To be bored and alone was something I wished for when each day bled into the next and time washed away tomorrow as yesterday ran out the back door.
Yesterday I felt true boredom for the first time in a long while. I sat in my bedroom, opened my windows and felt the warm weather, air thick with rain, and looked around at the blank walls. My mind is a blank white wall, and all I want to do is something. My mind is an empty stained wood floor that creaks far too often. I reached for a clean fresh page in my worn tired journal but found I had nothing to say.
I sat in that wordless moment and sought out something, or rather someone, I knew would describe what I was feeling. If no one knows me, than Kafka knows me— not in a true way, but in the way that Kafka seems to always describe despair and loneliness and existential dread in a way that cannot normally be found in community but must be found in the dog-eared pages of a book we must never open in the presence of another for fear that the notes in the margins will be read over our shoulder. Who else would one go to to read something said simply, said obvious, said in a way that looks nice on a blog post or a tumblr page?
‘I am free and that is why I am lost.’ – franz kafka
I am free. I am free from classes, mostly. I am free from school-year obligations and my regular 7am alarm. I am free from that weird academic pressure that looms so heavily over ones head, lowering and thickening with each exam, each credit, each year closer to the end. I am free and that I know and have not doubted since I left my last final and wrote my last paper and shut my computer and finally laid down.
Now what? I’m laying down and it’s June and every moment feels fleeting and lacking some sort of substance. Yes, the sun shines wonderfully, and the lake looks like a zillion nickels, and the grass has never felt so nice under my barefeet- but now what??
The feeling. The now what feeling. The feeling of being lost. When we are left to roam with no end in sight, and suddenly come to realize we have forgotten which way is true north (maybe even confusing up and down), only then can we say we are lost.
Today I feel true boredom and I feel lost. Today I feel the sun in my bones, and the grass under my feet, and the lake through my skin, and I am free.
To celebrate this feeling of freedom and sunshine and days where the sidewalk must be skipped down I have compiled a playlist of songs that I listen to on bright and boring summer days.
full playlist here (june 12th 91.7 fm wsum @4pm)
‘I am free and that is why I am lost.’ – franz kafka
Feral in the barrel 