The first semester's done. I feel a little strange about it, to tell you the truth.
Time has always seemed unnatural to me, a strange and inexplicable imposition over the free flow of the world, casting a peculiar light over everything and forcing everything that happens into unnatural order. It seems odd to narrow everything into a straight-line progression, moment after moment pouring past in a swift, cold clatter that adds up the whole world into one neat, tidy sum.
Think about it: Every day is the same length as every other, each a compounding of hours and minutes and seconds piling up one on another. On a quantitative level, you can't tell any second apart from any other; the whole of the modern world is founded on the idea that time passes evenly everywhere. But that idea only draws its existence from our mutual agreement to overlook how far from reality the system really lies. Is every second of your life as important as every other second? Compare the 2,820th second of your Chem lecture today with the second after you opened the letter from U.Va., right before you started to smile. Did those feel the same?
So, time careens on in its wild and improbable course, ignoring the truth of our lives. When we count everything up at the end of it all, the thousand hours we invest in our thousand different pastimes won't weigh a 10th as much as a few isolated moments of sunsets and strong winds and bright smiles and defeat and victory.
And, more's the pity, as time moves on, so do we. I'm not the same person I was when I got here three months ago. I doubt if any of us are. The world has been changed, all our worlds, each by our own pleasures and our own mistakes. My former selves are rapidly collapsing beneath the weight of an infinity of popped collars and 60,000 people singing radically out of unison.
I know a man whose identity was stolen from him along with $111,500. I know a girl who, seeing a blue jay, decided that it would thenceforward be her everlasting symbol for beauty and peace. Not 12 hours later, she tripped over that self-same blue jay, lying dead at the foot of the stairs. Odd, yes? I know a guy who was deceived into believing that his laptop had been sold on e-Bay behind his back. I met my first totally nocturnal man. I met a girl who rolls about on balconies wrapped in quilts to pass the time. I met a guy who uses a loofah routinely in the shower and the word "poopie" routinely in conversation. I know a girl who wears scarves on her head and does arabesques without provocation. I almost had my character slandered on a massive and very public scale. By the way, I apologize for that whole thing.
I've met opera singers and pianists, architects and scientists, Soviet sympathizers and people who make John D. look like a pansy. I've met far too many Northern Virginians, just enough people from the rest of the country and too few of my fellow Ohioans (God bless you, Buckeye State). I've stayed up all night and slept in all day. I ate my first chocolate cheesecake. I once momentarily forgot the difference between a solid and a liquid, and I insisted that Germany was on the Security Council of the U.N., even though, of course, it is not. I've had long and fascinating conversations about religion and philosophy. I've learned, and I've done far too many stupid things. But maybe above everything else, I've enjoyed myself, enjoyed the incomparable vibrancy of this place and the genuine vitality of all the people here. I've enjoyed meeting people who annotate poetry for fun, enjoyed (naturally) that fabulous Facebook, enjoyed having no free time and doing nothing with the free time that I had. And finally, my friends, I've enjoyed finding a new home here with all of you, a new center of self and a new network of companionship, as time runs on in its perpetual path and I collect one by one those few more moments that begin to define the world. I love this place.
In other news: Everyone should join the Facebook group "Cleveland Rocks," because it does, clearly. "The Apprentice" is coming to an end; anyone who doesn't watch the finale is a Communist. Holler back, UJC Exec.
I hope you all have a wonderful holiday. I know I will.
Connor Sullivan can be reached at sullivan@cavalierdaily.com
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