So it’s that time of the year again, in which either common sense or the hand of Nunn calls us to protect ourselves from the indignity of the Gregorian calendar, and to let this blog pass in silence, I’m sure you’d all agree, would be nothing short of egregious.
But anyway....It’s crazy (preposterous, even!) to think that a year ago we were still living in the same House. The same brickful of memory stuffed with creaking stairs and midnight excursions and funny quarrels, all topped with a handful of eternally endearing inhabitants who, even as I write this, having been scattered away to the four winds (though some are blessed to have clustered together), are now certainly busy with dominating the world, achieving intellectual greatness, etc.
Well—I don’t know what to write. I wish I could verbalize the unreality of those six weeks, or explain away this constricting of the chest that has made me so absurdly restless...
I went to China for six weeks or so. Time passes very slowly there (or is it the jetlag that has drugged me?) and then suddenly—knowingly, like a cruel jest—disappears. Beijing, as expected, is caught in the excitement and perspiration of Olympic fever. Children shout in the streets, thousands collapse in the wake of natural disaster; a genius is born and dies. The world seems so stupidly unaware of itself.
How I miss the tapioca pearls of Ithaca! And those random outings to collegetown, the academic eccentricity and quiet intellectualism we all possess to some degree, that air of familiarity I can’t quite place and maybe never will find again... Because as tightly-knit and visually aesthetic as it seems (actually it’s really not), Alpharetta pales in comparison. Everywhere I see strangers and forced smiles. True, the weather is nice and it’s always great to be in the company of classmates, but there’s an extreme deficiency in TASPer population, which invariably makes for some very dull and nonexistent conversations.
But back to the point: Happy July 25th! I am in love with you all.
