temporary and real

I am going back to school tomorrow and oddly enough, this vacation because it actually felt long. Some days were great, but others dragged. More people have moved away. Remaining finals work was hanging over my head. But yet on this last night home for a little while, turning off all the lights before I go to sleep (turning out the xmas tree lights last of all), I was overwhelmed by a heavy nostalgia and a deep sad feeling.

Life is fine at Princeton; even great! But I realized why I get this feeling every time I transition out of breaks home for weeks or months at a time. Somehow, in these three weeks, I have fallen back into such comfortable patterns that I can almost convince myself that this is my life. But it isn't. My life is no longer in this beautiful house, each detail lovingly decorated, everything I see a memory of something. My life is not here, and it is not in Princeton either. The Princeton experience is about to be over. I plan to take it all in, enjoy it to the fullest, all that...but that's not my life either, is it?

It seems to me that right now, my life is this unknown future. These plans and hopes and goals, but nothing material yet. I don't know what it will look like or who will be a part of it from day to day. I don't know hardly anything about it yet, and that just makes right NOW a really scary time.

But I will know more. And as I write this, I wonder too if I am shortchanging the transient present. maybe it's more real than I give it credit for. I really do hope so because right now, it feels like all I have.