Age-Old Songs [Counting on an unpredictable tide for deliverance]

We sat around the fireplace at Bunche House, some people holding long papers for different classes, others writing names of professors or annoying people on scrap paper. Once the logs started burning the papers started going in. Some threw in piles of the whole semester's work all at once, making the fire die down slightly, only to flare up brighter once the bright pages caught. Others passed pieces of paper one by one to the front, where someone would read it aloud, then throw it in. Some people wrote complaints about work, others about hallmates, still others about classes or professors. The papers would sometimes curl up like a bowl, or sometimes fly back to another part of the fire. Often the flames turned a bit green around them. Still we kept writing, trying to remember every trouble and annoyance of the semester, everything that had made us want to hit someone or curl up in a ball in the corner and cry.

Who would have thought that such an activity would result in anything other than bitterness and venting? But that isn't what happened at all. After the obvious things were out of the way -- the professors that had given the hardest finals, the longest, most painful papers, the most frustrating co-workers -- it became harder and harder to find the negative things, to remember what it was that had been so bad about the semester. Positive things began to flow through, and we started remembering fun times and good friends, the nice things people had said, the worthwhile things we'd learned. Eventually we ran out of paper, just as we were running out of ideas, and in the end we all just sat contentedly around the fire, breaking into song occasionally, as we tend to do, and watching the leaping flames, our worries turned to no more than ash.

Well, the lyrics box just suddenly got much bigger, but I just fell in love with that entire song and can't reduce it to a couple of lines. But hey, that's why I have the lyrics box in the first place, so songs like that will have a home when I need to post them.

I feel bad about this semester in a lot of ways. I had some great classes, and some great experiences, shared with wonderful people, but I don't think I made the most of them at all. Because, as I've been saying a lot, I felt low on energy. Something wasn't flowing that usually keeps me alert and motivated and excited. So I dragged myself through the semester, only really enjoying things now, in retrospect, as I reminisce about them. I didn't manage to enjoy the good things while they were here, and now they're gone and it's too late.

Granted, it's not as if it's the end of everything. I can recharge over break, and hopefully find the energy to make the most of next semester. But this particular semester will never come again, and I have the nagging feeling that I could have somehow done better, even as I also know that energy isn't always something that you can control, and that sometimes you just can't find it in you to really truly live in the moment. But I have to do better than this. There are too many moments that matter that I never get to experience again, and someday I'll wish I had them.

But, even now isn't too late. Here are some moments for you, haphazard, poorly described perhaps, but well-lived, I think, and in my memory nevertheless: six chairs, six people, smiling, talking, eating, reminiscing, making promises for the future, together, happy. Do you realize that happiness makes you cry?