running, returning

One night some months ago, it was the start of the fall but it still felt like summer and the band Akron/Family (accompanied by members of Megafaun and one Pitchfork writer named Grayson) was setting up a slip 'n slide on our front lawn. It was somewhere around 3am, and any alcohol that may have been associated with the post LOLA evening was long, long gone. There was us (a few fourth year university students) there was them (a group of big-bellied, hairy bearded married musicians in their near-thirties), there were a few strangers we'd picked up during our walk home, there was a sheet of linoleum flooring they'd stolen from a house being renovated down the street, there was a bottle of dish soap, and there was a hose. They stripped and slided. They played a sing-along of their own songs using Karas' guitar. We forced the cat to come outside. We had a big group hug on the front porch before they lurched off to find the hotel they were staying in. It was the tamest, most innocent afterparty ever in the history of afterparties, and it was epic.

I went to bed that night hoping that the craziness that had just gone down would prove to be a precursor for the rest of the year. It had been an intense, unbelievable, unforgettable night, and I had faith that all the coming nights would be just as amazing and weird and good.

They weren't.

This was a year that saw me plummet academically, endure perpetual sweats over the future, learn to breed hatred for just about everybody, and lose contacts with some people and things that used to be of primary importance. I just slipped. (I also literally slipped on the ice one night during the tail end of London's horrible winter, but that's another story.) It was an endlessly hard year, and I'm not even in the clear yet.

Still, though. I mailed away my future yesterday (a single piece of paper cradled inside a way-too-expensive xpresspost envelope.) I felt like throwing up as I handed it to the girl behind the desk. She took my future and stamped it, hard, and then tossed it through a little slit. So there it is...there, it's gone. It's now.

I used to believe that my academic future would entail a leafy autumn campus full of warm old buildings and me, dressed in some sort of Ali McGraw-ish outfit, hugging a pile of books and leather-bound notebooks tightly to my chest. But I've slowly found the flaws in this vision: I don't have long black hair, nor am I attracted to Ryan O'Neal types, nor do I have the arm strength to lug a stack of books around. Come to think of it, Love Story sucked.

I'm surviving the year, just barely, and my future is currently in transit somewhere between London and Toronto. I've decided to pick the other future. The one that isn't connected to any past fantasies of mine. The one that doesn't include old buildings or musty books, but might come to include all these other things I've been too scared to even dream about. Things like slip 'n slides, afterparties, and massive nights. Epic songs filled with trumpets. Long-long-distance afternoon runs that turn my thighs to jelly. Stories that tumble beautifully out of my head after being cooped up in there for months. People who leave me besotted. A city that isn't London, and a campus that isn't Western. It took the entire year, but I'm finally hopeful again.