explanation

So. I wrote a paragraph in my November 29 blog entry about walking to calc class... My dad sent me an email asking about it.

There is a time and a place for vagueness and obscurity, and as much as I enjoy confusing people, and as much as I hate being unnecessarily obvious, sometimes it's nice to be clear. So... this is the explanation I gave my father about the mysterious paragraph. I ... liked being able to explain it all, without using unnecessary pronouns or hiding what I meant.

The day before writing that entry, Daniel wrote a bit of prose regarding his footprints in the snow. He'd walked from his dorm to mine, stayed a bit, then gone back home. By the time he went to go back home again, the footprints were gone, and he was glad about it. He let me read it, and I thought it was rather nice.

Now, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I go to the engineering center around ten. Cam comes in soon afterwards, then Daniel maybe around 10:20 or 10:30. At eleven Daniel has a class, so he goes to that. Spencer comes at some point during this period. Then, at around 11:50 Daniel returns from his class and Spencer usually decides to ditch his. So in those next five minutes I head off to class myself.

With this in mind, I was talking to Daniel in those five minutes, and watching Cam and Spencer bicker playfully. So I looked at my watch, and decided I'd best go to class if I was to get there even remotely on time. "As I walked towards my class I didn't look back." So I walked to class and... I didn't turn around to see what my friends were doing. Just walked toward my destination.

"It was an interesting contrast to, say, last night, for instance." The previous night, after Daniel had visited me and started the walk back to his dorm, I ran to the window on the second floor and watched him as he went. "I'm not the one who's going anywhere. I'm already at my destination. So there's no reason to not look back, at someone who still has a ways to go." Basically, all that was left for me to do was go back to my dorm room and get online and wait for Daniel to get back to his apartment. (It's kind of silly. I'll talk to him before we hang out and after we hang out before finally going to bed. I hope he doesn't get sick of me too soon. He doesn't show any signs of it yet, at least.) So I much preferred to watch him as he trekked across the snow until he was out of sight before going back to my room. You know how I hate waiting for something.

"But when I left for Calc, it was a very liberating feeling. I had things to do and ... my destination was known. And even though I was going away from something... I knew that when I returned, it would still be there, waiting for me." Okay... so this was basically me saying, that when I was walking to Calc, it was different. My two options were 1) look back at my friends, and at the happiness I was leaving behind, or 2) just go towards calculus class, and concern myself with the present and immediate future of being in class and hopefully learning (and getting some Japanese homework done if the learning part was unsuccessful). I chose the second, and it was nice. Because I could be happy in the moment, without regretting that I was leaving my friends and the happiness I feel when I'm with them, safe in the knowledge that once Calc was over I would be able to go back downstairs and talk to Daniel, Spencer, and Luke.

And as I thought this, I thought of what Daniel had written and shown me, and I had this urge to write it down in my journal. My actual, handwritten, don't show to just anybody journal. The problem with this was... I had given my journal to Daniel so that he could read all my writings. So, as a substitute, I wrote it down in my weblog. A little less poetic, and a little more vague, but not terrible.