Sunday, January 30, 2011

Here's to you, Carrboro

I wrote this for my writing class.. we could write about anything. It's a descriptive-experience short write, but the end has an interesting turn. I liked it, so i put it on my blog that no one really reads. I also like Carrboro, sometimes. read on:


My life as a UNC student is different from most. The majority of UNC students either live in dorms on campus or in apartments in Chapel Hill, but some choose to live in the city of Carrboro. Anyone who has ever been to Carrboro knows the implications behind its name, and there are words that I could use to describe it to you, but you would not fully understand the nature of this place unless you went there yourself. There are families that live in Carrboro, families that may choose not to eat meat, never use plastic bags, or make their children eat only food that’s organic. There are also young college graduates here that have allowed their creative sides to take the reign; hair in dreads and clothes all made from scratch, the stereotype Carrboro “hipster” tends to be found at Weaver Street Market reading a novel or engaging in conversation over a cup of Chai. The popular hipsters make it a habit of going to Open Eye CafĂ© to attend to their graduate-upper-level-intelligence work that is always done on a laptop. It is, certainly, a sight to see, and daily I experience culture shock when going back and forth from this city of oddities to the more normal, quainter, town of Chapel Hill.

Every morning, after I feast on a bowl of Kashi cereal and the occasional scrambled egg, I hop on my bike carrying my backpack with everything including food that I will need for the day. The ride isn’t too long unless it’s in January, but I’ve boughten a pair of ski gloves for those days. Every morning I pass the house with the skull on the front porch; no one knows if it’s left over from Halloween or just a desired yearly front porch ornament. The oddness of this is overcome, however, when I ride by my favorite house in Carrboro: a white one-story house with a wraparound porch lined with always-lit Paris lights. The tire swing dangling from the old Oak on its one acre lot makes me jealous of every fortunate person that gets to live there; sometimes during the evenings you can find them sitting on the front porch playing their guitars and fiddles. Snapping into reality, I weave in and out of traffic (it’s a miracle I’ve never been hit), and make it to the bike path that flirts with an old railroad track. One day I was late to class because I had to wait on a train to finish chugging through; what student is late to class because of a train crossing?

This bike path is a combination of the most relaxing yet creepy places you could be; depending on the people that happen to be on it while you are. The mornings are the relaxing times, because students like me tend to be going to and from classes, and it’s quiet, but sometimes in the afternoons the woman that talks to herself is roaming the premises. There is a place in my heart that has compassion and sympathy for her, but it is an eerie thing to hear her loudly belt words that I don’t really understand. Then there’s the wheel-chaired homeless man that says hello to me every time I see him, hating the grocery store list I’m planning in my head because I know that he hasn’t sat at a table for dinner in years. Finally, I get to Columbia Street where Chapel Hill begins: quaint houses filled with college students. The stoplight by the fraternity houses always makes me stop, but I actually enjoy the stop on Mondays when you can see all the red solo cups lingering from the weekend’s party; I giggle at stereotype. Passing through more stoplights and sidewalk crossings, I finally make it to the bike rack where I park my bike for the day. Pretending that my morning has been normal, I walk into class and take notes with all the students who woke up in dorms surrounded by students just like themselves, but all I can think about is that homeless man in the wheelchair.

No comments:

Post a Comment