Mad Rush

My fingers stroked the keys of the Steinway in the Villard Room with the same ease and familiarity they always had - as if they had been practicing on it every day. Philip Glass's Mad Rush echoed throughout the College Center, bringing back old memories long forgotten - the taste of sweet potato fries at the retreat, snowy days in the warmth of the music practice rooms, late nights at the Vogelstein editing rooms - the endless battle against our heavy eyelids, the smell of maple syrup boiling in our stove, perfectly cooked fried eggs on an english muffin with a steaming hot mug of tea on a crisp fall afternoon with the wind blowing through the leaves in the woods, grass with last night's raindrops still clinging to the soft blades under my fingers, the fireworks reflected on Sunset Lake. I can still smell that comforting smell of fresh laundry and old books, still hear the gut wrenching pain of every chord emanating from the strings in my cello that last concert, still taste the explosion of ecuadorian mango in a spoonful of Haagen-Dazs Sorbet in a hot late August afternoon.

And then the piece ended and I found myself sitting under the dying Magnolia tree near swift hall - alone. I screamed at the pine trees in Sunset Lake, begging, and pleading them to return what they had taken and now refused to return. I tried to coax the piano into play those notes again with the same warmth, the same passion, the same happiness.

But it was all gone. The Magnolias were not the same Magnolias. The Pine Trees had aged. The piano had seen more masterful musicians.

Vassar - my Vassar - is gone. And returning was like walking through a strange memory. Like meeting a doppleganger, some strange wonderland seen through the other side of a looking-glass.

And I saw my own reflection in the water. Older. More defined features. Eyes that had seen too much. A soul that had been torn apart and was beginning to be pieced back together. I saw someone that was someone else - a doppleganger of myself. And I realized that I do not know who I am any more than I did then.

On the train back to New York, I felt like myself again - something I haven't felt for a while. I felt a release. Or the beginning of one. Perhaps now I can really move forward.

Categories: Hudson Valley, Poughkeepsie, travel, Vassar