Southwestern U., Georgetown, TX, 4/2007

I was staying at a bed and breakfast across the street, so on a perfect-weather day, I decided to take a walk around campus. The guidebook in my room (which I read after visiting the campus) said Southwestern University (in Georgetown, near Austin) boasts “neo-gothic” architecture. That probably explains why I felt like a character in Wuthering Heights. Also, oddly, there was no one around. It was a Friday, why weren’t people in class or walking or sitting on campus? I felt like a character in something.

I’m no architecture expert, and probably couldn’t pick “neo-gothic” out of a guidebook; however, some of the campus (including the obelisk below) did not seem ‘gothic’ to me. And there were no gargoyles in site—so neo-gothic isn’t very authentically gothic, in my estimation. Or maybe the day was just too bright and warm to feel gray and clammy. Or maybe gothic isn’t everything I think it is.

Brown Fountain (named for a person, not a color)

Texas is known for its open space. At least it’s known to me for its open space—considering that where I lived you had to drive though A LOT of open space to get anywhere good. The campus made good use of its open space by putting stuff in the space, but not too much.

These animals didn’t realize they were on my movie set. Awww, look how oblivious they are!

The campus had some good climbing trees (below left) and high-quality shade-creating trees (below right), which made for a nice walkway.

As I walked down the path (shown below) I heard music, growing louder. By the flags I discovered a speaker, sitting there all alone, playing music. Nice, mellow music that suited the environment. I’m not sure if that speaker sitting there is a regular occurrence or a one-time statement piece, but I’m glad it was there while I was. Across the courtyard from the speaker was some construction. As I neared the construction area I got to enjoy a pleasant surround-sound effect with the sounds of activity in one ear and “Eleanor Rigby” in the other (an appropriate song choice for the emptiness of the campus). Then these combined with the perfect (not-too-dry, not-too-humid) breeze and smell of fresh-cut grass to create a nearly epiphanic moment solely meant for me, a person who rarely believes in such moments (but tries to appreciate them when they find me?). [I wish you were there to share it with, but I don’t, because if you had been there it would have been a different moment—the perfection of sound lost in the talking, or the cool breeze ignored in favor of other things to notice. At the very least “Eleanor Rigby” would have lost some of its poignancy. So I settle for having you there now, traveling back through time, arriving in spirit in a DeLorean.]

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