Inbetweening
It's a strange and disorienting experience reliving past lives. I did just that tonight, spending the past hour and a half going through this blog, opening up a lot of the old entries, locking up others, and just shaking my head at how much I've changed. In some ways I haven't changed at all though, because wherever you go, there you are.
One thing I regret about all this changing is losing track of so many of my dear Sewanee people. I look back at some of the older entries and they may have 6 or 7 comments from Brendan, Molly, Charlotte, and others. We had a nice little community up there on the mountain, and I am happy to have been a part of it.
I took this picture in 2004 in the Sewanee cemetery with my 1megapixel digital camera. I think it'll be doubly fun to show it to my grand kids who will only know what snow is from books. I'll say, "Yep! Back in my day it was cold enough that precipitation would fall in the form of small flakes and accumulate on the ground! That was all before the mutant uprising of 2032, of course!"
I should visit Sewanee again soon. I think Alex and I will probably go in the Spring, once its a bit warmer. I've been putting it off, because part of me wanted to delay my return to Sewanee until some day when I'm successful... You know, so that all those professors who doubted me back then will crap their Depends(TM) in surprise and terror when they see me. But, look at the facts. It'll be YEARS more before I have any real success (not that I don't have plenty of tiny things to talk about inbetween). So, I might as well just find the professors that I truly liked and reconnect, if only for a moment.
I think of Robert Donat in "Goodbye Mr. Chips" when I think of aging Sewanee professors. Imagine, you taught little Johnny Whatshisname back in the Spring of '04. He did very average and was not a very good student. He wore those terrible band shirts with "THE CURE" or "THE SMITHS" plastered on them in heavy lettering. And then one day, years later, while you warm your tired old hands by the hearth and prepare your English Breakfast tea in a dented old kettle, there's a knock on your door. OH! It's Johnny, back from the Cyber War! My! He has finally become a man, after so many years of useless inbetweening!
Okay, its somewhat unrealistic, but I still get that stuck-in-time feeling from Sewanee. No one at ETSU EVER throws around words like "tradition", because who cares?
Maybe it isn't Sewanee as a place but rather the lives of others that filled it. Maybe I'll go back and find nothing there but buildings and manicured grounds. Maybe it'll be surreal and unsettling.
I have to find out.
Sometimes, I still wish I could do it all over again. I wish I could be more loving and compassionate and a better friend to everyone. These days, I feel like I'm waking up in a lot of ways. Because, I'm happier now than I've been in a long time. But, it's hard to come out those shadows of the past. Instead of Organic Chemistry I wish I was reading Zhuang-tsu or Yeats and breathing in foggy mountain air. I guess the changes have to happen though. I've been a inbetweener for too long, and I need a good dose of progress.
Still, sometimes I can feel those little sparkles of youth that I ignored for so many years, and I just want to go backwards for a while and lay.
One thing I regret about all this changing is losing track of so many of my dear Sewanee people. I look back at some of the older entries and they may have 6 or 7 comments from Brendan, Molly, Charlotte, and others. We had a nice little community up there on the mountain, and I am happy to have been a part of it.
I took this picture in 2004 in the Sewanee cemetery with my 1megapixel digital camera. I think it'll be doubly fun to show it to my grand kids who will only know what snow is from books. I'll say, "Yep! Back in my day it was cold enough that precipitation would fall in the form of small flakes and accumulate on the ground! That was all before the mutant uprising of 2032, of course!"
I should visit Sewanee again soon. I think Alex and I will probably go in the Spring, once its a bit warmer. I've been putting it off, because part of me wanted to delay my return to Sewanee until some day when I'm successful... You know, so that all those professors who doubted me back then will crap their Depends(TM) in surprise and terror when they see me. But, look at the facts. It'll be YEARS more before I have any real success (not that I don't have plenty of tiny things to talk about inbetween). So, I might as well just find the professors that I truly liked and reconnect, if only for a moment.
I think of Robert Donat in "Goodbye Mr. Chips" when I think of aging Sewanee professors. Imagine, you taught little Johnny Whatshisname back in the Spring of '04. He did very average and was not a very good student. He wore those terrible band shirts with "THE CURE" or "THE SMITHS" plastered on them in heavy lettering. And then one day, years later, while you warm your tired old hands by the hearth and prepare your English Breakfast tea in a dented old kettle, there's a knock on your door. OH! It's Johnny, back from the Cyber War! My! He has finally become a man, after so many years of useless inbetweening!
Okay, its somewhat unrealistic, but I still get that stuck-in-time feeling from Sewanee. No one at ETSU EVER throws around words like "tradition", because who cares?
Maybe it isn't Sewanee as a place but rather the lives of others that filled it. Maybe I'll go back and find nothing there but buildings and manicured grounds. Maybe it'll be surreal and unsettling.
I have to find out.
Sometimes, I still wish I could do it all over again. I wish I could be more loving and compassionate and a better friend to everyone. These days, I feel like I'm waking up in a lot of ways. Because, I'm happier now than I've been in a long time. But, it's hard to come out those shadows of the past. Instead of Organic Chemistry I wish I was reading Zhuang-tsu or Yeats and breathing in foggy mountain air. I guess the changes have to happen though. I've been a inbetweener for too long, and I need a good dose of progress.
Still, sometimes I can feel those little sparkles of youth that I ignored for so many years, and I just want to go backwards for a while and lay.