in medias res

Midweek Zen

This is going to be a cheesy and a bad post - I can already tell that. I haven't had enough time to process and I know that more will happen that will push these experiences out of the story rotation before I can write about them. You've been warned.

After a few days with old friends, I'm overwhelmed with goodness. I went to Gardner-Webb for roughly 36 hours to visit a few people that live in the area. Boiling Springs is a small town for so many memories. First, there was the four years of school, living in the apartments on the edge of campus, slipping on the mud as I ran to class, the old Williams building that still smells the same. Then, there are the memories from the year after graduation when I moved there for a job and other things - the heartache and growing pains that hard year. One friend used to run the perimeter of campus with me and we'd talk the whole time. We ran this again on Monday. The big things are the same, but the small details have changed enough that it no longer feels like home. (Then there was the time we played in the sprinklers and mud of the new football practice field.) I read stories and looked at pictures with one friend. Discussed life and literature and motherhood with another. I was sad to leave. That night, I went to Greensboro and sat up until 2:30 talking with friends and enjoyed some comfortable silence. With other old friends, there was some awkward silence. That happens and I'm okay with that.

Now, I'm finally with Mike in Chapel Hill. Yesterday, we split our meals between his friends; I'm inspired by their lives and their work. I want to be as full of life ten or twenty years from now. He's golfing with another old friend right now, and I'm about to go for a run. I have ridiculous faith in my last-minute efforts before a big event.

Big decisions about next year still nag me, but I'm putting them off for at least another week. I've decided to go on a thesis-bender when I get home - lock myself in my office at school for at least 48 hours or until I have forty more pages. No outside communication - just me, Ellis Island, Typhoid Mary, and Foucault.

The hard part is that Mims said that Bruiser is now completely cuddly and starved for attention, and all I want to do is to get home and play with him. I tell my friends stories about him and see their eyes glaze over, but I can't stop myself. I can't believe I've become that girl about a dog.

And now, a little more quiet before the whirlwind-of-a-weekend.

posted by tara @ 9:41 AM