Originally posted on my blog Sloth And Dignity.

May 28, 2007

On May 27, Christopher Hume’s parents met up with my friends Dan and Wacks at Bard College, and they went down to the on-campus waterfalls on the Sawkill Creek, where Chris and I had spent so much time back in school, to scatter Chris’s ashes. I was going to go but decided at the last minute not to, because I was too angry at Chris’s family, for reasons I won’t go into here.

My phone rang at about 9:30 that morning, and all I heard was a burst of static for a few seconds.

Later on Wacks & Dan called me from the falls. After the ceremony they had gone to the beverage distributor where we had bought so many sixes of Genesee Cream Ale way back then, bought a six of Genesee Cream Ale, brought it back to the falls to drink it, and called me on a cell. The earlier burst of static had been the rushing of the water when Mike surreptitiously called me on his cell while Chris’s parents emptied the ashes, so I could “be there” for it. Later on, they noticed Chris’s ashes still swirling around in the creek, and they filled one of the empties with water and ashes to give to me when I head east next month.

Bard’s been in a development boom for the last 15 years, and Dan & Wacks reported to me on all the changes… the new student center occupying what once used to be a field and marsh where you could listen to the spring peepers sing, the new dorm complex where there used to be woods by Annandale Road, the disappearance of a row of small, rickety wooden dorms called the “Ravine Houses” where most of my friends had lived at one point or another.

That afternoon a song drilled its way out of me. It’s called “The Ravine Houses Are Gone”. I’ll have to ask you to pardon my vocals.

I’ve since done a better take of this, but haven’t cleaned it up enough to post yet. I’ll replace this post with the better recording when it’s ready.

The next day Dan posted a picture in his blog of hin & Wacks at the falls that afternoon. My heart broke.