Transience
In 5.5 hours I will have packed my belongings into a few cardboard boxes, stuffed the artifacts of my glorious summer into ad hoc time capsules, time capsules to be unearthed after what to me currently resembles a suspended eternity of nothingness. Going home always feels like entering an alternate universe: time suddenly seems to pause as all obligations, be it schoolwork, labwork, or even the menial tasks involved in taking care of oneself, seem to momentarily suspend as an ethereal mist, omnipresent yet ultimately insignificant.
In 10 hours I will be in a car, cruising down the familiar bumps of I-88, racing towards home. Home - what a complicated concept for us quasi-nomadic étudiants. Is home where we sleep at night? Is it where our parents live? Where we grew up? It always slightly unnerves me to hear someone refer to a dorm as "home" - then again, I have always held an almost awkward reverence towards names. In my head, my room in Lowell is known as "my room." This summer, our sublet has been "the house." Yet "home" to me isn't just necessarily another geographical location. It's the entire essence of being surrounded by the people and objects that instill in me a supreme, unparalleled comfort.
And despite my imminent journey towards unparalleled comfort, I'm going to miss this summer. The house, the housemates, the music, the cooking, the exploration, the independence, the restlessness - so many factors contributed to making this summer perhaps the best one I've ever had. But most significantly, I've started to feel settled. I've finally reached that threshold of familiarity, the one where you stop thinking "Oh, I should do this at least once while I'm living in the area" and start thinking "This is great, I'm so glad I live here so I can do it again." It's that familiarity which then beckons nostalgia, a nostalgia analogous to [yet completely independent from] that which I feel for home whenever I'm away.
In 12 hours I will be asleep in my own bed at home, momentarily satiated of my nostalgia for home, yet newly afflicted with nostalgia for the summer. When I return in 10 days, even though I return to the same city, the school-year on-campus routine will be inevitably different: no more breakfast omelets with J, no more dinner scheming with A, no more almost daily trips to Market Basket, no more bike expeditions to the suburbs on weekends. Such, however, is the transient nature of our lives, a stark contrast - and well-placed juxtaposition - to the dependable constancy that ultimately defines home.
In 10 hours I will be in a car, cruising down the familiar bumps of I-88, racing towards home. Home - what a complicated concept for us quasi-nomadic étudiants. Is home where we sleep at night? Is it where our parents live? Where we grew up? It always slightly unnerves me to hear someone refer to a dorm as "home" - then again, I have always held an almost awkward reverence towards names. In my head, my room in Lowell is known as "my room." This summer, our sublet has been "the house." Yet "home" to me isn't just necessarily another geographical location. It's the entire essence of being surrounded by the people and objects that instill in me a supreme, unparalleled comfort.
And despite my imminent journey towards unparalleled comfort, I'm going to miss this summer. The house, the housemates, the music, the cooking, the exploration, the independence, the restlessness - so many factors contributed to making this summer perhaps the best one I've ever had. But most significantly, I've started to feel settled. I've finally reached that threshold of familiarity, the one where you stop thinking "Oh, I should do this at least once while I'm living in the area" and start thinking "This is great, I'm so glad I live here so I can do it again." It's that familiarity which then beckons nostalgia, a nostalgia analogous to [yet completely independent from] that which I feel for home whenever I'm away.
In 12 hours I will be asleep in my own bed at home, momentarily satiated of my nostalgia for home, yet newly afflicted with nostalgia for the summer. When I return in 10 days, even though I return to the same city, the school-year on-campus routine will be inevitably different: no more breakfast omelets with J, no more dinner scheming with A, no more almost daily trips to Market Basket, no more bike expeditions to the suburbs on weekends. Such, however, is the transient nature of our lives, a stark contrast - and well-placed juxtaposition - to the dependable constancy that ultimately defines home.
posted by Cindy at
12:32 PM
1 Comments:
i like the last line ... i think this is how i've tried to describe the summer and college itself for so long but don't have your eloquence to do so. :)
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