Author: Jordan de la Torre
The Nicaraguan poet Ruben Darío once said, ‘Yo detesto la vida y el tiempo en que me tocó nacer’ (‘I detest the life and the time in which I was born’). Not more than a few years ago, I would have dismissed such a statement as pure garbage: poisonous, self-pitying and hypocritical. Darío was, after all, a venerated poet who spent his life traveling as a diplomat. Now, though, I’m not so sure. Perhaps it is merely my Occidental education, but I become more disgusted with these modern times with each passing day that brings me closer to graduation and the so-called ‘real world.’
I am studying abroad in Madrid right now. My friend, Alex West and I have a professor (one of the young and arrogant breed) who absolutely loves to recite this contemptus mundi bit. When he does, I get the feeling that he thinks he is blowing all of our minds, shattering our cozy conceptions and false truths, as if we’d never heard anyone attack the United States or the cell-phone before. Yet, the truth of the matter is that Sr. Emilio Pardo would fit right in at Occidental, and he’s only preaching to the choir (in my case anyway).
On the first day of class, he showed his true academician colors by saying that ancient man lived just as well, if not better, than his modern counterpart, something that I read or hear at least once a week at Occidental, the statue of Janus crying nostalgically for what is behind him-and damn if he doesn’t have good reason.
It has been said many a time that the problem with ‘our generation’ is our political apathy. ‘Where’, those that have come before us ask, ‘are your demonstrations, your causes, your righteous anger and organized efforts towards change?’ And they say this all as if ‘kids these days’ were flying in the face of nature, as if we were degenerate or defective because we supposedly reject some time-honored and Aristotelian notion of man as a political animal. How bestial, how animalistic, to live without regard to politics and the good life! Yet, what they don’t see is that the problem is precisely the opposite, and herein lies the reason for my resentment and my ire: man has been tamed, has forgotten that he is primarily an animal, and O how the mighty have fallen!
In class one day, perhaps two weeks ago, we somehow got onto the topic of recurring dreams, when a girl (a tall and harsh looking New Yorker, we’ll just call her Ms. Blah) related this gem of a fantasy that has taken permanent residence inside her mind. “I keep having this dream,” she began, throwing in an ‘um’ or a ‘like’ every third or fourth word at the most, “that I am in the middle of this fabulous shopping spree. I am in the mall, and I have all the money I need, and all the clothes fit me so well and they all look so great, and then I wake up sad because I know that I don’t have any of those clothes.”
I couldn’t have been more at a loss for words. What, I wonder, can one even say to that? So, in lieu of speech, I laughed. How absolutely pathetic, like a fish trapped in its bowl while only its wards realize that its incarcerated. Poor, poor Ms. Blah.
Yet, there is a solution, and hope springs eternal. The most fun that I’ve had so far on this trip was my first night in Ireland. Admittedly, I was fairly drunk. My aforementioned friend and I got to arguing-God knows what about, as we both pass the time playing Devil’s Advocate-all before we got to exchanging blows.
Now, I’m not a very violent person, and neither of us had any intention of hurting each other, but still, he got me in the face pretty good and I popped him in the ear with my elbow (everything else was body shots, perfect strikes above the hollows of the knees and below the numbers on the chest). This was probably my third or fourth fight, and the only one not with my brother, and I must say, we have been much better friends since then, and I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard, or felt so vividly alive.
I’m not telling everyone to go around fighting in some sort of orgiastic and violent haze, I’m just saying: remember that you are an animal! Shed the material coil that makes you a prisoner to the vulgarity of the mob and its MTV and its oh-my-god-have-you-seen-the-new-blackberry! We are beasts, all of us, and we would do well to remember that. It’s just as my fellow Minnesotan F. Scott Fitzgerald said, ‘To the spoils goes the victor . . .’
Do away with the spoils, and then we can truly be victorious.
Jordan de la Torre is a junior ECLS major. She can be reached at jdelatorre@oxy.edu
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