a thought at 6 AM...

i got some of my younger homeboys from church over tonight for an end-of-the-semester sleepover, and we were going over some of the tales, exploits, and journeys of their (only recently abandoned) halcyon high school days. i was reminiscing as well, and it brought up heck of old memories, like when my car got broke into in the parking lot senior year, or that time that I got detention for disrespecting our (ex-cop) driver's ed teacher, or going to Six Flags for those physics/AP physics field trips (holla @ Tim Serge)...

then i was just looking over some facebook profiles, kids who graduated with me from high school, seeing what they're up to now. i still retain reasonably close relationships with a handful of them, but especially for those guys and girls that i havent seen since graduation, or maybe only at the occasional party/get-together at Jackson's place or with the px crew, it's real interesting to see how our lives are going. in some ways, we're pretty much the same as it ever was: i don't feel surprised to see my peer group expanding our range of roles. but, at the same time, it's incredible to think that we've left high school so far behind, so far in the past... it feels like it's been forever since we've been gone. what happens when more of our lives have passed since high school than before it? we look back on grade school now and think, we were so very young - but my generation is starting to move on to the point where even high school is surrounded by the same air of wistful disdain.

what happens when bright college years pass the same way?

some of these kids i've seen as recently as last March; for some of them, our graduation was the last time that i've seen them in person. the one thing that we have in common, of course, is that we all spent four years in the same tiny social pool, streaming around and over and just past one another. in ways, it's not surprising to think back on them and - despite the distance between some of us - fondly recall those hours, days, weeks, and years spent, more fondly even, in ways, than those spent in college. College, after all, is precisely the experience of emerging into a larger, less personal, community; the close bonds are all the more tight-knit for it, but those who are the Other are distinguished, set apart, far more so. In high school, especially one so comparatively miniscule as ours, we were, for better or for worse, in it all together.

hey, guys.

what up?
















































































([||] on this picture)

(also incredible: all these pictures together are smaller than 3 of the pictures taken by my current camera[phone])