Solace in Walt Whitman's River, My University's Bench

The other day I stood in front of what used to be the offices of the Brooklyn Eagle, a newspaper edited by Walt Whitman.  I saw this inscription and it reminded me of another one of my favorite inscriptions on a stone bench at my alma mater, Cornell University (so maybe I've mentioned this bench one or one hundred times before.)

The Brooklyn Eagle inscription:

I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence.  Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt...Walt Whitman, crossing Brooklyn ferry

The bench inscription:

To those who shall sit here rejoicing; To those who shall sit here mourning; Sympathy and greeting; so have we done in our time. 1892

Not to sound all hippy dippy sighy but I find peace in these special spots, looking at these words.  There's great comfort in knowing that others have survived our hurt and experienced our joy.

Campus In the Rain

Sometimes I click to see the live view of the Cornell University campus. Today, I see that the sky is vaguely pink. That the sun skids past cloud and hits McGraw Tower.  A figure walks the path and disappears and my August heart aches to follow.

It rains in Ithaca. A lot. And, yet, I don't remember how it felt to clutch an umbrella on the brink of Libe slope.  I don't remember the slosh of rainboots or socks hung to dry.  I remember cold, sure. The way it itched at my scarf and left us raw.  I remember the sun's stammer, how we clung to its brief note.  But Ithaca, in its steady, constant, reliable stretch of rain. This, I don't remember.  This, I never see.

Cornell as I see it

Ten Years

It's been a restless, strange week. The kind of week where I just wanted to get my bearings and life came at me instead. I find myself knee deep in a bunch of work I took on before I left for Spain.  I am re-writing my novel and re-inhabiting a world I thought I'd left.  And it's summer.  When did that happen?  Hot, sticky days.  Late afternoon thunderstorms.  The fan is whirring and my tomatoes are epically thirsty.

It's reunion weekend at my alma mater, Cornell University.  I won't be there.  But my heart is caught.  It's been ten years since I graduated.  I'm trying to process that.  So much has happened in ten years.

I have no idea why...but I'm thinking of these stairs I used to take from Collegetown to West Campus, along the rushing waters of the Cascadilla gorge, past the law library, or was it Hughes?  I am desperate, suddenly, looking at online campus maps, trying to find the exact location of these stairs.  I had taken them so many times.  More than I can count. It's like I took a photograph that doesn't exist, of all of us, laughing, in the middle of the night, walking these stairs.  I could find them, without any effort, if I was there.  But placing it, arranging it next to one building or another...I can't.

So. Ten years.  Where were you ten years ago?  I was taking those stairs.  And now I'm here.

Such Stupid Things

The other night I attended a party where I didn't know very many people. I'm not good at mingling. The idea of wandering around a room, never able to truly settle into one conversation, makes me crazy. I'm not sure how to engage in a real discussion when everyone is there and then off again, to say hi to so-and-so, get another glass of wine, grab some kind of puffed pastry.

So I become an investigative reporter. I ask hundreds of questions until people are sick of me and desperate to move on. It's the only way I know how to get through.

One of my grueling interviews involved a series of questioning about what it is like to have a child attend college. My 'interviewee' was worried about his son running off to do something incredibly stupid and I asked if that was because he, himself, had done stupid things in college. He hadn't. But he wished he did.

I thought back to my own days at Cornell, 'on the hill', as they say. Thought back to a few of the stupid things I did in a state of wild abandon. I swam in a lake during a severe thunderstorm. (And it was no accident, I intentionally went out during a thunderstorm to swim and later discovered that a woman drowned in that very lake the same day.) I walked down a crumbling path into a 200 ft gorge at midnight to swim under the haze of alcohol, barely 100 pounds and having had far too many drinks to do something so dangerous.

But when I think of those times, I do not fear what could have happened to me, though I realize both experiences could have had a tragic end.

I only fear what would have happened to me had I not done them.

Because I knew once what it felt like to swim between the rush of a waterfall and the rain pelting down, not knowing or caring which washed over my shoulders and soaked my hair. To descend into a gorge and jump, fully clothed, from slippery rocks into water, under moon and endless sky, and not know its bottom. Not know its end.

U is for University

More specifically, Cornell University, which is where I got my undergraduate degree. I always think that Cornell is where I found my voice. Not just a voice in my writing, but an actual voice as well. Up until that point I had been a little frightened to speak up and be the person I wanted to be. But, in my time there, it seemed I was not afraid to say or do anything.

When I think of the things I did, I surprise myself with the memory. I think of the classes I spoke in front of, the singing auditions I attempted, the actors that gave voice to my short plays in theatre classes, the stories I read out loud in workshops. And of course, I remember my closest friends, who are the friends I always imagined having. The bars we frequented, the plantations we wandered through, the midnight swims in the steep gorges, the drives to the secret swimming hole where I sat underneath waterfalls in the pouring rain.

It's been nearly ten years since I graduated, but I remember that being a time of true freedom. A time to explore and become.

I always think of this bench which sits on top of the slope and overlooks the lake. The quote carved into it encompasses everything I felt during my time there. It was a time of extreme emotions. The first time I felt a part of something larger and more real than anything I had experienced before it. It might also explain why I never felt afraid.

To those who shall sit here rejoicing

To those who shall sit here mourning

Sympathy and greeting

So have we done in our time

1892


Photo Credit: vonhohenstaufen