No joyless forms shall regulate our living calendar.

In some other life, I must have been a Romantic poet.

Last Wednesday during English, my professor started talking about Wordsworth and his cottage in Northern England (the Lake District, to be exact). I began to imagine the green hills topped in dew and the rainbows peaking out between white clouds. I felt my heart begin to pound as I recalled the quiet country villages that I stayed in seven years ago. Seven years? Has it been seven years already?

And while I'm pretty sure about going to Stratford this summer, I feel the country pulling on my heartstrings, begging me to wander over the green hilltops and ponder my place in the world among nature and God (if he exists, along with other supernatural powers) and my fellow human beings.

While I came back to reality and began reading along with my professor, I realized that I write in much the same way as Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy. It sort of scared me. How can you be so far away from something and have it still be such a part of you? Like my Southern childhood or the two weeks I spent in Northern England, not realizing how complete I felt at so young an age. I'm thinking about that tiny town in England, I'm thinking about that grocery store, I'm thinking about tea time, I'm thinking of how out of place I really must be here.

Perhaps I've gone on too long. It's just that I am torn by nostalgia for a place I hardly remember. And I'm realizing I may never feel quite right until I can recreate that time and place.