The wind was changing, like the weather was making one final attempt at spring cleaning the sharper gusts of winter away. I don’t know what woke me, but I know I never sleep well when the seasons change. It’s like the universe shifts a little and small seismic ripples shudder through our conscious world in ways that only our unconscious can feel.
It was 5 am, I guessed, but I’d accidentally unplugged my iHome the night before and never bothered to change the clock back to the right time, so a fluorescent 11:04 blinked back at me. I could see the basketball court slivered from between my blinds, in a sort of strangled bluish post-dawn light. So barely morning then. The trees waved frantic newly green arms into the gray sky. I rolled over, back into patchwork dreams.
**
I wake up with word fragments stitched somewhere between my ears, heavy and repetitive on my tongue in the morning. Ideas, or dreams of ideas, or maybe even just dreams flutter around my head like lost birds, trying to signal.
It’s the end and it’s the beginning. Sixteen days left to go (officially) in the semester, and twelve for me. My parents are coming to get me early and I’m both dashing towards that deadline and running away. I’m not ready to be a junior, but I mark my time in oddly significant ways and the words “junior” flash a myriad of things that make sense to no one but me in front of my eyes. I gain so much: a house, a TA position, an internship, classes I love. I’m trying not to think about the things I’ll lose: one of my best friends, being able to laugh off things like job hunts and grad school applications, regular Starbucks study sessions. Words start to bubble up and over my throat and then get squashed and swallowed back down, sitting wrong in my windpipe.
I am terrible with goodbyes. (I’m terrible with change, in general.) My goodbyes will be short and (bitter)sweet in person, but I’ll mourn in writing for awhile. I’m trying to reconfigure my senses now, get everything in order in my head, accept change and loss as part of the whole cycle of life and living. Winter has to come to make spring more beautiful. I forgot the fullness of green trees and how much color does me good.
I glanced at my calendar today and was half-surprised to see that finals began next week. I’ll be writing my final exams in a week. Part of me understood that saying I had twelve days left meant that I would, conceivably, be writing final exams within the next week or so, but a larger part didn’t quite succeed in connecting the dots. This year has moved so fast. I realized we were done with first semester in January and was disgusted to realize that it was already March during second semester. In some ways, I feel like I’ve been walking through this semester in a state of lucid dreaming. Where did the time go? Even as I wrote final exams for fall semester, I didn’t understand that I was halfway done with sophomore year. I’m sure I’ll be home for a week before I realize I’m actually on summer holidays (another summer of wearing white and black and smiling prettily for the more entitled). But this summer promises good things too–a week in Cape Cod and Boston with one of my best friends from home, a week in Maine, and hopefully a week or so in NYC and Long Island, visiting friends. One of my German friends will be in Cooperstown for a month, on “exchange”. I am going to write and write and write and submit and write more and amass rejection letters by the dozens, and maybe just maybe, get one lucky break.
The seasons are changing. Change, change, you lovely dread.
**
I woke up five minutes before my alarm clock hissed and shook on my bedside table, almost knocking off the bottle of water I’d precariously perched on the edge before I went to bed. The bluish dawn light had settled into a fine light gray, with skinny lines of buttercup yellow trying to get through. The weatherman said they were fighting a losing battle. But you never knew with Geneseo weather, it was always in flux. You could stand up by the gazebo and watch stormclouds roll in across the valley and estimate how long you had to get into a building before the storm came. Or you could be getting drenched and see sun stretch out over the valley and have hope that maybe you wouldn’t squish to your next class.
I hit snooze three times, even though I was already awake. I didn’t have to get up (not absolutely) until 8:30, so I was going to lie in bed and lazily check my email and the three Words With Friends games that I was in the process of losing very badly. It was no lazy Sunday morning in bed, with a book and tea, but Monday mornings have a sort of briskness and business to them, even if you do hit snooze three times.
My roommate came back from the shower, towing bathrobe and shower caddy. Time to actually get up. On cue as always, my alarm clock whirred annoyingly for the fourth time, like an irate stuck bug. I sat up and promptly fell forward, face buried in my blankets. So much for successfully getting up. The alarm clock still whirred behind me and I silenced it, finally hopping down from my bed. Feet have made solid contact with the ground. No going back now, to the blessedly foggy No Man’s Land between dreams and waking.
Second to last Monday morning. The countdown to summer has started in my head. Here we go. Twelve more days.
The Wanderer 