Livin' the dream Going Home

Author: Dean Atyia

I came to the Northeast to see what the rest of the country is like, and I embrace this nook of changing leaves and snowy fields for both its merits and its faults. Where I come from, we don't have open discussion of racial inequalities. We avoid the D-word characterized by socialist spending and flimsy rulers who would rather shake hands than pull triggers. Instead, we tend to focus on a strict regimen of nepotism and exclusivity. It is for these very reasons that I found my beliefs to be in the minority during high school, and I tend to think that's why I was often ostracized from social groups and not because I couldn't cut the mustard on the football field like my dad said. The ball was really big and my hands were so small - it wasn't my fault. But even for all its racist tendencies and strict adherence to flawed tradition, I find myself glad when I return to its warm mystique.

I grew up in Memphis, Tenn, home to Elvis Presley, smooth blues, tangy barbecue and some of the oldest cotton families in the South. My summers were filled with wet ribs dripping onto my father's bright seersucker suit and days upon days without ever putting on shoes. My friends and I all learned to swim by being thrown into the water and told, "Go." When we came home with a note from the teacher, we traded it for the back of a hand. To me, this was the perfect childhood, but as I got older, the South became a more complicated place.

My best friend got a job as a lifeguard at a country club when he was fifteen - I worked at a video store in midtown. He would come by, and I would give him all the movies he wanted. In exchange, I would go to the pool and swim through the afternoon. On one of these afternoons, a family of members and their guests walked into the club to enjoy the cool water and the setting sun. Within 10 minutes, the manager approached my friend and informed him that he had to ask the guests to leave. Why? Because they were black. I wasn't even a guest, and I hadn't been given a second look when I walked in. My friend quit that instant, and I drove him home.

At the same time, however, these broken ideals were juxtaposed with moments of perfection that I've only found back home. During my senior year of high school, that same friend of mine and I snuck through back parking lots and climbed over hollow dumpsters in order to sneak onto the cobblestones of Beale Street, home of some of the oldest and sharpest blues riffs ever played. My friend's older brother snuck us through the kitchen of a one-room shack that had been there since the beginning of time. We settled down with about twenty other people, all hoping to hear some local talent as we sipped our cool, cheap beer. Ten minutes later, a man whose name I can't remember, with only a few dollars to his name, came onto the stage and played some of the most improvised and beautiful blues I've ever heard. The club closed when he was finished, but six or seven of us stayed and sat with him until morning, talking about music and the river.

Here in the North, I've encountered some of the most open minds and progressive ideas I can imagine, but I've also seen a kind of isolated living that I've never been exposed to before. I find my own values more akin to many of those here at school, and my politics and social beliefs often intersect with those associated with the greater Northeast. But with all the democratic politics and efforts at social community, social capital, in the words of Thomas Friedman, is lacking. Up here, I find myself walking through cities with my head down and my ears plugged. I slog into subways, shoulder to shoulder, with anonymous faces whose names I never care to know. In short, I find the Northerner to be a person of two lives, one private and one public, but the two never intersect. Walking alone late at night in New York City, surrounded by lights and traffic, I've often felt a great sense of peace, but walking alone in the city in the middle of the day amidst hundreds of others, I find myself totally alone.

After each article, I read the words on the page and promise to change my major to anything other than philosophy. It's starting to affect my sensibilities, not to mention making me sound really silly. I think after school, I'll abandon the North and the South and head to Europe. It's perfect on the opposite shore, right?

Dean Atyia '08.5 is from Memphis, Tenn.