Flights of Fancy

It has been ten days since the last graduation party of the summer.
The story I finished for Doc was finished yesterday.
David leaves for college tomorrow.
His birthday is the day after that.
I move into school in five days.

This past Thursday, I went to Kelly's beach house for what was to be the last get-together of the summer. It wasn't the last time I'd see Kelly, and it probably isn't the last time I'll see Nick, but I knew that, after that event, I could very well never see Rachel, Kim or Kristina again for a long, long time.

Anyway, at one point on Thursday night, we went to a beach near the house. (Not the beach at the beach house. A different beach.) It was a clear night. A good percentage of the stars were blacked out by light pollution and the occasional cloud, but there were still enough visible to warrant my laying on my back in the sand to look up and lose myself in them. I've spent my whole life with stars above my head, but I never really stopped to watch them until one night in Arizona. I've never seen so many stars as I did on that night. The stars on the beach weren't nearly as bright or as numerous, but their twinkling was enough to get me in one of those Lani moods, during which everything becomes a metaphor.

When I sat up, I saw Nick and Kim standing calf-deep in the water talking. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but regardless, I got to thinking. They were standing in dark, open water. The flow of conversation was interrupted at points when a fish would make itself heard through the bubbling and splashing in the tide. It reminded me of the plunge that we're all about to take. We're all about to jump into the depths with both feet. The thing is, am I really ready? Don't forget, I'm afraid of water.

Stop the world, I want to get off,
Lani