It has been almost six weeks since I left Fort Collins. I've always six weeks is about the time it really takes to get used to being in motion on the road. Maybe it's just hitting me now, how faraway my life before I left on the road now seems.
A month before that, I hadn't even known I was going to take this trip. But a letter arrived one afternoon with the unmistakable return address of the University of Texas. At first I just thought it was an alumni solicitation, but I noticed that below the address was typed the name of the chairman of the physics department, the same chairman as in 1989 when I first went to Austin.
It turned out to be an invitation to a banquet in honor of the recent retirees of the physics department, including my thesis advisor, Dr. William C. Schieve, whom I hadn't even known had retired. That's how out of touch I've been with that part of my life.
I immediately knew I had to go, so with a month's preparation I was back on the road, heading back to Texas for the first time since 2000, and to Austin for the first time since 1999.
I took three days to get down there, crossing the Colorado Eastern Plains just as I did in 1989, when I went down to Texas to flush out the residue of bad experiences in my final year in college in Oregon, and to start a brand new life. In so many ways, that restart was as successful as I could have hoped.
Ironically in recent years I've felt pulled back into the undergraduate experiences, and have felt as if I got stuck in the some of the same old emotions that needed clearning out. As I headed down towards the panhandle across the desolation of the plains, I wondered if I might evoke some of the same kind of renewal.
I went hiking in the Comanche National Grasslands on a hot afternoon, then cut across the tip of the Oklahoma panhandle. The minute I crossed the Texas border and saw the outline of the Lone Star State on the sign, I felt my soul lift and could feel the influence of so many bad emotions that gotten stuck in me begin to melt away, as if they immediately began to have diminishing influence on me. I'm not 24 years old anymore---that kind of abandoned unbounded optimistic renewal is just not something I can muster, I think. There is too much water under the bridge. But it felt as close to it as possible, for where I was at the time.
I stayed in the night in Amarillo and the next evening I was back in Austin. The next day I picked up my friend Arjendu, who shared my same advisor, and who is now a dean at Carleton College in Minnesota, with a ton of real responsibilities. Ironically he's a good friend of the current president of my undergraduate college in Oregon, who is a Carleton alumnus.
That night we went to the banquet at the alumni hall. Upon entering I was flooded with a barrage of memories of faces I'd somewhat forgotten, of the faculty members I used to see day in and day out.
On the front table at the reception were the name badges. I laughed when I saw them, because mine was all by itself in the corner, right next to Steven Weinberg. I told Arjendu it's not every day I see my name right next to Weinberg's. But the petty egotism of that moment was more than balanced by a wry poignancy at how little I've managed to accomplish.
My advisor did not know I was coming and it brought tears to his eyes when he saw me after so many years. It was a splendid occassion. All of us who were his students crowded around one table and we even got to stand up together as a testament to the fidelity of his former students.
I
No comments:
Post a Comment