misty morning

This morning I stepped out into a very close world. Fog had set in overnight, creating a blanket clutched tight around us. Sometimes it loosened, but only very little.

I have a coworker who appreciates sunlight, and I could hear her protest already as I got into my car, but I knew it wouldn't impact me much. "It's a lovely morning," I'd reply, if she mentioned it.

And it is. The mist highlights spiderwebs built in patches at the top of the grass along the sides of the road. It masks the industrial chimneys occasionally seen pumping out steam on the horizon. It softens the arrival of about 40,000 students.

Classes start on Tuesday. I'm half thankful for the students' return, and half irritated by it. Their awkward and often lost arrival disrupts the easy flow of summer here. I admit it: I've become a townie. Then again, in the four years I've lived here, I've always felt like one. It's just that they descend like geese--loud, obnoxious, and often shitting all over the place an awful lot. When one gets detached from the flock, they make an awful racket of being lost.

I do understand all this, of course. I've been there myself. And I'm certainly generalizing--this is no one person I'm describing. It's the mass. And it's no one's fault. It's just an inconvenience, interrupting a comfortable flow and (gasp) evoking change.

I love academia. I do. Being surrounded by this many brilliant and becoming-brilliant people is invigorating. But I have to admit the return of students and introduction of a new batch can be both immensely hopeful and depressing. I see drive and spirit, and it's lovely and refreshing, but in the back of my head, the cynic in me starts making bets about how long it will take for that to be driven out of them. Somehow, I hope that students will avoid my mistakes, for example, but of course I wish that for them without being able to say what, exactly, those were.

Gosh. All this makes me sound like I'm becoming older and wiser, doesn't it?

Laugh while you can.