Some people are just full of magic.
Others are just full of shit.
Once I packed a bag full of cereal and Spaghetti O's and ran across town after a rainbow. I was about eight, but I can't remember being happier.
Eventually one realizes that no matter how fast you run, there will always be land between you and the horizon. That's the first step toward maturity as an adult would define it. You're grown up when you can see these things and not be dazed or enchanted by them.
That disenchantment can follow you. It will wreck the mystique of any place. Hawaii, Australia, High School, all are more dirt and buildings until you remember how to attach meaning to them.
Backstage at a theater, up in the rafters, I found the most beautiful place I have ever seen, not because of where it was or how it looked, but because of who showed it to me. She pitched it with such enchantment and wonder that it became the set of the Phantom of the Opera and The Pirates of Penzance at the same time. Had I been alone, I would have just seen boxes.
It's that rare person who never gets tired of wonder. -who can sit on a plane a hundred times and still marvel at how the wings don't fall off. -who marvels at the mixmaster every time, wondering with me what future civilizations will think of these massive pillars and arcs.
(Not just you, though. This is every ******* I've ever met.)
Wide, bubbling eyes take in everything, still in awe of what great and random wonders were produced by our age. It warms me to know that a single person can have the whole world pegged, and still stare in dumbfounded awe at bridges and drain-pipes.
At twenty, that has all been gone for a while now.
It's now time to sit. It's time to read. Pay attention.
For your final, I want you to...
...take three days that could have been spent road-tripping to Galveston or playing in other people's corn fields, and waste them on trying to impress me, a person you don't respect...
...due Monday.
So I will sit, and I will stare at a fucking wall
with the radio off
until I can remember that feeling that I lived for
when I used to build forts.
Once I packed a bag full of cereal and Spaghetti O's and ran across town after a rainbow. I was about eight, but I can't remember being happier.
Eventually one realizes that no matter how fast you run, there will always be land between you and the horizon. That's the first step toward maturity as an adult would define it. You're grown up when you can see these things and not be dazed or enchanted by them.
That disenchantment can follow you. It will wreck the mystique of any place. Hawaii, Australia, High School, all are more dirt and buildings until you remember how to attach meaning to them.
Backstage at a theater, up in the rafters, I found the most beautiful place I have ever seen, not because of where it was or how it looked, but because of who showed it to me. She pitched it with such enchantment and wonder that it became the set of the Phantom of the Opera and The Pirates of Penzance at the same time. Had I been alone, I would have just seen boxes.
It's that rare person who never gets tired of wonder. -who can sit on a plane a hundred times and still marvel at how the wings don't fall off. -who marvels at the mixmaster every time, wondering with me what future civilizations will think of these massive pillars and arcs.
(Not just you, though. This is every ******* I've ever met.)
Wide, bubbling eyes take in everything, still in awe of what great and random wonders were produced by our age. It warms me to know that a single person can have the whole world pegged, and still stare in dumbfounded awe at bridges and drain-pipes.
At twenty, that has all been gone for a while now.
It's now time to sit. It's time to read. Pay attention.
For your final, I want you to...
...take three days that could have been spent road-tripping to Galveston or playing in other people's corn fields, and waste them on trying to impress me, a person you don't respect...
...due Monday.
So I will sit, and I will stare at a fucking wall
with the radio off
until I can remember that feeling that I lived for
when I used to build forts.