It's bittersweet, really

I'm almost done with school. For - who knows how long. There are fourteen days left until I receive my degree; there are fifteen days left until I receive my commission.

There are so many things that I regret not doing, and so many things I regret never trying. I will never regret the things I did do.

What a strange time in our lives! We're at a corner, looking forward and backward at the same time! It's silly, really. Like your first drink at twenty-one - as if it's the first, as if it's something special, that arbitrary day. It's a title and a moment, but little more. Yet these times matter.

I can't help but think,'this is the last...' for every action I take. This is the last exam... this is the last paper... this is the last class...

I can't help but reminisce about all the friends and times and - the moments when time stopped with friends.

And I'm starting something new, something wonderful. I've got a career ahead of me that could take me some great places. I'll be in Madison, enjoying the summer, and then autumn - until January. Then, I leave. Ft. Benning, GA; Ft. Knox, KY; Ft. Bliss, TX. Who knows where from there? Someplace challenging? Someplace easy? Someplace rewarding? Places I never thought I'd go.

It's not overwhelming. It's exciting.

This morning, I felt like I was in Ireland. The fog was low. It smelled so ... green? I'm not sure. It's hard to describe. There's something about scent that can move you to a different time more than any other sense. I felt young and old at the same time.

This is it. I'm almost done.

As Kerouac wrote in his novel that mirrors every man's life,"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? -- it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies."

Watch out, the world's behind you...

There's only so much one can take of organic chemistry, really. Only so many hours you can spend drawing letters and lines into snowflakes and snakes with oxygen for eyes.

And yet, despite my careful hours of prodding electrons into their new orbits, I feel very sure I will do horribly on my test tomorrow.

Frankly I've had enough. Aldehydes and ketones be damned.

Everything is frustrating on a Sunday, but nothing more so than getting up early on a March morning. Driving down Madison's wagon-rutted side streets, wanting to go to church just to hear someone sing at you 'depart in peace', and then ending up in your bedroom, alone.

Sometimes I regret painting over the bordello chic purple and mauve that the previous tenant lived in. The yellow I chose is beginning to remind me of the short bus, especially when my dresser is vomiting dirty clothes on the floor.

If it was June, I could leave my windows open and listen to a warm rain. I could fall asleep to the gentle worry of a bum crawling into my room in the night and not have to think about awakening to trek up Bascom Hill--Madison's last great bobsled run.

Instead, I will toss and turn and debate drinking my security whiskey, unable to read myself to sleep because the only books I've started recently are about poverty, terrorism and my white liberal guilt.