Achewood
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The House Where Achewood Began, College Pics, The Doubt
🕑 Added 2024-04-18 16:29:14 +0000 UTCLast weekend I flew down to Stanford for the annual reunion of the Chaparral, the campus satire magazine where I first cut my teeth as an aspiring intellectual miscreant. The Internet as we know it did not exist in the year of my matriculation, 1993; my dream was to spend the rest of my life in a smoke-filled room full of Conan O'Brien's opening monologue writers, growing bald (everywhere except my cortisol-hardened paunch) and miserable.
If I could do it all over again, would I forsake the long afternoons spent painting myself silver and harassing the dining halls? If I had spent a little less time dripping warm Goldschläger into my eyeballs, and a little more time learning C++ computer code, maybe by now I'd have that house on the hill. What if I'd taken anything as seriously as I took laughing my ass off?
A return to these mythic headwaters always foments an insecurity in the validity of whatever it is I have done in the days since I flipped the tassel. After I ask my ride to drop me at the Oval, and I embark upon my unscripted yet predictable pilgrimage across the Quad and White Plaza, I am washed over by the same sense of unbelonging that they included with my freshman registration packet. (It was a powder that you mixed into warm water.) What was an undecorated kid from the rural Sierra Nevadas doing among Andover and Exeter's best-looking Olympians and most hat-melting chess masters?
This time was a little better. Returning to the Achewood universe last May — nearly a year ago! — was, without question, the right move. (Most critical to this internal diatribe is that I have finally granted myself supreme authority to declare what the right moves for myself are.) My relationship with Lauren is fun every day, and stabilizing. Learning how to restore old homes built an unexpected reserve of confidence.
(A quick aside: The Achewood universe...I'm frustrated that dealing with the old and the new houses, both so decrepit, has kept me from completely losing my days with Ray and Beef, writing new adventures big and small, but those plates are largely clearing next month, when I will finally sell the old house. E.g., I spent today building a new gate there, figuring out which touch-up paints stay or go, and mowing a lawn absolutely lousy with dandelions, their fat wet heads splatting against the blade like zombies marching into a helicopter's blade.)
Back to the topic. I spent these recent days on campus trying out this new perspective, and it took me a while to realize this, but I don't think Stanford and I need each other any more. Of course, it definitely never needed me, but I'm learning not to look there for validation on any scale. Allowing this realization is part of letting go of the idea that I can ever go back there and start over, an idea which must have metastasized along the back of my medulla at some early point, like a sticky rind of brie against a dark portion of large intestine. I wasn't even aware it was there, but, like deep-space astronomy, sometimes we can only tell that things exist by observing that other things are not behaving as they should. Perhaps this condition is a common companion of regrets.
This does not go for the Chaparral, the place in which I formed large pieces of myself out of Weinhard's and Sharpies. As I reflected with Lauren upon returning home, the weekend proved that I had made the right friends there — the sort you flop down next to and pick up again as though great barrels of a completely separate life hadn't been topped and shipped in the meanwhile. Among the doctors, diplomats, tech legends — and even a scoundrel or two — I felt the ease and welcome of family.
Comments
M. J.
I was being a snot in recommending it to you. Thank you for your Stanford recollections. I was at U of Minn for French language/lit and journalism undergrad and then their law school. Debt goes away next Feb after my 10 years of public service.
Chris Onstad
I just did! I listen to music for the instruments and never the lyrics so rap never works for me. I think I have the gene for rap like those people who can’t smell asparagus pee. I would imagine this is a very Pat aspect of me. But thank you for the suggestion.
M. J.
have you ever listened to Asher Roth - I Love College
blair
This is how I feel about Chapel Hill. I used to love to go back (the first time I went back I stayed for twelve years) and now I mostly feel like the rent go too high and I got too old - when I do go, though, I run into someone I haven't seen for twenty, thirty, even forty years and we hit the ground running.
blair
I only did ir until I needed glasses, myself.
C C
Crunked? Apparently someone has created a word that describes both my existence and circumstances from 1985 - 2012 I find it both disturbingly accurate and sort of unsatisfying. ABC Baby!!!
Chris Onstad
ABC, man. Always Be Cartooning/Crunked.
Chris Onstad
They said you'd go blind from drinking too much, so I figured this was how.
C C
I'm pleased to notice that even at that tender age, and implied level of inebriation, you kept a responsible number of pens in your shirtfront pocket.
Nate
You say these things like I won't take them for the baldfaced lies they are. Eyeball shots were probably your hors d'oeuvre of choice before the real debauchery began, you maniac.
Chris Onstad
Nobody actually knows why my middle name is Todd. I even asked my mom this last month when they visited. I had an older half-cousin who died from cirrhosis while in prison (the liquor they keep there is apparently unclean) after a career as a petty criminal, so I like to think this honors him in some way, although honor is probably the wrong word.
Chris Onstad
You can thank me watching a Neil Degrasse Tyson video for this imagery
Chris Onstad
It's an escape path the brain makes out of cobweb cable and packing peanut tackle. It's important to brush it away from time to time.
Chris Onstad
I know people used to drop acid this way. I didn't actually pour European novelty liquors into my eyeballs, at least not on purpose, not earlier in the evening.
Chris Onstad
You know, I wouldn't be surprised if Beef and Molly tried to juice up their relationship by buying a fixer-upper this summer. Thanks for the words of encouragement.
Chris Onstad
Early Times made a hard man out of me.
Chris Onstad
She's actually just a drawing. You can find lots of pretty drawings of ladies on Google! You can actually become a bit of a connoisseur.
Chris Onstad
A+ callback
John Robinson
I doubt I'm the first to plumb this particular depth--and forgive me if I'm misinterpreting the cup in picture #8--but I can't help but wonder what it means that everyone's favorite van-driving drug enthusiast squirrel bears his creator's middle name as his first name. It's probably nothing. Probably.
Julie (HiDeeHoGal)
"...sometimes we can only tell that things exist by observing that other things are not behaving as they should." This is awesome.
Spyguitar
Man, the idea that you can go back to your alma mater and start over... hoooooboy yup.
Nate
This is the first time I've ever heard of anyone taking eyeball shots of Goldschlager. Full disclosure: this is the first time I've heard of eyeball shots, period.
Oppido
W/r/t this bit -- "I'm frustrated that dealing with the old and the new houses, both so decrepit, has kept me from completely losing my days with Ray and Beef, writing new adventures big and small..." Dude, do whatever away-from-keyboard activities you need to. Swan-dive into it. I say this for the simple, selfish reason that I know sooner or later you'll mine the experience for some memorable and delightful piece of Achework.
Don Rowe
Did the hard times make a strong man out of Christopher Todd?
Nicholas Williams
I'm going to admit something here. I was trying to zoom in on the sexy lady in the picture behind you but due to the unknowable whims of the Patreon interface I zoomed extremely far into your glimmering silver visage. It's a very high-resolution image
Amy Lewis
That chair deserves to enjoy its retirement in China!
