if you threw a party, invited everyone you knew, you would see the biggest gift would be from me...
Okay, maybe today doesn't quite qualify for a long-winded trip into Golden Girls territory, but the next few days will bring release from the office and a social happy-hour of friends from different pieces and parts of my life. For the remainder of this week, I get to play both tourguide and tourist on account of Jack's trip to NY. We're doing the Gugg summer camp trip to the art warehouse tomorrow and of course meeting with Nathan and John once they can escape the burdens of their offices. Plus, we just get to play - go to museums and putz around the great neighborhoods that make New York the Big Apple.
Then on Saturday (thru Tuesday) I'll be in Boston to see the new real estate other friends seem to have acquired since the last time I saw them. (Somewhere between May and now, my friends turned into grown-ups, bolstering leases to prove it) I am really thrilled for the change of scene - if even to get away and think about NY, this job, my future as a grad student with some wisdom-inspiring distance. it's only a few days, but often times, that's all it takes.
While I am in Boston, my father and sister are going to join me for a tour of MIT (it's been a LONG time since I've taken a tour of a college) but just the same, a two-year committment in a place that is going to have a fist in shaping me is serious enough to warrant a test drive. Following this social parade, I'll go home for a night and my Dad is going to come to NY to spend some time with me - I'll take him to West Point like I promised, and maybe I'll even get him to walk the ramp at the Gugg. That is even a treat - and it's nice that it's not an overly sugary one.
I have been trying to assess what has become of this summer - now on the cusp of August - with all of us throwing our hands aloft and asking "What happenned to July??" or for that matter, "What became of June?" August is always my favorite month anyway, so hopefully I can count on that time for some solid personal relflection, a little more GRE prep, and even a grad school essay or two (my mother suggests that I at least apply a few places in NYC). It's been a transitional summer for me - sort of between school, reality, circles of friends, and even academically transitioning into a cyber culture person. it wasn't until my lunch last friday when I realized that without consciously making it so, I up and turned into a disciple of Jon. But in any case, I have high expectations for the coming weeks - trying to carve out a meaningful niche and give this summer the character and definition to which remember it by.
There was a great article in the Times this weekend by a Proust scholar with a penchant for traveling to "lost" cities of the world. Well, the article didn't change the world - but there was a very good line that stuck with me - "we live in the very small space between a future we anticipate and the past we try to recapture." It's enough to ALMOST persuade me to pick up Proust (since I am such a nostalgia addict) but I just look at the mounting scholarly pile of cyber culture stuff, books about Fellini, and a biography of Wright where he's still only designing houses in suburban Chicago. Talking to Katie last night after a lapsing absence - we both enamored the idea of a routine and this elusive concept of 'free time' where one comes home after a long day and inherits a whole night of quiet contemplation and productivity. I guess like the lost cities recorded in the pages of the Proust scholar's passports - that kind of night is rare, well-hidden, and better in dreams than in person.
posted by lmjasinski at 8:51 AM
