The Hamlet Project

A lot can happen in a month.
It doesn’t always.
Some months seem very much like the ones before it
And some inch forward very slowly
Like a tree growing
Out of the corner of your eye.
You’d never know that tree was climbing upward
Unless you measured it against your own body
(likely fairly static in its height these days.)
But I can think of months that changed everything.
That July in 1989, for example.
I was fifteen, going on sixteen
In Radford, Virginia
Learning passionately,
Surrounded by other kids who took art seriously.
For the first time,
I’m not alone
My brain is humming with ideas
My social self reaches out in every direction like an octopus, like a sponge,
like a spongy octopus.
My teachers treat me with respect
They treat me like an artist.
We are a community of arts
We learn from other disciplines.
My roommate plays the marimba.
I’ve been searching for utopia from that little month ever since.