The end of an era.

The university era has come to an end for me this month, July 2010. Papers and thesis have been submitted. Results have been released. Walking down the isles of the libraries triggered a different feeling. Different senses than the ones that I perceived when I was in rush for finishing those academic papers. They were emptier than before. Winter break it has been. It was a chilly evening, the mercury stood between 9 and 10 degrees. Jumping off the tram at Stop 11, I found the pathways emptier. The trees along the pathways are bare, more than the last time I recalled, which only a week or two away from now. Mere empty branches, leaveless. Winter has took them off of the trees.

I reckoned that the cafes close earlier. Came at 4.30 and the staff of Professor's Court cafe were folding the chairs and closing the sliding glass door, preparing to close it. The taste of the muffins are still familiar, and so do the chai latte.

They looked different to me now 'though. Never knew why, I sort of looking at replicas ("a replica is a copy that is relatively indistinguishable from the original, which are a copy used for historical purposes, such as being placed in a museum", according to Wikipedia). Or artefacts perhaps. They're fading away from my memories. I felt like the curtain of the cinema is rolling down, starting to cover down the main screen of my part of life here, if my chunk of life here is illustrated as a movie, with stories and plots, laughters and tears, food, travels, lunches, dinners, celebrations, seminars, rains, hails, flood, drought, fires.

I don't know why, I always have a strong feeling of time as a linear process, the feeling that I always move forward, not backward, and defnitely not static either. Everytime I move from one city to another, there's always been the sense of 'closing and opening curtain'. In between, there have always been series of adjustments, famliarization to the new work, places, senses, smells, crowds, speed, temperatures, traffics, markets, skies, and the peoples, most of all. And likely, when all things were way too familiar, too established, too settled, I started to smell a sort of, boredom, a weariness of sameness. Losing of challenges. City's dynamics turned into statics. Familiar routes to and fro work place started to look like the same page of book that I read over and over. So did the job. The page needs to be turned to the next. Moving. It is hard to be a sedentary creature*, indeed.


Note:
*definition of sedentary: "remaining or living in one area, as certain birds; not migratory", from www.thefreedictionary.com)