I'm getting pretty tired of writing about my life and my "experience" here at Dartmouth. As a writer you'd like to think that all it takes to write a good piece is a little soul searching, a few wistful anecdotes and a subtle turn in your conclusion paragraph.
Eventually, though, you run into the reality that your own life experience can only provide so much worthwhile material. In other words, your own life just isn't that interesting. I met with a writing professor last week to talk about his craft and to beg for some magical wisdom that could solve my writer's block, and he told me that in order to become a real writer, the first thing I had to do was get out of my own head. Then, he said, go outside and talk to people and write about them instead of yourself. There are amazing stories being lived out every day all around you, he continued, and all you have to do is start looking for them. I want to believe him. I want to believe it's that easy, but his advice seems too simple an answer for what at times can feel like something existentially important.
I cling stubbornly to the idea that all things worth writing about will be found behind closed doors, in the depths of my own thoughts, probably whilst sipping a mug of tea as I jot down ideas in a black Moleskine notebook. Maybe all I need is a new Moleskine the heroic writer, figuring out the world's problems from his futon.
So when the Winter Carnival issue of The Dartmouth rolled around, I figured I should go do something wintery and write about it. I'm taking two classes this term and have big chunks of free time during the day, a novel experience for me.
One day, in lieu of an afternoon nap, I decided to go help build the snow sculpture. As I walk across the Green on another unusually warm afternoon, I fall into stride with a group of guys moseying from lunch back to their dorms.
They're cracking jokes about the snow sculpture, which thus far seems to be just a soggy pile of snow in the center of campus, and how pathetic the little cupcake will look in comparison to sculptures past.
"I long for the days of epic, 30-foot snow castles on the Green," says one of the friends, referring to the gargantuan structures that were once the pride of Dartmouth's Winter Carnival.
I, too, wish Winter Carnival was something grand, like it was in the olden days. Which is weird, because neither I, nor the kids I'm talking with actually know what Dartmouth was like back then. Our idealized image of Winter Carnival in the '50s and '60s comes from nothing but some photos in the yearbook. What a strange thing to reminisce about times and places you yourself have never known.
There's no one working on the snow sculpture right now, by the way. It's an oddly deserted collection of shovels, buckets and floodlights surrounding a few stilted boards, sitting on what looks like a half-melted skating rink. For some reason, the floodlights stay on 24 hours a day. I feel like I never see anyone here, but I'm sure that whoever is running it is committed and puts in a lot of work. Maybe I should come back another time.
I've never stood in the center of the Green like this for no reason. Most of campus is in 2As right now, and the few passersby seem more distracted by the sculpture than interested in it. Baker Tower looms above this pile of snow encased in plywood, and behind me the din of construction and midday traffic on Wheelock Street comes in waves, providing a contrast between Dartmouth past and present.
I can't remember the last time I went to a particular place on campus like this just to stand and think, the last time I wasn't rushing between classes stuck in the cycle of furious work that will supposedly help solve the world's problems and/or my own.
There's no greater purpose here other than standing and thinking. Sure, I'm supposed to write an article about the snow sculpture, but the stories are already here. All I have to do is look for them.
