Shimmer

When my alarm went off a little after 6 this morning I did not want to get out of bed. I hit the snooze button as many times as I could until it was very nearly 6:30, the time I really need to have feet on pavement in order to get my run in before heading over to the transcription office.

I pulled on my red shorts and gray top, picked some cd's and a baseball hat, and headed out into the gray and misty morning. I took my usual route, crossing the street to the Catholic church and then wending my way through North Cambridge ending on Brattle Street. As I approached Harvard Square, I heard a bagpipe in the distance and decided to turn off my walkman to see if I could figure out where it was coming from.

Turns out it was graduation day at Harvard and true to form the kids are underachievers, already milling about in their robes at barely 7 in the morning. I watched them appear from the mist one at a time and heard the bagpipe music grow stronger, until I was at one of the gates of the school, where the bagpiper was standing and degree candidates were streaming in. I had this odd feeling that the world had shimmered somehow, and transported me someplace different. Not necessarily back in time, but to someplace timeless instead, as if that bagpiper and that sea of students had always been there, was always there, but I had only now just seen it.

And just in case you're wondering, if you go to Harvard to get a really fab robe. None of that cheap-ass thin scratchy polyester.