Empirical Chords

A pair of events have caused an up-swelling of thought. I have once invested time into exploring these emotional avenues and find with my of-coming age and new roots that I am less stricken by an expected harmony. Complacency has begun to trickle in and left me from eye to brow with eroding, saddening furrows.

Things have become less about why for me. Of course I am still occupied with those concerns, but a tectonic shift has begun with which I am concerned more by the absolutes that we share. Suppose that I have moved and taken new footing on an empirical stage whilst my cigarette smoking flares to applaud my self-promotion. A transition-- attack so sudden, more so than any of the news that has (thus far this week) ambushed me.

But there is a growing constant, more weighty because of its timing than ability to perpetuate. The janitorial staff in my building, especially the young African American who has just received word of a new son, and Robert, the meth-tooth'd man from Colorado who is clearly not straight in the head.

They ramble, they laugh. They unabashedly take root from our perches in secluded fumigation. We say hi and wave, and we share ours news for its own sake. /Its own sake./

That more than our constant barrage of decisions gets me by. No matter what, being placed in this building and doing research for one summer has left me with a few indelible memories. Most anchoring of them all will be the sun rising through the circular array in Biosci's foray. Most heart-warming of them all will be the short bits of conversation and the long chains of cigarettes shared by my beige brethren.

I want to look up at your window. Oh I want to go home to protect all of you. But you are living with decisions you have made and will have to make. I have to give you space, for my own dignity-- dignity that's invested in the independent, Brownian motion of our lives.

I once held to two simple words: Chin up. -Olga
I have imparted and begun to espouse two new ones: Be well. -Me