Party of One
Nantasket Beach
I am well acquainted with my suitcase. After all, we’ve spent a lot of time together: It’s moved me back and forth between Canada and America, between my little hometown and a city where no one knows my name, between my parents’ house and a college dorm and (most recently) a seedy summer apartment. I know that its wheels squeak at an uncomfortably high pitch. I know that its weight will bang into my calves at every other step unless I skip and hobble in a particular way. I know that it exists to displace me—and for that I resent every durable green inch of it.
After all, leaving home is hard. It is a starting-over, with both a demolition and a reconstruction. It forces me to stare hard at the aspects of myself that I cut loose, and it forces me to ask myself what I retain. How tightly am I bound to my location? What do I give up when I leave? Who am I, on my own?
Boston Lagoon
There are two kinds of apologies.
There’s the voluntary kind, the kind that involves a specific offense and a genuine acknowledgment of wrongdoing. “Sorry!” I say when I’m irresponsible, when I’m cruel, when I do something I regret and I want you to know that I regret it.
MIT Museum
“A machine may be about fabric or grease, but it may also be about thick liquid and sensuous movement. A bit deeper, it may be about meditation or the sense of release. And taken another step, it may be about pure invention and the joyfulness in the heart of its creator.” - Arthur Ganson
I live in a paper sea. It’s made up of spell-checked resumes and half-written articles and ironclad “five year plans,” and it laps a little higher with every midnight to-do list I produce. The sensation isn’t without its own peculiar thrill—ambition saturates every double-spaced line of this papery tide. The emotion is equal parts wood pulp and hunger, carbon black and drive. It is warm with the enthalpy of my exertion.
Mount Auburn Cemetery
I wear a kitschy straw hat. I carry free maps. I spend every afternoon talking to strangers. I am a tour guide, and I trade in fleeting connections.
It’s a strange profession. Off-duty, I barely register the thousands of tourists who flood Harvard Yard every day. They operate in the background of my experience, just noisy chatter and selfie sticks and inconvenient sidewalk-blocking mobs. On-duty, I become their friend. I am “The Harvard Student”—perky, accessible, brimming with stories and trivia and self-deprecation. I even come with a summary: “I’m Laura and I’ll be your tour guide today! A little bit about me: I’m a rising sophomore, I study English, and I’m a proud Canadian.” I wave, they wave, and—voilà!—everyone has met “The Harvard Student”.