Completed Cycle

Hello, all,

This is the last update I will post until the story restarts in about two weeks. I want to talk some about why I'm restarting and what you will find here once I do restart. And then I will tell you about New Years twelve years ago.

When I started this blog, I wanted it to seem like I was blogging about my current life--of course, these events happened over a decade ago, and I intended to be honest about that, but I wanted readers to be able to get into the story as though it were happening right now. Unfortunately, I got caught up in a lot of exposition early on, so I ended up doing a lot of telling and very little showing.

This time, when I restart the story, you are not going to get a simple re-run. Some of the posts will include old material, but I'm going to post much more often (roughly twice a week), so there will be a lot of new materials. I will describe some of my fellow students as well as the faculty, so you'll get to know more characters. I'm hoping to include illustrations with every post (I can paint and draw), and I'll include links to supplemental material, so if you want to you can look up Charlie's entire recommended reading list or Kit's lecture notes or complete menus for our holiday meals.

Yes, it will be the same "story" that you have read before, but there will be a lot more of it. More detail, more characters, and a more immediate sense of being part of the day-to-day flow of the story.

So, for New Years' itself, a few of us on campus toasted the new year in and watched the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey." We couldn't watch the ball drop, because we didn't have TV on campus, but we did have a video player. I remember standing out on one of the balconies looking out at the dark and suddenly I could hear distant cheering and fireworks bloom in the night around me as people in the nearby towns and along the roads began to celebrate. I wasn't wearing a watch; the New Year for me was auditory, in the beginning. Behind me in the room I heard voices, so I turned and joined my friends.

I don't know what the masters did. I didn't see any of them.

For the next few weeks my busy, semi-solitary, winter vacation continued. Sometime I saw strangers dressed in street clothes in campus, looking around, curious. I didn't speak to any of them, but I knew what they were doing. Sometimes I walked through the office and saw people talking to Sharon. I saw myself through the eyes of these prospective students and I looked strange and exotic in my black and white robes. I looked like what they wanted to be. At the same time, I felt normal, every day. My life had changed so much in just a year. I had changed.

Again, the masters processed into Chapel Hall and we gave them light so they could light the way for us. Graduates crossed the stage and a few more people received their green rings. The school year quickened into life again, and my time as a yearling was over.

A new cycle was beginning.