12:35 a.m.

My neighbors who live in the house that faces College Avenue are having a party to, I think, celebrate the end of the school year, or maybe graduation. A fuse blew in my bedroom and now none of the lights work. The landlord didn't know how to fix it, but he called an electrician to come this week. And so I sit by the slotted, blinded light of my window and listen to the conversation and smell the cigarette smoke that trickles into my room from the silhouetted partygoers who hunch around the picnic table that is about 15 feet away from where I now sit cross-legged. Music I cannot identify pulsates from my other window and vibrates along the wood floors. I should try to sleep, but I do not have earplugs, and as much as I mostly disliked college parties, peripherally experiencing this one makes me nostalgic and flutter-hearted. Not really for any one or any thing in particular, but mostly for a certain feeling I have only realized in retrospect that I did not appreciate enough. The constantly busy, always-moving, stressed-out, blindly enthusiastic feeling that anything is possible. The knowing that your talent and knowledge and creativity is pure, without motivation, and true to the only one who matters: you. It's a feeling that only really knocks the wind out of you with its power and thrill when you're on the verge of losing it.

It is after midnight, and today last year I was also sitting on picnic table like the one outside my window. The emotion is different now. It's impossible to recultivate. Perhaps the aforementioned feeling is reserved for undergrads. At present, I am still stressed-out, but I am also forward-looking and searching in dusty corners for the inspiration I temporarily lost. It's here, I know it, and now it doesn't require a semester schedule. It's a readiness I didn't have today last year. Or even six months ago. But now I long for the wind to knock out my baited breath because I'm tired of waiting to start.