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.
An enigma : why does the basement of the HUB smell like donuts in the morning and diapers in the evening?
I’ve started lifting weights. I like the phrase j’ai mal partout although it’s not totally accurate. Maybe one day I’ll be in some kind of shape again (as opposed to shapeless? I hope not).
Dickinson isn’t so bad after all, if you learn se laisser aller. There are good people here, and as long as I don’t hope for too much of their time, I can be satisfied. On Friday, Sue and I lounged and laughed, she turned me on to a happening pizza joint, and then we went to Open Mic Night at the Treehouse. Somehow I thought that singing “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” would be a good idea… I slaughtered the guitar part, handed the instrument off to someone who didn’t know the song, belted it (didn’t miss a note!) on my own, and quit without singing the last verse when they all applauded too early. I was embarrassed about being unable to properly pull off the whole thing, but it felt SO GOOD to sing and let go, everyone smiled at me and I knew it was because I had a big goofy grin by the end.
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?