Ithaca

Launched on a path now
in the middle of upstate New York,
I understand my beliefs
less well than ever.
I run up and down the many hills here
wondering. Or walking slow,
letting a smile crash up
when I feel
how my legs are good and warm.
I am becoming the person in a dingy overcoat
whom you detest or whom may be you love.
I am reforming.

I have an excuse to be here
but it's not a good enough excuse
to me.
Maybe I will learn
wintering here
maybe inside I will turn hotter,
dryer
through a hot rain of anger,
Maybe I will become a different person.

I wrote this poem when I was 22. I was in my first semester of grad school at Cornell in Ithaca, NY and hated it. I thought I had launched myself forever on a career path as an academic (in comparative literature). Rediscovering this poem now, I am in awe of my 22-year-old self, who had the strength to take me away from a life-sucking, secure path I could not stand.

It was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made to admit that grad school wasn't working for me, that academia had been revealed as dry and starved and full of meaningless one-upmanship, and that I didn't want to do it and, in fact, I didn't have to do it.

At that point in my life, I found it shameful to admit that anything wasn't working. Or that anything simply wasn't going well for me. I was supposed to be happy and successful all the time. It was hard to leave a fully-funded fellowship that I thought was a ticket to Importance (not to mention a perpetual meal ticket). Reading this poem makes me happy that I dared to do it.