College Green

A maple moon rose low in the east. Its watery light filtered through sleeping trees, diluting the cool, humid dark. The night tasted sweet in my mind, but it was also bitter. A familiar taste, sure. I chase the bitter sweet because it’s where I feel most alive. But now, there was a presence in the space I never knew before. I walked these dark paths fifteen and more years ago, longing to fade away into my private vision of nature. Now, I could remember the longing, but it was old. I was outside it looking in. A new perspective. Is this the wisdom of age?

Susan and I were walking the college green, past Cutler Hall on the north side. I gestured to the thin redwood, bearing a new gash. The spreading maple was gone, with a young black gum in its place. A trio of sycamores arched over head, spread out long glowing arms, and made a cathedral. The kind, old Norway spruce still watched Scrips Amphitheater. I wanted to stop and converse with all of them, but we walked on, sipping a decaf Donkey coffee.

The next day, as we left town, I rode past the Acme Co-op. The porch had the look of spongy wood. Years past, we decided to encourage the old grape vine growing up the porch, so we devised an arbor of steel cable anchored to the porch beams. Those were my golden co-op years, when we were confident and young and brash. Ready to take action. The grape arbor we erected was gone except for the wooden supports on the porch pillars, which now seemed to be rotting. The houses seemed to sigh. One of the paw paws, which I watched bare its first fruit, was being overtaken by English ivy. I was quite surprised by the change. It seemed dilapidated and unfortunate, but then again, maybe my poor perception was only due to the memories lack of inertia and entropy. Memories don’t atrophy, they blur and sharpen selectively.

The car next door still proclaimed, “OBEYGOD”, which means, probably, Doc Childs still lives there. Somethings change quickly, and somethings, thankfully, change slowly.