The Southern Gentleman, Lost in Laramie

It's been a couple months since The Golden Trigger's last post. This is mainly due to a lack of spare time from an ongoing job hunt. However, I'd be lying if I failed to admit that following a break-up with Rachelle I had considered abandoning the site. Having gotten that out of the way I'll turn my attention to the present.

I am undergoing a period of newly found perspective. After the Roaring Gap season ended in early August I moved to Laramie, Wyoming. There were a number of reasons for the move. The most important of which is that my sister Maggie is currently writing her dissertation. This is typically a difficult undertaking. When taking her 3-year-old and 10-month-old daughters into account, it seems an insurmountable task. Especially while she is applying for professorships at 30-or-so schools and her husband, Sam, works about 50 hours per week. Needless to say, they needed a hand and I needed some time to plan my next move. I feel it is necessary at this point to point-out that following my graduation from the University of South Carolina, I am completely humbled.

As of now, I have no official plans to return home. I am quite desperately homesick, however, and have developed a even more profound adoration of the South. Laramie is a fantastic town, don't get me wrong. It has the tendency to force cowboys, hippies and hipsters into the same cramped bars. And while these three groups greatly differ in political and social philosophies, they share that same landlocked angst that comes with nine months of winter and no discernible sea-breeze (It's understandably difficult to buy into the butterfly effect in the bitter vastness of Wyoming).

While here I have managed to fit slightly into all three groups of locals, while not genuinely sharing much with any of them. I'm currently working at a vegetarian cafe, which pleases the hippies. I get around town on a fixed gear bicycle that has become the favorite mode of transportation for hipsters since a slew of viral videos crept out of the hills of San Fran. And I wear either Tony Llamas or Ariats daily, which grants me entry into the cowboy circles.

While I have grown to enjoy the cultural here, I can't help but feel lost. Granted, my father contends I would feel lost anywhere, and I have to agree. I miss the South. Massey, sweet tea, southern belles, and at this point even beaus.

But this trip is all about perspective. I'm been reading two books in my down time here. Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake, and the famous Lakota autobiography, Black Elk Speaks. What these two works have introduced are two very different and dynamic ideas. Vonnegut's argument is basically that human-beings are the only living animals on Earth that have the capacity to hate being alive, and we're all at least a little miserable. Black Elk's humble story however is a dry explanation of simplicity in life and finding inner-peace while still maintaining the capacity to hatchet fat pioneers to death. Using Laramie's social scene as a catalyst I am stuck trying to uncover the meeting place between these two ideas, and thus where I fit in their great spectrum and where I ultimately want to be.

With my newly discovered listening pleasure Mumford & Sons as the soundtrack for my stay thus far I'm going to continue searching within and outside myself. The Golden Trigger soldiers on.