Someplace for my head

During a break in the rainfall, and before I realized I don't care about abstract algebra, I was outside, walking beside the Latino Center, when I caught the scent of some pine shrubs enjoying the glory of hydration. I stopped, turned, and walked over to confirm my nostrils' message. Exuberant pine needles, ever green. I kept walking, recalling to mind that my sense of smell seems to have heightened. Smell is the sense most securely tied to memory; it's as though my body is searching for some memory here to hold on to, some lingering, irresistibly fragrant figment of my past to lure me back into the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' common scene. Maybe it's that. Maybe it's not, since it might be my hormones making me search for pheromones in the air, which the blossoming plants give off unashamedly, while eligible lover men and lover women decline to betray even the slightest hint of enjoying the presence of one another. Maybe it's both these things.

I mistake a bird for an airplane, and then an airplane flies in a linear fashion above the clouds, as if to tell me that nature escapes too easily and one has to chase it whenever one can, without tiring. Another airplane flies above, when I look back.

The needles on the pine trees all point straight out, convinced of their direction. But they all point in different directions. Some of them are pulled by gravity, drooping. Some of them have fallen, still green. Many of the brown, faded, remain. The rain has stopped again. Somewhere, someone is running. Less people today because the weather isn't as kind. The others roam inside searching for someone to be kind to them. A man drinks a smoothie at Hotung Cafe.

Tufts - the end is near. Life will go on as usual. Four years from now, a new train stop will appear for the Green Line on Tufts' campus, and it will be a hassle to walk to the gym. Parking of the kind I sometimes enjoy, legal or not, will be a distinct impossibility. Tufts will continue to increase its reputation, maybe developing a reputation equivalent to Ivy League in time for my retirement. And I will be an alumnus, at least.

I will probably be somewhere else. But Somerville, I will miss you.