August 07, 2005

I never told you everything that happened when Laura and I went to London last week — we did more than just run around naked.

Once the afternoon melted into evening, and our bellies were full of meat, we got on our bicycles and drifted across town to see her new university campus. We got there just as the sun was setting over the stone buildings, and we held sweaty hands as we walked down avenues lined with trees.

Any campus is better than Laurier’s. At WLU, everything feels constrained, absurd, unreal. At Western, students actually get a real campus.

“They had enough foresight to get the buildings to match,” Laura said. The campus has been created so there is some consistency in design. Even hyper-new buildings retain some of the architectural features of the old ones. Jason Shim once told me that the constipated Laurier campus is a reflection constipation inside the minds of Laurier students.

“And look how much green space they get,” I said. ” This is where you can come to learn the names of trees.”

It’s easy to fall in love with a place at sunset when there are no people on campus and there’s a river flowing nearby. Especially when the lampposts in that place are painted red and you have your girl’s sweaty hand in yours.