Hillsdale, Avalon, and Anaktoria

A college friend wrote me some days ago. Here are words that pierce like swords or burn like cold iron:

People like ***** are now ghosts to me; men in black and white pictures whose names I will only be able to mumble. I'm sad to say I fear that your color will fade too as our lives grow decidedly apart, and your name will sound strange to me after I've said it. Still, since you claim you will one day swim again in pools of ideas, we may be close again one day, though we swim on different shores. I was in Hillsdale earlier this summer to help my sister move her things. I thought of many people while I drove slowly through those streets, and you were one of the most distinct. My heart is broken in so many ways and in most of them it was broken there. Hillsdale will always be distant from me now, an Avalon where my soul might someday go to sleep.

So I must ask you, do you not feel this pain? And, yet, would you not rather see the shining pallor of his face before your eyes than Lydia's chariots in all their glory armored for battle?