It’s 11 am when I checkout of the Lost Pines resort and I’m walking out with my luggage. I pass by a car and Megan, our class president and I see each other. She hops out and we embrace, a tight warm hug. We both talk about how it’s not sinking in and I’m sure it will hit us later.
She’s looking resplendent in a beautiful white bodycon style dress and looks like an angel, a young woman with an incredible competence and wisdom beyond her years mixed with a vulnerability and innocence that endears her to everyone. A gentleman in a golf cart shouts out to me asking if I need a ride to the parking lot. It breaks our reverie. We bid each other goodbye and soon I’m chatting with this man about my stay. He asks me questions about the program, how difficult is it? All I can do is gush about it. As he helps me load up my car he shares he’s just moved from Waikiki, Hawaii and he has the time and just feels like he wants to do it though he doesn’t think he needs it. It isn’t cheap I say, but I notice that cost is not on his mind. I take in his face, could be in his 50’s, lean and fit, some grey in his goatee, well dressed and probably well to do. I like doing this here as I get to know people but maybe I’ll go back to school he says. Would be fun perhaps he shrugs, palms on his waist. I shrug back and say I didn’t know exactly either and I don’t regret it, it’s been a beautiful fun ride I’m going to cherish the rest of my life. He nods, tips his cap and soon he’s offering a ride to a couple unloading their car.
I marvel at the beautiful day outside as I drive out. April in Texas is exquisite and these grounds are magnificent. Everywhere I look I’m met with a brightly illustrated canvas of multicolored pops of flowers on young ebullient carpets of fresh greens. The Texas sky so blue and vast and promising, barely able to conceal its exhilaration, stretching out to far reaching corners, a blushing bride of a big hearted open skied spring. It wasn’t possible for the earth to look more in love.
I finally scan my key card to exit the premises and putter about with my radio. ‘This American Life’ is on NPR. I start paying attention when they talk about minions and Bob’s sister. I catch snatches and try to put the pieces together, an octopus drawing, no one knows the gender, a teacher and students, a drawing that goes missing, the mystery around it, a funeral, some eulogies and some very amused and sad students. It all sounds very charming but I debate if I want to call anyone or if I just want to be alone with my thoughts and if so, should I turn on the radio?
I’m overwhelmed but in a state of stasis. I’m not ready to feel but also eager to process the joy of it all. I decide to listen on. It’s the second story on ‘This American Life’ about a violinist. My thoughts drift away to the weekend and there’s a smorgasbord of images from the past two years. To all the faces that now feel like home. I tune back in to the radio as I sense the hint of emotion deep within.
This is the final week for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera. The orchestra members are each talking about how they feel and the dialog goes from snippets of conversation from the start to the middle and this final stage of their 35 years, roughly more than 13,000 performances, of playing in the pit every day at the same time, with the same people, in the same way. They’ve all signed contracts that bind them to play till the end of the show. They think it could be a few years and then decades pass by. One calls himself a violin operator and dreams up elaborate machinations in his head of an artificial band of automatons that play everyday but for this violinist, also automated i think that throws in a twist at every performance. There’s a drudgery and soullessness some feel from this profession. The best of the best, well paid artists doing the same thing every day. A lady talks about the sensation of nausea every time she performs, another about how the Groundhog Day-ness of it all appeals, then amuses you at first and then it becomes something else. “Great job Linda’ at the same time from the same person in the same place every day. One guy who was lucky to get away says he’s buried it so deep inside he cannot remember to play a thing anymore. They talk about how parking is hard in Manhattan. Then Ira Glass, the narrator talks about his exchange with one of those rare people, he says, a woman with absolutely no filter who recounts how people changed and what they said and how they felt. They were annoyed with everything and everyone, and complained about it all. A woman did not speak to me for weeks because she felt I smelled of some kind of gardening/plant implement or spray. Another would sit down with his back turned to everyone in the locker room. He had shades on the side of his glass, she said because he couldn’t stand the sight of me anymore. Years later this gentleman chuckles saying she needn’t have taken this personally. He didn’t want to see anyone to his right, not just her. They were tuned into the smallest of inflections and habits, how one bragged about their children, how another laughed or talked and every little thing grated on their nerves. It took a certain kind of personality to endure this, they said. These were recordings from three years ago.
Now it’s their final week.
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/15/1169698583/phantom-of-the-opera-closes-broadway
How serendipitous I think, to be listening to this of all the times, just as we leave behind our own momentous pivotal journey of two years together. Now they’re talking about how they felt like the earth below them sunk when they learned it would be over. They start to miss the complaining, the things to complain about. This has been their way of life and now they feel sharp pangs as they know they already start to miss each other. An Oboist, let’s call her Laura, says she chose to be angry about all the things she hated about her job so she cannot feel sad and it worked really well until now. I don’t feel bad about anything now she says since it’s been festive with a lot of activities during their closing week. We had a photo-op and it was fun, we were all on stage with our poster and getting each other to sign them like it’s a yearbook. Those things we were annoyed about, we needed them, another says, but they’re all disappearing now, I’m not bothered by any of those. I just feel love and a sadness.
I keep drawing parallels and reminisce with a grin about our own journey with an already distant fondness that feels like it’s too soon. Our class, our people, our gripes and grumbling, our spirits and the support we felt, the disappointment and disenchantment but above all, the love and friendship and our journey. I turn off the radio and drive back the rest of the way in silence but my mind is buzzing and my heart is racing with emotions. It will hit me later and the floodgates will open, I know this. But for now I hold it at bay and think hopefully forward to another chapter, a different one but one still filled with all of these faces. And I’m reassured some, knowing I may be holding onto some wishful fantasies, but still I choose to believe in forging our own path and writing our own stories. I didn’t care about the stats on what oft happened or what the norm was, I only know I will be home again.
