Like A Rolling Stone

Kacie Rahm
Thought Experiment 2
Parasites

Like A Rolling Stone

Me and sleep have always had a tumultuous relationship. In my first Parasite-themed blog, I wrote about my history with night terrors. “When I was younger, I had night terrors. I would awake in the middle of the night from some half-conscious nightmare that was so real, I would be literally paralyzed with fear. I would hide under my blanket and quiver uncontrollably for hours at a time, until I would finally pass out from exhaustion.” I have not had many of these terrors since childhood, but every now and then, usually at times of high stress, they resurface. After the night terrors there was “the man outside the window,” which is the name my sister and I gave to the ghost that haunted our house. He would pace loudly outside the corner of the house that happened to be my bedroom just about every night. I was able to fall asleep despite him, because a familiar ghost starts to lose it's frightful qualities after a while. Once I reached high school, the nights began getting later and I became more of a diva about how I would eventually end up in dreamland.

I can't fall asleep without some kind of noise. I prefer television, because the soft glow is also something that lulls me to sleep, but in a bind I can handle an oscillating fan or easy listening music. I know people who can't sleep without eye shades or a tempurpedic pillow, but for me there's nothing like a dull roar to distract my mind. I personally have troubles falling asleep at night. I'm no doctor, but according to limited research on Web MD, I show symptoms of clinical insomnia, such as “trouble falling asleep” and “daytime sleepiness and irritability.” I can never seem to turn my brain off at a reasonable hour and have tried many things to remedy this. The combination of Valerian Root tea and cartoons on the TV has been doing the trick recently, but I still wish I had the ability to just fall asleep without it being a process.

Sleep occupies roughly 1/3 of our entire life. A huge fraction of our time here on Earth is spent horizontally, eyes closed and minds open. I think sleep, although a state and not a place, is where I feel truly “at home.” I have struggled to define the word “home” for myself, especially recently since I have lived in 4 different places in the last 2 years. In another blog that reads kind of like a poem, I first revealed to myself the connection between home and sleep. “Over the mountains I feel uncomfortable... I lack that total familiarity that can melt me into restful sleep.” I know that I tend to sleep better in my own bed, but since I wrote that blog I've realized that my bed has changed just as often as my house. Maybe it's not the bed, but the sleep that makes me feel at home. I also linked comfort to home in that blog, which is something that I have thought about extensively since writing it.

If home is the place where you feel the most comfortable, then it could definitely be a state of mind rather than a physical location. I feel most comfortable when I am traveling. I don't mean physical comfort, because who in their right mind is comfortable on an airplane or train? I mean that place in your head where you are completely satisfied with where you are and what you are doing. I want to go everywhere and see everything that this world has to offer. Whenever I am in a new place, especially with a foreign language or major cultural difference, I know I am one step closer to that goal. Some people get overwhelmed by culture shock, or frustrated by under-developed conditions, but I embrace it. I know that I will still go to that familiar state of sleep even though I am surrounded by the unfamiliar all day. This got me thinking, maybe the reason I don't feel like I have a home, is because I'm static. I've been living the lifestyle of a poor college student and funding for vacations is just nonexistent.

I think that when we become too familiar, we stop growing. In high school, English classes were a joke. I had the five paragraph essay down, and I enjoy reading and writing. I could go through “To Kill A Mockingbird” and highlight all of the bird references, or explain the symbolism of T.J. Eckleberg in “The Great Gatsby.” I got a solid A on every assignment in every English class up until graduation. Even in college where I felt challenged by my English classes, it was more because of the reading level than the actual thought process. Then there was Parasites. The very first day of class I knew it would be a different experience. Now here I am, writing a paper without a prompt. No direction, no clear idea what I want to say, and that completely unknown feeling that I am stepping into a vortex. However, my discomfort and my unfamiliarity with this classroom structure has made it one of the most propulsive learning experiences I've had. Once we get locked into a little cage, “the box” if you will, with our comfort foods and our sweatpants and our five paragraph essays, we cease to learn.

Though the class started out as a thought experiment, it has mutated into some kind of dysfunctional family. We are starting to know first names, or at the very least match plurk names with faces. We are opening up, sharing more of ourselves with each blog or comment in class, and we are communicating ideas more freely with each other. So if I have this family, one that is struggling with the same issues (readings) as I am, then does that make this something like a home? If we stick with the idea that home is where you feel comfortable, then no, absolutely not. I have felt many things in this class, but comfort is not one of them. The only kind of comfort I have felt has been from the consistency of my note taking.

The first day that I took notes on Plurk was January 15, two weeks into the course. I wanted to take notes but found the idea kind of absurd in relation to the way class is run. No, bullet points on a college ruled sheet of paper would simply not work. Plurk had a different feel though, my fellow classmates could contribute their ideas, and I could attempt to wrap my head around the things we had learned. I have since written notes every day that I have been in class. It has gotten to the point where I am known for this practice. On February 22, I was late to class by about 10 minutes. That was all it took for, “Dahamburgler is starting the notes thread in the absence of our notetaker!” to ding into existence. Have the note threads brought a level of comfort and familiarity into a class that is anything but organized? There are about three people who consistently contribute to my threads and a few people who favorite them every day, but this alone is not enough to make me feel at home.

If I am not at home in school, where I pay tuition, then I should feel at home when I come back to the place I pay rent. This has not been the case. I love my little two bedroom house. I love my seafoam green kitchen and my sun porch and my carport. I even love my roommate, she has been my best friend since ninth grade. However, I don't live with her anymore, I live with her stuff. She spends about 90% of her time at her boyfriend's house and that's her choice, but I can't make this a home without her. My parents house isn't a home either, they have a new lifestyle and three grandsons to worry about. For the first time in my life I feel like I could go anywhere.

Some people might think its depressing not having a home. I think I could make a home wherever I please. Like a rolling stone, anywhere I lay my head is my home. If we go back to the beginning, the part where home is just a state of mind, maybe sleep, then I do have a home, or many homes. Maybe we're placing too much emphasis on this idea of having one place we call home. If you make any place home, then you will never get homesick. If you make any place your home, you can invite anyone over at any time.

This thought process has liberated me to the point of no return. I have no reason to stay here, in fact I have an overwhelming desire to get the hell out of here. All of my connections to people are strong enough to survive time apart, or weak enough to cut ties entirely. My sister, the person closest to me and also something like my alter-ego, left on a whim to Korea for a year. If she can do it, I can do it. I have always enjoyed traveling and have had an awesome amount of opportunities to do so, but never alone. I have never just packed my life into two suitcases and started over.

This isn't the same as running away. Running away means there is something pushing you to leave. What I have is something my Anthropology teacher would call a “pull factor.” There is some unknown force pulling me out of my cozy little life and forcing me in the direction of anywhere else. Besides, I don't even have anything to run away from, I'm not in debt, no psycho ex boyfriends, haven't committed any felonies. What I want is to find that unfamiliar place where I can grow, much like Parasites has been for my education. I want to wake up in a foreign place, wake up in a train, wake up in an airplane. I know that I can make any place feel like home, because I decided that home is not a place anyways. Home is anywhere I decide it is, and I decide it is not here anymore.


You know what is surprising? I feel like I'm going to sleep amazingly tonight.

Inspirations and limited citations include: every plurk ever, especially the note threads, every classroom discussion thus far, http://www.WebMD.com, my blog at http://kaciesays.blogspot.com, every book I have ever read, my own mind, my sister's blog at http://adventuresintherok.blogspot.com, my life experience, my absentee roommate, and of course, Tony Motherfucking Prichard.