Bennington Days, Solstice Nights

It has been much more difficult than I expected to find time to post. Our class has been acting in a frenzy of support, going to all of each other's lectures and readings, which is a lot more input than I've taken in here ever before...It's great, and I love the feeling of tightness we have, but I feel brain-full.

Last night, a bunch of us stood on the commons lawn at "the edge of the world" (it does feel like it, and even precipitates conversations about, "what if the world blew up and we were stuck here...?"), and for the first time, I understand the song, "Bad Moon Rising." I don't know if an orange moon, shivering with a kind of cold heat, a dry ice heat, counts as a bad moon, but it was also a full moon, and it rose in front of us, over a far hill, and it was, truly, quite spectacular. I felt awed, and then, a little sad. See, it's really almost over now. I can feel the familiar life hinging toward me. I got to spend the longest day of the year with people I've really come to enjoy, in a beautiful place, with a little liquor in me to give it a maudlin punch.

This reminds me of the summer I was turning 13. I had been at camp for four weeks, and was not at all interested in leaving. So I told my father to come for me at the very end of the final day, so I could stay longer with my counselors and friends. My father took me literally, and hour after hour, the counselors exchanged worried glances: had this pre-teenage girl been abandoned there? Which one of them would have to call the county to have me taken in? But I was ecstatic to have those final hours with them, feeling strangely safe, comforted, never wanting to leave. When my father arrived, and the truth came out that I had told him to come so late, they grimaced at me, but they understood. They knew how much it meant to me to spend my summers there (my camp's name, by the way, was "Real Adventure Camp.") I bawled on the way home.

Yesterday marked the first official day of feeling "weird." Too many feelings to sort out and summarize. Too many desires to untangle. I want not to have to leave this place forever, though I do not want to do so much as another week of school. I don't want to lose touch with my friends. I am hovering in this odd place where being in California will feel strange too, as if I've actually moved here, though come winter, I'm sure I'd be craving home. I told E. that I've been hit by a feeling of wanting grandiose changes: to move somewhere completely new. To start fresh. He seems to be having the same urge, fortunately.

JPR