Dining Alone

Tonight, after wandering around the streets of College Terrace in Palo Alto, looking for a 3-bedroom house for rent, it became dinner time. My wandering companions all had prior commitments, and none of the few others I called were available, so I ended up going to a small and reasonably-priced Chinese restaurant on El Camino, alone. I’d eaten there once before, also by myself on that occasion, and I remembered it as a place where I could relax, take my time over the meal, drink some soothing tea, and reflect without interruption.

Because that’s what I tend to do when I’m alone–reflect. As the word implies, most of the time I end up reflecting reflexively, that is, on myself and my feelings or desires. Occasionally something not related to me will come up in a train of thought and I’ll leave behind my little camp of selfish narcissism to follow it and reflect (if only duly) on it, but for the most part I just wallow in whatever is currently clouding me, in the hopes that the fog will burn off in the bright glare of my intellect. I’ll let you guess how often that happens… But reflecting remains one of my fondest hobbies.

Tonight, reflection returned to reminiscence, and I thought back to a year ago, when I was finishing up classes and papers, climbing Snakedike with Dan, hiking Half-Dome with my friends, preparing to drive cross-country with Dav, and saying goodbye to Stanford. The reminiscence aroused a strong sense of nostalgia for me, probably because that particular series of weeks last year is still accounted by me as the best time of my life, in terms of the euphoria related with graduating and moving into the next phase of life, etc…

Driven by that nostalgia, I ended up back at Stanford, which I realized I hadn’t visited in some months now, despite it being only a few minutes away. I parked in the Oval and headed slowly to the Quad, which was the place on campus I would always go at night when I wanted to think or pray or feel or be alone. The atmosphere there is incredible to me–the architecture is amazing, and made genuinely awesome by the soft and subtle lighting all around the old sandstone arcades.

At times the facade of Memorial Church is lighted by spotlights cleverly hidden in nearby palm trees, and then I like to sit and ponder while looking at the beautiful mosaic of Christ teaching. Tonight the church was lighted in this way, and as it came into view from the Oval I almost began to cry as the memory of all the previous meaningful time spent there came back as experience.

What’s more, I had the luck to be walking towards the church as some chorale group was giving a concert inside. These are my favorite times to be in the Quad, because I can go sit in the rose garden to one side of the church, and hear the music bleeding in ghostly strains from the stained glass windows, an audible analogue to the light from the windows, soft and wavering, barely pushing through the color.

So I sat and continued my reflection and remembrance, becoming increasingly emotional as I remembered all the things that had transpired in the last five years, and how they have made me into who I am. I decided that I have become this way, curiously, not just because of Stanford and my experiences here, but in many ways, in spite of them. I reflected that Stanford probably didn’t want me to turn out exactly how I did. What’s more surprising, I don’t think some of the more anti-“Stanford” elements of my experience here (Christian groups/culture, for example), would have really wanted me to turn out this way, either! I feel like I’ve become something new and, importantly, exactly what I want to be at the moment.

Nostalgia and reflection also have a tendency to cause me to revisit my current state of loneliness (not in the community sense; the romantic one) and engage in some very useless, pathetically sad, wishful thinking. As I said before, I don’t know where these things come from, but I see them as forming some of my core struggles with God. Some struggle with faith–believing that God is real or that he works in the world. Some struggle with identity or purpose–who they are or what God wants them to do. I’ve struggled with these things too, but only, it seems, on the road to struggling with love. They’ve never occupied my every waking thought; I could put the struggle aside and go on with life. That’s been much harder with this new contest.

But at any rate, it should be said that I am certainly more annoyed than you, the reader, that all of my otherwise-interesting ramblings eventually degenerate into painful whining for a girlfriend. That itself is a large part of the problem. Oh well, patience is the order of the day, and so I ask you all to have patience with me while I learn also to have it. That, or stop reading–but who’d want to experience that kind of withdrawal?

Enough of the result of tonight’s reflections. I wish they’d involved more of the non-personal things I’ve been thinking about lately, for instance the extremely stimulating philosophical discussion on the nature of language and grammar that I had today with Nick and Justin. But alas, I am now and will always be more driven by the thoughts of love or nostalgia than any important philosophical question. I am glad, though, that I am back here at Stanford, illusorily lonely or no, and can once again visit the Quad at night, or go for a smoke in the rose garden and hear angel-song drifting from the church.