Ghosts of Harvard

by Francesca Serritella

Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. —Albert Einstein

Anguish is distinguished from fear in that fear is fear of beings in the world whereas anguish is anguish before myself. Vertigo is anguish to the extent that I am afraid not of falling over the precipice, but of throwing myself over. —Jean-Paul Sartre

“You know what was in this space before it was an elevator? JFK’s freshman dorm room. He went from Weld to the White House.”

Harvard was more than a school. It was validation. It was history. It was expectation.