[dar-list] the [beginning] of the summer

[Wood Alexander]

Wow! What a great, heart-felt post! Thanks, Amy, and
all the best!

--- Amy Whipple <newnonfiction at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've always been struck by how, in college, the
> beginning of the summer so
> closely resembles "The End of the Summer."  I've
> packed dorm rooms to go
> back home, stayed in my apartment as the town buzzed
> around me.  A month
> ago, I watched as everyone packed their belongings
> and headed off into the
> worlds they previously knew or the worlds they were
> about to create.  
> 
> As I started to load my last carfull of things (and
> it's taken way too many
> at this point), I realized that I, too, had finally
> come to the moment where
> "we push ourselves ahead."  A sky that started out
> so colorful this morning
> crept to a drizzly gray by afternoon, where it's
> landed in that odd
> muggy-chill of an early summer night in Virginia.  A
> few random things
> surround me, and I've got my sleeping bag on the
> floor for one last night
> in, what I've deemed the last couple of days as, a
> heroin den.  But it's sad
> to leave my absolutely beautiful apartment behind in
> a town that, when I
> first heard "The End of the Summer," I never thought
> I'd understand, let
> alone conquer.  Mrs. Dalloway looks about how I
> feel, so confused to see all
> of her things gone, with just a smattering of toys
> littering the floor.
> 
> In the last month or so, I've found myself
> gravitating heavily to Dar and
> Mary Chapin Carpenter, the two people whose music
> really helped me through
> the awful transition of freshman year.  But so much
> has changed, so much
> time has passed.  Two degrees and one-fourth of my
> life later, I'm left to
> know that part of me is still that eighteen-year-old
> girl.  And, yet, when I
> think about her, I sometimes think, Was that really
> me?  It's interesting
> how much Dar and MCC have changed in their music in
> the last six years as
> well.  It's like there's so much growing up to be
> had, even when you're
> technically already all grown up.
> 
> I also wonder if Pittsburgh will give me new music
> -- a thought I had to a
> smaller degree as I finished undergrad and headed
> into the graduate program.
> Is there someone new who will lead me through a
> transition that rivals only
> the one I made six years ago?  Or will it be Dar,
> MCC, and Susan, providing
> a comfort zone that feels so protective?  I also
> wonder if it will always be
> this hard, moving on from one place to another? 
> When do I finally get to
> say, here, this is where I want to settle?  Or will
> there always be the push
> of, You must move on, you can't stay here forever?
> 
>  
> 
> The End of the Summer (album) has been out now for
> ten years.  I feel that,
> perhaps, when the actual end of the summer comes, we
> should have the best
> card exchange ever.  It just seems right, you know?
> 
>  
> 
> Okay, Dar-listers, that's enough for now.
> 
>  
> 
> Best,
> 
> Amy
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