On Dread

It's been almost two days since the Presidential Election of 2016 and I still feel a bit numb.

The word that stuck in my mind today was "dread." I honestly don't remember when I felt anything as serious as "dread" before. I've endured a lot of moments of pain in my adult life: when I learned in March that my liver was ailing on account of my allergy medication; when my father collapsed last fall from a weakened heart; when I sat motionless before my parents and came out as bisexual a couple months after Obama's election; when I feared whether I would pass my general exams in grad school earlier that year; when George W. Bush won reelection in 2004; when two planes crashed into the World Trade Center on live CNN.

But in retrospect none of these moments carried with them anything close to "dread." Some even seem silly as I write them out. After all, a lot of folks suffer great fear way more than I ever have, for reasons that no one can explain.

Gimme Shelter

A Review of Ludovico Einaudi's work, exemplified by In a Time Lapse and In a Time Lapse (The Remixes) (2013)

I recently described the past week to a friend as like a hurricane. It swept in quickly but not without some advance warning; was devastating in its toll on my mental and spiritual energy; and had moments of calm amid its thrashing waves.

Part of the reason I felt this first week of the fall term so intensely, I think, is that I've become more introverted over the past few months. I feel more disconnected from students than is usual at the start of a semester--perhaps the result of my evolving administrative responsibilities in the Study Abroad Office. (I did feel relief from this scary isolation, though, when I advised a group of thoughtful and energized first-years on Friday.)