And then, sooner than not, the beginning of the semester, which always signals a quick plunge toward the end of the year. I try not to think about how every class of college freshmen stay the same age and I get older and older and more far removed from it. I was aghast last week when I realized that it was 20 years ago that I was in my first year at RC. Unlike the previous year that had been sort of all over the place (fist UNC, then a community college where I took some classes) it was my first taste of life in a small, more intimate liberal arts school and I reveled in it..my classes in Shakespeare and Ethical Theory..the library where I spent all my time between classes holed up in a study carrel..the incredibly scenic campus tucked back in the woods behind the usual Rockford strip malls and fast food franchises. I loved my classes and my teachers there, and it was like this door had been opened to another world. I think everything felt important then..the authors I was studying, the things I was writing, the plans I was making (shakey as they were). It's probably just nostalgia talking, but everything felt so much more real, and maybe it' the whole pre-internet thing, though I'm pretty sure I wasted just as much time with television and magazines as I do these days on the web. Or maybe it's that I payed so much more attention to the world then.
Obviously, I'm nostalgic today and missing things and people I am not really sure I want to be around. There's been a little napping, some scrambled eggs and tea, some reading (I am re-reading everything on my bookshelf by Jenny Boully since finishing her not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them), some writing, and some cat antics..all in all a lazy Sunday like the calm before the week's storm..
