reminiscing about st. john's

i’m trying to get a handle on what that magic is, that signature nostalgia that threatens to engulf me there, what chords in me does it particularly pluck that i haven’t learned enough about to enjoy and submit to?

that palpable air, humid because it’s the South but tempered by the salt of the bay? the bricks look a little moist, everything does. none of the trees nor the buildings are very thick or very tall. that sailboating air pervades, so that it can’t be quite country, but the smallness and the hicky-ness of maryland generally keeps the officiousness genial and the preppiness a little faded and worn so that it seems more genuine. it’s rich but it’s down-homey money, invested in the home, more trips on the boat with family to see family, better food and booze to entertain, and there aren’t enough people to overwhelm your entertainment of quite as many people that you like as those you don’t.

the familiarity, because even if you don’t recognize somebody you’ve probably shopped in their store or eaten beside them in a restaurant. the smallness, the manageability…

oh, the memory hurts! hurts so gloriously! what is it touching?

i knew it and i knew who i was. i felt no competition. the whole world was in my head and annapolis and st. john's were just a place i was passing through. and now i have passed through, God help me, and now I’m lost in the biggest jungle in the world and nobody knows who i am. i sometimes recognize them but nobody recognizes me. i mean nothing here and i don’t feel anything is manageable. there, anything i did stood out. there were so many people for such a small place that it was quite likely someone i wanted to impress or someone i was impressed by would be right around the corner, or at the same party. now it doesn’t matter where i go, no one will notice and i will notice only in passing without hope of finding out. maybe that’s why writing comes so damn easy here—it’s a way to get to know all the people i’ll never get to know.

but when i first got there, was it like that? everything was just there, and i sort of coasted along and i remember sitting under the gaslight on the next-to-last night of the school year, when i was a freshman, and thinking, i won’t be like those people, terrified of leaving, i have other places in mind to go.

when i think that someday, if i were to go back after proper ripening of time and maturity, misters p. and k. and h. and ms. k. won’t be there—they’ll be dead or retired—or that they just won’t remember me… it won’t be anymore what it was for me. can you believe it’s the same campus that A's parents went to, that they can walk around and see the same things? the buildings stay the same, but it’s the people i want to see! that’s the problem with knowing people isn’t it?

when i first got there, i felt faint stirrings of envy of those who knew so many people but i just thought it wasn’t worth my time. and then i was so depressed and alone my second year because i didn’t know anybody. and then it was fun and also dreadful, because other people knew me, too.

anybody might be around the corner, or out on the quad, and usually they were. people noticed me. drama and intrigue everywhere.

i’m not lonely here but i do feel strange. i had no reason to come except that God seemed to call me. okay...here i am.