Raining Down

This is way too long to be anything near my Williams supplement essay (nor is it going to be anything near what my final essay will look like in terms of subject, because this is not really reality), but it is a start. I have not (extensively) proofread this, and there definitely will be mistakes. This is merely my exploratory take on the subject, because exploratory works are all the rage lately.

. . .

My fingers are millimeters away from the rain.

I can feel their coolness on the tips of my fingers, feel them drip past my skin, into my bones. A trickling sensation. Spatter-spatter-splot. I hear the drumming of the raindrops and hear them against my skin. Goodness rain.

Outside, the grass is a saturated green. Long, wispy strands reaching out to a solemn grey sky. “Do you know the time?” The grass asks. “Five-after-two,” the sky replies.

The grass nods. Happy. The rain splashes on. They are singing some tune, a drum affair, with a scattering of xylophone notes and the occasional flute. I trace the rain as they dance across the sky, their footsteps light. A free-style salsa in a funeral. With only harmony and no melody, or only rhythm without harmony.

I reach out, trying to bridge the last few millimeters, and everything turns mute. The rain is merely a humming now. The green washed with silvery-grey. The cold, the wind, it is all gone, except for the vents blowing cold air into my elbows.

It is ten-after-two, or fifteen-after-two. I do not know—I cannot know unless I turn the key in the ignition, and if I do that then I will lose the quiet. And as I think that, I know I have already lost it. I am back where I was. In a Ford Taurus station-wagon at some service area on Interstate 90. Behind the windshield, overlooking the rain, the grass, and the cars zooming past, ghosts of what they are.

I do not know how I had missed the cars before. They are there, in the parking lot, blues and reds and blacks. People running by under umbrellas, under coats, under backpacks slung over their heads. And I do not know how I had missed the people. They are going somewhere, with their iced coffees and Happy Meals and cigarettes soaked through the box but only damp inside. They are turning keys. Lights. Motors. Plates from Tennessee and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Indiana. The rare one from New Hampshire. The one from Florida that is everywhere. The bright red California—no, that is a Massachusetts.

I sit in my car, my feet cold from the rain, my arms cold from the air conditioning. The key is in my hand, waiting to settle. It is at least fifteen-after-two now. I should be leaving. It is late.

The grass shouts, “You do not belong here.” The sky agrees. “You have places to be. Things to see. People to meet.” Their voices are muted. Muffled screaming.

I know. I know.

I am on the crossroads. I came from a past of wandering, of staking out new territories and discovering new adventures. Years of searching and floating, fleeting “Hi how are you?” and “Sorry I have to go.” And now I am driving. I am in control of the steering wheel, with twenty bottles of water in the trunk and a box of energy bars on the backseat. A small bag with two sets of clothes. Toothbrushes, toothpaste. Soap. Shampoo. An umbrella thrown in that I will probably never use except to poke at things stacked on tall ledges.

Goodness rain. I am almost there.

Ten years of waiting. Of plotting. Of knowing I want to go somewhere, wherever it is.

I want a coffee. I suddenly want a coffee so badly I shove the keys into my pocket and grab a few dollars’ worth of change. One third coffee, one third cream, and one third milk and hot cocoa. Cinnamon hazelnut coffee. With a sprinkle of oatmeal, and tapioca pearls too, if possible. But I am okay with just the coffee and cream and milk and hot cocoa.

I am about to leave when my cell rings. I pick it up. Private caller. “Hello?”

“Hi, Ginny, it’s me,” my mother says. “Where are you now?”

Somewhere. Nowhere. In the middle of nowhere. “I’m on I-90 right now,” I say. “At some service area.”

“How much further?” Because I have a destination. Somewhere. I look at the map sprawled on the seat next to me. Count the increments. Ten miles. Twenty. Fifty.

“Sixty miles,” I say. “I think. I don’t really remember what the last sign said.”

“You’re only there?”

“I stopped for lunch,” I said. I did not mention that I went off the highway for an hour, driving through town after town in the misty rain, trying to envision a destination somewhere in the heart of this land.

“Oh, okay,” my mother says. “Don’t drive too fast.” Her way of saying, “Drive safely.”

As she hangs up I put my hand against the glass, fingers splayed. It is half-past-two. I remember I have more clothes in the trunk. An entire suitcase of them. My mother and I had packed them a few days ago, before she left for China with my father and I left for wherever it is I am going. I have other things, too. A blanket. Two pillows. Several bedsheets. Some books salvaged from the tag sale.

And I remember. I have a destination. I am going somewhere. Not nowhere. Sixty miles away.

I am going off to college. Going, going. To be places, see things, meet people. Break through this windshield-mute. Listen to the rain on my hands, on my nose, on my lips. Drumming. Coolness seeping into my bones. Soaking into my blood.

I think I am ready.

. . .

Or not. I don’t think I am ready. Not yet, anyway, although I will have to be soon. Meadow’s Walk (I don’t really know her real name) has a blog, in which she said yesterday, “Remember when you were a freshman in high school, you walked down the hall in a blur of strangers, lost in the wilderness? And remember when you were a senior, and you could not go 5 steps without saying hi to someone you knew. Then you knew it was time to move on. It's like that.”

It really is like that. I can’t go by a single hallway without knowing someone, and in passing time alone, I’ll be able to talk with someone while I’m walking to my classes, all the time. I still remember my sophomore year (because I missed out on the whole freshman experience) when I didn’t know anyone, and I really thought I’d get lost in so huge a school, and now I know where I’m going without even thinking about it. I know where I’m going and I know how long it’ll take me and I know how much time I have to linger out in the halls, talking with people before class.

So it’s time to move on, almost, but not yet, and I’ll be damned if I let some college essay stop me from enjoying my last year of high school.

McGill: Metropolitan; Middlebury: Many Dorms?

Remember in year 12905120348BC I once said that I would do almost anything (taking out huge student loans not included) to go to a school in the US, and not in Canada? Well, my parents and I went up to Montreal to visit McGill this weekend (after an hour-long wait in customs), and now I can sufficiently say I have changed my mind. I wouldn't mind going to McGill either, even if it's not very high on my list of priorities.

(The really cute red-haired guy with those dark green-blue eyes that reminded me of Brent Tarleton may have something to do with it. Maybe.)

Before this college-visit-and-all-around-trip thing, I'd been to Princeton (with Tea and Avon), Dartmouth, and Amherst. All three of them are pretty secluded schools, in small towns that are a good distance away from the nearest city. McGill—not so much the case. While it's not located in the heart of Montreal (which, judging from where a lot of the souvenir shops are located, would be in Old Montreal), it's pretty much downtown. A blown-up map of the downtown section has the campus at the edge, and when you look out the gates, you see tall skyscrapers, bustling streets, and lots of people.

Another thing that's different. McGill (like many, if not most, other Canadian schools) has a lot of students. While University of Toronto probably claims the most-populated-school title (to my knowledge, anyway), McGill has some 30,000 people, more or less. That's a lot of people, in a campus that is not particularly big. So the buildings, although not taking up a lot of space, are pretty high.

We were going to go to the Welcome Centre, where we could pick up self-guided tours, but the doors were locked. So I asked around a bit, and finally, whom I shall call Brent from now on told me that the bookstore might have some information, and he pointed us towards what we later found out was a library (the bookstore was behind the library). I got a map of the campus, and thus, we began our self-guided tour (because real tours won't start until June, and we're impatient).

On the right of the campus (if you look in from the front gates) are the science buildings—chemistry, physics, geoscience, environmental, and an anatomy/dentistry building. We mostly walked along there (skipping all the art/music/English buildings, because I only had five minutes to copy down which building was what, and so I skipped them). When we were walking away from the chemistry building, a couple of fire trucks came along, sirens blaring, and stopped in front of said building. We watched for a while, trying to figure out if a lab was on fire, but we couldn't figure anything out, so we went to the medical "wing." This was an oddly shaped (it resembles a drumstick) building, tucked behind the biology block, with mostly glass walls. Really pretty.

I don't think we ever figured out where the math department was, which was a pity. Our self-guided tour of McGill ended somewhere after the med/bio sector. The next day, we drove up Mont-Royal (much less exciting because I'd been there once before), then we wanted to go to the Jardin Botanique, but we couldn't stay for long, so we left for Williams, which was our next destination.

Since we wanted to see the islands between New York and Vermont, on our way to Williams we took Route 2 (and the ferry) across to Grand Isle, then onto the bridge and down Route 7 in Vermont, which leads straight to Williamstown. I got a map of Vermont on the island, and it was because of the map that we discovered that Middlebury was along the route as well, and so we made a detour there first.

(Somewhere here, we passed by this motorcycle parade filled with hundreds of motorcycles—and motorcyclists—whirring past us. It was really spectacular.)

Middlebury is probably the stark opposite of McGill. Whereas McGill was in the middle of a busy cosmopolitan city, with tall, modern buildings and the vibe of a city, Middlebury was calm, quiet, and sombre, with its grey stone buildings protruding from the ground in a neat pattern. We got a self-guide brochure from the admissions office, and followed along the route they told us to go.

The entire conversation of the tour basically went like this (all additional commentary are removed):

"Hey, what's this?"—"Dorms."—"Another dorm."—"Another dorm."—"Dining hall."—"Dorm."—"Dorm."—"That's a pretty building."—"It's another dorm."—"Oh! Science building!"—"What's that?"—"Another dorm."

(I can't type "dorm" now without thinking that it looks weird.)

We did find the academic buildings near the end of the tour (and we ended with the library, but it closed half an hour ago), and then we saw the athletic fields, including a small paddle-tennis court and a golf course. I thought the stone buildings were a bit drab, but they were very elegant, even if more than half of them were dorm buildings.

After Middlebury, we went (on track) to Williams. Compared to Middlebury, most of Williams' buildings are made of red brick, and instead of Middlebury's near-complete seclusion, the structure of the campus just flows into the town itself, with two major roads cutting through the middle of campus. It was somewhat difficult to navigate through campus and figure out what each building was supposed to be (we had a map, but it was not very informative), and after walking through two campuses, I was a bit tired. Nonetheless, I did like the small-town feel of Williams, even if it's not my favorite.

(We also saw two Memorial Day parades, and they were really fascinating to watch. I'm sad I missed our town's parade though. I got an email from Mrs. MacDonald asking for people to hold some banner of some sort? Does any of you know who did it?)

We went mountain-climbing as well, up Mt. Greylock, and up the tower on the summit. It was very fun, mostly because we rode the car up the mountain, as opposed to hiking up the side, so it was much less tiring on such a hot, sunny day. I also collected a lot of maps and brochures, which will be fun to read.

Which reminds me, I still have to read two acts of Othello for tomorrow. I was going to read it over the weekend, but as you can see, I was very distracted.

Also, my visited campuses ranking list thus far:

1. Princeton (what a surprise...)
2. Amherst
3. Middlebury
4. McGill
5. Williams
6. Dartmouth