Cambridge

Drops of rain streak across the car-window like bits of firework propagating through the night sky.

The destination: Cambridge, Massachusetts. The city that both elite colleges and average human beings call home.

The two centers of academia – Harvard and MIT – make up a cloistered world of scholars amidst the common residents of Massachusetts. The campuses are physically integrated into the city at a glance, but there is an invisible and undeniable line of demarcation that runs thick between the scholar and the simple Cambridgian. The two are living in worlds so separate that they could be at opposite ends of the earth. The proximity of college and city does not imply interaction between the two, just as correlation does not imply causation.

The world beyond the car-window is an odd mix of gray and green. The green ruddiness of spring foliage in the median stands out brightly against the dismal wet surroundings. Branches, sagging with their bounty of leaves, reach over the wall wistfully and bow to the moistened tar of road. The clouds hang in a similar manner, weighted by the bundles of earth-bound water they hold.

The rain continues to fall: possibly the only thing that touches both commonplace denizen and erudite scholar alike.