Monday, March 20, 2006

Loose Ends And Echoes From The Past

Yes, I will continue on with impeachment soon, but I was on vacation for a week.

One might say that one disengages one's normal activities during vacation and does the opposite, mightn't one?

Well, for me the norm is thinking and other such academic bric-a-brac. I was, you will be pleased to know, able to disengage this for an extended period.

Whiskey helps, as usual.

It was a busy week. Friends getting married, my dad's birthday, St. Patrick's Day For The Reinforcement Of All The Worst Stereotypes About The Irish. It was jam-packed and, riding the bus home in the middle of the night, I realized that exhausted was hardly the word.

The sight of the capitol and Lake Monona was truly a sight for sore eyes (and legs and liver and damn near everything else). It is not because I wanted to leave my family and friends. Far from it.

I have not been sure what location is really "home" anymore. This was discussed in a seminar I had last semester but, as with most things academic, no agreement was reached and the discussion could have gone on ad nauseum.

My current "base of operations" is clearly Madison, WI. That is also where my books, ties, washrags, flatware, Funkmaster Flex medallion and other material things currently have their home.

I still, however, find myself calling Oak Forest "home."

I guess you really never can truly go home.

This adage does not help much, but oh well.

Lastly, good to hear from Otto von Bozzi. Too long, my brother, too long. Everyone else, too. Thanks for looking in.

Back to the usual boringness this week. I promise.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

What's this vacation crap? You're in grad school! No vacation!

Glad to see you made it back "home" safely. I remember having the same identity crisis, especially when I still had an apartment space in South Bend, some stuff at my mom and dad's house in Markle and my wife and daughter living in Charlotte, NC. Where was home? Typically it was a stretch of I-77 and/or I-80 (when it wasn't the lab at school).

Some people say home is where the heart is. Clearly, for Will Shannon, home is where the ties are.

By that definition, home for me during the aforementioned term of indefinity was a storage locker off Cleveland road in South Bend...

Will Shannon said...

Vacation in the sense that I was reading for hours on end in a different location than usual. I also did not think of school for at least three consecutive days.

Was this smart? Maybe not, but I needed it.

Lost A Sock said...

I always felt this way about home while at St. Joe. My parents had moved from their Chicago home to Indiana just a few days before I started school at SJC, and I wasn't really sure which way was up. Living here in Hobart for nearly six years, we're feeling settled (for now.) My sister is going through this very same thing right now, having graduated from school and living party at my parents' house, partly at our house. Things will settle down. And if not, hang on to your ties and whiskey. ;0)

Anonymous said...

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Make sure to click the link for my name :)

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Sorry link didn't work..cut and paste the above link...