Musings

So another summer has all but ended...in a few days I will be off to visit family, and then back to the grind of the academic year. My brief time in this apartment is also coming to an end, and I've already moved some things into my office for storage until I get back.

I always hate this time of year, when people move on, even though new ones come in. I always hate the feeling, too, of time passing too quickly, and me not taking enough advantage of it. I meant to spend a lot more time outside than I did this summer, meant to try out several eateries I didn't, meant to go places I never got around to going, all crunched out by the day-to-day living which, such as it is, characterizes my life. I guess I should be used to that by now, but I'm not. Sometimes I feel utterly happy and content, as if nothing could be better than the simple, prosaic moments of my existence, while other times I feel like there must be so much more that could be in my life but simply isn't.

For some reason, the song in my head is from Les Miserables:

"Turning, turning, turning through the years.
Minutes into hours and the hours into years.
Nothing changes. Nothing ever can.
Round about the roundabout, and back where you began."

But that seems too pessimistic, somehow. So I will instead leave you with Eliot's "Little Gidding":

"The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England."