where has the time gone?

the spirits of summer have never been less generous.  unrelentingly they snatch their sunny days from me, this year faster than any other.  i am not grateful.  especially since i am staring down the long and expensive barrel of Law School.  i've never needed a neverending summer more.

if i were to choose one word to catch and en-capsule the last few months (and what a silly and futile exercise that seems to be) it would be unforeseen.  so much of the recent past has blind-and-broad-sided me.  i feel indebted to the experience i have gained, to the exposure i have been given, and to the interests, tastes, and involvement that that has led to.

this world is a big one, regardless of what they say.  so much to see.  so much to do, to learn, to relish, to allow to transform (or transfigure if you are a witch/wizard) you.  this has been the common thread through most of these posts of mine.  i have been swept up completely in the south wind that has been blowing my way.  i hope it doesn't stop.  boy do i ever.   

i feel like this song a little bit, or a lot-a bit:

and also like this poem.  because this summer and those who peopled it have changed me.  and there's nothing i can give that will repay them.

"The Lanyard" by Billy Collins (first heard on NPR)

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.        

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.