I woke up early today (really yesterday, but you know my schedule) because a friend of mine was coming over. Early these days is around ten or so in the morning.

My friend (Ariel) and I met up with Em for lunch, who had already completed a couple classes in the morning. We relived old times we never had at the Frist cafeteria, imaging the student center of Princeton to be the basement of Usdan. With the new student center, even the basement of Usdan isn’t the basement of Usdan anymore.

We then proceeded to the Chancellor Green Library, undoubtedly the coolest interior space on the Princeton campus we’ve yet found. Most people, upon seeing it, immediately dub it the “Harry Potter Room,” though that distinction arguably might be more apt for the Grad College cafeteria, which generally looks primed for an address by Dumbledore himself. In any event, Chancellor Green is an octagonal room with two floors topped by an ornately woodworked dome, adorned with stained glass and bookshelves galore on each level and each edge. Below are comfortable reading chairs and above study desks. The expectation is silence throughout, if not to read than merely to appreciate the hallowed halls surrounding.

I rejoined my Russian friends in Toltsoy’s world, lamenting how little I’ve been able to read amidst the writing lifestyle I’ve developed. Some have said that one should never be writing at a higher volume than one is reading, but I feel that writing takes its toll on the desire to read. Besides, most of my reading is usually done either during a commute or just before sleep. I have no commute and I’m going to sleep after writing sessions that leave me utterly drained as dawn is threatening to break. Yeah, not exactly conducive to reading.

So I appreciated the opportunity to bury myself in a book for the afternoon, spending hours with 75 pages of the world’s most reputedly epic tome. Having discussed my general progression of becoming a slower reader for much of high school and college with Ariel, I was grateful to have sped up enough in subsequent years that I could read at such a pace. There was a time that I was convinced I would someday have to take whole days to read just a single page at the rate I’d been going.

Then home, phone calls, dinner, a brief time with Em as she worried over the day to come and we finally caught up to the current episode of “The Office”, having traversed the show’s entire history with frightening alacrity via Netflix and Hulu. Not everything I’ve done out here in Jersey can be strictly described as productive.

And then writing, the whole of chapter 35, a chapter I’m profoundly fond of suddenly, unanticipated in its depth and implications, all the more satisfying for how much it surprised me. There are chapters I know are going to be powerful, momentous, vital. Some have already passed. This one I wasn’t expecting and I deeply appreciate the characters therein for revealing themselves to me in this way. Really.

And here I am, just this side of five in the morning, worn out and really content. Not content as a proxy for slowly settling into the sediment that one’s life has become, but content in its truest, highest form. Not happy or elated, for I lack the energy for either. Just satisfied, at peace with my place in the world. This life is everything I hoped it would be, for all its solitude and strange freedom. God help me find ways to never let go, now that I’m here.