And I heard you say, right when you left, that day, "Does everything go away?"

I have a class in the Billy Graham Center, across the street from campus. When I was stepped outside after class tonight to walk back to my room, I was struck by the strangeness of a familiar smell: salt. Ocean salt. I have no idea how it smelled like that - maybe being sick has just thrown my senses way off. But to me, at any rate, it was very evocative of my last night at home. And while I walked back across the street, the lawn, and through the lamp-lit center of campus, I was looking up at the overcast midwestern sky and thinking of how the sky over the shore of California looked exactly the same at 2:30 AM that day.

I had spent that afternoon packing, and Kate had kept me company the whole time - sitting on my bed, helping me sort through my clothes and watching funny youtube videos with me when I was getting too stressed to make good decisions. At about 2 in the morning, my stress was replaced by super-stress, depression, and crabbiness. I still had a million things to do and I was tired; it had been an insane and emotional week and I was running on almost no sleep at all. I'm not sure if this is an accurate memory or not, but I seem to remember being literally pulled to my feet by Kate, who told me to get a coat on because we were going outside. We got into her car and found ourselves at the beach. We'd gone there a few times late at night over the summer - mostly around performance weekends. (I remember that because we would both hop around for awhile and kick sand at the waves, then run opposite directions along water, and then, at the top of our lungs, we'd sing/shout whatever we wanted the ocean to hear. For my part, I mostly sang the French verse of "Storybook" from The Scarlet Pimpernel; I think I sang it better to the ocean than I ever did to an audience. With more oomph, certainly.) That night, we didn't do much raucous shouting or singing, though. I remember that we took our time getting to the water's edge; I remember stepping into the water; then I remember running, as fast as I could possibly go, away from Kate and the factory; and then I remember stopping, just looking out and feeling my heart pound like mad. And then Kate was next to me. I don't think we said anything at all. We just stood there for a long time, looking around, and then we both turned around and started walking back to the car. I was about to look back at the ocean one last time (sentimentalist that I am), but right then Kate took my hand. "I like New York in June. How about you?"

By the time we got to the last "How about you?", our feet were dusted off, and we closed the car doors to shut out the cool, salty ocean air.

Well, Kate. Now that I've had time to really think about it, I don't know how I feel about New York in June. I mean, I've never seen it. But Oxnard in August - that was nice.