In the long-standing tradition of being a shitty blogger--a condition I hope to someday cure--I have once again failed to properly portray my glorious summer.
So: In the also-long-standing tradition of trying to rectify said situation, I begin a series of posts: translucent windows bearing hazy glimpses into my beautiful summer.
Summer began with exam week. Exam week is filled with desperations, always. There is the obvious, blatant desperation of Oh Shit My Grade Comes Down To How Long I Can Stay Awake. Underneath it, however, is the more quiet, more spiking desperation--the desperation that comes with realizing that you will be separated from the people you've come to know and love.
The last week of school, we sit together, sometimes laughing, sometimes quietly, sometimes just realizing what the end of the week means.
I had three exams: history on Saturday [after which, I had Physics homework and labs to complete and turn in], Physics and Organic on Monday.
I spent Friday night with Matt in Watkins, staying up late, reading desperately over History notes and trying to take it all in. Angola. Mozambique. Cuba. The USSR. Vietnam. Korea [both North and South]. Venezuela. Chile. China. China. China.
Around 2 in the morning, Matt and I decided to go back. We went outside. We talked for a little while, standing up. We talked. We talked. We moved to the bench, sat down, and kept talking. It got cold outside, and people would pass us and look at us. Will Milks told us it was warmer inside. We didn't care. We just kept talking. Talking. He asked me what my biggest fear was. I told him that it was death. And narwhals. He understood both. Assured me that I wasn't going to hell.
We talked for two hours until, at four in the morning, with a hug that lasted thirty seconds or maybe more, we left.
The night before Organic and Physics, I nearly killed myself studying. I managed to interject some fun--Trent, Meg, Matt and I went to Lou's, an always-enjoyable excursion. We returned to Watkins and Matt studied Physics while I studied Organic, and Jeramy O. came and took pictures of us. We were his first.
I slept on the couch, briefly, and we listened over and over again to the theme from Forrest Gump, which sometimes makes him cry, beautiful piano and all.
Eventually, he left, and I fell asleep again until Will Milks woke me up, asking me if I had intended to be asleep that long [I hadn't.]
On Tuesday, I went to meet [the] ajalon in Columbia. I saw the newspaper pictures on his refrigerator from the Spelling Bee that sent him to Washington and was duly impressed.
We got into his Spectra. He hit 100 and we listened to the Kings of Convenience and the New Amsterdams. We made it to Matt Foley's house in due time. We went to pick up his friend Ryan's dog, listening to Talib Kweli, Lauryn Hill, and Common. When we returned, we went to dinner, a seafood place with wonderful shrimp and grits.
We returned to the house and watched Hotel Rwanda, a stunning film. It was time to take [the] ajalon home [after some discussion], and we got in his car. The last time we drove back from Charleston, we turned off on the exit for a small town called Dixiana, because we are curious and impetuous, and because questioning minds want to know. This time, we stopped in at Foreign Trade Zone 21, or at least attempted. We turned off on the exit, and drove for a while, and didn't see any blatant advertisement for the Zone. We stopped at a gas station to get Frappacinos, Oreos [me, at least], and use the bathroom. The cops didn't know where FTZ21 was either.
So we drove back toward the interstate, and found this:
Ajalon put on the emergency flashers, parked the car, and we took pictures.
We drove the rest of the way back to Richland. He let me sleep, because it was nearing midnight, and I was driving back to Charleston that night [for a supposed rendezvous with Matt Allen the next day]. When we got back to his house, I drank a glass of water, we hugged for a long time, and I headed back.
Enjoyed the convenience of my solitude.
I returned to Matt Foley's house around 3 or 4, walked into a glass door on my way in, read an article in a Newsweek about antisemitism, and fell asleep.
Foley, thankfully, let me sleep in the next day. I woke up around 1:00 and we had a lovely lunch of waffles. We talked about a lot of things, which is my favorite part about visiting Foley. We talked about teaching and schools, about race, about what I want to do with my life and thusly about healthcare and how our system is shit. We talked about the kind of things we usually talk about, deep and reaching like roots. He showed me the beginning of his new book. I liked it very much.
I eventually left, went to meet Matt. The meeting didn't go as I had planned, as he had Lizzy in tow, and we woodenly spoke, and I gave him some things of his that I had somehow obtained, and we left. No hug. No anything.
I couldn't help but be disappointed.
That night, Wednesday, was the night of my semiannual Midnight Dancing Study Breaker with the lovely Shawn Marler. We waltzed, and he requested that I sing "On Top" by the Killers, the same song I had sung a month earlier as he walked me to my SLA reinterview, the song I had sung to calm myself as I walked, mealy-stomached, defiant, shaking from anger, sadness, fear.
He walzed me into sand spurs, and we had to stop so that I could take them from my feet. I laughed. We swing-danced, and I stuck the landing. We hugged for a long time beneath the stars until Trent [who was watching, with Meghan] yelled "stop making out!" With a deviant glance, I pulled Shawn to the grass, and we rolled over and over, laughing hysterically.
Then, it was over.
Friday was a busy day, full of us enjoying ourselves. Trent, Meg, Amanda Musielak, Sara, Blackmon, Mike and myself went to swim in the river where a preacher, a good man died the next week. We found a jump off rock, and we fell on the slippery rocks and we injured ourselves, and we laughed it off.
Afterwards, we went to eat Japanese food, and I went to see my psychologist and wondered why I was even there at all.
That night, we went to Chick-Fil-A with Nolan and Tabitha [who praised the poems I submitted to the Review] and then jazz in Greenville. I acquired a new dog from Stephanie Cirillo, who I named Ezra after Ezra Pound, whose poem "The Garden" moves me and moves me and moves me.
The next day, we went to graduation, and I packed for hours and hours and hours, until I had everything I owned in my car and my parents van. My whole life, in two cars.
I drove home, back to my "other life", back to the town where a rock band playing at a small venue was waiting for me to arrive.
But that, of course, is another glimpse.
