Moab

#2

Amherst was delightful.

On the walk up to Baker after arriving, piled with various knapsacks and grinning like a madman, I felt as though I were in a film. I imagined the point-of-view swooping around from behind me. Reality was saturated. It was the opening scene. It just felt so significant. I hope there will be a lot of moments like that in Israel.

Fortunately over the course of the weekend, I was able to enjoy some tender moments with my beloved coffeehouse, Rao’s. Cafe vanillas and blueberry muffins all around.

Most importantly however, my trip to Amherst granted me a certain peace of mind that I have been craving. I was able to organize my thoughts and rework my mindset. For the last month I have been rather apprehensive, to say the least, about this whole study abroad thing. It wasn’t simply the language barrier or the inevitable culture shock that was bothering me. To put it simply, I’m a man of routine. I enjoy predictability. I take refuge in the familiar. I don’t often deviate from established routines. To tell the truth, it can be quite jarring when plans and routines are interrupted.

Side-note: I also have a dreadful memory. It’s not that I forget an experience happened per se, but I forget what it was like to be in the experience. The memory decays very quickly, sometimes within a matter of weeks, and all I’m left with is a shell of sorts.

While I watched bucolic New England landscapes pass by through the Peter Pan bus window on the return journey, I mused over advice dispensed to a friend of mine.

It takes courage to even leave your house. It takes courage to go away to school. And it takes a certain brand of courage to go half way across the world and study in another country. Some people go their entire lives without leaving their hometowns because they fear the unfamiliar, the unpredictable, the unknown. To weave in the above side-note: I often forget how anxious I was in the months leading up to my freshman year of college (as most people were, of course). Going away to college, while something I had always wanted to do, was so far from my usual diet of familiarity and predictability. It was a frightening venture at the time, but it has reimbursed me a thousand times over. With this upcoming semester in Tel Aviv, the ante has been upped (to make use of that dreadful cliche), but so has the reward.

Thirty-six hours until I leave, and I think I’m finally ready.

Now I just have to pack.

In eight days I will be in Tel Aviv.

In three days I will be in Amherst. Which am I more excited for?

Damn right. We’ll be reunited soon, my dear UMass.

Dispatch #1

One of the most wonderful things about literature is its ability to convey a writer’s ideas on universal truths—its ability to make sounding and resolute judgements upon the nature of love, religion, society, modernity, humanity, et cetera. As a reader, you have the option to peruse all sorts of works and weed out those which you believe to espouse such monumental insights, from those which have less truth than the latest issue of The National Enquirer. Literature illuminates possible universal truths that you as a reader can choose to weave into your conception of the world, or just as easily disregard as a barefaced mistake or tragic misunderstanding on the part of said writer. Therefore, books which you may spurn for promoting bogus universal truths are just as useful as those books which you as a reader may praise for their masterful veracity, as the former allows you to pressurize your ideas and manufacture an equal reaction to the falsities about which you have read.

When I write these words, one book in particular looms prominently in my mind’s eye—that of William Golding’s magnum opus, Lord of the Flies. I read the book in my tenth grade English class, for a teacher by the name of Mr. Riordan, whom I liked. 

This is apropos of nothing, but the following year I had an English teacher by the name of Mr. Lapenna, whom I liked significantly less. He reminded me of a marble bust of Shakespeare, and was about as engaging. Occasionally he wore turtleneck sweaters that, perching upon his shoulders and circling his thin neck, appeared ready to eat up his bowling ball of a head at any moment. That thought kept me entertained for a minute or two. 

It was rumored that his wife was a former supermodel, that he had served a stint in jail, and that he had an infamously attractive son, only the last of which I can in good graces confirm. He is quite handsome.  

In the much more likeable Mr. Riordan’s class, I scampered through Golding’s book, growing ever more bothered by his über-pessimistic worldview. It seemed to me that he considered humanity to be worth little more than a pair of used gym socks. It was Golding’s opinion that the undeniable, naked truth about humanity was that it was inherently evil. Reading Lord of the Flies forced me to grapple with my own ideas of humanity’s intrinsic qualities. However, I came to the opposite conclusion. It is my stalwart belief that humanity is inherently good, and that it is things like ignorance and propaganda and hyper-consumerism and lust, that sully humanity’s pristine condition. This is a plank in my personal philosophy that trickles down to affect every other aspect of my life. 

However, I also understand the vantage point from which Golding regarded the world and gathered the evidence for his perceived universal truths. Golding saw the Great Depression and World War II, and the following decades of Cold War xenophobia, rampant consumerism, urban decay, race riots, and assassinations. He saw postwar miracle fall upon postwar miracle like the collapsing tiers of a house of cards. This pessimism is imbued in a whole generation of writers—even my beloved Kurt Vonnegut. I guess I cannot blame Vonnegut and Golding and Heller and the like for their judgements on the nature of humanity given their experiences, but I nevertheless, politely disagree.

One last superfluous note on English teachers: the bothersome Mr. Lapenna was a vocabulary machine. Despite my dislike, I offer to him in thanks: imbue, apropos, magnum opus, superfluous and a whole set of words without which I would be a much less reputable writer. Fancy that.