Being in campus makes me think that it is natural and right to do this, to rebraid the frayed ends of memory to the reconfigured present. We all mourn for what we gave up. Here, at my alma mater, I mourn the seeming limitless potential of my youth. A young kid strums a guitar by himself on the floor of a hallway, others gather in study groups in the library, a class discusses action films in a political science class, people crowd quietly in a computer lab; all of it has the power to bring back all of the happy feelings I had back then but none of the misery I now, only vaguely, remember.

I was never closer to suicide, bankruptcy, or exile than when I was in college. As Kurt Cobain said, “I miss the comfort of being sad.” I was quietly self-righteous back then. I was sure that nobody felt or knew as deeply as I did—or nobody in my life, at least. I thought I was at the doorstep of some limited, intellectual fame; that my greatness was to be ignored for most of my life, only to be discovered in my old age (with many a star-studded retrospective of my work in the world’s biggest cities) or shortly after my death, sudden and tragic: a motorcycle accident on a sunny, winding road to the beach; a shot in the heart by a jelous lover in a mexican bordello, struck by lightening while bearing the standard at a parade. I would walk home late at night from school and, especially on cold or rainy nights, glower toward the warm, suburban windows and cultivate a feeling of outsiderness.

Then there was the period during the combined stress of a romantic breakup and family problems when I found that everything, everything was somehow funny. Tragedy and pain were absurd, banality was comic, anything grave or serious was farce. And, of course, anything genuinely funny was hilarious. For a couple of weeks, I had to keep myself from laughing out loud at everything and everyone.

Walking through the student store today reminded me how intimidating the common area was during my freshman year. I still had concerns about being in public alone.

Now the great north view from the 4th floor of the Oviatt library is obscured by trees and buildings.