This listserv has caught me at one of the busiest and chaotic points of my life. With only one more semester of university ahead of me it's hard to know what to write. Should I talk about what brought me to where I am today? About how the last few years of my life have changed me? Or maybe my plans for the future.
No, instead I want to talk about right now, partially because none of those things are particularly interesting, partially because just thinking about the future enough to make me anxious. Right now I'm reading A Memory of Light, the 14th and final book in the Wheel of Time series. I've been reading this series since I was 13 and my time with the world and characters includes my entire adolescence. I'm sad that the story is ending, it feels like I am saying goodbye to an old friend.
More goodbyes lurk on the horizon. At the end of this semester I'll be saying goodbyes to friends both old and new. I will have to say au revoir to the city, adieu to my school, and so long to a country.
But just as I can pick up my beaten copy of The Eye of the World, I can return to all of these people and places in the future. Maybe it's better to think of them as 'laters' than farewells.
For now, I plan to take my time reading A Memory of Light and to savor my last few months here. The future is uncertain; in April I will be starting a new chapter in my life and who knows what will happen after Tarmon Gai'don. There will be new places, new friends, new books, but they'll never replace the old ones, nor do they have to. And that is comforting.
"The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legends fade to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the third age by some, an Age yet to come, an age long pass, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings or endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning."
Ciao,
Zak Strassberg
Montreal, QC, Canada
[email protected]