Something Momentous

Well readers, it appears as though barring any monumental academic collapse or significant legal misadventure, I am headed to the mountains of Virginia and Washington & Lee University next year. I look eagerly forward to four more years spent in an idyllic setting among fellow intellectuals, learning, playing, relaxing, and "becoming my best self," as Big Freddy Nietzsche would say. That said, I am still apprehensive about a few things.

- LEAVING THE NEST: I tend to grow homesick after being apart from my family for a period of time. I suppose everyone does, but mixed in with the blissful hours I will spend among new friends and colleagues, there will be periods of loneliness mixed in. Such is college, and such is life.
- KEEPING UP: I have always had outside motivation for doing my work diligently and to the best of my abilities. I won't have many eyes looking over my shoulder, making sure I'm on task and on time. I would like to think that I will be able to grasp the reins of responsibility and use them effectively, but I am somewhat uncertain. It will be an interesting experience.
- LIVING IN HARMONY: I am fairly confident that for better or worse, the people with whom I will be living next year have never encountered someone quite like me. I will go to them (and they to me) with a clean slate. What sort of reputation will my initial actions create? Will I be able to control myself so that I don't irk people. These are questions with a range of answers--which will turn out to be correct?
- WOOING AND COOING: Will I finally have a breakthrough when it comes to girls/women, or will my shyness hinder me as profoundly as it has throughout my high school years? Will I meet someone who is compatible with me? Will I be seen as compatible? Desirable? Time will tell, I suppose.

Before tonight's lyrical selection, I would like to thank you "Phoebe," for your kind comment on my last post. If you see fit at any time to reveal yourself, I would be pleased to know who you are. But at the same time, I fully understand your desire to conceal your identity. Regardless, I extend my sincerest gratitude to you.

Tonight's selection: "Visions of Johanna," by Bob Dylan
"Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin' you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there's nothing, really nothing to turn off
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind.

In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman's bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the "D" train
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it's him or them that's really insane
Louise, she's all right, she's just near
She's delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna's not here
The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place.

Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
He's sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at the wall while I'm in the hall
How can I explain?
Oh, it's so hard to get on
And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn.

Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
See the primitive wallflower freeze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, "Jeeze
I can't find my knees"
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel.

The peddler now speaks to the countess who's pretending to care for him
Sayin', "Name me someone that's not a parasite and I'll go out and say a prayer for him"
But like Louise always says
"Ya can't look at much, can ya man?"
As she, herself, prepares for him
And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes ev'rything's been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain."