I woke up today and realized it was raining heavily—which is quite unusual in Tucson, but perhaps not during the monsoon season. I am a big fan of rain—I think it bears with it some heavenly touch. I often find myself seated next to my window, watching outside as the first droplets hit the ground, as it starts to become grey and everyone begins scampering for shelter.
But today, in the spirit of rain, I wanted to go back to a space that has, for a long time during my stay at the University of Arizona, been intimate to me. And when best to do this, if not on a rainy day?
However, I got there and the rain had ceased, and the sun was shining—but not in the usual Tucson hot way.
Attachment to Places and Spaces
This place has for sure shaped the way I look at life, and I think it is going to be dearly missed. There is some calmness it brings with it: overlooking the mountains, human beings in their element and ecosystem, and the extreme silence that comes with it.
I remember last semester, I used to overhear—gladly—some of the gossip a group of girls had about a guy named Chad or something… I would laugh my lungs out, even forgetting that I shouldn’t have been listening in the first place. But grace was extended to me too.
Nature
Margaret Ogola writes: “Nature is inimitable in its beauty and power and endless variety.”
Wait, let us dissect this. Nature? But what exactly constitutes nature?
I remember scratching my head with Dr. Jacobs, my MA supervisor (and an incredible human being—I am yet to meet someone else with her grace-You shaped me in ways beyond the imaginable). At first, I thought nature was trees, animals, the sun, wind, etc. But well, nature is also the natural—the almost routine, and what seems and feels like a logical order too.
And Beauty? Goro Wa Kamau can help me here—he says, “Beauty is the promise of happiness.”
And lastly, power and endless variety—I think this is about the control, about the infinity.
And that, I think, summarizes this space I have been in—Nature in the orthodox aesthetical way, but also the routine, Beauty in the promise of something bigger and better—happiness and lastly its attempt to control and to seize but also letting go and allowing infinity (German Unendlichkeit)- my favourite word in German after Sehnsucht (Longing).
Letting Go?
So, I decided to come here, in my liminal state (waiting for the next thing), and in these final times, I want to savour—perhaps hoard—my last experiences here.
Sheldon Cooper says, as he looks with sadness at their gracious home before leaving for college:
“I want to take it all in one last time.” Then Missy comes in (could be expected of her anyway):
“Will you remember me?”
Sheldon says: “I have an eidetic memory.” (classic Shelly)
“Huh—you will rememer me,” chucks Missy again.
In a way, I will remember this space not only for the structure of it, but for the many emails, applications some succesfull many rejects, and the assignments I wrote here. I will also remember processing here the fears , panics, anger, rage—and also, but most importantly, the wonder, the smiles, the beauty, the incoming flights, the sun, the mountains, the gossip, the rain—experienced while pondering over what life is and could be, in this particular location. And yet it continues to be…as I exit.
To Weaver Library, 5th Floor
Thanks again.
Sources:
Ogola, Margaret. I Swear by Apollo. Nairobi: Focus Publishers, 2002.
Kamuri, Peter Kairu, ed. When the Sun Goes Down and Other Stories from Africa and Beyond. 2012.
Young Sheldon. Created by Chuck Lorre and Steven Molaro. CBS, 2017–present.
Introduction 
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