Oh, the Places You'll Go

A great and beautiful thought has overtaken me just now

Perhaps you might find it equally marvelous

The rooms I’ve lived in – who lives in them now?

Houses on Windsor, Beverly, Oxford and Kings Court – all regal in name, but simple in structure

In Allen Hall, Lambda Chi Alpha, Chalmers and East Armory

Arcobaleno in Milan, Italy

One apartment and two houses in Denver, Colorado

A dorm room in Queens, New York

A temporary residence in Brooklyn, New York

And the room in which I now sit, 4 stories high in East Harlem, New York

These are the places I’ve called home, if only for a time

Someone calls them home today

Who are those people who share such an intimate piece of my life?

What stories are unfolding in the confines of those walls, particularly the walls of the fraternity – boy, I do wonder

Our stories and lives meander and weave together in the most miraculous of ways

I’ve lived approximately 15 places in my life, not counting the hospital in which I was born

15 places that exist in this moment, which I recall so distinctly, but are shared by another

And in this one city there are 18.9 million people inhabiting X million number of rooms with X million stories and moments to recall 

It can make one’s heart swell

These are my memories; the crab apple tree that hung over the shed in our back yard and the mint leaf patch on the east side of the house; a brand new bicycle waiting in the “nice” room that rarely held company; a birthday party in a backyard tent; mud sliding by the elementary school and dirtying the brand new shower with a thin lair of grime that would never wash away; late night conversations with an old friend and new roommate; countless moments of drunken hilarity in the latest hours of the evening; the summer of lemonade over the sound of the Decemberists; the precious last weeks of a college career; cheap wine and guitar on a balcony, thousands of miles from home; reconnecting with a brother; cigarettes and hanging lights on a patio; family dinner on Wednesdays; the most challenging 6 weeks of my life endured against a wondrous skyline; the squeak of an air mattress as I lay down to sleep; warm tea and a toast, to a quarter century of life well lived, a fresh perspective in a new room, and the feeling of home once again

It can make one’s heart swell