Come On Baby Light My Fire
New York bound now, train skids away from scene of last night's excitement. Girls gossip behind me. Quinnipiac. In the reflection of the window one glows an unholy color orange. But she's not as bright as the revolving red light hitting St. A's last night. Two fire trucks struck stone in phase. They came as called. Fahrenheit 451. But no book burning, we're a literary society of thirty-something who stood outside at 1:30 am, mocking, dancing, and trying to get the story from fire-starters. Because it happened Thursday night at the Hall, I won't say more about what happened inside walls than thoughtlessness started a brief blaze and grace under fire put it out. But I can talk about the cinematic street scene we created after the alarm sent us out to bewilder passersby. No one hurt and nothing damaged (except some secrecy), the air was festive. We made carivale. Palmyra played violin, Shansby had a group around guitar. Henry and I lay in the ivy and constructed horror film plots for this particular ominous sky, sirens, old stone and gargoyles to serve as the final scene of before the credits rolled across the cloud covered night.
Today turned in a Milton paper. I pulled off five pages painful and swift like a band-aid during daylight yesterday. Then spent the post-incendiary, post-St. A's-night, meaning morning, reworking, rearranging it until I fell asleep typing in the billiards room. Staggered to Stiles at 4 am, tireddrunk, desiring to sleep on the steps of the library rather than walk five more minutes home. Reason paper had be good was not only the usual (pride, grade, medschool), but also James. My illegally good-looking Milton TA. An English grad student with green eyes that speak sense into Milton and weave the man's allusions into something like meaning. James is how my Milton reading gets done every Thursday evening after the Hall, before Friday morning section. He's why Carolynn and I casually compete, calculatingly comment in class. And discuss how he probably writes and imagine how he could parse a line of—sigh and laugh at ourselves afterwards at lunch. These are cute side-effects, but distracted during lecture, fumbling for a word Friday, writing a painstaking paper, I recognize the illness: I have really bad luck. For this terribly wonderful course, I’ve somehow had the great ill fortune to get the only hot teaching assistant in eight and more in what seems to be the whole damn department. There ought to be a law against attractive English TAs. —Mr. Bones: there is.
Today turned in a Milton paper. I pulled off five pages painful and swift like a band-aid during daylight yesterday. Then spent the post-incendiary, post-St. A's-night, meaning morning, reworking, rearranging it until I fell asleep typing in the billiards room. Staggered to Stiles at 4 am, tireddrunk, desiring to sleep on the steps of the library rather than walk five more minutes home. Reason paper had be good was not only the usual (pride, grade, medschool), but also James. My illegally good-looking Milton TA. An English grad student with green eyes that speak sense into Milton and weave the man's allusions into something like meaning. James is how my Milton reading gets done every Thursday evening after the Hall, before Friday morning section. He's why Carolynn and I casually compete, calculatingly comment in class. And discuss how he probably writes and imagine how he could parse a line of—sigh and laugh at ourselves afterwards at lunch. These are cute side-effects, but distracted during lecture, fumbling for a word Friday, writing a painstaking paper, I recognize the illness: I have really bad luck. For this terribly wonderful course, I’ve somehow had the great ill fortune to get the only hot teaching assistant in eight and more in what seems to be the whole damn department. There ought to be a law against attractive English TAs. —Mr. Bones: there is.
