Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Stargazer Lilies

As I sat last night working on a presentation, typing away at my keyboard, donning and doffing my sweater as I got alternately hot and cold, the fragrance of lilies surrounded me.

The fragrance of the bespeckled blossoms filled the house and soothed my mind as I sat there with the clock on the mantle showing a later and later hour.

And when I woke up this morning and retook my seat, they were at it again.


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Feeling Like a Foreigner

I've been here before.

These spiraling concrete stairs climbing up from the Underground into the shade of Live Oaks and a blue sky beyond.

This sloping drive down into the courtyard with tables where we used to eat and drink and philosophize, where I struggled to contain my panic and salvage my dissertation and failed.

The winding stairs on the other end of the Union and a tiny room somewhere at the top where in 1984 we published a newsletter for campus Macintosh users.

That television room over there behind that wall of glass where we sat glued to our chairs all day after we heard about Challenger.

I've been here before, been here often, lived here for a time. But it's been a long while, and I see that it belongs to other people now. And I kind of feel like a foreigner.


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