Divorced

In many ways, I am divorced from reality. This is not a discussion of continuing adolescence. I'm not drifting away in my own private dreamworld, deluding myself with ideals of grandeur or any such thing. What I'm referring to is a phenomenon that I see arising as I speak with people who exist from areas of my life outside Luther College.

I literally just hung up the phone with a friend of mine from high school. Now, we had a very pleasant chat, I was quite glad to hear from her. So don't misinterpret this. But it reinforced ideas I've long fomented about how people from separate experiences address each other. In many ways, to old friends, college is like an archipelago. We're all on these islands, many of them similar. But they are islands nonetheless. They're separate, they're distinct. I look around my room, at what defines me, and how it differs from what used to define me.

There's a St. George's cross hanging on the wall, which would take a whole other blog to explain the significance of to my life (conveniently, such a blog exists, just click on the link to the right). I have posters of Led Zeppelin, Dylan. I have a stack of jazz CD's and LP's littered about my space. Two devices to brew coffee. A masterfully heisted Starbucks mug. A canvas of a trombone. Scarves. Photos of places of been, but more importantly, photos of my friends.

Obviously, I'm a lot different person than I was 4 years ago. And I'm sure most of my old friends are too. But we don't know what sort of new people we all are to each other, so we're stuck communicating in this sort of antiquated fashion. We're talking, but it's like we're screaming from one island to the next, instead of getting in our canoe and paddling over to talk face to face.


*On a quick side note, the archipelago pictured above is from Finland. I love Finland, and I don't really know why. Maybe it's because no one else does.



Plus, who can forget how cool Sibelius' "Finlandia" was when arranged for trombone choir?