I ain't overjoyed

In retrospect, this realization, like many, has been a long time in coming. It is always that way, at least for me. Once I realize something, I also suddenly realize that I have in fact known this for some time now, the only difference being that it has finally become so damn painfully apparent that a retarded monkey under heavy sedation in a sensory-deprivation chamber would have taken notice by now.

This flash of insight came, just like its predecessors, in a moment when my emotions were on the more extreme end of my emotional spectrum. I was walking along, pushing a bicycle whose mere sight I have come to loathe, and trying to make up lame anti-bicycle jokes.

Q: "Why did God give bicyclists hands?"
A: "It'd be pretty difficult to push your bicycle home without 'em!"

This was the 2nd time this bicycle had been out of the house in about 2 months. During the majority of those 2 months, it was languishing with a flat tire which I used as an excuse to avoid having to use the damn thing. When I finally got it fixed, and back out the door, now it had another flat, leaving me stranded about an hour and a half's walk from home.

So as I walked my stupid walk, and joked my stupid jokes, I had plenty of time to notice the crappy architecture of the buildings I walked past, and the shabbiness of many of the stores, whose bald and paint-skin chipped mannequins clustered in faux conversation outside dusty-windowed stores. I noticed that what few buildings didn't look as though the designer nursed a grudge against humanity had their plaster falling off in large chunks, revealing the brickwork underneath. And everywhere, all the buildings are coated in a coal-smoke residue that could pass for the color of dirty dark concrete, were it not for the streaks under the windows on either side, where the water washed off the sills, and left cleaner streaks to stand out.

The sidewalks are all made of individual concrete paving stones, frequently broken, pushing up out of the ground at odd angles, grass growing up between the blocks. My useless pointless fucking bike bounces and rocks over the jutting, angled blocks, and I curse boredly to myself.

All the while the cars go by, the sun shines down like something I haven't seen since a past life (which is not so far off, in case you were wondering,) the birds and bugs squawk and screech, and life is generally pleasant, considering. Then suddenly it occurs to me. This general pleasantness in outdoor life, this hideous lack of consideration for they eyes of passer-bys on the part of any architects, this small, humming, inbred small-town self-satisfaction - WHERE HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE? And the answer comes to me - Hesston, Kansas.

Now, if your life has seen anything signficant happen during the last 9 years, this may be an indication that you are unfamiliar with this particular metropolis, so allow me to help you. The wikipedia entry for Hesston, Kansas, which has no pictures whatsoever, (due to the fact that there is nothing there worth taking pictures of except 2 girls who have been raised on nothing but corn and milk, and there are other websites for that sort of thing,) states that the population in 2000 was 3,509. And since credible research has demonstrated that the median IQ is indeed rising, we can assume that the population of Hesston has probably declined since 2000, since no person with the braincells necessary to steal candy from a person in a semi-vegetative state would remain in Hesston. I know this because I had a friend who lived his life in a highly functional semi-vegetative state, and even he left Hesston.

Nowy Sacz reminds me of Hesston. How can this be? How can a town of more than 100,000 remind me so much of a town of 3,500? Well, I suppose it is due largely to the magical, reality-bending forcefield which seems to be present in most small towns, which make them all resemble one another. But that aside, let's try to reason it out.

Is it the physical town itself? Well, yes and no. I mean, the buildings are in a dreadful state of disrepair - no doubt about it. Whereas Hesston was, on the whole, very well kempt. But Nowy Sacz is improving everyday, and slowly becoming a cleaner, nicer, less gray place to live, which is encouraging to see. When I first arrived here, I puzzled long and hard over the buildings that were painted on one or two or three sides, with the other side(s) left concrete gray. I pondered - had they run out of paint? Was paint truly that expensive, that the building had to be painted in stages? (This was not such an unreasonable assumption, as you could see many houses that had obviously been built in stages with the material available at that time.) It was only over the summer that I saw workmen erect scaffolding, and apply six-inch blocks of styrofoam all around the building, and then cover it in a light layer of mud, and paint it that I realized . . . they were insulating and painting at the same time. And the combined cost was indeed too much, so they were doing the buildings in stages, improving the heat retention and the appearance, one side at a time. Nowy Sacz, after the long, dark night of communism, is indeed on the mend. But it still has a long way to go.

Is it the variety of things to do, the limited offerings of entertainment in this small town? Well, that certainly may have something to do with it. I would hesitate to leap upon it as the definitive answer, since there is an occasional movie we can see here in English or Spanish, and there are a sprinkling of restaurants, of the Chinese, Polish, Pizza and Kebab variety, from which we can choose. But that gastrological cornucopia aside, (please note ironic tone) the fact remains that the streets are quite still by 9:30, and the nightlife here consists mainly of sitting in chairs around a candle in the center of the table, and listening to your friend tell a story quite similar, but different in some details, than the one he told you last week.

Is it the people? Well, yes and no. I mean, the people in Hesston were dreadfully closed off. If you hadn't grown up there, and molested the same cattle as them, well, you just weren't family. We could communicate in the same language, but there was still a barrier between us.
People in Nowy Sacz are far more open to outsiders than Hesstonites. At least the one's I deal with are far more intelligent in general, and open to outside influences, than their counterparts in Hesston. But, at the end of the day, there is still a barrier between the great majority of them, and yourself. In large part they were bred, born, and will live and die in this town. With some exceptions, their conception of life outside of Poland is no greater than my conception of a life limited to a 400 mile radius.

Which is not to say that they aren't splendid people. The ones I've hung out with have been generous, kind, and largely polite to a fault. You certainly couldn't say the same for most Spaniards. But despite their politeness, generosity and kindness, there remains a barrier between you - that you will never truly understand them, nor they you.

So . . . Nowy Sacz reminds me of Hesston, Kansas. And the fact is, every single instant that I spent in Kansas I now regard as having been a waste of my precious, God-granted life, and thus, an offense against the Almighty himself. I wish I had not been so stubbornly tough in my youth, and insisted that "when the going gets tough, the tough get rough," and had rather stuck by the maxim, "when the going gets tough, the smart move and let the dumbasses carry on in their stead." Yet, what am I to do? Having finally realized (what has been a long time coming,) that I am definitely not overjoyed to be living here, am I going to move?

The fact is, no. The job-hunting season is largely past, and I made a commitment to this school. But if you think that is enough to keep me here, you don't know your Matt very well. The real fact is that I am here for a reason; I am on a mission, and I won't quit till I get what I want. I am getting an advanced degree, which will be one more stepping-stone on the way to my ultimate goal of getting a PhD. I always said I could do time in prison, if need be. And this is a far cry from prison, but I still feel like I am doing time. I may not be locked up, but I still ain't overjoyed.