Passion

It's late. I only seem to write when I really don't have time to write. I did get a lot written in my paper journal this weekend--the three-hour bus ride up to Cape Cod gave me plenty of time to get my thoughts onto paper. It always feels good to put things down in black ink and then close my journal on them. It's so cathartic, and the act of doing it helps sort everything out.

Anyway. The retreat was awesome. Woods Hole is this adorable little tiny New England harbor town in Cape Cod, and looks exactly like what you'd imagine a little tiny New England harbor town in Cape Cod would look like. The houses were wood shingle, the sidewalks were skinny, there were trees everywhere, there's only one bar in town, there are small fishing boats upside down on the sides of the roads, there's really only one main loop through town and it takes less than half an hour to walk it.... I couldn't live there for a prolonged period of time, but I loved it. I'd love to spend little bits and pieces of time there.

Also, autumn has come to New England. I am very excited about this. For the first time since I was seven, I smelled autumn this weekend. The air in Cape Cod had a crisp, clean, cold smell that I vaguely remember smelling last in Alaska. Reno doesn't smell anything like that in fall. It gets cold, but it doesn't smell cold the same way. The leaves here are all turning red and orange and yellow and I used to think I hated that, but it's so gorgeous here I don't know how I ever thought I didn't like autumn. There are a lot of things I'm realizing I've always loved but was just never aware of. I love the way the air smells early in the morning here in autumn, and I love the sight of red and orange trees along a road by the beach. Santa Cruz doesn't have trees that turn red and orange. It has redwoods, which are green all year round (which I loved). So this is a very exciting change for me. I'm really looking forward to deep fall, and to winter.

The retreat itself was a lot of fun. We had to listen to an inordinate amount of talks, each of which was half an hour long, and they were presented in groups of five. As you move into the second hour of talks, you start to go a little numb, and somewhere about the middle of the fourth talk your brain sort of clicks in the way that small pieces of metal click when they fall onto a sidewalk, and that's just the end of it. You can't possibly absorb any more new information. So while I struggled to entertain myself in a dark auditorium for about 20% of the lectures, overall they were mostly interesting, and I learned a few things.

I'm gonna go to bed now, since it's late and I only got four hours of sleep last night. But I will leave you with this sentence, which I think conveys the basic idea of what I did Friday and Saturday nights:
Last night, around 3 am, one of the professors stopped taking shots long enough to come over to where we (a small group of first-years) were standing, and ask us if we would help form a human pyramid, which we did.
Photographic evidence will eventually be posted here. Stay tuned.
I'm going to go sleep off the remains of the worst hangover I've had since freshman year of college.