palace of winds

I dreamt last night that I’d gone back to school. My new college was a sprawling affair — some of the classroom floors getting a little shabby, a little close and worn-feeling, but odd lobbies and the cafeteria beautiful, full of light and air and open curls of stairs. It was my first day and I’d forgotten my schedule at home so I was guessing at classes and rooms, fingers crossed as I wandered. It was mid-morning already when I ran into my (real life) next-door neighbor, the cyclist, who in my dream was my phy-ed teacher. We talked a little about his plans for the semester and my other classes — one of which was meditation with my college Buddhism professor. And then I spent the next hour trying to get the bus ticket machine to work, punching through the same sequence of steps over and over, always hitting a wrong button right near the end.

I’m not surprised about the dream, really — I’ve again been thinking a lot in the past few days about going back to school. Which is a song and dance I did last winter, I know, and which fizzled into a fat lot of nothing after I spent months hounding the public library’s volunteer coordinator, to no avail.

But I’ve just signed up for an info session at St. Kate’s next Tuesday. One more small step.

I’m exhausted today. Everything feels like a monumental effort. Focusing my eyes to read, walking to the fridge to fill my water. Drinking my water, knowing it will just make me colder when I’m already just barely restraining myself from curling up under my desk around my space heater. Falling asleep with my face pressed to its toasty little grate.

When I was in college, I would periodically vanish for an afternoon, an evening. Often it was to work on papers or some readings I’d fallen behind on; sometimes it was just because. Usually I hid in the library, and sometimes in the lounges on the fourth or fifth floors of my dorm. I would kick off my shoes and cozy up with my portable cd player (ah those were the days) and a book and just be alone for a while. Unreachable.

I’m long, long overdue for one of those. I’ve been feeling claustrophobic in my own life, and so I’m taking a little hiatus. This week I’m silencing my phone and staying more or less away from the internet. (I won’t kid myself and say I won’t even be checking email, because I probably will. I’m shooting for not, but I’m not going to beat myself up over it. So if you really need to get a hold of me that’s probably the best way, short of calling my house. Though I’d really prefer you not call my house unless it is with an invitation to go get hot cider or tea or something cake-ish. Or perhaps Asian, or pizza-y, or…well. Edible. Or to go see Serenity. Or to shop; I like shopping.)

I’m trying to form some better habits, and plan to spend more time reading and less time glazed in front of a computer screen. I shan’t return until I have finished at least book 1 of the Narnia series (even if it is, I have been told, NOT book 1, but the new idea of book 1 which is wrong wrong wrong).

I may update this during the week(s), because in (weird and incongruous) addition to feeling claustrophobic I’ve been feeling chatty. And it’s become a mid-morning work habit. If I don’t — enjoy the first of fall, darlings. I plan to. The leaves here are turning and it has not get gotten frigid. Bliss.

I’m far beyond exhausted and I must get to bed so I can get up in the morning for promised mall time, but what’s a few more minutes?

Tonight we met up with my aunt and uncle for pizza and afterwards wandered over to the dollar store, which sometimes has some very good deals (I got a cow handtowel, though I haven’t a kitchen to put it in right now; one day, though), where my baby cousin learned to say my name and repeated it up one aisle and down the next, off and on for the whole half hour we were there. It was adorable, and it is absolutely amazing how much he has grown even since last weekend, how smart he is, how quickly he is orienting himself in the world.

I love especially the way his whole face lit up when his mom blew a bit of air on his face through a straw; his mouth split in an enormous grin and it moved through his whole body. And I thought What delight, what perfect joy in the world. To be so buoyed up by a simple unexpected puff of air against your cheek.

The job is going well, and I swear, I swear I will write more about it soon. I should know more next week about whether it will end in August or whether I will sign with them on a permanent basis. If the latter I will take the test to become registered (after months of study, of course) — I think it is the Series 7, but I’m not certain. I feel ready for it, though — the studying, that is, the necessary preparation. The past few weeks I have been feeling sharper; my memory has been clearer — I have been diligently memorizing dozens of names and situations and procedures, and I think it is filling the school-void in me.

Okay, bed time now. Far past, really.

I woke up this morning thinking about how an article I’d read about homosexuality and cannibalism could apply to the movie The Talented Mr. Ripley. The application is more direct with Moby Dick (which is why I read the article last year — to write a paper on Ishmael and Queequeg), but Matt Damon’s character has a nearly cannibalistic drive to not only destroy but devour (and so become) Dickie. At least so far as I remember it. I haven’t seen the movie in years.

Anyhow, it was a very odd (and honestly far too complete) thought to wake up to, especially since I’ve thought of neither the article nor the movie in quite a long time.

May 15, 2004

We sat in the dim cool of Baldwin Hall for what seemed like ages — over an hour, anyway — waiting for things to begin. Talking about the future mostly, connecting briefly with old friends, batting our tassels away from our faces. I thought of the first time I’d sat in that auditorium: August 13, 2000, my eighteenth birthday. I don’t remember any of the speech the university president made that day; my mind was with my parents and my sister, whom I’d just said goodbye to moments before, out on the walkway in front of Baldwin.

It took us another age to snake around the quad and around Kirk, past Science Hall and Pershing and finally down to the stadium where we shuffled in, passing through a double row of faculty half-unrecognizable in their big black robes and hats. Then we stood in front of our seats, turned to face the bleachers behind us, playing Where’s-Waldo with the crowd.

The weather had been fitful earlier in the week, and it had rained just the day before, but the sun was high and hot in a clear sky, and soon we were all getting nicely roasted in our black robes. The preamble was mercifully short, the reading of the names understandably long. Carl and I played rock-paper-scissors (and went through an eerie streak where we put down the same thing at least a dozen times in a row) and thumb-wrestled and had odd little wars with the silky ends of our honor cords.

When all was said and done we went back to the quad to pick up our diplomas, and we took pictures in front of Baldwin and in the odd bright dappling beneath a large oak. We ran into Kyle (above right) but missed Courtney and Kamiah.

By the time we finally started heading back to my apartment I was exhausted, sun-wilted and thirsty. The apartment was surreal those last few days, stripped down and echoing, our belongings slowly vanishing out into the cars. My walls were huge and unfamiliar, giant white swathes of space, and I’d been sleeping fitfully.

I’ll always remember lying on that awful purple couch, though, staring up at the ceiling and breathing in the warm spring air and thinking Goodbye, goodbye.

How did it go so fast
you’ll say
as we are looking back
and then we’ll understand
we held gold dust
in our hands