I was back in Oberlin this past weekend.
I opened my pores tried to absorb as much as I could. The love I have for Oberlin and its Obies is too large for one body. Broken open, I haven’t felt this much myself in a long time.
Hedgehog!
I’ve become more prickly since leaving the bubble in the cornfield. I’m more on my guard. I stay rolled up around the soft bits. Is that a good thing? I’m not sure, but damn if I didn’t feel the weight I’ve been carrying as soon as I dropped it.
Mirrors are a funny thing.
I napped in the science library, an unsettling, dislocating experience. The same pillows, the same clock, the same potted trees (but the one by the window is larger, and I walked into the branches) the eternal undergraduate I should recognize, but don’t. And then I went to wash up and the face I saw in the mirror was not the same as the one I’d seen last time I looked in that mirror. I’m glad some (many) things haven’t changed with the passage of a few years, and I’m glad my face has the evidence of those years.
It is good to remember that there are possibilities I haven’t dreamt of yet, that there are people my neighbours can’t imagine, that there are other ways to live in the world.
