Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Dealing with "it"

I throw the Kleenex box up in the air and furiously punch it, launching it across the room. Little white pieces of fluff flutter to the ground at my feet. I pick up a pillow and punt it as hard as I can into my closet, causing my dress shirts to slide off their hangers. I throw myself onto my bed, burying my face in my pile of comforters in the corner. I scream at the top of my lungs.

I am muting my primal scream with comforters because I don’t want to give my roommates the impression that this is a cry for help. No, this is just me, dealing with “it”. It doesn’t really matter what “it” is, when you are dealing with “it”, what is important is how you deal with “it”. At this moment, I am dealing with “it” physically, punishing inanimate objects that I have projected my problems onto. That is not the best way of dealing with “it”, but it just seemed appropriate today.

I have many other methods of dealing with “it”, but here are several of my favorite.

1 – Writing music
I pick up Sophie, my acoustic guitar. I throw her strap over my head, grab the pick from its nestled place between her strings, and give my guitar a strum to make sure she’s in tune. Okay, she is. Now, Sophie and I are going to deal with “it”. Depending on what “it” is, I will either proceed to play my heart out and sing at the top of my lungs or finger pick a sad little song to mope along to.

2 – Bottling "it" up
With this method of dealing with “it”, I visualize “it” as a material, physical object in front of me. I slowly, almost sneakily, reach up and snatch "it", holding "it" tightly in my hands. I thrust “it” into my chest, deep into the dark, rarely thought of parts, where my hidden bottle of problems lays. I open it carefully…OH NO! Oh jeez, all my bottled up problems almost escaped. That would have been BAD. I quickly shove “it” in there with the rest of my problems and cork the bottle up. Maybe one day I’ll get to those long sitting issues.

3 – Letting it go
In my opinion, the best way of dealing with “it”. In all my limited clutching and grasping at philosophy, I have found that by accepting and acknowledging “it” as a fact of existence, the inevitable pain that humans must experience, then l can actually let “it” go. This way of dealing with “it” removes “it” completely from myself, sanitizing me, freeing me.

In life, people are constantly dealing with “it”; relationships, bills, jobs, school, all the different varieties of negative human experience. There is no escaping “it”, because “it” can mean so many things. The only thing a person can affect is how we end up dealing with "it". I think next time I’ll take it easier on the Kleenex box and just decide to let “it” go.

5 comments:

Whitney Bourgouin said...

Jeremy, this is one of my favourite posts by you. I really liked the beginning because,like we talked about in class, it starts with the conflict. I also like the image of the Kleenex box, which almost always indicates crying (or a cold, I guess. And then at the end you go back to the Kleenex again to tie it all together. The form of the post was interesting too, and I like that it was different from most of our posts that are all in one story form, so this was different. One of my favourite lines was "I open it carefully…OH NO! Oh jeez, all my bottled up problems almost escaped." It's like the problem, or "it", is really a physically tangible thing, so that was a neat way to write about it.
Good job!

Stacey39 said...

Hey Jeremy,

I really like the description you use in this post. Even though you never explicitly say what "it" is, you are able to talk about the various ways you have of coping.

I think the end "wraps it up" a little bit. Maybe you could return to the negative action. Do you experience a catharsis after you rage against your room? Maybe that's how you "let it go."

Great piece.

Meghan Eddy said...

Hey,

I like this post. It reminds me of type of longer creative non-fiction essay: like the guy who wrote about the "art of sighing". It's interesting and funny because it is analyzing a little part of life that we all have to deal with: breaking it down into categories and looking at it from a different perspective. I also liked how you started with a scene, and than gave that scene context with the rest of your piece.

Well done

Sarah said...

I really like this! It’s just so relatable: everyone has problems, and different ways of dealing with them. It was interesting to see your take on it. Also excellent was that you started with action, and your description of the scene was vivid without being padded, which was because of your great word choice. You used a lot of dynamic verbs (punt, clutching and grasping, etc), which just really keep your attention and make the whole piece very vibrant.

I really liked the ending. It isn’t always a bad thing to ‘wrap things up’, especially since this isn’t really a post that is a story. You gave us a nice callback to the first paragraph, and let us see that there was maybe a personal lesson you learned in writing this out. Anyway, all in all, great job.

Cassie B said...

Jeremy,
This is a great piece. You create tension right from the beginning, making your readers long to know why you are so angry. My favorite part of the piece is the personification of your acoustic guitar, Sophie. It adds humor as well as displays the connection you have with your guitar.
I felt like the lead in, describing your other methods could possibly be more built up. You could explain when each method works the best.
Great post!
-Cassie