I go back to my college Homecoming every year. I go because I want to see people I only get to see during that weekend, and to re-connect to the person I was during my years there – young, passionate, naïve maybe. But hopeful. Blissfully ignorant of the daily grind of adulthood. I liked her, and I like to hang out with her once a year. But I’ve said all that before.
What struck me on this visit had more to do with the way my memories of those years come alive for me when I’m on campus. The school has outwardly changed very little in the almost 30 years since I graduated, so picturing my younger self in that setting is incredibly easy. When I’m away from there I of course can remember what the buildings look like and how they are situated, but when I’m there it’s like I’ve stepped inside my memory. The administration building, my dorm, the theatre – they all exist both then and now simultaneously. I spent a lot of time walking around campus with various people on this trip, and I kept seeing myself everywhere I looked.
This ditty is the best way I can describe it:
Memory Vision
I see with two sets of eyes.
They see both then and now.
I walk down a sidewalk today, and I see my 20-year-old self
Almost dancing down the same sidewalk, dressed up like a Gypsy,
With my friends, a band of Gypsies,
Going to the Banquet.
I look at the old building and I see me, bursting through the door,
Rushing to class, my books in my arms,
The chapel bell tolling out the seconds
Of my lateness.
You and I walk into the place I lived, my dorm,
And I see us, sitting on the couch in the lobby,
Talking, teasing, testing –
Where would this go?
We didn’t know, because we couldn’t see us,
who we are now, our older selves with our gray hair,
Standing and staring
At where we used to be
And still are,
And will always.
Every Day is Saturday 