The End of an Era

As I watched the colorful liquids swirl down the drain, punctuated only by the clinking of glass and unscrewing of caps, I knew that my life was taking a more serious turn. For so long our living room, both of our current apartment and the old place on Thayer, has been lit by flourescing fluids in various liquor bottles by a black light.

It was kind of an easy decision to pour them out; the entertainment center where they’d rested for at least two years was taken home when one of my roommates moved out recently, and I couldn’t remember the last time we actually turned on the black light for more than a few minutes.

Still, there was some nostalgia that flowed out with those waters. It’s odd, the bottles had become dusty and were now serving a purpose far from what they were originally intended. They were only rarely illuminated and just served as a quiet background for our lives. But when uncapped, the waters were even lusher and brighter than I had originally hoped they might be when we first pulled highlighters apart in the hopes of making something aesthetic and college-y with our empty liquor bottles.

Maybe it’s forcing the symbolism too much, but it just felt like a lot of college came pouring out with that water. So many of the memories have been covered in dust. My college enrollment has served a purpose far from what I originally anticipated it to: while it’s been an environment supportive of intellectual growth, it’s been a huge social catalyst. It’s where I first learned to come out of my shell, relax, and, in a weird way, let loose and party. That’s probably one of the greatest lessons I learned at Michigan, and it was thanks to so many people along the way that I was able to model. Those memories are not often very vividly recounted, but when they do come back, they pour out, just as vivid, and perhaps even more, than they originally were.

The beauty of memory is that it doesn’t take up space. When I was done dumping out our decorative liquor bottles I was left with no pretty water and some dull, dusty old glass that I recycled, but when I relive my college memories, the times of sadness, friendship, ennui, struggle, triumph, and realization that few experiences can be cleverly binned into a lame, trite categories, the memories flow around me, but they don’t leave me, and it will hopefully be a long time before their container is recycled.

New content

From a blogging perspective it’s difficult to continue putting out content now that my daily experiences probably no longer merit blogging in the sort of descriptive, un-commented style that I prefer to write in (see old Xanga posts on first dates and Harvard interviews). Instead I may need to start actually reflecting more on the experiences, but then we run the risk of this becoming a cliched live journal type publication,  and I really don’t want this blog to head down that path.

If I might engage in a little emo-blogging for a second, maybe the fact that I don’t presently have anything blog-worthy going on in my life should actually become an impetus to put more interesting things into my life.  There’s plenty of stuff going on in Ann Arbor, and plenty of good art I could immerse myself in anyway. Maybe that can be a motivator. So…coming soon, book reviews? Chronicles of crazy adventures in the seedy underbelly of Ann Arbor? Anything you want to know about but never checked out? Help me make a to-do list of crazy/cool stuff, and I’ll do it (maybe) and write about it! Woohoo, prepare to cross the fourth wall

-Daniel

Ann Arbor in the Summer

I’ve been back in Ann Arbor for several days now and am remaining in a self-imposed quarantine from my office for one more week. I found out that I do indeed have an EB virus infection which is causing mono. Normally that’d be a bummer to find out, but in this case it’s a relief. I’ve already gone through the worst phase of it and received treatment for it, so it rules out the much scarier alternatives.

Ann Arbor seems really odd this summer. Last night we went to Top of the Park, a part of the Ann Arbor Summer Festival. It was pretty cool, and we saw “Raising Arizona.”

-Note: This post has been sitting in my drafts box for a while, so I’m just going to publish it and move on.