last day of school!!! ?

remember that old cosby show episode in which cliff is complaining to claire about how he has to wake the kids up for the first day of school when they're all grumpy and miserable about having to go back to classes, while claire got to wake them up for the last day of school, when they practically lept out of bed into their clothes and straight out the door because they were so excited about summer vacation?

well, today was my last day of classes. it didn't exactly go like the cosby show version. truth be told, i'm a total sentimental sap when it comes to endings and beginnings...

today i got up early, made some coffee, and headed out to schenley park for a bit before i had to be at school for 9:00 family law. i found a nice bench on that grassy place on top of overlook drive to sit and drink my coffee and take advantage of the view of pittsburgh. i needed some space so that things could sink in. this is, after all, the last day of class...ever!

i love moments like that. silly and solitary; the kinds of moments where the point is to look at the birds chase each other around and watch the morning traffic on 376 while listening to sufjan stevens on my headphones. moments like that don't translate -- they're only mine. i will never be able to share them with another soul. and i like it that way.

lately i've been surrounded by a sense of adventure, of being on one of those life-roads. this is different than a sense of accomplishment. i think i needed to sit on top of that hill in the park this morning to be able to wrap my mind around having reached a landmark, a destination. this school thing has come to an end. it has been both universal and unique among my other adventures. the last time i was a student, the freshman and senior points were worlds apart. this time, the 1L and the 3L are basically the same. there's a lot of comfort in that. sure, now i'm a little smarter, maybe; better able to articulate some ideas; more determined to be able to support the things i'm willing to say out loud, less impulsively emotional. you know, lawyery. oh, and i read more quickly and my eyesight has gotten worse.

but this... this beauty. those solitary moments, gone as soon as they appear... and letting them pass me by, come and go; i have no desire to pin them down or take them apart. they're the stuff of poems, the stuff of melodies, the stuff of imagination.

the law is not this kind of beautiful -- the law is orderly, regimented, it makes recommendations, it is skeletal, structural. the law is not spontaneous or transient or mirthful. my brain is famished for something beautiful, something that doesn't give a damn about parameters or logic. my brain wants to feel the melancholic aftermath of tragedy; it wants to stand stock-still in wonder of things too big not to marvel; it wants to feel exhilarated at not knowing or having to find answers. i can have these things again. law school is over. i feel liberated!

...but there is also a sadness. my heart is full of my colleagues and friends, some of whom will be far away soon. whatever this law school thing has been, it was something we did together, our lives merged for a bit as we trudged through it. i wish i had the time and the energy to hold each of those people close and tell them what they've meant to me. i wish a lot of things... mostly, i'm grateful.

so, farewell to law school. farewell to my life as a student. good for me. good for us.