not a thing

I did not like college. I liked the idea of it, but once I got there, I wanted no part of it. As big and as bold and wide open as college was, I didn't feel like there was any room in it for me. But I went, I saw, I experienced, and I finished--in four years with a transfer from one state school to another. (I was damned if the experience I disliked, okay, hated, was going to make me miserable and poor.)

In fact, I spent so much time hating college, that I never left much room for thinking about what I liked. Yesterday though, ten years after I graduated the first time (that's right, I hated it so much I went back for a second time), it occurred to me what I liked.

I liked the day that didn't have a plan. The day when there was no place to be, nowhere to go, nothing to clean, not a thing to prepare. While college was busy in different ways, it seemed that there were more of those unfilled days than not--and there was always someone else to share nothing with--Julie across the quad or Laura next door, maybe Merry downstairs, someone. Nothing usually began by finding a sunny spot to sit and stretch. Conversation was light and unattached, and growing by the body. Two people quickly turned into three, into four, into five, into six and more. Time moved differently; it wasn't urgent, didn't run out. In my case, it stood still. It didn't move fast enough (to have THOSE days back).

So when I saw a group of college-agers in a sunny spot yesterday with their coffee and their water, some chewing on a blade of grass, others just picking it, I remembered all of a sudden what I liked about college. Not what I miss, but what I liked. I certainly don't want those days back, I love the ones I'm in too much. But watching those friends--some who would be friends forever and others just til summer's end--reminded me of how nothing feels, and how filling it up with laughter and love and blades of grass doesn't require a courtyard or a quad. It just requires someone to do it with and the time to do it.

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Go Slow

I've been making time for 10-minutes of clarity every morning...and it's turning into hours of peace every day. I'm going to keep at it for the rest of the month and hopefully have all kinds of prosperity to report at its end.

Splurge, splurge, splurge

Ava and I are meeting my running partner who's turned great friend and her little one for some non-running nothing this afternoon.

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