Two Things

Thing One: My friend Charles linked this tonight. If you have ever felt bored, unproductive, or useless, please accept the result of your click as validation and proof that you aren't.

Thing Two: The good-byes have begun. The semester is wrapping up. Unworn t-shirts are getting a good laugh and are then being thrown into the collective waste-baskets at the ends of halls all over campus. Empty liquor bottles are being trashed so parents don't ask questions when they arrive to help their now-permanently changed children-turned-college students move back to their permanent residences. The valuable contents of dormitory rooms are being carefully folded and placed in those big Tupperware things all over this beautiful place, interrupted briefly by hallmates for hugs and laughs, before the students return home to find that they in fact can not truly go home again.

Over the last couple of days, I have had my first occasions to sit for a few minutes with people who have meant a great deal to me and simply visit before they return home for the summer. But as the conversations come to a necessary close, the habitual verbal farewells effect a mental double-take. I usually say "K, see you 'round." It occurred to me today as I said this to a great friend whose head will rest in Norcross tomorrow night, "Well, Brett, no you won't." I will see this friend, but not around… not in passing, but in very specific instances in which life allows me to… and not until after the time when my driver’s license is issued by a different state.

This is the part of the entry in which I express that I do not mean for this to become depressing and that I remind all readers that I write here ultimately for my own purposes. Ready?

I don’t mean for this to become depressing, but remember that I write here ultimately for my own purposes.

If the hopes and necessities of this old soul would allow it, I would never leave. I would never set foot out of this county without the intent to return in a timely manner. I would never stop teaching what I teach, spending time with the people with whom I do on a frequent basis, or even move out of this cramped apartment which has more problems than I can name and more memories than I could ever have hoped to have experienced.

If I could continue to live and eventually pass right here with the knowledge that I had done everything I could, had become everything I could become, and had shared everything that was fair game, I wouldn’t even think about leaving.

There have been moments over the last 13 years when I couldn’t believe how good I had it. Now that I’m walking away, those moments seem to come more frequently, and I seem to look back at the older moments and realize that my awe was entirely justified. I think about the experience in total and say to myself, “There is no way that all happened. No way, and especially not to me. And if it did, why would I ever leave?”

The answer is: It did happen. Yes, to you and everyone you ever shared it with. And you’re leaving because you can now do little more than repeat it, and because, in spite of the joys inherent in that, there is something more.

I say this with all of the appreciation in the world for the things I have given and received here; I suspect most people never have an experience like I have here. But as much as I would live in this forever, as fulfilling as this has been, I believe there is something more.

I know I am going to kick and scream on July 16.

Better to kick and scream now than to look back and sob later... and wonder forever.

How did they ever get me to leave the womb?