The Beauty of a Fragment

I dream of wholeness, of completeness, of integrity. In my dreams I know what to do, and when, and why. I choose right, and I act in silence. I smile often, and rarely frown. I am always sure.

I live incomplete. I shake a someone's hand and look at my shoes. I write a sentence and blot it out. I write another, and then a paragraph, and abruptly click "select all - delete." I start to read a book, then put it down, then eat half a muffin--and get up for coffee. I decide I need to spend more time outside. Then I watch a movie.

I can relate to the narrator of Tobias Wolff's Old School. He can't seem to finish anything he starts, either. He's a kid from a parochial school in the midwest, someone whose single living parent struggles to keep the rent paid on their small and shabby apartment, someone who walked away from that life and sought a new one at a prestigious boarding school on the East Coast. He praises that school so much that I can't help noticing he feels entirely out of place there. He couldn't finish his childhood at home; it wasn't what he wanted. He had always planned to "forsake [his father] without regret" (6). He's happy enough at the new school to whistle spontaneously in the hallways. But he also can't seem to get started in the new school. He has a roommate with whom he is civil, but not friendly. His best friend Purcell is rich enough to think nothing of owning a seemingly priceless set of first editions; and the narrator cannot talk about Purcell without mentioning the carefree abrasiveness that his class and wealth make possible.