Homecoming

"Seriously, all joking aside--"
"Oh, did you hear that? Seriously. No joking aside."

-- Biedermann and the Firebugs, by Max Frisch

--

Cut a four-hour and forty-five minute drive down to an even four hours. Took a break from the road in Bowling Green, where the University football game had just emptied out. A ten-minute food/potty stop turned into a forty-minute traffic fest. The stars and moon came out around eight o'clock, and the sky slid from blue to orange to purple.

But I got in by nine, hit the main party in town and caught up with folks. Made it to the movie premiere. Smoked with Erin and lounged in the student center. Smoked eight cigarettes in one night, seven more than usual. Woke up this morning in the Home of the Two Black Wizards with the Lincoln Tunnel for a throat. Met Rachel on the loading docks for coffee. Hit the Finish Line for a greasy brunch. Talked in the parking lot afterward for almost an hour, shifting conversation as easily as shifting weight.

Went to Biedermann and the Firebugs, the TP's season opener, and was floored by the chorus work and comedy. Brecht talked about alienation; I felt that. But not the awful kind, the dread of being in-but-once-of. Friends are friends, and good shows are good shows. When they come together, it is a wonderful thing indeed.

--

It's overwhelming, really. Being back. The summer campus is vacant, like a postcard picture, and it is open to exploration, a kind of memorized landscape. It's just you and the grass, or you and the buildings. The small changes can be ignored. But in the bustle of a weekend such as this, with multitudes (that's how it feels, anyway) of smiles and hugs, you see every detail with a kind of numb fascination, and something like resentment. It's not that you dislike the progress that has been made. It's just that you feel like your presence impeded that progress. Like the college said, "Okay, now that those guys are gone, let's pull out the stops." The air smells better.

Probably has something to do with not having to perform here any more, in classrooms or on stages. You don't realize how much pressure you felt at a place until you revisit it. The pressure was welcome then, but now you couldn't possibly own it the way you used to. It's like stepping back from a mosaic and seeing the pieces merge together.

--

I'll be back, for sure. The whens and whys are a bit fuzzy, as itineraries always are for trips down Memory Lane. Someone has a laptop on the floor with a slide show of old pictures, but digital cameras can murk up the clearest visions sometimes. The present, firm and defined and slowly moving, contrasts with the blurry past and future, like a magnifying glass floating along a yardstick.