Approximately Adam: Connections

May 13, 2005
Connections

I just got back from one of the best moments of my R.I.T. career. I was spread out across the leather couches on the forth floor of the Eastman building, but the piano. I'm tackling the Philosophy readings I should have attended to a long time before. As I'm aproaching critical frustration, someone comes out of the elevator and I expect Campus Safety coming to bust me again. But no, it's a kid with a lei around his neck, like those worn at tonight's Senior Night. Coming up the piano, he asks if the piano playing would bother me. To my surprise, I told him it would. So he stared playing as I was reading and a stupendous, peaceful vibe entered the room. Soon the reading started clicking, and all the stress of the current moment slided away. He was a great player, but he didn't need to worry about an audience, so he experimented, making mistakes and correcting them, proceeding through classical pieces, modern fare, and early twentieth century piano music in turn with the same calm, patient persistence. When I finished the reading, I didn't feel like leaving, like joining the cocophony of the outside world, so I started drafting my essay in my notebook via pen and paper. When he left I had two pages, by the time I left I had two and a half. It may very well be the best handwritten writing I have ever produced. When the lights went off the first time and I got up to re-trigger the sensor, he exclaimed something to the tune of 'So that's where the sensor is. I always thought it was up the hallway.' I began to understand that this was perhaps one of his last times at that piano after a great many times at that piano. It was good to spend one of my last R.I.T. moments simultaneously with someone else's last R.I.T. moment. There's something wordless about that feeling, but having a soon to be graduate there made it somehow more potent, more escalated, and yet less threatening and more contemplative. It reminded me of beauty in this world.
Earlier today, I got up early to tackle the Vermonster challenge with my Calc group. They used spoons; the only other non-Calc member and I used hands. It was pure, unblemished fun. As it wrapped up and we washed our hands, I realized with the exception of the aforementioned kid who I'd just met and the kid who always slept through class, I knew everyone there on a personal level. And even with the new kid, I was able to have a decent conversation right out of the blue. It's like whatever stuck in me a while back that pervented me from expanding my circle of acquaintances had come unglued. An aspect of myself that I used to like and had very much missed made a sudden reappearance. It was good to act like children again for a moment.
Last night, I tried to get the orientation group together for one last go. In the end it was just Phil and I, and we had fun. The movie was "Rushmore", which I'd hated the first time through. This time through I connected with it and appreciated it on a much deeper level. And yet it left me depressed, because I realized I had made many of the same mistakes as its characters, locking myself up and isolating myself from the world and people around me. Today was an answer of sorts to that temporary depression.

^{posted by Adam at 23:11 |}

0 Comments: