Be glad and young

It was a long week. At least I was dressed appropriately. My dear friend A___ ordered this t-shirt for me a little while ago. It arrived just in time for me to wear it proudly Friday. (image is gone now - I'll put a new one up if I find it again)

To my great surprise, I went to a party last night. To my even greater surprise, I had a reasonably good time. It started with a last minute invite to dinner from another grad on Thursday. During the day Friday, I watched via e-mail with increasing trepidation as the hostess wrote "you might want to bring your own chair", then "and your own dishes", and finally issued an entire change of venue from her itty bitty apartment to a large faculty house which was being house sat by a friend of mine.

Initially, I had thought the change of venue was a swell idea since the hostess's apartment was about a half a "block" (I use this term with thick sarcasm) away from where I had lived for the last three years with my now ex-S.O. I wasn't looking forward to a literal drive down memory lane to top off my week. Little did I know the change of venue meant it had become the fucking party at Twelve Oaks. The smallish dinner I had accepted an invitation to had exploded into a party with too many people, after too much week, and on top of too little hormone for me.

Just before leaving for the party, I started getting cramps. I stopped and got some food so I could take a space shuttle sized Motrin. As I drove to the big party, I was desperately trying to cram as much of a chocolate croissant into my mouth so I could take said pill before the cramps got ahold of me. I nearly wrecked because some asshole was tailgating me the last couple of miles to the party (yes, it was all his fault. It had nothing to do with my dropping flakey croissant bits everywhere and pawing about for my water bottle while trying to watch for suicidal deer in the road). Finally, I pulled over and managed to choke down the pill. While I sat at the roadside spluttering water and croissant everywhere, I watched the tailgater pull into the driveway of the house I was also going to. "Perfect" I thought. Upon arriving at the party, I tried to figure out whose car it had been riding up my ass. An acquaintance from school greeted me, booming "Hey! Was that you I was tailgating?" as if this were just about the funniest thing in the world. This provoked me to a Courtney Love like moment of screaming Zen. At least it was Zen for me, not so much for the acquaintance. I felt sheepish, but much better afterwards.

Overall, I had a good time. This was acheived mostly by allowing myself to have no filter whatsoever on my mouth. I don't like acting this way a lot, but I had to blow off some steam or I'll lose my mind by Christmas. I don't drink and I figure I get some inappropriate behavior credits I can cash in now and then. There was a lot of strange sexual and romantic tension at the party and I was thankfully not a part of of it. (My own sexual/romantic tension is not at all strange. Indeed, it is familiar to the point where it is barely even tension.) The food wasn't great, but it was ok and it was a meal I didn't have to cook or prepare or be responsible for. Homemade macaroni and cheese, salad, and an extremely unappetizing and frighteningly large pot of polenta.

The motrin started fading around 10:30. I caught up with my house-sitting friend in the driveway as I was leaving. With some guilt, I listened as she repeated dismally "Ayava howsh-fulluv peeep-pulll...whaddamI gonna do witha fukkin howsh full uv peeep-pull?" During my pre-drive cigarette, my friend and I shivered in the driveway not far from the ten pounds of left over cement-like polenta she had snuck out to abandon in the woods. We watched through the window while the original hostess flirted badly with nearly everyone in the room in a desperate attempt to console herself that the man she was interested in, the man she had invited (several weeks ago) to her apartment for dinner that night, the man she had gotten carried away wanting to impress with her graceful hostessing skills, the man it seems she threw this whole party for, had left without saying goodbye. While this was not exactly a pleasant moment, I felt some kind of kinship with these women who were burning so close to the ends of their social fuses.


I sit at home now on a Saturday afternoon. Dearest A___ just left for an overnight road trip. My house sitter friend called to cancel our laundry/movie/dinner plans because she needs to get laid and, towards that end, has invited her ambiguously ex-boyfriend down. Good to see she's working through that tension. Ah...this is not bad in fact. I'm getting to like spending the first day of my period alone. I'm bleeding but feeding myself left-over halloween candy and motrin shuttles. I got an unexpected e-mail from one of the first year grad students at the party. Fall out from the sexual tension shit, which is not my problem. Trying to keep myself sane and free of shit I don't need right now, I replied to him with an ee cummings poem. I'll post a couple here. One for me and one for the party people. It seems like it should be clear which is which, although on second thought it could well be that both are both.

you shall above all things be glad and young

you shall above all things be glad and young
For if you're young,whatever life you wear

it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever's living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man's
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think,may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation's dead undoom.

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance



all which isn't singing is mere talking

all which isn't singing is mere talking
and all talking's talking to oneself
(whether that oneself be sought or seeking
master or disciple sheep or wolf)

gush to it as diety or devil
-toss in sobs and reasons threats and smiles
name it cruel fair or blessed evil-
it is you (ne i)nobody else

drive dumb mankind dizzy with haranguing
-you are deafened every mother's son-
all is merely talk which isn't singing
and all talking's to oneself alone

but the very song of(as mountains
feel and lovers)singing is silence