Catharsis: On Creativity, Sensitivity, and Nostalgia
At the age of eighteen years, one month and twenty-nine days, I sat alongside my mother on a stone bench next to Glengarry House. Only minutes before her Uber would arrive, I looked at her large, red suitcase beside her, and then at the large, red-bricked walls of my to-be residence for the coming academic year. To say the least, in a few hours I would take my first steps into a university classroom. To say the most, I was sitting besides the woman who watched me take my first steps, who I would only watch through the screen of my Macbook on a Skype call for the next seven months.
Memory deceives me when I try to recall what we spoke of in that ephemeral time frame, but I now know that months later I would regret not insisting on keeping her with me for a few more hours, for her Greyhound was not scheduled until 5 p.m, and it was only 2. My dad used to say that regret was one of the strongest forces in the universe, one of his several musings that I would haughtily brush off as a seventeen-year-old but that I would begin to grasp, painfully so, at eighteen.
On the plane ride here, my mother’s insistent tapping on my shoulder, pointing towards the food and the intermittent “try this!” and “try that!” irked me. Five months forward, I now irk my tummy when I forget to eat, which she relentlessly rescues me from everyday with her “Did you eat breakfast?” WhatsApp text messages.
I push back further to the day of my departure, nearly midnight on a Sunday. I can feel the heavy warmth in the air, and a great deal of irritation for the pushy crowds hustling towards the gates, but I cannot feel what is to come during the next half hour. Snap of a finger! Half an hour’s up, it’s time to proceed. My mother is ready and so am I, and our bags are loaded onto the trolley with our passports and boarding passes in hand, but I look back and there’s one thing I own that I have left behind. One person. My dad. He stands there and he is so distinctly recognizable in the crowds, for you’d know his salt-and pepper hair, slightly more salt than pepper in the last few years, but always ready for a daughter’s Special Sunday Head Massage. He throws in a frank smile, and frankly I have never seen him cry all his life. He does not cry now either, and is faithful to his signature friendly-grin-hands-in-pockets look. We wave for every moment until I disappear from his vision completely, and he from mine.
My mother’s Uber is here, and I walk her to it. I tough it out to say goodbye, I’m not leaving forever, I say to myself, and I am now where I have forever wanted to be. I watch her leave as she watches me firmly standing on the sidewalk, I feel a surge of emotion, a sense of mesmerizing pride, a heavy nostalgia, a light optimism. I walk upstairs to my room and remember what she told me — cry for two minutes if you feel the need to, but then remember why you’re here.
I remember why I’m here, and how I got here. What it took to get here. But most importantly, I remember what they went through to bring me here. I will always be proud of all the sacrifices, love, fear, passion, pain and attention it took them to help usher me here. This is why writing something like this is difficult, emotionally taxing, but pure catharsis for me. I purge out what was stuck in the recesses of my mind but must be forced out, and allow into myself the beauty of the life that I have been gifted. I pick myself up, and brace myself for all the most beautiful experiences I could ever have asked for.
I fall in love with Ibsen, Chekhov, Eliot, Pound and Nella Larsen. I am mesmerized by James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Eliot Pound. Luchino Visconti enchants me with his decadence and closeted homoeroticism, Pedro Almodovar fascinates me with his comedic neorealism. I find a little love in everything, I go to art museums, I walk in parks, I listen to a little Sufjan Stevens everyday, and sometimes I tear up with John Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy”. One night I don’t sleep at all and drain my skin of color because I haven’t eaten well and I’m suffering a bad case of hives and I itch and scratch and still don’t know why, because I have never been allergic to anything all my life. The next day I’m painting my face, deciding what shade of lipstick screams “film student” the most, feeling energetic and lively and hives-free once more.
I watch myself blossom and bloom as I look through my Instagram pictures. I look at a photo of myself from a couple of months back, cheeks sunken and eyes hollow, then one from just a few days back, fuller cheeks, bright-eyed, with a healthier smile. I feel a surge of gratitude for how far along I have come, and how much farther I can go. To say the least, I am overwhelmed, happy and persisting.
I love looking at the burnt orange leaves in the fall, and feel the soft cushion of snow beneath my boots as I tread along. I love talking about neorealism and psychoanalysis, and I love discussing vertical integration and how Disney is just a monster corporation eating up everyone along its way. I love walking through the tunnels to class, where I think about growing up, or just growing, about wanting to write, and just how happy the Courier font of a standard film screenplay makes me. I think about how empty I feel when I’m not working, then I feel anxious and look for ways to feel passionate again. I never have to look very hard, because it comes every Monday when I head over to class to discuss Tender Is the Night or why the genre of horror appeals to an audience.
Sometimes, I also think about home. Idle afternoons in my mother’s room, where the blinds are down but the light enters softly, and we chat all day to no end. I laze around until the evening with her, and then we order Chinese food. I remember arguing with my dad over Robert De Niro’s expressions, and realize how I’ve grown to admire Clint Eastwood much more than I did before. I remember the warmth of my house, my room and all of our books with their old, yellow, nostalgic pages and how despicable, cold and hard the world outside could seem as compared to the comfort of home. I remember the hard days too.
I love where I am now, and how I am living, flourishing, thriving and striving for more as each day passes by. I am learning to let go and to live in the moment, and I am looking back at all the love that has brought me here. I think about the love my father and I share for Cinema Paradiso, and how I am his little Toto who must leave to go far away and aspire for all the passionate and meaningful things in life. I am Eilis from Brooklyn, for I too have left a beloved home to fend for a better life. I am Boyhood’s Mason, for I have grown with all these experiences, and am finally a young freshman at university, even though I’m a woman, but saying freshwoman doesn’t make any sense. I am Christine from Lady Bird for I have fought everyday to aspire for better than what was imaginable to me, and I have made several mistakes and hurt a few people along the way. I have felt David’s yearning for his mother in A.I Artificial Intelligence. I have felt a longing for my father the way little P.L. Travers felt for her ailing father in Saving Mr. Banks. I see Mia from La La Land in me for I have dreams to make it big doing what I love.
I have seen myself in all of them, all these characters coming alive on the cinematic screen and I have come to realize everything I love. I thought I had left home when I arrived at university, but I found a new one in the resurgence of a passion quietly burning inside of me for years to come. Many things have held importance for me all my life, but creativity and imagination were there when I didn’t acknowledge them. When human friends abandoned me, I was rescued by those of the creative imagination. I feel life more intensely the more I think about the power of film and writing in my life, and this is what I want to do.
I will let it be a companion to me all my life, for it can live and die with me, but the beauty of it is that I can still keep it breathing long after I am gone.
Thank you.
