Come back kids

My Yankees! They just don't know how to lose. They refuse to even when there are only two innings left and four runs to make up, when the game is over and nine innings have been played, they go on. Because the drama must build to this climax. Face off with the nemesis. Armies of arch-rivals deface one another's signs. Boston thinks this is the year the spell will be broken. Yankees vs. Sox. Again. But unlike Plath, one year in every ten, the Sox don't manage it. Reassuring that there are predictable patterns of outcomes. College students consume six too many beers and leave with the wrong person. Rational actors will not cooperate unless they stand to gain says game theory. And at the end of the game John Sterling's voice thundering "thhhhhee Yankees win!" The Sox Red in the face Guildensterns, each season battling the Yankees to be heads of the American League, flipping coins for eternity and watching it come down 85 times against them. The laws of probability don't hold. Some syllogism says there are super-, sub-, or unnatural forces at work here. Characters with a written course, double play's fated outcome, a divinity that shapes our ends rough hew them how we bootless will. Perhaps it's the curse of the bambino. Or the force of the team that refuses to lose, to lie down, let go. They are hopelessly devoted to winning. And so am I. I refuse to be beaten by drunkenness or immaturity or choosing the wrong side, tails. I will not crawl into the dugout and hang and hide. I'm an Austen, Dawson's determined, devoted romantic devout in my Yankee religion, hoping I'll win at least before the Sox do.

I don't always believe I live here.

All the proof to the contrary, the midterms with my name on every page, the mirage of gothic enchantment no one anti-make believes away, the sign on the door "Happy Birthday Samantha," this moment it strikes me as odd. Ostrich picking her head out of the sand of books, the sleepless sleep of hell week, the darkness of the theater to notice where she is, I am. Sophmore year in a room with a dark massive built in desk, streamers left over from sweet surprise, someone else's things too. Studying. In college, a collage of all the things I thought it would be thinly plastered over the joy and pain of perpetually being human. It's easier than last year. I don't sigh myself to sleep missing. It's delightful and intoxicating and dangerous to forget where you are and be buried under obligations you volunteered for. But then there's lying in the grass, shoes off, feet in the air. Reading in the courtyard I came to Yale because of. Creeping towards the corner inscribed with Latin as the afternoon shadows chased me in the direction of morning. Following the crisp sunlight that sharpens the edges of buildings, stops thoughts from blurring, clears up complexions and complexes, I am deeply happy.

Strike!

No, not the kind with dancing paper boys and picket lines but fly lines and lights and ladders. My and Seema's first one finished. Yes, it is 3:45 in the morning and yes we threw Our Lady's wooden cross over the side of the dumpster and loaded Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern in. Yes the planking of the forced perspective stage all fits together. Yes to others' inductions with the Cole Porter cup and the this century book matching the last century book scribbled with signatures of Edward Norton to Thorton Wilder. It will be us in November when we've worked on three shows and yes we will stay up all night and use power tools yes and running home heart and hair were flying like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.