take three
exactly seven days ago, i returned to a crazy cambridge for take three of “undergraduate education.” the characters were the same, though some minor ones will likely see less time on the set, the weather hasn’t changed much, mostly cloudy overcast, and most of the plot remains intact, i would estimate a good ninety percent.
but something feels a bit different, a good different. i’m still figuring that one out.
most of the past week has been consumed with freshman exercises, the buzz of camp harvard. interestingly, but not surprisingly, this peer advising gig has been more instructive for me already than i can ever imagine it could be for my advisees. their brilliance and eagerness inspire me to return to my dream of what harvard would be and give life to that dream. but it also inspires me to share that with others, not my specific dream, but that empowerment, an empowerment that transforms harvard from a three hundred seventy year old monolith to a wiki, an opensource, a community, that evolves with its citizens.
maybe that’s what is “wrong” with harvard–we may just need a new webmaster.
yesterday, i ate twinkie ice cream. as the name would suggest, it was twinkie and ice cream fuzed together. i found it to be a sign of how every day every person becomes more and more confused and how businesses are accommodating that confusion: things like suv-minivan hybrids and reversible jackets and those weird candies that have one flavor on the outside and another on the inside. some would suggest the confusion is bad. but i like to think that rumi was right, that indeed “perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.”
maybe my inability to pick between a twinkie and an ice cream is helping me reach closer to veritas. probably not.
it’s amusing to see how others deal with the confusion of life these days (i say these days recognizing it as my only frame; i’m sure things have always been confusing). this evening i visited the loeb center for the american repertory theatre’s production of bobrauschenbergamerica. it was a plot-less collage of scenes and moments, ideas and soliloquies, staged on a set of an american flag. a style of theater that really captures the confusion of a mind blitzed by a million thoughts a moment and very few conclusions.
one of the more memorable moments of the piece came with the announcement of a character that there was more space than time in the universe. definitely a point to ponder. he said something else that was neat: life as we observe it is always history (a physics explanation, of course, of waves and neurons).
as we wrapped up the night–now back from the theater, in our newly decorated room, my roommates and some guests engaged in one of those spontaneous harvard conversations that make me love this place. the substance of the discourse has all too quickly meshed with a longer internal dialogue that i’ve been having on identity and community, a topic that will likely surface in more detail as year number three steam rolls ahead.