no small plans.

a temperate day
brings clouds to the horizon
dark, heavy with rain

along the rain soaked pavement, my steps click with a sticky dampness to the steady crunches of automobile tires along the wet street, sounding more like the pulling of masking tape from beige rolls. lights glimmer with an eeire aura, reflecting themselves onto the blurry glassy road like snakes that slither away as i walk towards them. red snakes, green snakes, and the rarer, temporal, amber snakes, all disappear as i approach. the air smells of damp earth and car exhaust, and i can catch the faint flowery scent of candy or blossoms hanging in the air from the two women who walk in front of me in all-black and heels. with a brisk breeze the scent vanishes, and all i am left with again is the smell of soil and night. time feels exhausted, and the world seems to heave a sigh before settling into its padded arm chair with a glass of scotch, relieved to be refreshed, but at the same time, warm and cleansed.

as i walk to lunch with a friend, we overhear bits and pieces of a conversation between two guys beside us. one says to the other, "did your dad tell you he wanted you to be the best?" where else but here would we hear something like that, my friend asks. there is something about this institutution, i think to myself, where people strive beyond what i can call reason to make names and reputations for themselves. a year ago, i knew nothing about this place, the gravity of learning here, and the legacy in the gothic-revival stonework, which makes up most of campus, choked by vines, now hibernating in their grey-brown stupor. the people here are a bust, and while i long for the fun experiences i had in undergrad, i try reminding myself it's now all about business, and i'll be done in three months. talking to kim online, i lay out my master plan for life, lofty to say the least, while she still has another year of grad school to figure things out and make connections. it seems the problem with plans is that the pieces must fall into place, and while it is clear that many times, they don't, and yes, i will be ok somehow, it's nice to dream and dream big - even when the images are fuzzy at best. "make no small plans," chicago architect daniel burnam once said, "they have no magic to stir men's blood," and if the city could rise out of the ashes like the phoenix depicted on the crests of my school, surely so can i reach even higher, without the fire. is it really something about the institution, or the people? as i settle into my own chair with my own glass of scotch, to the distant murmuring rumbles of thunder, all i can do is wait for time to start up again, think about the amount of work i need to get through in the next week, and dream big.

ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.
: wilde.