Hit and run…
Like so many people on campus, I knew this guy, if only for a little. Walking from bus to my class, struck up a conversation, and it kinda continued each time we rode the bus together. Never exchanged numbers or anything like that, and then when Fall ended, the schedules changed and I only saw glimpses of him across campus this quarter… and now I won’t again.
I don’t really know what to say.
And as seems to be the pattern, I find out through news articles. Because I don’t travel in the same circles, I just hear about it when impersonal paths cross. There’s no one I had in common with him, but reading through the comments on the UC Davis livejournal community, I’m not the only one whose path he crossed.
One of those perspective-givers – yeah, I’ve got two papers due Tuesday. I haven’t had nearly enough sleep lately. I’m in a hotel in Orange County trying to catch up on rest while the other Comp Corps & State Ambassador folks goof around at a park.
You meet people, you may never see them again, you do what you can to get to know them even a little bit… and then you see it in the news and even thought you never expected to cross paths again, the knowledge that you won’t ever get the chance forever changes the image you had of them… casts them in a different light. They’re preserved in that moment in a particular light and it shines like ice – it’s frozen. There’s no further growth or change… just that. Then that memory of them fades and they become their salient characteristics – they lose the vibrance.
Don’t worry about me, I know that’s how life goes. We move on, we grow and change. We learn a little from each instance, each chance meeting. I just wish I could remember the details – I know the joke was funny, but I can’t recall it. I remember her smiling, but not what her face looked like. And the pictures I have don’t capture the people – only that particular angle at that one moment.
I want to remember it all. I wish I could invest in more storage space for my brain – but then, they say dreams are where we process input and discard the excess to make room for the next day. The next chance meeting.
I’ll remember. After all, that’s why I’m writing it in the first place.
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