Hanging by a Moment

I kept telling myself this past week that I was going to sit down and write a blog. I had all my ideas planned out on paper and everything. I guess I was just busy having a life.. so I could write about some of it here =P. I need a job because the "Jess-fund" is ever-so-rapidly declining.. so my search for one is ongoing. Hopefully I'll be going for an interview in a couple of days and then tomorrow I have to call Kohls. I can't believe that it's July already. Its seems as if summer has just started.. and yet, in some ways it's almost over. Although I have a plethora of things to write about now that I haven't written in awhile.. I'll only mention two of them:

1) Graduation. Graduation was on the 28th of June this year. I played flute for wind ensemble like every year. The ceremony was nice and I was pretty impressed with a speech or two. Unlike the previous graduations our school has had, this year graduation was outside on the football field instead of in the airconditioned auditorium. It was nice to not have limited seating.. but it was god awfully hot outside... not to mention I got scorched from sitting out there for band. I can only imagine how hot the poor graduates were under those gowns. Nevertheless is was nice to be able to see all of the seniors go up and get their diplomas. Graduation was the point where they all officially moved on... and it was also the day that it started to sink in for me. Junior year is finally over. I'm a SENIOR. How and when did that happen? When I walked into the band room before we went out to play, I saw so many new faces, and not the familiar ones that I have become so accustomed to. It came as a shock .. to not see those seniors talking and laughing with eachother.. putting together their instruments.. playing notes obnoxiously =P. And then I realized how different this upcoming year is going to be. Those seniors aren't coming back next year.. they are moving on to something bigger and better. And now we are the seniors. We're at the top of the school hierarchy. And in a year.. which will fly by faster than we can imagine... we will be standing right there in the seats of the seniors before us (though hopefully in the air-conditioned auditorium instead). In merely a year we will be heading off for college and leaving this all behind. A little overwhelming all in one day.

2) "No matter how long we exist, we have our memories. Points in time which time itself cannot erase. Suffering may distort my backward glances, but even to suffering, some memories will yield nothing of their beauty or their splendor. Rather they remain as hard as gems." -Anne Rice

Another thing I've been thinking about lately is memories... the memories I have, the memories I am making this summer, and all the memories to come in the future. And we will always have these memories to look back on... like a collection of colorful treasures, or a scrap-book, or a tattered old leatherbound book that you can come back to read every once in awhile. This precious collection of memories can almost be seen as the proof of our very existence...the reason we are here... for without our memories, who are we? Our experience and our memories make up the very fibers of the lives we live, and they are part of who we are... the people we become. In those memories, life as it once was is captured. You can see exactly how a person was in one specific point in time... how he winked at you or how her hair seemed to dance in the breeze. You can remember how you felt when you laughed so hard tears were streaming from your eyes or how you were smiling so much your cheeks started to hurt. You can remember how tired you were in that track workout or in those drawn-out pit band rehearsals. I'll always remember playing hockey down at the church... or listening to a trumpet player attempt to play Ironman in the beginning of wind ensemble... or just simply laying down on my bed and watching the Mets. I'll remember running in the rain for cross-country, getting soaked to the skin and covered in mud. I'll remember sitting in the back of my best friends gigantic pickup truck on the fourth of July, while listening to the Beatles and watching fireworks. I'll remember watching my boyfriends band play at some of the graduation parties and thinking how proud I was of him. I'll remember watching some of those graduated seniors gleefully burn the books and assignments they hated in hichschool in the glowing bonfire, and getting a hug from someone special while "Sweet Child O' Mine" played in the background and fireworks went off in the distance.