Internship Journal

EPILOGUE:
I had delivered my presentation and come back to the apartment alone. The other guys had all left. Cory had been offered a job with a military contractor and had left two weeks early. Steve’s girlfriend came in the middle of the night a few days ago and he disappeared into the night. And I had loaded Tyler into his jeep yesterday with a hug and promise to keep in touch. And every one of those bastards left me to clean out all the crap they left.

It was kind of a lonely feeling. Most of the other interns had gone home. I walked into the apartment and was deafened by the silence of it. Cory had taken his 42” television with him, Tyler’s blankee was missing from the sofa, and there were none of Steve’s cigarette ashes covering the coffee table. I opened the refrigerator to get a cold drink and was immediately struck by the number of condiments in it. Four months in D.C. as tallied in ketchup and salad dressing. Not really knowing what else to do, I grabbed a hefty bag and dumped out the works. I had to wonder how many tons of relish was tossed each year from people moving. I mean you don’t take that sort of thing with you from place to place. Wherever you go you start with a new relish. I thought of how I had relished my new beginning here in Washington. Then, partly used, that relish was chilled and here at the end of it all tossed aside with the knowledge that a new one would be acquired in the next place I go.

Those jerks had left a ton of stuff in that kitchen. Random glasses, dishes, pans. I certainly did not want any of this crap, but I didn’t feel right throwing it away. I mean it was stuff, unwanted as it was. The plate was a plate; the glass could still hold milk. It was just their randomness, their not belonging to some concept of a matched set, part of a larger design that made them seem useless. Was there some metaphor here that I was supposed to get, or was I just the guy stuck cleaning out the junk.

Certainly I felt a little like I was not part of the set: a random entity among the interns. But I guess you could say that I held my milk. And if I was a more uniquely formed vessel, that would only mean that what filled me would take on a different form. The form of a container has a lot to do with its function. A red wine glass is broad to allow more surface area for the wine to breathe. The martini glass is so designed to bring out the bouquet of the gin. Yet even these distinct glasses can be coordinated into a set or design scheme.

So maybe the metaphor was meant to apply to my experiences here. There certainly were some that could be defined as random and unconnected. Were they then still useful? Do they still serve some purpose for me? Are they still valuable in some way?

In the end I decided to throw all that stuff away. I suppose at the time all of the random incidents fulfilled their usefulness, but in the end it was my choice what I would take away with me. It was my design, my vision that I needed to complete.
It was nine o’clock at night when I had finally finished cleaning out the apartment and loaded up my Jetta for the seven hour drive home.