Life at 21, do you remember it?
Things rush at you, hit you, from all directions.
Any small decision can turn into a major plot beat.
What are our lives anyway but the sum of our decisions?
Opportunities contract and expand around us, like breathing—
and what fills those lungs are our test scores and faculty opinion.
College is a land of dreams—we’re all dream catchers—on our own paths, but the paths are mazes shrouded in haze, tumblers in need of combinations, variants that we must learn and memorize though it drains our communal blood.
At test times, the silence in libraries and coffeehouses is deafening,
full, as they are, of hunched-back phantoms toiling on books or blue-lit screens. If it sounds stressful and dramatic—it is. It’s not a time to get raddled—it’s all a big test.
Your world contracts to the sterile and dry— the facts and the moments needed to gather and order them.
That’s why we love breaks. Fall, Summer, Christmas, Thanksgiving—any flavor—break.
In fact, Lisa and I are on break now, I’m typing, on a MacBook Air, in a helicopter, screaming towards Manhattan.
If we don’t die in this shaky, 250mph, 3000-feet out-over Long Island Sound, cricket-like contraption, we’re going to have a great time—if we do nothing but sleep, hug our families and eat turkey—a great time.
.
.
Songs for this:
Little Hercules by Trisha Yearwood
Constant Craving by k.d. lang
Merriam Webster word of the day challenge 11/14/24:
Raddled = confused or befuddled or broken-down and worn.