Music: 10000 Maniacs - These are the Days

Prenostalgia... Tom Lehrer jokes about it, but in a sense, the coming change is always the freshest lettuce, when memories are new, it's easiest to look at now, and see the wrapping up of things, and think what they'll mean when they're gone. The lab meeting, all these people that have come to mean something to me, and the wind washes over it all, smudges what was perfectly clear, in time. When you see a statue in a park, a painting in a museum, we come to respect the antiquity, but the original is so distant. All the smiles and struggles, how the injury coalesces into a scar and a thought, which may eventually fade.. how quickly the lipstick on the neck and the faint crumple on the skin left by a hug disappear. The present moment always beckons, the personality survives. I held the empty water bottle up, and could feel it vibrate to the sound of the speaker's voice. Memory, a resonance.. It is time to make new patterns..

I'm not really walking out the door alone -- a few other people are leaving or have recently left the lab (graduated).