Saturday, April 23, 2005

Pump and Slipper

Jump and flip her. Jump and Jivin'. Living like F., crazy, but less crazy than Zelda. We performed the Great Gatsby last night. Unadulterated fun, the famous formal.

A man with prominent teeth cut in. Edith inhaled a slight cloud of whiskey. She liked men to have had something to drink; they were so much more cheerful, and appreciative and complimentary — much easier to talk to.
"My name's Dean, Philip Dean," he said cheerfully. "You don't remember me, I know, but you used to come up to New Haven with a fellow I roomed with senior year, Gordon Sterrett."
Edith looked up quickly.
"Yes, I went up with him - to the Pump and Slipper."
- May Day

Pump and Slipper's the St. Anthony Hall dance that dates back to before the beginning of the century. Descending through time, somehow it stayed in the twenties and pages of Fitzgerald stories. We've inherited long gowns and tuxedos or sharp suits and swing skirts, lights along the windows and bowers of flowers on the fireplace mantles. As usual, a live swing band played. The music kicked up its heels. Conversation sipped champagne with dropped in strawberries and circumscribed postmodernism anachronistically. We pretended Edith and Dean, Jordon and Nick were standing over our shoulders, behind us, somewhere in the crowd. Loud lively rhythm inspired our make believe. Men nonchalantly nodded and offered a hand. Firm arms led, spun, and dipped on dance floor as if they had never known grinding a weekend before or met a slack body bumping into it to a bored d.j. Instead, stylish couples danced stylized steps. Flutes sprouted casually out of springtime hands. Swing time slowed, we swayed, rocked almost elegantly. A man with innocent teeth cut in.

Outside, it's pouring the weight of Aimee Mann. Her words warped by voice drench the scene that's been dry for two weeks. The rain replete sky provides serious light to write papers by. The sound striking the window works well with typing. Listening to the latest album online thanks to Ben. Switching soon to the game to check on Jared Wright to keep the Righty in line, hitting his spots so the Rangers don't. Their bats, the rain, and my papers won't let up.

Thursday, April 21, 2005

Dr. Schiller's 2nd Law of Reading

He stole it. Lifted Look for Repetition with Variation right out of Peter Brooks' Freud's Masterplot. "Repeating (with variation)" is the theme. Enjoyed writing my essay too much. All my favorite characters showed up to frolic in the playground that was my paper till they turned it into a circus. Three-ring. Sisyphus and Stevens and Dr. Schiller, twice.

Stil shuddering from the last lecture. Last class of sophomore year, so strange. Nostalgia is outlawed by the decree of three papers and four finals, but it is hard to worry when nature's first green is gold and ethics professor proved egoism is a hoax and language speaks the truth about speech. That speech can communicate, but there's something supplemental that always says things you do not mean. "You can't possibly mean what you say," said Professor Fry. I laughed. "It is impossible to say just what I mean!" Prufrock gasped. Profoundly disturbing and exciting how language haunts speech. I enjoy the recourse to the unintentional. And I don't want to let go of my classes, this state of wonder and wrestling with brilliance.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Sunrise occurs at 6:46 am

Eastern Standard papering time from the window of Stiles 2946, over the roof of the strike struck Hall of Graduate Studies. It's the last week of classes. Five papers to write. Morning.

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

I almost cut all my hair off

yesterday, there was a sign for Locks for Love on the door to my classroom. It pointed down the hall. I followed the infinite chain of signs around the corner, down a corridor. Each egged me on and asked if I had the heart to do it. Continuing sign to sign, will and trepidation rose. Each marker was a test of courage. Could I challenge Ecclesiastes' all is vanity. There was time to wonder "Do I dare?" Time to turn back and descend the winding stair. Then I was there, arrived at the the moment movie heroines with consciences come to where they decide to make a change, a break, and cut off all their hair.

It's been a week for wild decisions. Visions and revisions of me arise as advising seeks to see and suit me. Dress me up, cloth me in interesting conceptions, reflections of the observer and the observed of all observers merge and multiply. I am prescribed summers like growth hormones for the soul.

Mr. Mark Darcy tells Bridget-Lizzie he likes her just as she is. Imperfect I am prepared to change, prepared to pay the cat price which is to die again and again, each time with no less pain. But editing or evolution is a process. I'm in no need of hurrying the inevitable. Not out for a runaway from myself to grow greater. After careful consideration, excessive deliberation, I do not choose to break with strands of hair and history. This is not that kind of movie.

Thinking of my kids at Camp Sunshine, standing in the doorway facing scissors, glancing at girls with clipped wings glaring in mirrors, I saw the beauty of having short hair. The giving girls' hair looked beautiful, bound into a wig, bound for a kid who went to chemo. So sometime soon I'll do it, but not out of desperation to change. Not to force a moment of separation. Separation from and separation as creation of a new identity. Only personal growth I worry to hasten is hair.

Sunday, April 17, 2005

aesthetics of Accra

Offered an internship at a publishing company in Ghana. Trying to decide, by Tuesday, if it's a place want to be for ten to twelve weeks this summer. Wondering if anyone has knowledge out of Africa. Any idea if I would love Accra? Would appreciate your thoughts, thanks.