Crois-moi

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. It’s funny how everyone says, “Oh, I’m not into Valentine’s Day, even though everyone else is. It’s just another excuse for Hallmark to make some money. But, um… these little cards with kittens on them were pretty cute. Here, I drew little hearts on it for you.” I didn’t give away any cards, but I’m still one of those people. I guess the day functions as a reminder to think about people you love, even when you don’t necessarily want to participate in the ‘festivities.’
My new job is going pretty well. There are lots of little things to love. I wear a long white apron and dangly earrings and I get to uncork lots of bottles of wine (pop!) and pour them into big sexy glasses. I love bumping the kitchen door open with my hip and sauntering out into the dining room with beautiful plates of food. I love when things go smoothly and I feel like part of a purring machine. My customers sit, focused on their table (what is on it and who is at it), while I glide around them and keep them suspended in their little table-bubble of pleasure.

Plus, my coworkers are hilarious. This Sunday night is the restaurant’s anniversary party, and I foresee that much merry will be made.

BUT FIRST, this weekend shall be consecrated to a long voyage across hill and snowy dale. I really hope the roads are okay by tomorrow so that I can make it to Wooster.
Snow’s cool and all, but if it makes it hard for me to see Stewart, my rage shall burn a path from here to Ohio!

This semester is off to such a good start. Alanis Morissette would say that it’s ironic and that it figures that the semester that’s looking the rosiest is also to be my last.
It’s fine with me, though – like high school, college was a rollercoaster, but in reverse. I got the stomach-wrenching bits over with first, and now this last semester is a climb to the crown of the highest hill, from which I can see the whole track I’ve run, spread out beneath me. It’s all right with me to leave off while things are going so well because, like waking in the middle of the dream, the memories and impressions will be fresh and pristine this way.
Needless to say, I’m feeling pretty good. Stewart is on his way. I had a great week and it’ll be a greater weekend.

I am cozy in Wooster. Stewart’s taking an exam. The wind is making people stagger and claw hair out of their faces on the sidewalk outside the window.

Life is good.

Today we’re going to go to Cleveland to see a promising art exhibit. Tomorrow we’ll say goodbye again. I had thought that it would get easier to handle being separated. It doesn’t. It gets harder. Being together keeps getting better, though, so I can’t complain. Anyway, in a few short weeks I’ll be in Houston!

This really is the end of my semester. My finals are over and I’m almost finished with my seminar paper. I felt myself approaching the end of my work and decided to pause before the final plunge, just to savor the proximity of freedom.

It’s a good thing, too, because finals have translated into egregious mistreatment of my body. I’ve spent most of every day immobile, breathing computer exhalations, embalming my insides with liters of coffee and Diet Coke, and soothing the upwellings of stress with chocolate and monkey bread.

TOMORROW. Tomorrow things will be golden.

Addendum.
One thing that bugs me : people who answer small-talk questions with too many details. It’s particularly aggravating right now, when everyone’s stressed. I take it for granted that “great” is too simple and optimistic an answer to honestly cover how people are doing, but when person after person goes into a recapitulation of due dates and page lengths, I turn off. I’m busy, too. I guess it’s improper to admit to such impatience, ’cause it doesn’t make me look good, but I imagine someone out there shares my complaint.

I’m not sure whether I picked it up in France or from my mother’s stories during my childhood about young girls getting snapped up and killed by strange men in cars, but I tend to be suspicious of strangers who try to talk to me.

Nevertheless, some of the most thought-provoking interactions I’ve had have been with strangers : there was Elena, with whom I shared a mishap-ridden train journey to Barcelona. She told me all about her daughter’s upcoming marriage, the difficulties of raising kids alone in a foreign country, her desire for a simple life full of love and works of love. She was remarkable, and I saw her again in Toulouse when she invited Brandon and I to her jungly apartment in the suburbs. My brief friendship with Elena gave me much food for thought.

This morning I has two interesting encounters while I was reading over coffee at Casa Mani, a little coffee shop off-campus.
There’s a French professor who I had my freshman year. She was crazy then – she made us draw trees and then psychoanalyzed the significance of the width of our trunks, the depth of our roots and the presence or absence of fruit in our trees. She told us to choose our favorite stone in the wall on one side of the room where we worked. Whatever connection these things had with the class, “Paris: The Epicenter,” was tenuous at best.

I’ve seen her from a distance a few times this year, but I’ve tried to avoid her. I think she’s an alcoholic. That destabilizes me big-time and I didn’t want to face her, but she came right up to me in the coffee shop today with watery eyes. She talked about all sorts of things, kept wiping her mouth, told me about a necklace she bought cheaply and how she got her first job. I don’t like how I felt during our exchange – I was uncomfortable and impatient and smiled and said “oui, oui, cool” to everything she said. I didn’t add anything to the conversation. I just let her follow her thoughts until they petered out and she wished me “bonne année” and left.

A while later a man sat down on the couch facing my chair and looked at me while he drank his latte through a straw. I did something I’m really good at: pretending not to notice anything that’s going on around me. I emitted “this book is really engrossing” vibes. He started talking to me anyway, about my major and my future. He talked about the cockiness of youth. I kept turning my eyes back to my book, but he kept talking. Finally he said, “The question I’m thinking about over this latte is this: true love or stability?” I had no answer for him, obviously. I don’t know his story.

It got me thinking, though. He’s not the only one who’s trying to find the answer to that question.

It’s a Wooster weekend. Stewart’s dressing as Chester the Molester (a former track teammate who hadn’t heard of personal boundaries) for a Halloween party at his friends’ house later this evening. This afternoon we wheeled around Wooster in his big comfy car. It rained, sleeted, and finally snowed in blustery gusts that swept leaves across streets and fields, and finally disrupted the power grid. Stew’s dorm was free of hum and whir. We napped.

People keep mentioning that I don’t write here much any more. Lately I’ve been grappling with the fact that I’m not a kid any more. High school angst has left me. Now I’m surrounded by adults with adult challenges, and it feels less appropriate to write about all of this big people business. I don’t know. Things are changing.

My weekend at Wooster was great. I wish life was all kite-flying.

This one is my last weekend exiled from the “grown-up” social sphere of the bars. On Friday I came home jangly from work to find lots of nice people having a party in my apartment. I hurried through a cup of wine, thinking to catch up to them, but no sooner had I loosened up than they flitted off “to the bars,” echoing foot-clatter and bursting voices. Katie and I blinked in the silence, felt the creep of loneliness, and went to sleep, unable to help each other. It was triste, but in the future it will be avoidable. In the future, I will follow the herd.

I am feeling strangely peaceful these days, despite being far from Stewart and feeling socially adrift. Things which might have upset me aren’t. Maybe I’m learning how to go with the flow and let things interrupt the order I impose on them. Is this called flexibility?

Tonight I had extra energy, so I… made Amish Friendship Bread : three batches of it, in different shapes and flavors. Two and a half pounds of flour later, I am wondering who is going to eat all this bread. I guess I’m going to be making a lot of friends.
First radio show happened today. I’m glad to have scheduled hang-out time with Rosalie.
Despite some pretty ridiculous scheduling mishaps, things seem to be falling back into place. Just get me to this weekend!