. . .The woosh of time . . .

I just finished my junior year in college and as usual, at the end of a semester, I can’t help but think about time. And how it runs so fast. And how I don’t like it flowing with blurry feet. Nights that seemed as if they were going one after another – sleepless or not – now seemed like they were actually groups of them taking leaps at a time, in the darkness and on sneaky, fast tippy-toes (as a squirrel might soundlessly leap across a lawn carrying a nut that’s filled with countless dreams left in the hands of obscurity and wonderment). And the events of the day were things on the to-do list, being checked off. And new additions in life are added on a timeline. January 3, 2010, I got a drum set, two months after my search for it had started. In late February, I watched Shutter Island with my family in a crowded theater – so crowded that we had to separate. Some time at the end of March, my sisters and I went on a dentist spree, hoping to get all our dentist appointments in during spring break. That was also the same time I got a new pair of shorts from Joyce Leslie and a new pair of sneakers from Sports Authority. April 20, 2010, Steph turned twenty; we are all in our twenties now – 20, 21, 22 and 28 years old.

It’s impossible, it seems, to catch a snap shot of time because it’s always in motion. Unless you have a digital camera, which can really focus. But no, life is natural and it’s healthy that way. It keeps coursing through the measures of time, whether that be the days on a calendar or the bowls of cereal I ate each morning for breakfast (we had a rotation system between different cereals from Costco. The most recent one? Chocolate Cheerios – yeah, we were surprised they have that now), or the minutes on my watch, which are actually four minutes in advance to make sure I’m not late for anything, or the countless times I get mad at teachers for grading papers subjectively and at times (it seems to me) arbitrarily, or the number of times I take courses with the same teachers because they’re so entertaining to watch and learn from – I never get tired of watching them gaze, not into a room full of students, but in the world of the text we’re reading, their eyes filled with enthusiasm and passion. And I would just sit there trying to write everything coming out of their mouths, as if I were recording the words of a person possessed, in a séance.

If time were to embody a car, I’d sit in the back seat, always at the tail end of things because I like to be able to see the immediate future, but stay in full view of the past. Yes, I am a person who lingers on the last day of school.

This is me being nostalgic.