So I've decided to blog again at least until the break is over...hopefully after. I need to get in the habit of writing again. I seem to have forgotten how. Words don't dance for me like they used to.
Yesterday I went to the Governor's School reunion party. It was fairly overwhelming at first. I had never been to one as I've always been away at school or adventuring or other such nonsense. So I met Mark and Will in the parking lot (I was terrified to go alone) and we went in. I felt so old. The lobby was bursting with a really intense (kinda smelly) energy, and I found myself searching rather dazedly for familiar faces. The only people from our class were me, Mark, Will, Thomasina Sarah, and Jonathan, though we met up later with our juniors, Philipp, Amelia, Rachel, and Anna Kate. And then there were just swarms of other people to wade through.
I saw George. We talked for a bit, but then he was taken off by autograph seekers. Evidently he's written a writer's manual. I talked to Madame Glass and Dana Howard , but mostly just meandered around campus with old friends, thinking of a time when things were simpler.
GS has changed a lot. I hadn't realized how much. Doug (an 03 kid now an RA) said that they'd had to really crack down on kids because of poor grades and insincerity. Perhaps this was inevitable, but I couldn't help but feel guilty as someone led in Dr. Uldrick to the gift unveiling. This may not have been what she meant...just another cool place for rich(ish) folks to send their kids.
It's funny how the memory works. We were allowed to wander around for about an hour before getting spotted by the security people as strangers. I kept smelling things that took me right back. A stairwell that smelled like a crisis. A hallway that smelled like a late evening aimless walk. An office that smelled like acceptance. And get I walked into another hallway that I knew I had passed through a thousand times and had no memory of it, startled to realize where I was.
It used to sort of depress me to know that GS and the life I had there can never be replicated. I am beginning to feel similarly about Bard, though perhaps less so. I thought that I could never go back. Never be that person again. Never be loved in that way again. Never shine like that again. But that's only part of the story. I came into my own in those buildings. I allowed myself to be important in that place. I took such ownership of my existence. After a rather isolated existence at Liberty, I found myself surrounded by friends. And not just everyday friends, but people my own age that held qualities that I didn't know existed. People whose hearts spoke to mine. It may sound horrible, but until I went to GS, I had very few friends that I admired, certainly I was not surrounded. I've never felt at peace with my generation (their music only hurts my ears!), but at GS I was.
But I take some comfort in knowing that who I became there didn't stay there. Maybe there have been times when I forgot that. I stayed out long and late last night with old friends, several of whom I had not seen in 5 or 6 years. And it felt like home. I felt at home in myself. I didn't have to try. I just was. I feel similarly about my time at Bard, but I was older then. GS was my groundswell, where my new life began. Those people I laughed and played with last night...we shared a bit of light...somehow related by a post-genetic imprint. I felt such love for the experience and (most of all) myself.
All in all a good night. I wanted to explain to my friends at W-O. I wanted to share but knew that such things couldn't really be relayed through words.
