In two days it will have been exactly six months since graduation. Much has changed and much of it for the better. Yet today, as I returned to the Wartburg campus, I experienced a most unexpected feeling.
As I walked into campus from the south, between the CAC and the science center heading for the Konditorei (campus coffee shop; basically my home), I felt... normal. It's hard to describe, like qualia--what does it feel to perceive, say, the color "red" in your mind? What's the subjective feeling associated with it, that feeling that only I know in my own head, that you know in your own, and that we can only assume are similar? You must feel it to know it. The best I can do is this: if I were to vocalize my thoughts, I would have said something like "okay, I know this. This is my school. There's that bush. The bike rack. The skywalk shadow has exactly the shape that it should this time of day. I know this. No big deal." At times--a second is a very long time in your head--it even felt like "yeah, whatever" or even "so what?" It was all very underwhelming, as if I'd been there a million times before... which, after all, I had... and as if there were nothing special about this one time.
But seconds later it hit me. That I would feel like this is nothing short of amazing. Why? So much has changed that maybe I expected to feel joyous, ecstatic, euphoric, just as I had felt kidnapped when back in May I saw the red bricks of the Complex fade in the rear view mirror for the last time. Of course, the joy hit me in full when I set foot inside the K-dit and started seeing people I'd long missed, but the original feeling of utter and complete familiarity stayed with me the whole day. Not for a minute have I felt out of place or like a visitor. Nothing on this campus looks or feels new, old, smaller, bigger, or in any other way different. Everything is just normal; just itself.
In retrospect, now that I'm back at the Love Shack, feet up and a cup of herbal, this is the best thing that could have happened. Had I perceived Wartburg as new and different, as a thing of the past, exciting but far-removed, surely I would have felt more strongly... but, I think, it would not have affected me as deeply. I might have been tempted to ascribe the stronger feeling to "it's been a while after all" and I might not have grasped the heart of the matter. And the heart of the matter is that I feel as if I have never really left this place. As I walked around today, I didn't remember things; memories didn't come back; I didn't relive past events and places and conversations and smells and sounds. All those things just are again, as if I'd held a wary double-mindedness all this time, a Gollum brain of past and present. It's as if suddenly my mind would do its own thing and switch back to Wartburg mode, back to my May self, which was right there, alive and dormant, as if the previous six months had been erased in one stroke. It was rejuvenating in the most literal sense of the term, subtly and penetratingly so.
On a final note, I must say all of this only happened with places and not with people, whom I've been so completely happy to see again and for whom I've felt a genuine surge of "omg lol hi!" every single time. I've loved the attack-hugs and kisses, the familiar smells, the big grins, the awkward tell-me-your-last-six-months-in-two-minutes conversations, and so forth. That was exactly how I'd imagined it would be. It must be that our contact with people is relatively limited and more meaningful than that we have with places, and thus we cherish and miss it more and it evokes a stronger emotional response when we are reminded of it.
Whatever the case may be, I feel like I'm getting the best of both worlds, and I'm loving it. In the end, I was expecting to come here to jump-start myself, to find something that je ne sais quoi that for some reason I'm missing at Tech right now... and so far I think I find it here, in the squirrels and the stones and the steaming mugs.
Oh, and still no wireless for me at the K'dit. See? I never really left!
Peace,
Claudio
PS: much more happened that's worth noting, especially some really meaningful conversations that I'll cherish for a long time... but all that must wait, till at least the morrow...
(end of post)
