Summer Blues...not really, but blue type thinking

For the student, summer has supposedly begun. As of now, I can assure you it hasn't. It's 10:30pm, I'm sitting out on the (covered) deck of my sister's apartment in Vancouver, I have my laptop and a brandy, and rain is pouring down thoroughly and relentlessly. I can see downtown, but it's mostly engulfed by rain and darkness. Perhaps summer isn't here yet, but something has changed. I can feel a change from just a short time ago. I've changed.

It was a novel feeling for me at the beginning of my sophomore year when the freshman arrived. It was my second year in a row living in Douglas, a familiar place, but it was filled with new and unfamiliar faces. It struck me then, as it does now, that a place is made up of people more so than it is materials. Wordsworth describes something similar when he spoke of the ‘spirit of time and place.' A building is just a building, but the people inside it most often make it what it truly is, or at least, was it seems most so to ourselves. Now that the academic year has come to a close, I appreciate just how much of me lies within those walls, with the people that filled them. Here alone, in this beautiful but big city, a sense of misplacement seems inescapable. It wasn't merely friends but family I left when I departed for the summer from Trinity; not merely a part of my past, but a part of myself. It's with gratitude to God and my parents that those things are also a part of my future. Nevertheless, I feel somewhat beside myself, so to speak.

This summer though, is one that ought not to disappoint. I'm having a very pleasant time in Vancouver, including this more pensive moment, and I've got numerous things to look forward to as well. Later in the summer I have three very good friends coming to live and work with me for two months. After that, my father and I are going to England together for a week's traveling, just father and son, before he sees me off to Oxford. Yes, there is certainly a lot to look forward to. And there is a lot to look back on. I expect this summer will include much of both.

I'll keep the blog going through the summer and during my time in oxford. Future posts won't be as introspective as this I should expect, but the circumstances of the evening were too good to not write something. This is what came out. Hope it was of some use.

Tom