On Knife’s Edge

Words By: Nico Borbolla Photos By: Eileen Shelton & Julie Vu

It’s 6:17 on a Tuesday night. If I’m lucky, there’s snow falling outside, tinted amber from the light fixtures on the side of each Mod. Or, if I’m even luckier, the orange is in the sky, where the setting sun dismisses Gasson Tower of its daily duty.

I grab a handful of trail mix—my reward for surviving a two-and-a-half-hour seminar—and watch Hal make some pasta. He’s usually the first to cook his dinner, because he’s also usually the first to have somewhere to be at night. His two meals on rotation are chickpeas and onions on pita bread, or pasta with red sauce. The alimentation fills the kitchen with steam and the aroma of alliums, but given his tight schedule, no more than fifteen minutes pass before we’re on the couch watching Jeopardy.

I’m going to miss it. Lately, the moment of the present, that knife’s edge between the past and the future, has been harder and harder to grasp. There are moments, like when watching the snow or the sunset, in which the past and future become thinner, and the present more plump, more rich, more full. It becomes impossible to not savor. I sense all past, present, and future come into each other, fitting like congruent triangles. It’s a special feeling of unity of time, in which the fullness of the moment brings every version of me into focus, brings them all back into the Me that I am. There is no high school Me, no California Me, no Boston College Me; there is only the me looking out and admiring.

In the year 2031, when I am a routine-ridden 30 year-old, I hope that the mixture of mirin, soy sauce, sesame oil, dashi, and honey makes me remember the days in that kitchen, flanked by empty bottles of wine in the recycling