Wow, this is really long and ineloquent.
Everyone is leaving! Everywhere I look there are people loading up their cars and facebook statuses [stati?] are set to "is moving in!". Everyone's abuzz about their last trip to the 'teeter or last drive down Friendly. It's really weird. I think most of the people I know have lived here in Greensboro since they could walk--or earlier. And I've known a lot of the people that I'm really close to either since elementary school or, at the latest, 6th grade. But even the folks I've know since 6th grade, that's 7 years. 7 years is a long time to go to school with someone, even if it's just that kid that doesn't talk but always shows up in your english class.
I can't really say I feel much about leaving, though. At least, not so much about leaving people. I'll keep in touch with some, and if I don't, well...
Right before you leave you somewhere you always feel acutely aware of how much of a community wherever you're leaving. I usually don't give two shits about community. It's something I'm aware of, and can wax sentimental about, but I'm not often rapt with delight about 'community' and 'unity' and 'spirit' in some kind of a whole. But in the last days of high school, it was hard not to feel some kind of something--180 days is about long enough for certain classes to make themselves into little groups. I think everyone's had those classes, that form their own rapport and jokes, not that they'd ever exist outside of that class, but certain classes are more familial than the next. My philosophy class was like that, and certainly, strangely, the IB art class had its own little estranged family relations. It's strange to erase those at the end of the year, but stranger still to leave them altogether.
I said I don't really feel much about leaving people, but I definitely have major pangs about leaving Greensboro. I've never really left anywhere and though I haven't lived here my ENTIRE life, I might as well have. I've lived in the same house for 15 years. Most of the people I know live in one of two zip codes and I can get to their houses with no more than one or two turns off Friendly Avenue. I've been driving or passengering down the same streets for a hell of a long time. Walking my borrowed dog-sat dog, I walk and see people outside, the kid who is always working on a defunct skateboard ramp, the neighbor who gardens constantly--usually stuff like that doesn't faze me but the last month or so it makes me want to cry. Last week, I shit you not, I was strolling down Elm Street over by the much-adored N Club. It was hot as Hades but beautiful and breezy, people were eating outside, things were being built and bought and carried and eaten, all with some weird sense of jollity. There was even a little kid with a balloon--it was like a depiction of the downtown of a small southern town and I crossed the street only to see... the mayor. Talking to a local business owner. He was out for his lunch hour walk around downtown. But really, folks. Can we pause for a minute and talk about how awesome that is, in sort of a reminiscing way--that we have a town where the mayor walks with shirt-sleeves rolled up, but also, that has a creepy artists collective and iconoclastic things of that nature [I hate it when people say "and things of that nature". Whatever]. It will be weird not to have the 'boro as frame of reference. It always charmed me when, at school, I could keep in mind at least that everyone there lived in the same place, that I could say something was out on Lee Street and most people would get the joke. It's weird to think of that disappearing.
I hated Greensboro as a place to grow up for a long time. Kind of, I still do. But whatever. I realize now that there could't really be that many better places. I hated, too, the South, with a passion unrivaled by much else, save people who smoke in their cars with the windows all rolled up. That, of course has changed and even though I am only going to Maryland--below the Mason-Dixon line, though really it's the Death Defying state, neither norther nor southern--Mid-Atlantic, as they say. But damn, I'm going to miss the way the heat blows across the city, the JP building clock looming, the sound of cicadas that will be there, sure, but be different.
All I'm sayin' is that this is really weird. So to all of you with your cars packed and facebook statuses [stati?] all cued up, good luck! Godspeed! I'll see around the Harris Teeter on Christmas break.
I can't really say I feel much about leaving, though. At least, not so much about leaving people. I'll keep in touch with some, and if I don't, well...
Right before you leave you somewhere you always feel acutely aware of how much of a community wherever you're leaving. I usually don't give two shits about community. It's something I'm aware of, and can wax sentimental about, but I'm not often rapt with delight about 'community' and 'unity' and 'spirit' in some kind of a whole. But in the last days of high school, it was hard not to feel some kind of something--180 days is about long enough for certain classes to make themselves into little groups. I think everyone's had those classes, that form their own rapport and jokes, not that they'd ever exist outside of that class, but certain classes are more familial than the next. My philosophy class was like that, and certainly, strangely, the IB art class had its own little estranged family relations. It's strange to erase those at the end of the year, but stranger still to leave them altogether.
I said I don't really feel much about leaving people, but I definitely have major pangs about leaving Greensboro. I've never really left anywhere and though I haven't lived here my ENTIRE life, I might as well have. I've lived in the same house for 15 years. Most of the people I know live in one of two zip codes and I can get to their houses with no more than one or two turns off Friendly Avenue. I've been driving or passengering down the same streets for a hell of a long time. Walking my borrowed dog-sat dog, I walk and see people outside, the kid who is always working on a defunct skateboard ramp, the neighbor who gardens constantly--usually stuff like that doesn't faze me but the last month or so it makes me want to cry. Last week, I shit you not, I was strolling down Elm Street over by the much-adored N Club. It was hot as Hades but beautiful and breezy, people were eating outside, things were being built and bought and carried and eaten, all with some weird sense of jollity. There was even a little kid with a balloon--it was like a depiction of the downtown of a small southern town and I crossed the street only to see... the mayor. Talking to a local business owner. He was out for his lunch hour walk around downtown. But really, folks. Can we pause for a minute and talk about how awesome that is, in sort of a reminiscing way--that we have a town where the mayor walks with shirt-sleeves rolled up, but also, that has a creepy artists collective and iconoclastic things of that nature [I hate it when people say "and things of that nature". Whatever]. It will be weird not to have the 'boro as frame of reference. It always charmed me when, at school, I could keep in mind at least that everyone there lived in the same place, that I could say something was out on Lee Street and most people would get the joke. It's weird to think of that disappearing.
I hated Greensboro as a place to grow up for a long time. Kind of, I still do. But whatever. I realize now that there could't really be that many better places. I hated, too, the South, with a passion unrivaled by much else, save people who smoke in their cars with the windows all rolled up. That, of course has changed and even though I am only going to Maryland--below the Mason-Dixon line, though really it's the Death Defying state, neither norther nor southern--Mid-Atlantic, as they say. But damn, I'm going to miss the way the heat blows across the city, the JP building clock looming, the sound of cicadas that will be there, sure, but be different.
All I'm sayin' is that this is really weird. So to all of you with your cars packed and facebook statuses [stati?] all cued up, good luck! Godspeed! I'll see around the Harris Teeter on Christmas break.