Portrait of an Artist as a Young Cynic: Transitions

by Genny Platon

Gainesville, Florida. Despite the humid weather, it's October. It's one of those hot days where I notice my shirt is sticking to my skin from the sweat rolling down my back. I've been working like a dog all day painting the outside of some rich old couple's house. As I am painting the house, streams of various thoughts pour in. I start to realize that I have no idea what I'm getting myself into. It's not just the fact that I'm painting a mansion that is the size of the white house in Washington, but that I moved here to find something that I can't even remember. I hardly have time to think about who I am, where I am, and ask myself what I am doing here. Each day I feel myself slip into nothingness.

My name is Napal Senntoyo. I've lived on this earth for seventeen happy years, and the eighteenth year just seems to be sliding right past me without notice. My freshman year in college has turned out to be a huge disappointment. I spent the first two months since I moved here looking for a job to pay rent. Since I wanted to be a painter, I thought painting houses would be an alternative to flipping burgers. Now I despise painting more than life itself. There's no aesthetic meaning. There's no purpose. Class has been no prize either. In the morning, my body still aches from the day before. I'm in constant debate with myself if I should get up or sleep in. Most compromises lead to wandering some place else other than class. The bookstore is a tempting detour while I'm on the way to the community college. Often I go inside the store to learn something on my own rather than sleep in a prep class I shouldn't even be in. It's a conspiracy, frankly. God forbid I am ever in a class where I actually use the information I'm given. I've always wanted to use my powers for evil. Someday I will create that nerd union against the world. With all sarcasm aside, I think either way there would be no self-fulfillment. But at least in this way I'm trying to fit in with the masses. Is this what I really want? To fit in?

It's time for me to clean up the paint and pack up to go home. I expect to be here for another hour listening to the old lady's stories of….nothing really. The conclusion's always the same. "Stay in college so you can get a better education," she'd tell me. But when I'd ask her what for, she'd tell me it's for some great reason. It's for some great job waiting with open arms. I'd tell her I'll just end up wasting any sort of talent I have painting billboards for some ungrateful money grubbing company. Then she curses at me and shakes her fist in a semi-threatening way. Let me get one thing straight, I never intended to come off as arrogant and mouth off. I like doing things people don't have time to do or just can't do themselves. But this couple just seems so bent on how life treated them so cruelly. They had to work hard to get where they are today. In my mind, I wonder if they ever enjoyed one minute of it. And they expect me to have this blind-sided trust in something I'm not sure of? I just can't stay silent about something I have doubts upon. I do feel bad, though, I haven't learned how to just smile and act like I'm listening. Damn opinions. Damn individuality. Being myself always gets in the way of things.

I decide to take a little self- induced field trip to some place new today, the grocery store. I haven't eaten a real meal since I left home. As I am strolling through the aisles, I realize I am walking with my messy overalls unclipped and my athletic bra showing. It shouldn't bother me. It's not uncommon to see girls running around in their underwear with those short shorts and athletic bras. But for some reason I feel a pair of eyes piercing through my back. "Damn Asian slut," I hear grumbled underneath what sounds like a woman's voice. I turn around and meet this woman's glance for a second. I'm not angry. Just a little confused. Is she mad because I'm Asian or is she mad because she thinks I'm a slut? I know she's not even sure which one I am. She appears to be a nice lady with a little potty mouth. With a sudden flick of her hair, she turns the opposite way. Before she turns the corner to the other aisle, she mutters something about Filipino mafias. Oh, I think I've heard of those. They are threatening to the community from the waist down. Honestly, I have no idea. But this isn't gang central. It's the good old South. And what strikes me as hilarious is that I have a stronger southern accent than she does. So I decide to innocently harass her in the next few aisle--from a distance.

"Oh! Oh! Is dis the isles with de rice?" I embrace a box of Rice-O-Roni and holler, "Oh! it remind me home!" And at the right moment, I catch the woman looking at me. I wistfully sing to myself, "Rice-0-Roni…the San Francisco treat." She begins to flush when I flash a friendly smile at her. I wasn't born in San Francisco, but the joke is pretty damn funny. This isn't the first time this has happened. I lived on the west side of Jacksonville when I was little. There was some man with a mullet who would curse the Asian population for taking the white man's job. He bent over to sneer at me and talk about when I grow up I'm going to be just like the rest of them. I remember squirming away and covering my mouth. Eventually, I screamed in anguish, "You're stinky!"

The situation seemed funny to me. Maybe he never realized that if physical appearances really mattered in hiring new people, odor would probably be more of a factor than color. I suppose, since that moment, everything has seemed funny to me. Life is a serious issue, but everything seems to have an underlying joke to it. The comment the woman in the grocery store made sparked that memory. And in the midst of the sacred cookie aisle, I have a revelation. That comment shed light on something else I was looking for, but lost along the path of sleep, wake up, go to class, work, occasionally eat, then sleep again. I came here to search for who I really am. I ended up losing myself instead.

I'm standing in the grocery line daydreaming about getting home to my very first apartment. It's the size of a refrigerator and came with a beige carpet that doubles as a couch. Once I get home, I am going to cook myself a real meal, then sit on my "couch" deep in thought. Probably to wallow in an insult I know wasn't true. I know I'm just letting this bother me, but I can't let go of the thought of it. Sometimes I feel as if I were trespassing in someone else's personal

utopia. If I were to leave, then the world would be perfect. I know. I realize that some people just never grow up. They never mature or change for the better. I want so much to rise above that and not be a label. Yet people will always judge. Even in America, the land that promises to be a heaven on earth. It's not a utopia and it's not the answer to everyone's problems. A huge pile of dirt is a huge pile of dirt no matter where I go. If I decide to look at it as a pile of dirt or build it into a sand castle, that's my decision. It doesn't even matter if I'm in a first or a third world country. I realize that revolutions start from repression. From that one person that rises above, there are others that follow to help make it happen. I feel as if I were seeking just that. I just don't have that "go and get 'em" attitude.

God, I think too much. So much that I forgot where I was. In the grocery store waiting, for what seems to be forever, in line. Don't these people understand that the express lane does not mean ten items or more? Top that off with a cherry and here I am spending the fifteen dollars in quarters that old biddy lady paid me on groceries. Money comes in. Money goes out. Sometimes I get the feeling I'm going nowhere fast.

***

I fast forward from that previous revelation to realize this whole scenario was the basic routine of my "exhilarating" freshman year.

I took a year off from finding myself in college to…find myself. How ironic that sounds. I'm trying to find myself when I'm right here. At the time it just sounded like a great excuse for a vacation. And now I need a vacation from my vacation because I got the guilt trip from none other than my parents. Basically, I love them and I've never told them. I wanted to show them I care by "upholding the family honor" just like they wanted me to. I went to college in the first place to do anything to get them to stop nagging, to stop worrying, and to stop being disappointed in me. I'm the baby of the family. When the older siblings have the freedom to make mistakes, the youngest must be the flawless one.

So I'm nineteen and everyone thinks I have a chip on my shoulder. To everyone else, I'm a no good college drop-out outliving at home with mommy and daddy. Let me get one thing crystal clear, living with parents is like living in a penitentiary. I'm doing penance for all of my wrongdoings. They never let me forget what I did "wrong." I tried to rationalize and ask them an endless round of questions:

"Why should I get a degree if I don't want to work for anyone?"

"Why do I have to take classes I passed in high school and pay ridiculous amounts of money for it?"

"Why do I have to have a magical piece of tree bark to prove that I have a brain?"

"What should I go to college for?"

"I have a short attention span! I can't take academic classes!"

This last is true. If I'm not creating something or doing something other than regurgitating knowledge I'll never remember, then I'm off in my own little world. I can prove it. I have a nice collection of pages with "Notes" as the title. The rest of it consists of stick people in comic book form fighting the evil Dr. Algebra and his hideous league of evildoers. My parents found that collection and weren't all too proud of my artistic abilities. Oh, it would be so much easier to say, "Mom, Dad. I love you. Please let me do my own thing." Then again, maybe not.

***

Here I am sneaking up on my twentieth year and I'll be the one surprised. I'm surprised I'm not a mentally dead as I thought. My problems won't be fixed in the time span of a sitcom. But I'm back in college on my own terms. Instead of being in the fourteenth grade, I'm still in lucky number thirteen. It's a minor set back. I've decided to live for myself and no one else. Losing control of my life wasn't a fun process at all. That time in my life was theirs and not mine. The process is slow but I found more creative ways to metaphorically roll a stone up a hill knowing it will only fall back down. Well, in basketball, they keep throwing the damn ball through the hoop and it never stays but they have fun anyway. It's playing the game, not winning, that's fun. I gave up on the crotchety old couples and paint murals on the poor side of town. Landscaping is turning out to be a pretty satisfying sort of job for me at the moment. It doesn't pay enough if I take into consideration that I might be feeling a lot of pain when I'm older. But just working on it and then seeing the end product seems enough of a reward. The money's just extra. The reactions I get from people make me feel like it's all justified. Every single ache and pain feels different than it did before. The pain makes me feel I've worked hard enough.

In a couple of years, I don't expect much. Having high expectations, but not living for the moment, tends to lead to disappointment. I'm not looking towards the years ahead as much as I used to. I had hoped for a world of opportunity, compassion, and acceptance to be at my feet. I found out that I have to make that world myself, be a revolutionary in my own right even if the rewards are small. Those huge memorable moments full of acknowledgement, extravagance, and loads of money are lucky. Are they happy moments? Who knows? I know I'm not going to wait forever for that to happen to me. All I can say of right now is…

…there is no end to it.

Home Contents Contributors Writer in Residence VOICES Events&Links Discussion&Reflection Creative Ideas Archive What is a FLAMINGO WRITER?

Flamingo Writers is maintained by Sally Nielsen