Osler's Razor

Spending 36 hours in Washington was a shock to my system. That city is thick with people I know, those who shared my schools and experiences for much of my life. William & Mary is a state school and many of the students are from the D.C. suburbs, and it was inevitable that many of my friends from Yale Law would end up in Washington. Eighteen years ago, I stood around drinking from red plastic cups in a dorm room with Jon Nuechterlein and Brett Kavanaugh; this morning Jon was arguing a telecom case before the D.C. Circuit and Brett is one of the judges on the panel. Twenty-four years ago, IPLawGuy and I were playing Clash songs at the campus radio station, and now his office is full of memorabilia of his experiences with presidents, senators, and people with enough genius to create something so valuable that their creations’ very name needs protection from pirates. Time is wonderful and alarming all at once.

We were walking out of a restaurant last night, a beautiful place with food we don’t get in Waco and the faint whiff of power. A woman in a brown wool sweater and a warm smile was walking in with her husband, and the maitre d’ snapped to attention. I didn’t greet her, she didn’t see me, and we both went on to the places we had always been headed. We do, or did, know each other. She and I shared a literature seminar together very long ago, where we fought like dogs about what words meant and whether they mattered at all, and one night danced at a party she was attending with her boyfriend, who worried. I can still see his face as he came over to claim her, knowing what it means to let a love of books bond you. And now, all these years later, I can think back on that, those shadows of ghosts, and understand it, and be glad to be where I am.

Life is good.