Catch, drive, finish, release. Catch. Drive. Finish. Release. The only thought that occupies my mind three hours every morning, six days a week. I have to offer myself some respite, so I keep changing it up. Something like Aaron Copland's "Piano Variations," I suppose. I try to make it last all three hours without repeating myself. Why am I doing so many pull-ups? Catch... drivefinishrelease.
Why have I been doing sprints for an hour? Catch and drive. Finish and release. I wasn't meant for this.
I like language. I like the nuanced terseness, the ornate circumlocution. I like its power to communicate and its power to obfuscate. Words to me truly "are loaded pistols," as Jean-Paul Sartre once said.
And now, the same four words are incessantly, tauntingly probing my brain, inducing some remote physiological reaction and always driving me beyond capacity.
With every passing day, I feel my muscles bulging with the raw iron bullets of my pistols, leeching my creative faculty to form a newly robust physique.
I like to call my decision to come to Dartmouth the most and best haphazard decision I've ever made. I didn't know what a Dartmouth was until the day before I applied, and I never visited campus. When I finally arrived, I was justly disillusioned with the strong bacchanalian undertones of the social scene here, so I resolved to find productive, sober niches. However, it soon became apparent that I wouldn't be able to subsist on slam poetry and trivia competitions for four years.
Lightweight crew. I assumed it was pure physical exertion, so my utter lack of coordination wouldn't encumber me. Moreover, it was a varsity sport, so it would occupy enough of my time to give me a sense of purpose.
Never could I have anticipated all the covert baggage that would come with it. I now spend every other day with the brothers at Chi Gam. I'm probably going to dirty rush there next term. And coordination? Not only do I need full mastery over my own motor skills, I need to coordinate my actions with everyone else in the boat.
Catch, drive, finish and release.
I have no time. No time to think. I worked on the sales floor of Target for a year in high school. I made $7.25 an hour, restocking shelves. My supervisors thought I was stupid and worthless. I would have died of tedium if I wasn't able to sing while I did it. I was one of Walt Whitman's workers of America's heartland, "singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs." But I cannot sing anymore. Now I only catch, drive, finish, release.
I don't drink. I don't like losing control. Before I came to Dartmouth, I somehow had the idea that I could go to parties sober and enjoy watching people act like idiots. I lied to myself. I knew this wasn't true. I hate parties. I want to be classy and hipster like the people in Amarna. But I'm a varsity athlete.
I like to watch people. Yesterday, I went to Collis to see what people were saying. I tell myself that I'm trying to capture some fleeting insight on life that lives in the way people laugh and cry, in the way they speak and listen.
Some people were talking about getting stoned on Friday night. Some people were discussing the last orgo midterm. Some people were just smiling. But everyone was doing what they love, and loving what they do. But I've lost my identity for a sport. It has consumed me, and I am weak.
Catch, drive, finish.
