Out of time

[Oops, this one was actually written on Monday, before the one which follows this, which was written on Wednesday (and now, in case you're watching, it's Thursday, and boy do I have things to write about from today when I had dinner with a Supreme Court Justice and was mistaken for an admiral's wife). So there'll be more to come...]

Sitting by myself at Burdicks chocolate shop in Cambridge, I realized that just as there is a part of my soul that only comes alive in the context of the beach and the hills and the sea—so is there a part of me that only comes alive in the context of Harvard Square and Burdicks and the fantastic conversations I have there.

I finished teaching the Harvard class this morning, and have wandered through the Square afterwards, buying shoes and touching sundresses that won’t be in season for eight months where I live.

It has been this Harvard part of who I am that has been most consistently fed over the past many years of my life, and it had gotten to the point where I didn’t even know that it was being fed, really. It was just the air that I breathed.

And the air that I breathe in Boston, so different than the air I breathe in Paekakariki, comes with a different kind of beauty, a human-made beauty. This is where the sense of age isn’t found in the glacier trails on the hills but on the ancient granite headstones from the 1600s. It’s where the sky is not endless, but is endlessly mirrored in the Hancock Tower, where the water is neatly bounded between tame and manicured banks. Nature is here, in postage-stamp doses, and held carefully at bay, caged and contained like an elephant at the zoo. This place is a monument by and to people, and it is people who are mostly worshiped here. But my soul opens here, too, and moves into the beauty of this space and the elegance of the buildings and the gilt of domed rooflines and gracious brick townhouses. And I feel a sense of fullness and possibility in a whole different way.

Today I have stood up in front of 100 Harvard graduate students and a famous theorist to teach about that theorist’s theory. I have done just fine, and have held my own in difficult circumstances (and I’ll do better next time). I have walked through familiar streets in the Square, hearing the babel of languages that marks a US urban centre. I have sat at Burdicks where I have countless powerful memories to go with the powerful chocolate—it was here that my group of friends celebrated doctoral and life milestones, and mourned setbacks. I have drunk deeply of this life. I have remembered the ease and intimacy and intelligence of my friendships here and I remembered a way I used to be in the world, a way I pick right up again when I come back into this world. Perhaps I will come back to Boston in July. Perhaps I will not. In any case, I have the sense that when I come here again, I will find myself once again at home.