present nostalgia

At dinner tonight with a group of people from my cohort in graduate school, I thought about the friendships formed in grad school and how they seem qualitatively different from other friendships I have had. Not better, necessarily, but different, like friendships one has before a war compared with the friendships developed during a war, in the midst of the battle. In some way, in graduate school, we often see each other at our worst, at the bottom, the days when we have taken a beating and our vision is blurred and obscured. These are the days when I have been grateful just for witnesses, and even more grateful for those who offerred a hand, and lifted me up. Sometimes all we need are those who have seen what we have seen.

I like to think about how I will remember the times I'm living through now. It's like instantaneous nostalgia--(try it)--and induces this reverie about how we wish things wouldn't change, and how they always do; how we want to keep people the same, and ourselves the same, and just find some kind of firm ground beneath us. It's always denied, but we never stop seeking. When I look back, what--and who--will I see?

Parting poem:

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

--Mary Oliver, from "The Summer Day"