2005-10-08 - 11:36 a.m.
..Every five years or so...
THIRD ENTRY OF TODAY: Last week while walking to work, just before the 3rd movement of some Brueckner symphony popped up, I heard an old familiar Indigo Girls song with the following lines:
"Every five years or so I look back on my life and I have a good laugh..."
(The Watershed)
Long ago, I started playing a game when I had only my thoughts to entertain me. Bounce back in five year intervals, and try to remember what you were doing. Or, even better, remember an ending and a beginning. Here's me:
1980:
EVENT: Moved from the countryside to the big city of St. Louis
ENDING: being the big fish in a small country pond.
BEGINNING: adolescence; the Reagan years; the Superman movies
1985:
EVENT: Applying to college;
ENDING: My parent's marriage; my desire to become a professional clarinetist
BEGINNING: My realization that my father was a drug addict; My brief stint in therapy for depression; renewal of my best friendship with B; my realization that the world lay before me if I could just get out of high school.
1990:
EVENT: Moved to New York
ENDING: Idealism that you can get anything you want if you just work hard enough; my tumultuous relationships with two men I was foolishly dating at once
BEGINNING: Graduate school hell.
1995:
EVENT: My first trip to Germany
ENDING: my relationship with S; my work relationship with my Ph.D. supervisor
BEGINNING: My love affair with Germany; my love affair with Alosha; My lasting friendship with my new Ph.D. supervisor
2000:
EVENT: My first trip to China
ENDING: my love affair with Alosha; the Clinton years
BEGINNING: my courtship with K
2005:
EVENT: A trip to Seattle; a life in constant limbo
ENDING: patience with tenure-track professorships and the USA
BEGINNING: a new world with K, here and beyond..