I must confess that your thoughts about the prom confuse me. I suppose it's because I skipped out on the prom. I had no one to go with, and I didn't really want to listen to loud music and dance, way back when.

But perhaps your expectations for the prom have less to do with the excitement of the moment and more to do with memories.

Memories are like skies in Texas. Sometimes on a clear night there I walk around for hours, staring at the stars that punctuate the deep, dark blue with their light. Evening skies there seem to go on endlessly - my God, those stars are distant - and yet, the sky has a shape. It seems always to encircle the world I stand on.

I think memories are the same way: We are finite because of them; they define the limits of our world. But they are the only thing that introduces us to the infinite, ultimately, and we constantly stare into them, hoping to grasp just a teensy bit of infinite, if indeed we can.

And so, if the prom is about getting a great memory, having one night be the culmination of four years of high school, whether those years were good or bad being irrelevant, the only thing mattering that you, having grown and learned and thought, attach weight to the night, I guess I can understand.

I'll be honest, though: I'd understand better if this were about love or charity.

Most of my memories of high school involve friends, many of whom I never speak to. Only two friends from high school are in my life now.

I love and am deeply concerned with those two friends, and the only memories that are significant from that time in my life are because of them. The others are fading away, fast, even the ones about girls who could have been potential lovers - the possibility of love in the present is so powerful that it has total control over the possibility of love in the past. (Regrets stem only from the impossibility of love at a given time.)

I know there's no one you can take to the prom for whom you care, and I know you're not heartless.

Still, when reading about your problems with the prom, I sometimes think of this other girl who was 300 lbs. and not terribly bright in high school. I remember how no one would talk to her, ever, including myself.

If I were thrown back in time, I would want to have the guts to ask that poor girl to the prom. I'm not sure I would have the guts, even now.

- Memories are only as good as we are, are only as good as what we bring to them. -

I hope your prom goes well, and that, more importantly, your appreciation for others and the world allows you to make the most of what you are given. We romantics know eros and caritas are one and the same, and our yearning for romantic love and great memories is intimately linked with our hope to become better - for ourselves and others.

My best wishes to you in college.

- s.

Posted by substantial at 9:58 a.m.