The croc on the couch.

The croc on the couch. scratchy meditations.

oh! the places you’ll go!as the 184th Commencement of Denison University is now over and the Class of 2025 has now gradu...
05/18/2025

oh! the places you’ll go!

as the 184th Commencement of Denison University is now over and the Class of 2025 has now graduated, the words of farewell to my senior friends feel more sincere and solemn than it ever has been. the “have a good summer” becomes “i wish you good luck wherever you go”, and it’s no longer just “see you again” but “i hope we see each other again”.

i have been strolling around to reminisce the colors of time. the items in the donation bins that used to belong to someone of somewhere. the empty dorms and apartments. the names on bulletin boards and posters. the present tense becomes the past tense.

but the end of college is marked by Commencement for a reason. college sends you off to new places, new people, new experiences, new futures, new lives. so i hope at a point in the future (next year?) our lives will cross paths again and we will tell each other all the fun things we’ve done since leaving the Hill.

lmw.
363 days from the 185th Commencement,
18-May-25

give me the wings.there was this Greek story of Icarus, who flew on wings of beeswax and feathers to escape the labyrint...
04/28/2025

give me the wings.

there was this Greek story of Icarus, who flew on wings of beeswax and feathers to escape the labyrinth that his father Daedalus has built. alas, he flew too close to the sun that the beeswax started to melt and the feathers started to fall away. so the poor Icarus lost his wings to the westerlies, and his life to the Aegean waves.

this year perhaps i have been flying too close to the sun. i have felt the sun kissing my cheeks and my back and my calves, and i have felt my feathers ripping away with the wet wax. the humble acceptances of defeat where i did not expect one. the long walks in the night that one only does when they are helpless like a lost time traveler. the sense of relief or regret at the cusp of change. the removal of what was, with no sense of renewal of what is or reception of what will be.

but also, perhaps, Icarus was destined to fall, for if he was real and did not fall we would not have a story to tell, and if he was made-up the story would be boring.

so this is where it has been destined to be. a period of reflection in a time uncertain. a chance to walk slowly and cherish this time together. a sloppy finish to an unsettling chapter, but to open the next adventures.

the heart falls where it carries itself to. and Icarus has perhaps felt the brief freedom in the brightest glory before his fall. in a sense, the loss of wings is a kind of liberation.

“you deserve better than this bro.
i know, i deserve to be free.”

pic: L.P. and i took a bunch of pinhole camera pictures of the trees behind Olin.

lmw.
27-Apr-25

Hear me notwhen I tell you it’s time to departfor then I may have already lostmy mind to brutal whirlwindsand scorching ...
06/25/2023

Hear me not
when I tell you it’s time to depart
for then I may have already lost
my mind to brutal whirlwinds
and scorching heat I felt since
you came with all those dangling thoughts
but who am I to force?

Abrasive you were
that now I think of me to you
like a mirror image, for we see too few
of the realities when we part ways
and too much of those platonic hard days;
our seamless match was indifference swelling:
Red Army tanks and IV needles, yes,
you can’t come in without breaking something.

lmw.
25-Jun-23

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