My government docs class took a field trip to Lansing this morning to see the Library of Michigan. (No pics, because I thought there would be security checkpoints, which, surprisingly, there weren’t.) Very handsome newish (1990 or so) building, impressive collection, a cool assortment of rare books, sharp librarians. We didn’t see much else of Lansing other than a few older-looking houses along West Kalamazoo on the way to the freeway. There were at least three large Bush-Cheney ‘04 signs on farmland along the side of I-96 that I saw as we passed through Ingham County on the way back to the island of Kerrydom that is Ann Arbor.

I had a conversation with a fellow in my class who said that he was carrying a Kerry-Edwards button on his backpack but didn’t have that much enthusiasm about the Democrat. Nobody I know has much enthusiasm about Kerry, and that says far more about Kerry than he would be willing to admit. He is a cautious, cerebral, plodding man, aloof, patrician, and very New England, reminiscent in some ways of two failed Democrats of past presidential campaigns, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. The only reason that Kerry will win this race (if he wins it) is that he isn’t Bush, and when you think about it, that’s not really much of a reason to vote for anybody. If Kerry hasn’t given us more of a reason to vote for him, he has nobody to blame but himself.

The start of October last year was unseasonably cold, although according to the National Weather Service, on October 8 last year it got up to 80 degrees. So far, this year seems to have been much more on the Indian summer side of the ledger. No rain yet this month, and it’s supposed to get up into the high 70s tomorrow and Friday. Today was almost like the first day of spring in some ways. For whatever reason, tonight the area around South U and East U was packed with chattering, fun-seeking undergrads, along with a few rowdy out-of-towners poking fun at the safe sex shop on South U near Forest; the burrito place I often go to, which is usually close to empty, was filled with customers. There wasn’t even the hint of a chill in the air when I was waiting for the bus.

Time is on my mind. Time is always on your mind when you get to be a certain age, and while I’ve always been obsessed to a greater or lesser extent with the passage of time (when I was in college I kept tally of where I’d been on a given exact date five and ten years previously and made predictions about where I’d be five and ten years hence), as you get older, the obsession is no longer a hobby or a pastime – it’s simply an inescapable reality, as close to you as your dreams when you’re asleep. There are occasions when I’ve got another five hours to go in an already long day and want this whole grad school experience to be “over.” Yet at the same time I remind myself as often as I can that it will be all over, in a matter of less than seven months, which is amazing, considering that when I started this whole journey it seemed like it would last forever. And then what? Who knows. We are going to be here another year at least, given that Steve needs to get his education degree. And I will work, at something, hopefully gainfully. Yet time seems to press on you. I especially think of how looming time becomes when I walk around campus among a crowd of kids that are close to half my age. They are all so blithe about time; it’s their insidiously ingratiating friend, they have nothing but time, they don’t think of it at all except as something to take for granted. It’s elastic and boundaryless, like a virtual-reality playground. I know this because I had the same feelings about time at that stage in my life myself and can feel the vapor of those exact same feelings rising from the undergrads as they stroll by, laughing, happy, oblivious. I concede that I was much more the brooding sort than most undergrads when I was at that point in my own life, but even so, time seemed generous and warm and full as many days as not, indeed it sometimes felt lazily voluptuous in its abundance (especially in a serene environment like Northern California), and it took effort to remember time and how little of it was left, except when I was blindsided by it every now and then, like in the cataclysms of world events, or in the realization that there was only a month of my year overseas, or only a semester of college, period. Now those deadlines feel at once more mortal and more mundane. Funny how that is. You expect the shocks of time as you advance in years, particularly as people and other loved ones around you move on or pass away, or as cultural icons that shaped your life pass on, and even when those shocks startle you and throw you for a loop, as they inevitably do, you are still somehow less naïve about them, less strangled by their cruelty. I don’t know when that feeling of expectation (not to say vigilance) starts to grow on you. Probably in your mid-20s. It’s something I ponder when I look at those carefree undergrads during these autumn days.

School is very busy; I’m not feeling quite as crushed with the volume of labor that I was last term, but that’s not to say I’m coasting by any stretch. The schedule I have, I think, is what’s kicking me up one side and down the other. I have classes in the evening from 5-8 twice a week (Monday and Wednesday night), and most of the other days I have work or my Government Documents internship. The schedule is making up in time pressure what it may lack in volume-of-work pressure. I fortunately do have pockets of break time during most of my days, though, which is welcome, and Thursdays I only have to be on campus until 2.00 most weeks. And I’m learning a great deal.

I spoke too soon when I said autumn was stomping in; it’s more like a tentative creep. The temps are noticeably lower each night. We had to drag in Steve’s pepper plants from the patio last night because the temperature was expected to drop to 29 degrees. But this morning, while chilly, was not as chilly as yesterday morning, and the day warmed up considerably as the sun ascended into its midday position. I wore a fleece pullover that turned out to be somewhat superfluous until it became close to sunset. The geese are flying in circles, it seems, unsure of whether to stay or go. Most of the trees along the Huron seem to be still green. It’s a prolonged Indian summer, and though autumn’s knocking politely on the door, it’s not fully here yet.

Seems that a misprinted Michigan absentee ballot for one precinct made some news in the last few days.

Lordy is 2-Nov gonna be wacky or what?