And I will drown and I will

Over the past five days I have met more new people than I have during my first half year of university. I have met students much older than I am, graduate students, PhD students, editors for the school newspaper. I met professors and deans from my university. I have professors and political analysts from across Canada, from BC, from Quebec, from Utah. I have met the next US ambassador to Canada, a representative from the Canadian Department of National Defence and I have met soldiers students from West Point who are on their way to Iraq and Afghanistan. I have met people from England and Columbia and Russia. I have slept very little and it hasn't mattered because I've been constantly doing things, driving places, picking speakers up from hotels and getting hurtled in conversations that were over my head. Last night I was packed into a drunken basement with all these people where the professor, whose house the party was held, told me that I will make a great academic because I can hold my alcohol. That was after he confessed that he once got arrested in London for urinating in someone's garbage can. That night I experienced politics at it's core, academics and thinkers having drunken arguments over American foreign policy and health care and anything else that one could argue over whilst intoxicated. I had the pleasure of taking part in a friendly yelling match with a girl from West Point.

Today was another day of introductions and new people and speeches and panels. Tonight was a suit and tie dinner to which I was gratefully invited earlier today by the conference coordinators. Dressed up, distinguished, beautiful and boisterous, drinking again, we wandered through an art gallery and sat at round tables and talked about racial profiling, ballistic missile defence and whether or not nipples can get sunburnt. For once I had found a niche where I felt like I belonged, a place where I could see myself in the years to come and I have never been more lonely in my life. The goodbyes were long and emotional and I watched from a distance. I said goodbye to the people I had met knowing that I would never see them again, knowing that they are all much older and experienced than I, knowing that I had just had a handful of the best days of my life. The drive home was cold and I was alone. Tomorrow I will be alone. Maybe I'll wake up with a new lease on life. Or maybe I'll just continue on my self-destructive track of nothingness.

The child is an acrobat
He walks upon the wire
Knowing well that he might fall
Still he climbs up higher

If he should slip
He will surely die
And his body will break and his soul will fly
Into the night where the spirits scream
He will leave this world and become a dream

My father was a sailor
He lived upon the water
Knowing well that he might drown
He sailed beyond the harbor

If he should fall
He will surely die
And his body will sink and his soul will fly
Into the night where the spirits scream
He will leave this world to become a dream
He will leave this world to become a dream

Nothing will change
Time goes by and nothing will

My love she is my saving grace She holds me through the winter
Knowing well that I will leave
Still she holds me closer

And if my heart should break
I will surely die
And my blood will flow and my soul will fly
Into the night where the spirits scream
We will leave this world and become a dream
We will leave this world and become a dream
The Acrobat, John Rice