"Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks' rage, blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout...
Rumble they bellyful' Spit, fire! Spout, rain!"
It's one of the privileges of being a senior that one can perform such outrageous acts in public and be labelled eccentric instead of a geek.
A few faces appeared at windows around the courtyard, curious about the ruckus but not foolish enough to raise their windows in the storm. We finally stopped and fought our way indoors, grinning ear to ear with spontaneity and the conviction that we had done our share to preserve the spirit of Old Eliot.
Funny thing is, I got a lot more out of that afternoon than if I had stayed inside rearranging footnotes. Sometimes you have to live life when it presents itself, to put aside all the things you're supposed to do--call it "procrastination," if you want--and just breathe.
This same idea dawned on me one night last fall while cruising the streets of Somerville with two friends in the cab of a U-Haul. We were hopelessly lost, hungry, and rapidly losing faith in the directions to the rental truck return we were given.
Just when we had gotten so grumpy we stopped speaking to each other, one of the guys pointed out that if we phoned the nearest Domino's and ordered a large pepperoni delivered to U-Haul in Somerville, we could simply follow the delivery boy and find not only our destination but a hot pizza there to greet us.
(This, by the way, is a brilliant idea in theory but in practice involves tailing numerous kamikaze-driver delivery boys through unsavory neighborhoods.)
We ended up back at Domino's, eating our pizza while squatting on the curb of the parking lot. When we finally found U-Haul it was closed, but by then we were laughing so hard we didn't care.
I went back alone the next morning and returned the truck without a problem, but it wasn't nearly as much fun. It's sad to think that a lot of people go through life that way, just getting things done and never taking time out to eat pizza in a parking lot or drag race in a moving van with Domino's deliverers.
In a way, my most vivid Harvard memories are moments like these, spent with good friends in ridiculous situations. Recalling them helps me justify all the nights I spent finding alternative activities to studying.
This is not to deny that academics dominate daily life at Harvard In my four year here my eyes have opened ever wider. I have thought and puzzled and breathed literature and politics and theory and life--had an "ejaculation of the soul" as Flaubert once said--with new insights and knowledge and curiosity exploding nearly every day.
But somewhere along the line I lost my faith in education through lecturing and learning through busywork paper assignments.
Perhaps it was when my roommate. Expos teacher lauded the sentence "My crisp memories drowned in a sea of nebulous platitudes" as an example of fine writing. Perhaps it was when a friend quoted his roommate in an economics exam as "the esteemed Finnish Communist" and his teaching fellow rewarded him with a check and an "excellent reference" comment.
Whenever it happened, I decided I would probably learn a lot more from whatever it was I wanted to be doing at that moment rather than whatever banal academic task I was supposed to be doing.
If you try hard enough, you can convince yourself that this kind of procrastination actually promotes worthy goals, like enjoying life for the moment (my TFs, of course, might disagree with this logic).
Still, if I could take one non academic lesson away with me from Harvard, it would be that you've got to live in the "now," you've got to embrace the present.
It's a comforting notion for those of us leaving here tomorrow. The next 50-old years should give us plenty of time to kick back, order a pizza and learn how to live our lives.