Ask, How long are you out for? and a cloud wiped the sun. The question trailed a whiff of autumn. All answers contemplated the end, the death of summer at its very beginning. Still waiting for the bay to warm up so you could go for a swim and already picturing it frozen over. Labor Day suddenly not so far off at all...The season had begun, we were proof of it, instrument of it, but things couldn't really get started until all the players took their marks, bounding down driveways, all gimme-fives. The others were necessary, and we needed word...Once we're all out, we can begin (Whitehead 2).
Benji's description of Sag Harbor and the atmosphere there is somewhat vague, but it still evokes feelings of nostalgia and happiness for me, and I'm sure for others. When he talks about Sag Harbor, it is kind of abstract, but the details he does give are mostly about locations or actions, such as going for a slice at Conca D'oro or not breathing when you pass the cemetery. Even when he is describing a person, the only description we get is of their "pleated salmon shorts," which gives the impression of a faceless, unimportant being. For all the "who's out here"'s and "the crew"'s that he drops, Benji doesn't seem to care too much about the people in Sag Harbor and that was what I had more trouble connecting with. The only time I've been to a summer home was when I went with a friend to her family's summer home that was a complex owned by various families. I loved my time there, but I didn't really know anyone besides my friend, so my memories are more of what I did, rather than who I did them with. However, last summer I started working at a camp that I had gone to for 5 years as a camper and it was for my time there that the quote above stirred up nostalgia for. Each year that I was a camper, I went with a huge group of friends from school and manipulated it so that we would all be in the same cabin. Once I was a counselor, I still had friends that came with me, but I met so many new people and became really close with them. Now when I go through my memories from last summer, I think more about who I was hanging out with. We didn't do anything exciting most of the time, usually just hang out in lawn chairs and gossip about campers, but I had so much fun. This winter we had a reunion and it was so exciting to see my friends from camp because we all live in different towns and have such different lives that we never really see each other during the year. I've been feeling pretty excited to go back to camp again this summer, and I identified with Benji's excitement in the car to get to Sag Harbor and see everybody, but I'm hoping that I don't build it up too much because I don't want this summer to be a flop. Maybe Benji's relationship to Sag Harbor is more of to the place than to the people, but I guess it just surprises me because the community of people who "summer" there seems to be so important and he doesn't seem to care too much.
The most fun and memorable vacations that I have had relate to who was there, family-wise. Even if we go to a really cool and interesting location, the trip will fall flat if there aren't the right people there. The best vacations really do center around who, instead of where.
ReplyDeleteYour description of you and the other counselors just sitting around chatting about the younger campers (your younger selves, implicitly) made me think of Benji and his (remaining) crew standing around at the Labor Day party, watching the kids line up to race. The function of nostalgia is tricky, and interesting, in _Sag_, because for the most part, Whitehead is NOT saying "those were the days." His depiction of the past is not idealized, and he depicts himself as bored or awkward or disappointed much of the time. But this isn't necessarily what nostalgia means, an idealization of some much-better time that's now gone. It's simply the *fact* of time passing that it makes evident--re-creating these times in writing has a powerful effect, reminding readers who lived through the time of things like New Coke, the Cosby Show, the Roxanne Wars, without necessarily saying these were either great or terrible, but just that they WERE, and they are no more. Just like Benji, in Ben's eyes. He can't "explain it"; all he can say is, "This is how I lived."
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