Still, what can you say? I was very young, or at least in hindsight I seem that way. Even last year, even six months. I remember sitting in that class and somehow, somewhere, feeling like I was onto something, feeling as though my work mattered collectively; as though that idea wasn’t only my own. How did I manifest that self-importance? I still like that I used to go to that class, that spring afternoon class, on left over Vicodin from a bad bout of strep throat. Now that I think about it, I think it was that which gave me that first sensation of peace, of the freedom from the anxiety. Strange to realize that now.

What was my intent when beginning that class? I remember walking into that room, seeing that tiny blonde woman sitting at the head of the table with a smoothie, and thinking I was really in for it, a whole semester with this total dimwit I was sure wrote some ridiculous poetry about silly Los Angeles type things. I don’t remember how I finally accepted her; she was funny, smart. I suppose that’s what surprised me more than anything.

I remember getting into the Advanced class thinking it was normal, that was what you did, the same with language, math, everything. Then hearing in class only three had been admitted out of the fifteen who applied, because the Professor had said, “only three were good enough.” Who knows the reason for that now. More likely than not the choice had little to do with us and our work and more with the English department, bureaucracy, and the Professor’s ever-present desire to cause a stir. I searched for the ever elusive, mysterious Professor everywhere, the bold hero whose values overrode the demands of collegiate bureaucracy (of which I had no intent or reason to oppose until I was drawn into the mystery). Then the anxiety which followed that summer, unable to write and damning myself for my lack of practice; by the time I returned to school I was a wreck, I was miserable. And walking to that class, dear God, catching two hopeful adds on the way, how that did little to abate my horror. And the room, that grandiose, English, dark wood room, the preposterous round table with the broad light fixture; too large, too serious, too perfect, and when he entered the room and gave us that first piercing glare over the bridge of his glasses clutching the Cantos and a small notebook, how perfectly, frightfully, everything I could have ever hoped for or imagined.

So much of this thing has been spent dwelling in the past, fishing it out and making sense of it and putting it back in again. I suppose it has to happen sometime, why not on idle Florentine afternoons and nights?

My English professor (who makes me wish with all my might that I had realized earlier how full English is) today said fall was here, that it was too bad it had come so early. How is it we know these things? I knew too that without a doubt we had begun the descent, that these most recent were no longer the simple summer thunderstorms. Something about them changed. And we knew.

I am beginning to understand what Matt has always said about headphones: they are a far more intimate way of experiencing sound. It swims in your head rather than around the room and filtering in. Very nice.