After an unrelentingly hot summer, the weather in Bloomington is now balmy and overcast, the air a dreamy sixty-five degrees. The early feelings of fall waft in the breeze, and with them memories of autumns past, swaddling me in a familiar melancholy, an ache I can’t easily dismiss.
I have too many ghosts in this town, and nothing summons them more fiercely than the fall.
It’s everything. It’s the rush of new students, brimming with ambition and motivation, which I once myself possessed. Such high hopes, such certain plans for the future.
It’s the sound of driven, focused practice in the halls of the music school. Halls I’ve walked now for ten years, never quite feeling I belong.
It’s knowing that somewhere, someone young and dear is falling in love, as I did. And unknowingly walking into heartbreak, as I did.
Most of all, it’s the inescapable recognition that another year has passed, another irretrievable year. And every year that passes reminds me yet again that there are questions left unresolved, questions which beg for answers, answers I have diminishing time to discover.
Too many ghosts.
Eric anderson, jr 