Adios Ann Arbor

I'm moving tomorrow. When I left Virginia, I was sad about the friends I had to leave, but I was glad to be out of the general atmosphere -- the stifling watchfulness, the inescapable melodrama, the unfounded moral imperatives. Now, I know I will miss the place more than any specific people.

It's not the people's fault. The past two years have been a sabbatical, and I haven't wanted to be close.

In fact, I like the population of Ann Arbor. I like that you can ask what someone's favorite book is, and they don't say The DaVinci Code; that women are respected in the north - and if that means the men are colder, then I like cold men; that I haven't been whistled at in two years, and that boys don't ostentatiously usher me through a door, but unobtrusively hold it open after they've gone through; that there are graduate students who are much, much smarter than I am; that, even though the undergraduates may dress the same, they think of interesting topics for their papers, and don't all write about the gay marriage amendment; that people are interested in different things, and that they come from different countries; that crazy people are allowed to wander the town freely, and that we pay them and call them "professors."

I like being part of a large university town. I like walking by the carillon tower and the nuclear reactor; the opportunities to hear Lessig and Zizek lecture, and Joshua Bell and the Vienna Philharmonic play; being within walking distance of a Botanical Gardens, the original Borders, and three Indian restaurants; taking a break between classes to examine the first extant Pauline manuscript (under glass, of course), and an Egyptian mummy.

I like the freedom of Ann Arbor: that there are sidewalks everywhere, and that people walk on them, and restaurants put chairs on them and serve meals on them; that I feel safe walking on them late at night; that people can do modern dance or smoke pot in the middle of the lawn and no one cares; that sidewalks are built where people walk, and people don't have to walk where the sidewalks are built; that sometimes funny graffiti doesn't get painted over and that we can drink champagne on the last day of class.

There are a lot of other things I like about Ann Arbor, but this is getting dull. Anyway, I'll be sad to go. Somehow it seems like I've lived under glass for the past two years -- well, under glass in a different way than I was under glass in THC. Not under a microscope slide for everyone to inspect. Under glass in the sense that I haven't had even a bad cold, let alone a chronic disease. In a funny way, I've felt safer here. It's been good, but I guess it couldn't really last.