The Grand Arrival of Lappy 2005, the final days of Baby's First Laptop

Yet ANOTHER week has flown by (3 weeks till I begin the 2005 Amber-in-you-hometown Tour).

My new lovely laptop arrived today! It's really rather huge, what with the 15.4" screen, but so very very easy on the eyes. Without compsci folk around, it was a bit unnerving at first, handling such an expensive toy and being not quite sure how to coax it into awake-ness. There are times I think I've learned alot, and have become quite knowledgable in one discipline, and then I try to read Dell's online helpdesk shit, and I realize I know oh-so-very little when it comes to computerese. Alot of it seemed to involve getting the computer afraid of you, but I love my laptop.

So, this new arrival has meant gathering together all the old files (aka Hiram stuff) together for saving or tossing into the ol' recyling bin. "What's left to save?" you might ask. Oh, lots of stuff. Mainly e-mails and AIM conversations, with a sprinkling of creative writing stuff (aka bad college poetry). I stayed up waaay too late last night reading through them, piecing together relationships of all kinds. It's hard to view Hiram like this, as four years condensed into a couple word documents and folders, when it seems like such a huge block of my young adult life. Argh, this is all cliche. It's just getting to be far enough back in my memory that I almost think I dreamed most of it. But here I've got writings and pictures to prove it. There are parts of undergrad life I wish I could live all over again, and there's parts I'm glad I don't live anymore. That's nothing unique, but it still aches that way. So, to get this out of my system, I'm just going to post one of the last Hiram entries, and if this sort of things bores you horribly you can just stop reading now, ok?

Looking out the window onto campus, I was thinking about our last quantum realities class. We had talked about trying to go back in time, and how time only flows one way typically because in order to reverse time you would have to recreate every event perfectly, from the placement of a nearby leaf to the thoughts in your head. To go back in time you would have to erase the memory and relive it.

Time and memory . . . that seems to be the theme of the senior week. My horoscope for this week had told me that it would be a time of Kairos—time outside of the everyday time (called Chronos). I can believe it. It’s one of those times in your life where you break off yourself and pick it up to move somewhere else.

Time can be reversed, but it is almost impossible, and highly improbable. There have been many times this week where I wished I could go back to some moments and just sit with them for awhile. I’ve taken my walk around campus to get photographs. It kindof turned into a series of pictures of benches—Sam joked I should make it into a coffee table book about the benches of Hiram. I have the bench where Andy Walker gave me a four-leaf clover freshman year, and explained precisely how you have to look at the world to find them. I have the swing in the library garden where Eva, Dave, Sam and I took turns swinging, our feet flying over the sapling that is now too tall to miss. I have the B-side, where I dreamed up weird pictures and poems, sat with Sam and discussed the franker aspects of life right along with the philosophical. I have the bench in front of Henry where Marianna used to smoke, where Allison used to sit, where a million people waited for a million things. And I have the little Bacchus bench between the Frohring buildings, where I perched waiting for Dave to open the box and show me the ring. I have them all, in photographs and mind.

A million memories. I’ve looked at the Hinsdale Arch a million times. Four solid years of life at Hiram don’t let you leave easily. There are so many people I wanted to spend more time with. Sometimes I want to turn back time so I can. I usually only by chance got to know anyone well, and if only I could expand those pockets of time, oh how I would. Even last year. Even that.

The irony of life is that our memories are never as valuable to anyone outside ourselves, and we have so many of them.

Sam left for home today. After finally hunting down the RA and getting the room checked out, it was time to go. Before he could get the chance to say otherwise, I ran up and hugged him. I don’t recall if I’ve ever hugged Sam before, but if anyone deserves a hug, it’s him. He’s saved my sanity many times over, and unarguably been my best friend ever. I mean a friend who was always just that, and without any contact but words finding comfort in one another. I’m so glad I’m not losing both of them, but one is hard enough.

Dave shook his hand, and we wished him well, and Dave and I stood arm and arm as he closed the door to the room, and was gone. I wonder what we looked like to him. Filter was playing “Take my Picture” in the backround, somewhere down the hall.

Do you wanna take my picture?
cause I won’t remember. . .

He left, and we just stood there unbelieving. And that was it. We cried.


Thanks for indulging my sappy nostalgia. I'm really so very very happy with where I am now, and it's not that I want to go back--nor could I--it's just sometimes it almost hurts, remembering how important it all was.

Ok! time to go to bed!