De-Blockedness. De-Lovely. De Sad.
It has finally hit. Four weeks before it becomes final. Already I miss everything about it.
The catfights (not so much). The impromptu meals. The Monday-night quarterbacking of exams. The urgent days and the sluggish days. The friends. Really, the family.
Cause family they became. Friends you fight with and can hate forever. Family you can never really get rid of. You fight with them, you push them away, you despise them half the time.
But here is the inescapable truth, to borrow from cummings: the deepest secret no one knows, the root of the root, and the bud of the bud: Family whether you like it or not is there. Family you HAVE to invite to weddings. Family you have to make godparents of your kids. Family they will always Be.
As detached as I thought I was it turns out I have a list of things I will miss. A list of things I will CONSCIOUSLY miss, not even bothering to ponder that which will lead me to enter the classroom near the lockers, that will lead me to answer B2009 when asked which block I belong to.
The drinking and the dinners, the block-mapped routes to the isawan (where I could only watch them envious envious forever of their ability to digest innards and not risk getting sick) and to caaa (where I got burned by the lure of nice-looking siomai and beefsteak with the ugly sauce), even the short trip downstairs for a quick soda.
The view from my all by my lonesome spot on the back, where I could eat and drink and be happy. The quick or not-so-quick chats with andi, irish (I miss), gismis moments with carol and quino, the bitchslapping of impertinent steve (who should always worship andi). The food shared, the digest distribution, the yosi smoke drifting in from the balcony. The perfect biting wit, the clueless last to get the joke laugh.
The heat of the sun on my right, the here now gone later blast of cold from the front, serious students (head bent over books) on my left. The every now and then visitors on my row. The valentine’s serenade I missed, the flowers from the boys.
And while I might rank up there as one of the laziest and craziest, no doubt the biggest surprise on my things-I-will-miss list is the knowledge I was in a safe haven, such as it was, in the presence of these people.
Law school is a perverse creature. A trip back to high school where pettiness would be the one-eyed man among the blind. Competition, gossip, preconceived notions. Part and parcel of what you sign up for four the theoretical four years.
One thing though, about high school. Most of the friends I treasure the most came from there. And I think this particular trip back to high school will also result in long-time treasured people.
The good from the bad. The happy from the sad. Learning to separate what matters and what doesn’t. That particular way of thinking doesn’t apply to me here. There are memories there I’d rather not have, but will keep all the same. Because everything was good and bad. Happy and sad. Everything mattered. Everything matters. The spectrum is blurry, as blurry as the journey I will be taking now apart from the safe and the known. So I will take that spectrum and accept its being inescapably mixed.
Let’s not kid ourselves here. There is no doubt it wasn’t perfect. Never was, never will be. But I’d take it any day, wouldn’t trade it for manufactured unblemished perfection. Cause that would only be exactly what it is. Manufactured. Existing only in the realm of a deluded mind.
Imperfection is the making up after the fight. Not overt, but subtle in its coming, days, weeks, months, years in the making. Imperfection is the fight before the friendship, the friendship before the fight.
Imperfection is the hand on your shoulder when you cry belonging not to your closest friend but to the one closest enough to offer comfort.
Imperfection is the heat of the sun burning your nose while walking with people in ways that only two years, one classroom, one block can. In a way no new combination of people can.
Imperfection is pock-marked in places, slightly discolored in places. Imperfection is that not so lovely memory of a day long past, is the realization that there will be many days more, but apart, never quite as together. Imperfection is not granite hard polished perfect, but soft, worn, welcoming.
Imperfection has an element of the sad, and the ugly, always lurking in the happy and the beautiful. But, any day of the week, twice on a Sunday, thrice on a holiday. I’d take it.
Cause imperfection is everything about something that makes whatever you treasure in spite of its not being perfect even more unbelievably beautiful.
The catfights (not so much). The impromptu meals. The Monday-night quarterbacking of exams. The urgent days and the sluggish days. The friends. Really, the family.
Cause family they became. Friends you fight with and can hate forever. Family you can never really get rid of. You fight with them, you push them away, you despise them half the time.
But here is the inescapable truth, to borrow from cummings: the deepest secret no one knows, the root of the root, and the bud of the bud: Family whether you like it or not is there. Family you HAVE to invite to weddings. Family you have to make godparents of your kids. Family they will always Be.
As detached as I thought I was it turns out I have a list of things I will miss. A list of things I will CONSCIOUSLY miss, not even bothering to ponder that which will lead me to enter the classroom near the lockers, that will lead me to answer B2009 when asked which block I belong to.
The drinking and the dinners, the block-mapped routes to the isawan (where I could only watch them envious envious forever of their ability to digest innards and not risk getting sick) and to caaa (where I got burned by the lure of nice-looking siomai and beefsteak with the ugly sauce), even the short trip downstairs for a quick soda.
The view from my all by my lonesome spot on the back, where I could eat and drink and be happy. The quick or not-so-quick chats with andi, irish (I miss), gismis moments with carol and quino, the bitchslapping of impertinent steve (who should always worship andi). The food shared, the digest distribution, the yosi smoke drifting in from the balcony. The perfect biting wit, the clueless last to get the joke laugh.
The heat of the sun on my right, the here now gone later blast of cold from the front, serious students (head bent over books) on my left. The every now and then visitors on my row. The valentine’s serenade I missed, the flowers from the boys.
And while I might rank up there as one of the laziest and craziest, no doubt the biggest surprise on my things-I-will-miss list is the knowledge I was in a safe haven, such as it was, in the presence of these people.
Law school is a perverse creature. A trip back to high school where pettiness would be the one-eyed man among the blind. Competition, gossip, preconceived notions. Part and parcel of what you sign up for four the theoretical four years.
One thing though, about high school. Most of the friends I treasure the most came from there. And I think this particular trip back to high school will also result in long-time treasured people.
The good from the bad. The happy from the sad. Learning to separate what matters and what doesn’t. That particular way of thinking doesn’t apply to me here. There are memories there I’d rather not have, but will keep all the same. Because everything was good and bad. Happy and sad. Everything mattered. Everything matters. The spectrum is blurry, as blurry as the journey I will be taking now apart from the safe and the known. So I will take that spectrum and accept its being inescapably mixed.
Let’s not kid ourselves here. There is no doubt it wasn’t perfect. Never was, never will be. But I’d take it any day, wouldn’t trade it for manufactured unblemished perfection. Cause that would only be exactly what it is. Manufactured. Existing only in the realm of a deluded mind.
Imperfection is the making up after the fight. Not overt, but subtle in its coming, days, weeks, months, years in the making. Imperfection is the fight before the friendship, the friendship before the fight.
Imperfection is the hand on your shoulder when you cry belonging not to your closest friend but to the one closest enough to offer comfort.
Imperfection is the heat of the sun burning your nose while walking with people in ways that only two years, one classroom, one block can. In a way no new combination of people can.
Imperfection is pock-marked in places, slightly discolored in places. Imperfection is that not so lovely memory of a day long past, is the realization that there will be many days more, but apart, never quite as together. Imperfection is not granite hard polished perfect, but soft, worn, welcoming.
Imperfection has an element of the sad, and the ugly, always lurking in the happy and the beautiful. But, any day of the week, twice on a Sunday, thrice on a holiday. I’d take it.
Cause imperfection is everything about something that makes whatever you treasure in spite of its not being perfect even more unbelievably beautiful.
posted by peach at 12:40 AM
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