I am in an Indigo Girls mood tonight. I used to only break out the Indigo Girls (1200 Curfews was I think the second CD I bought on my own free will, the Grateful Dead's Reckoning being the first...) when I was feeling nostalgic for camp, and maybe a little sad. I don't get nostalgic for camp much anymore...not in the same way. But lately, and by lately, I mean the past four years, the music has meant a feeling of nostalgia for a hell of a lot more.

I went to the Choral Awards concert tonight, and it's like an unspoken tradition that there is always at least one Indigo Girls cover, usually very good. So I'm already feeling sentimental when they sing "The Help of My Friends," this song that always gets sung at the last chorus concert and at graduation. And all the seniors cry and all the juniors cry and all the parents cry and it's all really emotional.

During Choral Awards, when they sang that damn song...the one that makes people cry...it kick-started my memory. It started with this image of all of us -- me, Emma, Opi, Andy, Michael, maybe Liz was there... -- sitting in Emma's backyard with guitars and bongos and little white votive candles arranged as a peace sign. We sang "Imagine" and "Give Peace A Chance." This was maybe a week -- not even a week -- after the 9/11 attacks.

I think there is something communal in the fact that we are the 9/11 generation, that the world ignited and began to burn as we plunged into adolescence...we lost our innocence, really, with the rest of America. And here, tonight, watching all of the DHS Chorus students belt out "Imagine" as the last song of the evening, everything came full-circle. I came back to that moment again. It was the beginning of my development as an activist, a pacifist, and a lover of humanity...this was a lot to assert in eighth grade, when everyone reinvents him or herself a million times over to what's cool. I don't know if pacifism is cool or not, although I hope at least one day it will be. But now, five years later, I'm finally all right with not being cool. I am at peace with everything...with the world and its shortcomings, with my friends and family, with myself. This does not mean I will end a commitment to activism or to improving the world...that's not gonna change. I've just come to terms with all of it. It only took five years and many replays of 1200 Curfews.

I am crying by the end, and the seniors are crying, and everyone embraces and lets their guard down. And I am still, and will spend the next week, trying to process everything that happened, like a montage left out of Garden State maybe, flashes of color and light and memory and senior year.

Seeing Casablanca for the first time and loving every second of it. The first football game. The wild exuberance of the Red Zone. The bus ride to and from The Merchant of Venice when it was four of us and Mr. B-W and we talked about everything imaginable. Being in pure awe watching the Rolling Stones play in Milwaukee, even when the middle-aged women threw their panties at Mick. The day we all found out about Sarah and Mr. B-W left the mug blank and told us that "some days, there are no words." The weekend I was in the city and saw a woman with her face buried in her boyfriend's chest, sobbing, and gazing in awe as they supported each other's weight. The way the weather was so beautiful I thought it almost criminal. The "we are sober!" chant at pep rally. The comfort of Sarkis the morning after Homecoming. Our Town. 11:00 in Grover's Corners. All the dressing room dance parties. Justin's "Numa Numa" dance. Kristy and Dana embracing the divine in one another. Seeing Liz play her djembe and sing "Philadelphia Story" at Good Karma. Getting the entire bus to sing "Tiny Dancer" on the way home from Theatrefest. Watching the sunrise with Emily after pulling an all-nighter for Louder Than A Bomb. The overwhelming feeling of North Beach and feeling like I just wanted to go write on a bar napkin somewhere. The way when, when we did the "Period Piece" everyone cheered at the part that goes "any woman who says the sight of blood makes her faint is lying." Raven teaching me how to play the piano for Stage Door. "The calla lillies are in bloom again." The last "Hokey Pokey." Closing night. Frankie's Mohawk. Any and every night at Mocha. Dancing like crazy with Evan at Prom and sharing the hat. Watching the couples hold each other close and steal kisses while slow-dancing to "Into the Mystic." Playing Twister under the bean in Millennium Park and looking at us in its reflection. Staring over the city from the Skydeck. Seeing the Joseph Cornell collages & exquisite corpses in the Art Institute for the first time. Realizing that some incense holder in the Chinese section has been around since 300 B.C.E. and trying to fathom all the people that incense holder has outlived, who used it, and how even after we're gone, it will still be here. Singing "Galileo" with Carly on the last day of TART. Sitting on the back porch with Jane and feeling at peace with the world and everything in it. Watching people I have known since kindergarten sing their last chorus song.

This summer, I will go dancing barefoot through Grant Park. And we will go back to the overpass and watch the cars pass under us. And we will get to the top of this whole damn town, & ring the bell in the church tower. And we will all be okay...of course we will.

"So please believe that things are all right with me, and even if they aren't they will be soon enough." --from the last entry in The Perks of Being A Wallflower