I love storms.
There was a real cracker of a storm on Monday, and I loved it; the rain made our professor inaudible, and the lightning flashes lit up our classroom even when the power failed.
Storms are great here. When the clouds go all purple in the distance and build up into immense mountains and fall down onto the old ridge of the Lawn and the rain raises dust-clouds from the constant construction in the Mad Bowl -- anyone else notice that they seem to smooth the dirt over and then dig it up again every week? -- the whole of Charlottesville feels darker, more complicated, less like the risqué slick-and-glossy sixties comedy it sometimes seems.
Of course, that same storm made me remember, as acutely as I did on gorgeous fifth-grade autumn days, precisely how barbaric it is that our society has chosen to confine its young for the better part of the year. As the rain slashed ferociously down and the raging wind howled around our corners, the room seemed suddenly a pathetic coward's cave against the irresistible power of the world outside.
Our instincts, too, have been all screwed up by childhoods spent sitting sullenly in classrooms as the year explodes with spring and ripens in fall. As the storm battered at our walls and sang to us from the outside, one by one my classmates rose and strode pissed-offedly to slam closed one and than another and than the last of our open windows, cutting off the feel and the flash of the outside. That's just terrible.
As sad as the closed windows made me, though, the incident was interesting because I think it has a lot to do with how we live here. People might talk about the bubble at the University, but that image suggests a phenomenon outside our control. That's not right. We work really hard to ignore a lot of stuff in the day-to-day. This is clear everywhere, but maybe especially in the words we use. Think about how many times you hear people use the same words and the same lines and the same jokes, cribbing off the same movies and the same national events, ignoring the unbelievable dynamism of life to generate a sense of constancy.
The world makes itself clear all the time. Whether by a storm or a tragedy or serendipity, it doesn't matter; you can't help but realize how quickly the path we walk shifts colors and switches directions. This past weekend was a great example. I had all these structured little components to my weekend like cells in a beehive, and they all happened, and they were plenty of fun.
But it was the utterly unpredicted and unrepeatable that made this the best weekend of the year. I talked with one of my best friends until the sun rose, and we saw the sky go clear from the Lawn. On Saturday afternoon, another of my dearest friends and I were struck with wanderlust and spent an hour circling outside Charlottesville as the sun sank and the hills went misty.
So that was pretty sweet. But this is more illustrative, I think, than instructive. I've not talked until it was clear dawn in a long time; things like that just happen of themselves, and thank God they do.
That's why I love road trips. Riding in a car is the clearest effort of humans to wall off the world, especially for Americans. We know the vast, consuming gulfs of our country by means of windows and windshields, via air-conditioned air and abstracted from the soundtrack of winds and cows and the like.
But once you strike out on the road with nothing more than a cooler of Diet Coke with Splenda and a box of Cheetos, as my brother and I did last summer, there is no way to control what happens to you. You might make it to the West Coast in one piece, or you might have to take an enormous succession of detours -- like a trip through the World's Largest Corn Palace looking for a replacement sparkplug wire. Whatever it is, you're forced out of the comfortable enclosure of your car-borne world over and over again by wrong turns and roads that aren't there and improbable, incredible sights like the World's Largest Bull's Head.
I love road trips, my friends, because they aren't anything but a tremendous and unafraid dive into the sea of the uncontrollable. Maybe we need a few more cars on Grounds after all, and damn the parking problem.
Days on the Lawn are here; drive away from the high-schoolers as quickly as possible. They show no mercy.
Connor's column runs bi-weekly on Fridays. He can be reached at sullivan@cavalierdaily.com.
Read More
It’s okay not to be okay
By Mai Hukuoka | 3 days agoWhether talking to a friend, a loved one or a professional, it is so necessary, and human, to need more than you can provide for yourself.
Taking a break at Tangerines Kitchen
By Charley Thomas | 5 days agoWhat the restaurant somewhat lacks in ambiance, it compensates for in tasty dishes and prompt service.
Virginia Policy Lab — a hub for student-led policy action
By Katherine Haden | December 9, 2024Students propose their own projects and collaborate with other members to research their issues of interest, brainstorm solutions and write policy proposals.
