2.16.05

some memories, with emphasis on smells:

emily, sophomore year, getting out of bed in the morning. standing in front of her dresser, between our beds, with her back to me. only a shirt and underwear on, emily underwear. sunlight booming in the windows, the leaves of my datura radiant green and translucent. lots of white. the smell of morning in that room; plants, sleeping bodies, dust in the corners.

a related image of sitting on the window seat in the common room the same year, doing reading for religion 101 with holt. underlining, looking around at rachel's art and all our food on the shelves along the opposite wall. nina's trail mix. a crowd of people had gathered outside the thorne service entrance, waiting for something. the presence of james and jordan identified them as a piece of the track team; i watched james shift from foot to foot, hand hooked into the straps of his backpack by his armpits, wearing his thin, blue coat and antsy. afternoon early spring sunlight lancing through the pines, making our prisms sparkle and hurting my eyes if i looked in the wrong place. eventually, james left, and i finished my reading. we were well past being together at the time.

earlier: spending the night at luke's house in yarmouth. it was in my first two weeks or so at bowdoin; i was reading a book for class in the large, white, crisp bed that took up most of his brother's old room. listening to the sounds of the house and setting my alarm for the morning. a vague sense of something being wrong; also, a sense of comfort, of being completely hidden from the world, out of time, closed in by the blankets tucked tightly under the mattress. it smelled clean and underground.

i thought of these things as i went to sleep two nights ago. i thought of these things and composed sentences i would like to say, forgotten when i woke up.