Originally posted on BMGS 1.0, Sept. 26, 2007
Taking my inspiration from a comment Donna made here the other day, I walked for an hour around Harvard Square this afternoon after finishing my second long copywriting assignment in the past 2 days. It was the first time I’d walked there since the kids came back to town. Just as Donna projected, the Square, the Yard and the Quad were all awash in perky youth.
It’s funny – that was my neighborhood for the better part of six years, and I’ve spent my share of time around there since, but whenever I walk around there now I always feel as if I am returned to my freshman year:
Fall of ’68 through the Spring of ’69, a wondrous time for me, in all kinds of wonderful ways.Much is the same: the perkiness (and even the occasional loveliness) of youth around the Square is always seasoned with some seriousness, that sense of inward-turned purpose and self-consciousness that one often finds in those who are determined, and likely, to make something of themselves.
But much more is different. The Yard was full of romance and rebellion in the Fall of ’68. I was falling in love with a dark-eyed enchantress from Libertyville, and wondering how I would break it to my high school
sweetheart. SDS was organizing meetings that would eventually lead to the drama of building takeovers, busted heads and tear gas in April. There were girls’ dorms and guys’ dorms, and if the twain met one kept quiet about it.I saw no sign of romance or rebellion today. A tour was being conducted in the Yard, as is nearly always the case, but this one was notable in that it was being conducted in Japanese. Indeed, most of the conversations in earshot as I walked around the yard were being conducted in a language other than English. Not that there is anything wrong with that. But as much as Harvard was a place engaged by the greater world in 1968 and 1969, it was thoroughly American then, even if it excluded much of America as it always has. Now it seems clear that the world owns Harvard, for better or worse.
None of which keeps me from experiencing my own place, and the place I have inhabited in the past, as I walk there today. It enriches me again when I walk through these places where I lived my live so fully in the past. I am lucky to be walking, and I am lucky to have such places near.
55 minutes of walking. I needed it, having worked way too hard the past 48 hours and having gotten precious little exercise since Sunday. But I got it, and all is well.
***************
Wednesday's soundtrack
This song by Soul Asylum is part of the baggage that I carry through my life. When my gambling demons had me, it was my theme song, and summed things up oh so perfectly. Today I give it a bow because it is always necessary to respect one's demons.
0 comments:
Post a Comment