There was a time in my life when the autumnal shades of melancholia seemed to settle upon my cognizance as if they were the brittle leaves that that sensuous season litters upon the sidewalks and streets of our homes, neighborhoods and parks; and if the degree to which the melancholia weighed upon my mind is at all in proportion to a quantity of those shed leaves, then I would place this cerebral organ in a rich birch forest in the deepest woods of New England (my salutations to the ancestral home of the American fall) in late August, when the winds begin to carry a touch of venom, and the sun grows bashful, subjecting itself to public scrutiny for increasingly shorter and shorter periods of time. And then winter came. And I wept.
Thankfully, though, that’s all behind me. Nowadays all I can offer are amusing and concise anecdotes. Like this one:
So I was walking down N Street and I came to the intersection with 34th Street. I was facing east, with my back to the University, letting traffic go by, minding my own business. It was then that the strangeness of my situation dawned on me. Something was way, way off. The traffic on 34th Street, that for which I had come to a complete stop, was going the wrong way.
If you didn’t know already, 34th is a one-way street, flowing towards, but never away from, Prospect Street. The traffic in question?which consisted of no more than one car?was bound for the outer reaches of the civilized world, in this order: O, P, Q, Volta and beyond.
My expression changed slightly, from the standard contemptuousness to a more severe glare. I craned my neck slightly in order to get a better look at the brigand behind the wheel. He was, of course, old. He had attached to his saggy-skinned skull a pair of glasses and a small-brimmed hat. Some similarly old figure sat next to him, staring ahead with an identically vacant expression. They were both blissfully unaware of their transgression.
“Hey!” I yelled, gesticulating wildly with a series of exaggerated points in the proper direction. “One way! It’s one way!” They did not hear my admonitions and drove on. Having recognized the futility of my actions, I quickly re-evaluated what mannerisms would make me look coolest and assumed them. This consisted of my bringing my hand, palm upward, to my chest, furrowing my brow, dropping my jaw slightly and curling my lip, as if to say, “What the hell, buddy? This is a one-way street.”
Needless to say, I looked ridiculous. Surely, anyone surveying the scene from afar would identify me as a jackass. Meanwhile, I was scrutinizing these poor old bastards with a scorn I had been reserving for my breakout acting performance as one of Bob Cratchett’s children in the Broadway production of A Christmas Carol?specifically, the scene where Cratchett makes all his kids toast to Mr. Scrooge’s generosity against their will and they all raise their glasses and say, scornfully, “Mr. Scrooge.” Not only did the occupants of the car not deserve such treatment, but I was making an obscene spectacle of myself in the process of distributing it.
Or so I thought.
The car had passed out of the intersection and was well on its way to O Street. The aforementioned doubts of my right to scorn these people began to settle on me then, as I stood in an empty intersection sputtering like a schizophrenic. But then someone on the opposite corner came into focus. It was a young male, dressed casually and wearing the same indignant expression that I was.
It was great. Here was a kindred spirit. He was still looking down 34th Street when I caught sight of him, so I had time to recreate my incredulous countenance before he turned around. When he did, he caught sight of me, and I was shocked by feeling a rare sense of community. We gestured at each other from across the intersection, speaking in a language of sign enhanced by some ethereal bond across the plain of contempt. I pointed down the street and shrugged my shoulders, clearly communicating, “What the hell? Who were those assholes?” He replied by imperceptibly nodding his head, rolling his eyes and sucking in his lips, as if to sign, “I know, buddy. But what’s a guy to do? We just have to learn to cope with living in a world of fools.” I noted my agreement by doing the same thing he did, only faster, and we parted ways, never to see each other again.
But that day, a fine, crisp February afternoon, saw me instilled with a renewed sense of fraternity that, as I saw it, was capable of moving mountains, levelling cities, salting fields and cultivating in those closest to me a confidence in the systems and institutions that we have erected around us as the monuments to a civilized species, a species that is no longer content to communicate only in terms of who needs what, and what needs what, but a species that seeks to love, cherish and hold.
And scorn.
J?rgen Cleemann is a senior in the College and a contributing editor of The Georgetown Voice. He’s more machine now than man, twisted and evil.
