"Claire De Lune" Claude Debussy



Years removed from Ms. Stark and 5th grade--the handball courts, the passing of love letters, the math games with numbered tiles--I'd occasionally revisit the school. The immediate sensation was smallness. How small these doors seemed. How could such tiny rooms hold such hyperactive, reckless children. The grounds themselves, which once seemed Saharan in their expansiveness, became a swath of grass and asphalt. I'd tried a few times to use the handball court to accommodate my burgeoning interest in tennis. If jelly balls, hammered as hard as possible, were still kept within the concrete boundaries, a tennis ball surely wouldn't give it any fits. I was wrong. I'd hit the ball and it'd bounce beyond the court, hitting the grate of the drain, or a rough patch of dirt. The ball would spin off in an awkward tangent. It did little to develop consistency in my stroke mechanics and I soon learned I had to go elsewhere if I was going to learn Agassi's forehand; I had outgrown the court.



I am not where I was last year. I am not where I thought I would be. I have made a series of decisions that have drastically changed my landscape and my habits. I went to experience what was once familiar to me this past weekend. And by virtue of contextual contrast, I now see that I have changed.



Perhaps when your surroundings change enough, you change along with it. Perhaps it's a matter of one's survival instincts that implores adaptation. Perhaps circumstances that come upon us, inasmuch as they are the product of design and chaos, also portend our futures.