November 3, 2011
If you know me at all, and have suffered through the pain of meeting me during one of my introspective moments, you can be the one to scream it before I write it: I have a rambling problem. There’s no stopping me when I start to soliloquize. And thus, when it came time to write for The Spectator and talk about what life at Hamilton is to me, I knew this was going to be it: someone’s death by diction.
So in a partially successful attempt to save everyone the agony of reading through a painfully long and insanely cerebral piece of prose, I thought I’d submit a piece of poetry I’d written my first day of pre-orientation here at Hamilton. I chose this mostly because it wasn’t a gazillion pages of emotional gibberish sans direction. But also because it sort of summed up every little ounce of fear that I had coming to not just a community I had no window into, but a culture I had merely known from afar and never experienced.
So even after the scores of wonderful people I met here, this poem is to those first nine who inspired me that day under that tree in front of South, my OA group: to Jake and Katrina, the most generous OA leaders I could have hoped for; to Meghan who allowed me the room for some awkwardness that first night; to Katie and Sabrina, the enthusiastic sources of energy and fervor throughout the trip; to Sara Kleinman, who showed me where Wertimer was; to Sara Mendel, who is easily one of the warmest people I have ever met; and to Will who can do a Gollum impression like no other! This is to all of you guys!
Colors Combine
I am some unknown color,
A shade I just don’t know
Walking in a land where I wonder
How colors even go
Will my blues and azure cobalts
Mix with the yellows of the vast sky
To form a green so deep and pure
That it dazzles every eye
Or will the blacks in me
Take over the shades of molten gold
And write a more gothic story
Than the stories I’ve thus far told
But then I stop overthinking it
And just look around to see
The palette of a gazillion colors
In the people around me
Those eyes from blue to grey
And those skins of brown to white
Each working to find its niche
In the spectrum of broken light
And so in the smiles they smile
And in the words they say
I think I see a part of me
That tells me I’ll be ok
So I go on to smile my widest
I know that I’ll be fine
Because when these colors mix
These colors will combine…
From Where I Sit is a column dedicated to the international voices of Hamilton’s campus. If you are an international student and are interested in contributing a column, contact Barbara Britt-Hysell (bbritthy@hamilton.edu).