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beetigerFriday night, I ate in Annenberg, the big undergraduate dining hall on the Harvard campus. I wanted to, both to save Julia a little bit of money, since she's prepaid there, and just because I felt like reliving that little piece of my college experience. Twelve-fifty to eat overcooked, presauced pasta, breaded eggplant mislabeled as tortellini, hummus from the salad bar spread on dinner rolls, a bite of a grilled cheese sandwich, and frozen yogurt from a machine set to much too low an overrun. It was very much like what I'd experienced at Yale, if a touch more pompous: a beautiful room, with high arch-filled ceilings and stained glass windows and statues of dead white guys in the corners, with a large number of people there not noticing any of it at all. Over the last decade, a few things have changed, though: there was quite a bit more recognition of potentially vegetarian diets, and the undergraduates had all gotten very young.
I couldn't sleep in the morning again on Saturday, so when it was light enough, about 6 am, I wandered out into Harvard Square and along Mass Ave. The only things open at that time, of course, were the coffee shops. If I'd had more presence of mind and less of a vaguely-annoyed-must-leave-room-now feeling, I'd have thought to bring a book, or a notebook to write in. As it was, I sat with a yogurt and granola in Au Bon Pain and read everything even vaguely of interest in the free papers, and then decided to take a walk down Mass Ave, toward Central Square. This had been a very common route for me, over a decade ago, though usually at busier hours. About 40% of it is just like it was then, with the other 60% unrecognizable. Walking it gave me both a feeling of being lost and a feeling of loss. I stopped at a memorial, which I'd guess was for a bicycler who had been run over on Mass Ave, a bicycle helmet nailed to a tree, with photographs and silk flowers underneath, but no words. It felt good to stretch my legs.
Only a few people spoke to me, during my morning out.--the cashier at Au Bon Pain, who told me the price of my purchase, a man sitting on a bench near a bus stop, wanting directions to somewhere, which I didn't know. The third was a fairly attractive, if somewhat drunken, Peruvian man, who convinced me to sit down on a bench with him. He told me he was on his way home from a party, that he'd lost track of the time, that it was hard to meet people in Boston, that he was headed to his apartment, which was right nearby. He told me this last thing several times over the course of the few minutes of conversation. He'd forgotten to zip his fly. I finally claimed wanting to walk some more, and began headed back toward Harvard, but in a few minutes he caught up with me, as if by surprise, and mentioned again that the next turn was to his apartment, to which he was going, and would I like to come. I declined. Somehow, this didn't make me feel unsafe, only sad.
I went over to look at the condo on Inman Street I'd lived in the summer between graduating from Yale and going to graduate school, a summer of temping and scrimping and coming to terms with myself and falling in love. It didn't look very familiar, nor did it look very different than the others around it, though my feet took the route by instinct. Once I got there, I had no idea why I'd gone.
I ran out of energy at about 8:30, and realized I didn't have any way to get back into the dorm room where I was staying. I sat in the entryway door, and waited, feeling exhausted and unloved and angry, and a rush of the feelings I'd had when I was an undergraduate near-stalker came rushing back over me, echoes of an unreasonable young woman sitting on a doorstep of an old Ivy League building while someone inside Just Didn't Care, weeping.
Déjà vu. More of our memories are stored in our bodies than we realize.
I couldn't sleep in the morning again on Saturday, so when it was light enough, about 6 am, I wandered out into Harvard Square and along Mass Ave. The only things open at that time, of course, were the coffee shops. If I'd had more presence of mind and less of a vaguely-annoyed-must-leave-room-now feeling, I'd have thought to bring a book, or a notebook to write in. As it was, I sat with a yogurt and granola in Au Bon Pain and read everything even vaguely of interest in the free papers, and then decided to take a walk down Mass Ave, toward Central Square. This had been a very common route for me, over a decade ago, though usually at busier hours. About 40% of it is just like it was then, with the other 60% unrecognizable. Walking it gave me both a feeling of being lost and a feeling of loss. I stopped at a memorial, which I'd guess was for a bicycler who had been run over on Mass Ave, a bicycle helmet nailed to a tree, with photographs and silk flowers underneath, but no words. It felt good to stretch my legs.
Only a few people spoke to me, during my morning out.--the cashier at Au Bon Pain, who told me the price of my purchase, a man sitting on a bench near a bus stop, wanting directions to somewhere, which I didn't know. The third was a fairly attractive, if somewhat drunken, Peruvian man, who convinced me to sit down on a bench with him. He told me he was on his way home from a party, that he'd lost track of the time, that it was hard to meet people in Boston, that he was headed to his apartment, which was right nearby. He told me this last thing several times over the course of the few minutes of conversation. He'd forgotten to zip his fly. I finally claimed wanting to walk some more, and began headed back toward Harvard, but in a few minutes he caught up with me, as if by surprise, and mentioned again that the next turn was to his apartment, to which he was going, and would I like to come. I declined. Somehow, this didn't make me feel unsafe, only sad.
I went over to look at the condo on Inman Street I'd lived in the summer between graduating from Yale and going to graduate school, a summer of temping and scrimping and coming to terms with myself and falling in love. It didn't look very familiar, nor did it look very different than the others around it, though my feet took the route by instinct. Once I got there, I had no idea why I'd gone.
I ran out of energy at about 8:30, and realized I didn't have any way to get back into the dorm room where I was staying. I sat in the entryway door, and waited, feeling exhausted and unloved and angry, and a rush of the feelings I'd had when I was an undergraduate near-stalker came rushing back over me, echoes of an unreasonable young woman sitting on a doorstep of an old Ivy League building while someone inside Just Didn't Care, weeping.
Déjà vu. More of our memories are stored in our bodies than we realize.
