Wednesday is the New Friday

by Samuel Sukaton

Few of you can imagine the song in the heart that has a doubly long weekend. But some of you might share kinship with the feeling of ambling out of De Neve Commons, tweed jacket on my back, feeling the light edge of an Angeleno autumn, stomach stuffed with lunch and brain bursting with information, eyes roving behind retro-geek glasses and Adidas-shod feed waltzing up stairs, two at a time, onto Charles E. Young Drive South. Others might nod with appreciation at more prosaic, but no less uniquely poetic sensations -- my friend from high school's roommate, who has a painfully cute grin, which works its normal magic on me as I lope up the hill to Hedrick. UCLA is achingly beautiful, if you know where, when, and how to look at it -- like the room at the top of Hitch Suites which has an view all the way to the Pacific, or my own room -- you can barely see Royce's towers off in North Campus, and everything between the Hill and North Campus. The students spit truth when they say that Westwood's color palette is AMAZING -- brick red, leafy green, and sky blue, the smartest (and most beautiful) 400 acres of land west of the Rockies. I love this place, the people, the life... but there's something inside me that's not locked in, not ringing with pleasure, the part that tells lame jokes, that keeps me distant from my floormates, roommates, and classmates, the part that nags and insults and leads me to do stupid, awful things, then mocks me in my guilt, that's not simply dead weight, but a collaborator with the Enemy of all that's true and beautiful, and I'm not quite sure why I can't handle that part.

6S

Samuel Sukaton represents the Blue and Gold of UCLA.