I'm leaving Long Island in a few days and it's really made me rather contemplative. I'm a fairly ruminating, brooding type person anyway, but it's just made me think more about things--friendship, love, security, and sunlight. I will certainly miss my friends here a great deal. They have meant a lot to me and I can't really do too much without them here. I certainly would not have been able to endure six years of a PhD in English without having their support and concern. They know who they are. They don't need me to mention their names, so that when one googles them they show up here on my piddly blog.
Love has also been a predominating theme in my mind. The love that parents have for children and vice-versa, the love between lovers, and all other kinds. Love is much more fragile and complicated than we think, for the most part. Just when you think that things are okay and that love is the most important thing, you see situations where, not to quote the song, but "love just ain't enough." I've been witness to a few of these situations as of late and it's always quite disheartening. I'm already quite mistrusting of love and all that bunk due to my own unsuccessful bouts with it, but all of these situations crumbling right before me really makes me question it.
Part of the problem with love is that inherent in the best kinds of love is security--that unconditionality associated with it. It's when you are ready to finally believe in something, have strength and faith and trust, and feel secure with something or a certain situation, that it somehow evanesces before your eyes. And yes, I used the word evanesce before the band Evanescence came out, so there.....
Another thing that has preoccupied me is sunlight. It seems like it doesn't belong, right? Like it's a game of "which one of these is not like the other?" but I really do see a connection between all of these. I don't just mean actual sunlight--which is quite important for a basement-dweller--soon to be former basement dweller, but the warmth and light of the beauty that surrounds us all. Yeah, I know that sounds a little schmaltzy, but I can get that way sometimes. Sunlight is what keeps us moving and growing and living. It's that impetus to actually get up and do something. It's what brings us out of despair from time to time and helps us see that not only is the grass greener, but the sky is bluer and things don't seem as awful as they really are. In some ways, sunlight can obscure the horridness of a situation with its glow. It's quite a miraculous thing, really.
