Purposeful chatter and half-formed ideas and dreams: Returning students used to college life. New student—any uncertainty subsumed by the excitement of doing new things on their own—being drawn forward into their unknown but anticipated future.
It's been a long time since I left that life. Wandering around on campus, I said hello to a lot of ghosts. **** Hall is no longer a dorm, but I could look up at the window of my old room on the third floor and remember what happened there. I also sat in the lounge of the last dorm I lived in and communed with the ghosts there—different ones, of course.
Later, I thought about how places can make long dormant memories pulsate within you. Like when I visited Osaka for the first time in twenty years: Walking along Shin-Midosuji, I reached an intersection that read "Sonezaki". After I had moved from Osaka, Sonezaki became just a word that I hardly ever even heard. But when I saw the sign, it came back to life and became a place again, one full of experience.
Except that it wasn't quite full. Something was missing.
In each case I was back, but I wasn't. All those memories? They're just ghosts hanging around the place. I've gone on, though sometimes I cannot see that.
So, I think I'll start a blog. It will be written just for me, and sure, anyone else that might drop by and find something they like here. I think it'll contain random musings, some music stuff, maybe a poem or two.
And maybe it'll help me regain a sense of continuity between now and then. I was gone a long time.