Bouts of Nostalgia

Zac Hanson's bday is in 2 days. I have been having some serious bouts of nostalgia as of late. I think it has mostly been triggered by music, which speaks to its power. Listening to Coldplay's "Rush of Blood to the Head" album and Jack Johnson has catapulted me back into my freshman year of college. It seems equally so close and also distant.

I have had very vivid images, daydreams, of the moments right after my last final of my very first semester of college, my Poli Sci bluebook final. One of the last to finish, I trudged my way down to the bus stop. It was quietly dark for so early in the evening, fivish, and the snow glistened just moreso for this and the orange glow of the street lights as it fell softly, but even more notably; consistently. I remember thinking that the world could not possibly get much more enchanting than this, with not only snow, but the promise of warm, familiar home and warm familiar people hanging in the air. I rememer feeling a painless confliction of wondering what I wanted more; to stay in that same spot for hours, or for the bus to come and carry me to the car that would carry me home. I think I wanted the best parts of both to suspend in that percarious moment in time.

This memory must have been only a few days previous to the last; once again, a slight chill in the air (nothing that mittens couldn't cut through), snow on the ground and in the air, and painting the window panes in a way that transports you, if they are wood, back to some simpler, unidentifiable time in the 1800's, feeling slight warmth against your back from the fire burning. Or maybe it is the people in the room? Regardless, my math flashcards had me glued to a big wooden bench-booth, all alone in the old Purple Onion, drinking a K-Chai (chai with a shot of espresso). Chai was a newly-discovered delicacy, introduced to me by my new frien Britt, formerly Brittany. I enjoyed hearing the muffled drift of speech from the booths in the front and back of me, and to either of my sides, including the severe amount of open space to the left, the part of the shop that opened as a void to the counter from the door to my kiddy-corner right. Beyond that were a set of stairs that led to the narrow next room. (Listening right now to a Radiohead track off "Hail to the Thief," another extreme-nostalgia inducing CD. It is on the 'Dot' compliation from Adam, which I may switch from because it causes memories, but I will hold off. Right now, they are just feeling pleasant and somewhat far away). The narrow room held a conversation with someone important to me at the time, I believe it was Adam that following Spring. While the chatter broke up my studying, I didn't mind. I seemed to be able to drift between that and listening bemusedly to discussions, some presumptuously academic, which were equally as enjoyable as the discussions of last night's drunk and high-ness. I remember feeling strangely content, despite the massively-frightening math test ahead of me. At those moments, I just seemed to know that it would come and go as all things do, and it being gone would mean me being home to enjoy what seemed to be a promise of endless-feeling days of abandoning the responsibility that I had began to gather in the past few months.