stable song

Time for the final bow
Rows of deserted houses
All our stable mates highway bound


I logged onto Facebook just a while ago, and I noticed that my friend Sara from Madison had posted these lyrics as her status a few days ago. I thought about how appropriate it was, at the end of the semester... everybody in Turner House packing up and moving away... but I had already done so, back in December. and my disappearance had already evaporated and faded into the old cracked walls; it would go unmourned during the final move-out.

and for a second, I think back to the first day at Madison... the sweaty, confusing bustle of things. all the mysterious people whose faces and names blended into each other. how awkward I was--perhaps we all were. the first conversations. the "ice-breakers" and the first look around. the first laughs, jokes. the awkward meetings between the parents... noticing someone else with the same futon as you, same guitar, same T-shirt...

for some reason, it just left me feeling so nostalgic and poignant, and I again started to consider all the people I had loved and lost in my life. it made me kind of sad, and now I start to wonder if I've done something wrong. if perhaps I've pushed people away because they didn't meet my expectations... my cinematic, overly-romantic visions of comradery and friendship.
perhaps my life was just bound to take on a lonelier path after that first fateful semester in Fall. who knows.

I just feel kind of sad, I do honestly miss the friendships I had in Turner House. I do regret that I didn't stay and see what could have bloomed.

but there were other reasons. I needed to come to Milwaukee. I needed to dissolve the image of it being the picture-perfect city for me, of it being the picture-perfect college for me. I needed to come here and find out that no, it was not all it was cracked up to be.

but then again, what really is? and I just seem to be approaching circular thinking here, running into that irritating old adage: "the grass is always greener..."


words can't really express what I'm trying to get at here, and if I keep rambling, I'll only lose the beauty and the fragility of the true emotion. I'm just filled with this sort of awe and this heavy sense of nostalgia. a longing for the perfect past... yes, always the perfect past... flaws become insignificant or invisible from a distance.

temps perdu

I've come home to Muskego for the weekend, and I am on the verge of another "Proustian" epiphany. I feel something akin to happiness inside of me, but I won't allow myself to recognize it as such... Or, more accurately, the logical half of my brain won't allow me to recognize it as such. It wants to rehash and recount all the things that are indelibly wrong with my life. My self-consciousness, my uncertain future, the thoughts of my peers, society's endless flaws, the depravity of mankind... but for a moment, I forget it.

It is lost in the scent of spring, in the beautiful onset of summer. Yesterday I was walking down the sidewalk near my high school, just as it began to rain. and all around me life smelled so beautiful... I probably looked insane, taking in huge gulps of air through my mouth and my nostrils, trying to absorb the fragrance as much as possible. The smell of the rain, the smell of spring...

and here at home, scents of a spring gone past greet me everywhere; hiding in corners, in window sills, in liquid soaps on the bathroom counter top. I actually brought my hands to my face after washing them, just to savor the smell of the soap... because this soap reminds me of last summer, of writing folk songs in my room, and performing them at Potbelly... because this gust of wind reminds me of the freedom of last summer... because this juice in the fridge reminds me of some other ancient memory... and more and more my involuntary memory envelops me in waves and waves of epochs gone by.

again, I look out the window, and take in another huge gulp of air. and still, I feel something akin to happiness within me... the sounds of my family, my mother's infinite selflessness, the sun, the suburban streets...


I think I really need to read Remembrance of Things Past in its entirety.