As my last photos I posted indicated, I went ice skating for the first time on Friday. Ever since last year they’ve blocked off one of the streets by the campus’s barren, esplanaded edge and installed a rink for a few months in winter.
Friday was also the day the historic mill downtown caught fire. Before I went to the rink I was watching it being put out from a distance as blinking lights from the fire department’s vehicles punched holes in the black. Blocks away it was being pierced by cutesy Christmas lights they put around while I was home on break last weekend. They finally put the fire out yesterday afternoon. It made me angry at first. A seemingly eternal view, one that I had appreciated and even taken for granted, totally destroyed. I try to never take attending an institution with such a history attached to it for granted. I walk with the weight of a scholarship in memory of a man who worked his tail to preserve that history for future generations when he was alive; I can’t just take certain presences for granted, can I? But I still took that quaint Taco Tontos view for granted. Things are wack here.
Skating did help distract me, though. I had always wanted to try it out, and having roller skated on and off for a while, it was easy to pick up, as much as I clung to the wall. It felt satisfying and even empowering. I took a few knees and resigned with confidence (and one independent lap) to catch the last bus home. It just felt good, good to be out there doing something I had always wanted to, on a whim and without external limitation. Bruised knees are cool.
I skated for the second time tonight at the university arena, which has public skating sessions every so often. The lobby is excruciatingly wood panel, and it has the faint smell of popcorn from the snack bar. There is a party room where a bunch of little girls were having a party. Out on the rink I kept running into (not literally) a really adorable little girl with bangs, black leggings, and a slightly-too-big Nirvana shirt. I should’ve turned her on to the Melvins, but I had skating to do. Other than the small children (of which there were many), there were all kinds of people there, including funhaving college couples, cocky college boys, and a few seasoned vets who seemed to effortlessly glide across the floor. I kept looking at one guy, an older guy who looked kind of like David Crosby but not absurd in the facial hair department, who just casually sailed along with his hands in his pockets. He just seemed so cool.
I was not cool on the ice, or at least I didn’t feel cool, because my continued reliance on the wall got me trapped in a lot of traffic jams behind tiny children who didn’t really know how to skate, and I kept falling on my ass. My roller skating career ended when I was standing completely still in the middle of the street hockey court in a hometown-local park, lost my balance for a split second, fell on my ass, and sprained my wrist catching my fall. Obviously, I was overjoyed to keep falling on my ass. GREAT JOB.
I can tell I’m doing well just going out there at all, even if my confidence tonight lasted in spurts. It was just a different experience. It was admittedly a little hard to focus, especially when “You Don’t Know You’re Beautiful” segued into “Baby Shark” near the end of the hour and a half when the sound system had tired of Christmas music. (The downtown rink did supply “Simply Having A Wonderful Christmastime” at the same exact time as actual rain, but at least it stayed on theme.) I’m not sure if I made any progress tonight, really. But I don’t want to abandon it out of lack of immediate proficiency. Because when I do get into the zone, the things that weigh heavy are trivial, and I feel like I can do anything.
I think I can get the hang of it.

Out Here
Tuesday, August 30th, 2022I’ve been away from the homestead for over a week now adjusting to the trials and tribulations of college. I must admit, it’s a very liberating feeling being left to my own devices, mentally mapping out routes to dining halls and wandering around campus when I have free time. I’m already getting a lay of the land pretty easily, and I can’t believe I’ll be showing some out of state (and in one case, out of country) friends around this not-so-little old place in just a few weeks. (Seriously, DEVOtional cannot come quickly enough.) Maybe someday younger students here will be asking me for their way around, intimidated by the many routes of getting to Eastway or unable to not keep dropping their school issued ID cards. For now, I’ve been socializing with other members of my class who are in the same boat as me, though they happen to have friends from high school lingering in the area. I’ll always be an introvert, but talking to these brand new people has been strangely refreshing recently. It’s a nice, liberating feeling being a blank slate to a whole bunch of people who, like me, are also baby faced, weird, and anxious as hell.
Even as I make connections in the real world, I’m still checking my frequented sites and social media accounts. I expected I would do less of that as I transitioned into college life, but in retrospect I feel like I’ve been going through a mental transition regarding my time on the computer all along. Ever since I began making progress towards even attending Kent in the first place, I’ve been taking the digital world less and less seriously, and I didn’t even take it too seriously to begin with. Now I look at people getting into comment section flame wars sometimes and just feel a little bit sad. I feel sad that these people, apparently, have nothing better to do than insulting people on the internet for fleeting moments of manufactured superiority. They could be learning new things, opening their minds to new experiences, and actually engaging in the real world, but they aren’t. It’s frustrating sometimes, because it feels as if so much potential is being wasted on useless, stupid arguments when the participants could have been doing something more productive in the first place. (Hey, if me being a student makes me a vital part of the conscience of America, I gotta put my honest opinion out there.)
My year-long honors English course is centered around the theme of disenfranchisement, the act of being made into an outsider. But sometimes, strangely enough, I like to feel like an outsider. I like to look at inane arguments and know that I have no place there, that there’s something much better to be doing than fighting fire with fire. I’m learning that the type of fire that actually needs to be fought can be fought with words, expression, logic, truth. I’m really grateful to have the chance to hone these skills.
Tags:comments sections, common sense brah, get off the internet, human interaction, idiocy, internet discourse, jesus, new experiences, new places, personal experiences, ranting, the internet, the real world
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