there's a blog in it somewhere, the last few days. starting school again, seeing people, seeing people in a new light, on the road, the anticipation of more work ahead this semester than i've ever had in any stretch of any school year to date and a determination to face it down, renewed inner life and perhaps a desire to write, things to say and no way to say them. at this moment i'm tired but fully awake, simultaneously caring less about the world than ever in recent memory and caring so much more than usual in a lot of ways.

in a class today we talked about nostalgia and what the word actually means, broken down to its roots, the greek words for "looking back" and "pain." i'm hopelessly prone to nostalgia: in many ways, it's all i ever feel. i'm a step behind most moments and always lamenting one thing or another, the way i imagine most people must be at their loneliest moments. as that brief class discussion went on, we hit on the word "bittersweet" as a way to describe this sort of mental, emotional pain, because there are good times involved as well, which is the worst part. you can wipe out or repress, at least for a while, the worst things in life if they have no redeeming qualities. sometimes, a lot of the time, there's other elements involved: some of your favourite music at a moment that later turned out to be not what you thought it was at the time. you feel as if the past has stolen from you something that you mean to enjoy in the present thank you very much, and you have to go back there and reclaim it. but you can't go back. you can re-live it, surely, in your mind, but the past is, well, you know.

time proves that we are all so wrong in so many ways about so many things. it could just be a matter of perspective or the precision visual manifestations of past events, or maybe there are a few points in life that are like checkpoints for your own perceptions, when you grow up a little or perhaps a little more, see your mistakes, and divorce yourself from the previous incarnation, that unenlightened you.