"I look back and can't remember most of my undergraduate career," Brett said over Dixie Kitchen brunch yesterday. "I mean, I know I took twelve classes, but I couldn't really tell you much about them."
After I finished my cheese grits and eggs benedict, I went home, filled up a suitcase with used textbooks and drove to Norris. I got $98.75 for roughly two dozen books that culminated most of my own twelve classes that I cannot remember either. Now I don't even have the books to prove I took them.
Though I won't admit it any other time except now, I spontaneously cry sometimes just by looking at Facebook or my room. I'll pick up my high school scrapbook and the people in the pictures look back at me from a different dimension. Some are now strangers. Some have passed on to the next life. Some, were it not for facebook, I could not tell you where they are or what they love.
And, I think, is this what becomes of the now? Four years down the road, will I look through pictures and say, I wish I still had the love we had in that relationship. I wish I knew what she was doing. I wish I had known him better.
There's so much pressure to get it right--this senior year thing. And who can?
Later that night, I met some of my favorite people for margaritas and burgers, shared some laughs, got drunk and played games, sang until my throat hurt, and had a sleepover. I may not get everything perfect, and I may keep making some of the same mistakes that I keep trying to fix, but for the meantime, I'm doing the best I can.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Senior Year
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Nostalgia
I miss New York.
I'll be sitting at my computer (like on a day like today) and suddenly start thinking about walking down 7th Avenue in Park Slope and the sound and smell of crisp leaves crackling and crushing under feet and strollers. Or I'll think about what various dirty words the street vendors at the Court Street stop in Brooklyn would toss in my direction as I rushed off to class. Or I'll suddenly think of the view of the dirty canal from the F line as it slips around Red Hook. Or I can taste the chocolate shakes from the Shake Shack and hear the music in Madison Square. When the sun blinds me in Chicago, I think about the glinting light bouncing off the flying towers of New York. I can't help it.
I haven't gotten into the city (here, in Chicago) nearly as much as I'd promised I would. I really have no good excuse either other than how much I hate the El after riding the MTA subway. I am, however, going into the city on Saturday for an animation festival at the Music Box. Had it not been -30 degrees below last weekend, I was going to go bar-hopping. There's still time and plenty of city.
For now, I apply and search for jobs and torture myself by wondering where I'll be in a year. Which is why I must stop thinking and wondering and drowning in what-if's. For now, there is now.
I live in Evanston. And that's fine.
(it'd be nicer if I had my iPod...)