Begin Again
Five years ago tonight I was celebrating my very last night of college. The biggest party I’ve ever been to; the Mods were full of people and beer and people full of beer. The roll of film I took and just looked through indicated only small slices of that evening, but all of college fit into that evening, too. People I hadn’t seen in years, people I might not have said hello to even if we had class together, my having perfected the “lookaway,” as so many of us did to seem superior. But there were no superiors that last night, five years ago – we were all on the same side, about to go through the same doorway, all of us winners, champions. The one thing we would lose was our bubble, the dome over our campus which separated us from reality. And from time. College took four years but we squeezed three plus years of memories into that one night, the last night, five years ago. And in school we felt timeless, time out of time, until we ran out of time. And those memories seem more real to me in this moment than what I see in my peripheral vision, so centrally am I focused on feeling how I felt. Back then, I would hope to stay awake through the night, march over to the garage and witness the sun rising over the Boston skyline, a new dawn. I would try to nap for just a while, embracing and embraced, holding onto what might transcend that transition and extend beyond. I would wake with the sun already having risen, beaten me to the punch, kicking me while down. But setting the tone for the next five years, as true now as then. Time flies when you’re having fun, but those things you do – if you remember them, and remember how they feel – last for all time. The temporary vindicates itself and becomes eternal. All college in a night, on another night, with the same date.
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