It’s definitely Fall now if I’m wearing socks and my windows are closed, two activities that come reluctantly and out of desperation. Fall is my favorite season, and I can’t remember being this excited for it before, even if I have to fake it a little with Minnesota. Right now, I’m sure it’s just slightly above freezing and I know for a fact yesterday when I was communing with the geese in Adams Hill Park I saw snow. Chris asked me when I got home, “Did you see the snow?” and I lied. Straight denial.
I don’t even remember Fall from last year. I was avoiding seasons, nursing my broken heart and Erik’s broken heart and all that sap. I avoided Fall last year because I loved it, and I was trying to be Coleridgian as possible. I didn’t want to love anything, not people, not leaves, not wind, not hot cider beverages! I didn’t look out windows. I sat in bedrooms and classrooms and cars and stared at ceilings and feet.
But! Here we are, mostly out of the depressive British poet stage, and I can love it again. I can tell Summer is gone because there are dry patches of skin starting to form on the corners of my nose. Plus, an extra blanket sneaked its way onto the bed last night, causing extra pressure and a vacuum of heat. My face looks like I didn’t even acknowledge Summer, which I suppose is true. My skin is already winter-white, with the tell-tell purple circles redheads are cursed with that give the face a deep-set pallor that make strangers think you’re ill.
I don’t think I’m ill. I could be, deathly, and I just don’t know it yet. But it’s one of those days where I feel too Whitman-esque in love with the weather and looming October, so the ideas of the brooding sickness will be put on hold, at least for today.
Nothing says true love like being wrenched out of bed at 7 AM to push a car in below freezing weather across a busy street. I was wearing my glasses, which don’t fit my face and keep slipping off, and the running shoes I stole from Minh which are slightly too big and make me fall on surfaces like wet grass. But Chris’;s poor Grandma-colored car got across the street and neither of us were almost killed too many times, though there was a lot of yelling like, “There’s a CAR COMING! I’m STOPPING! OW! DON’T PUSH THE CAR INTO ME, FUCK ME, FUCK THIS, FUCK 7 AM.” Etc.
But now his dead car sits on a side road, and he’s using my car, which means I either need to find homespun chores and entertainment, or walk to places, but walking is so passé.
The Sunny Wicked kids played so sizzling well at the gig the other night that I nearly wept. There was a nice-sized crowd, energetic and attentive and the boys busted moves the Midwestern world had never witnessed. Timothy came down for the show, so he and I drank things and danced and took pictures and mingled with Chris’s friends from high school who came out to see the show, one girl whose hand I grabbed and yelled very loudly that she was my new best friend. We stuck around to hear Ray Jones Special play, but we were all exhausted because we’re not college kids anymore, oh no, we go to sleep at absurd times like midnight. Chris fell asleep on a bar table and I fell asleep on him, hence the picture, which looks posed, but only speaks the truth. (Timothy caught another angle of the Great Bar Sleep).
Now’s it cold enough to be considered Fall, which means huge itchy sweaters and hats that make my ears hot and coffee that makes my ulcer sob. I love it.
Oh, I’m not feeling gloomy, per se, just sort of, “Gak! All I ever do on this site is write abstract imitations of other authors and post pictures of my drunken friends.” I mean, I know I get self conscious like this at least sixteen times a month, but there it is, along with the word “gak” which I think might be trademarked to Nickelodeon.
Anyway, last night my roommates and I had a total hippie sitcom moment. I came down to the basement play area to find Andrew on the couch, lazily playing and singing Beatles tunes on his guitar, while Chris had his electric guitar hooked up to his amp, trying to figure out why one of the channels went wonky on him. Andrew started playing Rocky Raccoon and then Chris started jamming along a little, and then Andrew played another Beatles tune, and then Abbey and Rick came down, and we were all singing and harmonizing.
How hokey-wonderful is that? It was one of those moments where I was thinking, “Don’t stop. Don’t let this fucking end, yo!” and then of course it ended because I demanded it not to. I think how often I try to feel like I did last night, like when I was at the cabin and Chris was pointing out the Big Dipper to me or when we fell asleep in the hammock next to the water. It felt good and sweet, but I was trying to hard too make it a moment. Last night was moment.
I am feeling nostalgic today, and listening to nostalgic songs, but I won’t be getting into that. I feel a little pukey from a Power Bar I wolfed down this morning and my allergies are buzzing my face to a pulp, but tonight I am going to get sexed up and go to the Sunny Wicked / Ray Jones Special show at the Library Bar and Grill. I know I always pimp their shows, but this show is supposed to be huge and crowded and hyper, and I’m up for that (after a few drinks). So come out, etc.
Now I’m going to clean my room and eat Skittles and sing along to Radiohead in my best Thom Yorke imitation, which is marginally less better than your best Thom Yorke impression.
Did I mention the noise level in the corner of Minneapolis I live in? The construction across the street does this weird beepy thing for nine hours of the day, sort of like someone’s microwave dinner is finished and they forgot to shut off the microwave. Except they forgot for nine hours. And the bulldozers and the airplanes have a low bass drumming that vibrates my inner organs all day. By the end of the afternoon, I often feel like I am personally beeping and vibrating, and that’s unpleasant, really.
Now the band is practicing and I’m blasting Radiohead and trying to think, but all I can think about is wide quiet fields of wild grasses. While at these fields, I have long gnarled-looking blonde hair tied back in a braid and I am carrying some sort of primate. The only sounds heard are killdares chirping sweetly and the primate curling my sun-bleached hair around his finger. Yes, in the midst of the NOISIEST PLACE ON EARTH, I have been seriously considering becoming a primatologist, totally classy and elegant Jane Goodall style and/or getting myself thrown into isolation in prison (which would be ideal only if it had wireless internet.)
But, you know, I can’t fall asleep at night unless the computer fan is whirring and the window is open so I can hear the leaves getting crunched and the last crickets of summer gabbing, so maybe I don’t mind the noise too much. But any sleeping I do tonight will be in my own bed and not my lounging buddy’s bed because when he got home from work today, I greeted him with, “We care about nossink, Lebowski,” and tried to hug him, and he glared at me and told me to leave him alone. If that’s not cause for a fight, I don’t know what is.
Back from the cabin, and here’s a list: I watched 6 and three-fourth movies. I lit blue sparklers and wrote my name in the smoke. I ate delicious cheese soup. I picked out constellations. I napped in a hammock. I almost fell in a waterfall. I was hit on by an old man at a salad bar. I was a punk kid. I played Nintendo, and lost. I saw deer. I heard mice in the walls. I wore a lumberjack shirt. I cuddled in the coziest bed in six universes. I got sunburned and wet and muddy, all good things.
I smell like well water. It makes me feel bionic.
Well. I’m departing for a little remote cabin in the woods until Monday evening, so don’t expect any writing from me until then unless I somehow harness the power of nature and make a spontaneous internet connection. Which won’t happen because I don’t even know how to swim or start a campfire. Last time Chris and I were alone at his cabin, we drank dragonfruit juice, watched a horrible movie starring Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas and received life lessons from two six-year-olds named Jackson and Victoria. Hopefully this time around will be just as exciting.
I wonder about this open book thing. When I am passing time between life events, I’ll plug some names in Google of people I haven’t seen in years or people I’ve been thinking about, just to see what they’re up to, who they’re screwing, that sort of thing. The information I find is usually very sparse, or something I already know. But me! Someone plugs in my name, and here’s half of everything. There’s no mystery. Old lovers and friends who wonder what I’m up to only have to lazily type in this address, yawn as they read a few words and while tapping their pencils think, “Ah. Same old stuff.” I have always wanted to be the mysterious squinty-eyed glamour girl in back, but it doesn’t seem to work that way. Here I am, neon. Here’s my life, twelve foot braille.
In other news, Sunny Wicked is playing at the 4th St. Station in St. Paul tomorrow night, so if you’re in the area, you should come by and rock things. Then the next day, the lead singer and I are taking a cozy romantic getaway for two to his family’s lake cabin for an extended weekend. It’ll be good to get us both away from our beloved technologies.
I am the only one awake in the house right now and my toe is bleeding from an earlier unfortunate incident with a sharp stick on a sidewalk. The wind is blowing my shades into my computer monitor. I feel trapped in David Lynch’s brain. I think I’ll go to bed
So you take the grief and you ride it.
The problem with living with all of your friends and even more so, your boyfriend, is that when you are angry and angtsy and want to cause a scene by yelling, “I’m leaving!” and slamming the back porch door is: where do you go? You get in the car, and you can’t think of a single place to go. You think - I’ll go sit in the park. But then you drive by the park and it looks so open and vulnerable. So not the park. You need some laundry detergent and maybe some dinner. Maybe you should go to the drugstore. But the drugstore is crowded, too, and what you really want to do is grab a girlfriend or two and go to a coffeeshop or a bar and shoot the shit, shrug off the issues and the boyfriends and the dreamgirls, and laugh easily. You want to be a little sunburned and a little drunk, feeling the strap of your tanktop slowly slip off your right shoulder. Isn’t that some sort of a bliss?
But instead you drive around the block, crying in little jagged spurts that are wholly unsatisfying, until you are blinded by the sunset across France Ave. You think: fine, I’ll drive towards the sunset, be the baby loggerhead that blindly crawls towards the brightest thing it sees. But even that seems like a lot of work, so you end up back at the house, not fifteen minutes after you proclaimed you were leaving, goddamnit. You contemplate sitting in the car, but it’s hot and your head aches a little, so, defeated, you slink back in the house, back to square one.
There’s so much noise here. Across the street, there is sprawling construction, looming bulldozers like dinosaurs attacking cement. There are constant airplanes. This neighborhood has cars in and out, in and out, their automotive problems screaming to be recognized. You! The blue Audi! You’re an individual, too. And then there are the drums in the basement, comforting on days you’re thankful for your unconventional modern-day Bohemia, obnoxious on the days you just want to nap, want to think, want to sit at your desk without the pencils rolling and rattling to the floor.
The trick is to learn to leave without going anywhere. Isn’t that what therapy teaches you? To find the quiet place, the formless place. That’s harder than it sounds because the words come out all wrong to other people. When I say, “I just don’t want this sometimes,” I don’t mean you and I don’t mean this house or this city or this circumstance. I mean this particular skin, this cliché corner I’ve painted myself in. To leave without really leaving is the mission, and the result and that can do a number on a girl with half an education and a misspelled desire.
Oh, I never know how to end anything. You know what I mean, right?
Oh, don’t say “dreamgirl.” I hate that phrase. I’ve had nothing but trouble with it, and to hear it slip so easily out of your mouth (about someone else!) makes me cringe. I’m sure you used that little bullet on me once, back when I was a dreamgirl, when it was a dream relationship. Back when we fell asleep, shivering under blankets, on the flat rock behind the interstate, in front of the lake. Back when I wore that floaty orange skirt everywhere, even when I sat on your lap while you mixed your music on some complicated computer program, back when that was the closest touching we ever did. Remember the thing with the breath? Yeah. That was hot. And I was a dreamgirl then, I’m sure. I always smelled like jasmine. I would hear you open the door to the house, and I would quick spray it - I wanted you to remember me with that scent. I wanted to be a piece of a poetry, I suppose.
But now there can be no dreamgirl, out of principle, really. How can I be a dreamgirl when you now have seen my face sandwiched in glasses and greasy slept-in hair? When you know I’m a little afraid of the dark and that I lose everything (everything!) and that I slam doors and drawers when I’m angry. I can’t possibly be a dreamgirl in these old jeans or with chronic heartburn (the pink Rolaids, always an arms length away) or with these mood swings. I mean, my God, the mood swings!
So why even say it? I’ve been called a dreamgirl three times over, only to have the title lost to some faceless girl met at work or a party or in a magazine. Some girl, if all appearances are correct, that doesn’t have all these annoying problems, that doesn’t whine, that can drive around the block without getting lost or scared, that can fly on airplanes without losing her lunch. Stop with the dreamgirl. I want to always be the dreamgirl, but that never happens - I end up in everything for the long haul, so don’t give me the title to begin with.
Miss America isn’t always Miss America, if you know what I mean.
A bright-eyed Zosia at 17
I opened a love-hate can of worms the other day thanks to . As Torrez pointed out, Friendster is like high school all over again, with the yearbook-style testimonials and competitive undercurrent of who has the most friends. I personally think it’s like high school because suddenly being smacked in the face with pictures and writings of people you haven’t seen since those years can make your heart and brain go all pitter-pattery in that insecure teenage way that makes you feel ugly and stuttery and pimply all over again.
My boyfriend from high school, Nick, left me a testimonial that was sweet in the only way Nick can be sweet (”Because I am the token gay man..I naturally have women hanging off of me. But there is only one girl who has gotten to experience the full package of Nick..”), so I decided to riffle through his friends a bit and see if I knew anyone.
I’ll backtrack a second and say when I left my hometown in Virginia to come to Minnesota three and a half years ago, it was a quick and deliberate decision, and in the most tough-girl way, I never looked back. I was broken-hearted and into some bad situations where I was at, so I decided to pack everything up and get out of there. It was a survival instinct, more or less. But since then, I’ve somehow managed to block all feelings about high school - not that high school was bad for me, per se, but I just put it away and never thought deeply about it again.
Well. Somehow Friendster’s little gimmick managed to smash that wall. I saw the pictures and profiles of people I knew from high school and first, I got this giddy excitement. A sort of like, “Oh, YEAH, I had a whole other life before Minnesota! And though it had its ups and downs, it was fun and romantic in that angtsy teenage way.” I happily wrote people letters and even wrote Nick a nostalgic e-mail in which I waxed confidently over our years together and about how older and wiser we are now.
Then I started to feel a little ball of insecurity form, and suddenly, my brain was shooting out all sorts of history files. In high school, I was unbelievably shy and scared of people, but I dated a boy who popular and outgoing, so I had to somehow compensate for that. I became really (I mean, worthy of a teenage sitcom) insecure and was bitchy to people and cried a whole lot. That’s the feeling that started replacing the initial giddiness.
Suddenly, it was like I was there again, standing in the hallways with my perfectly shiny hair and trying-really-hard trendy outfit, watching the gorgeous girls who were talkative and sociable and friendly with so much envy I felt sick to my stomach. It got so bad for an hour there that I almost got nauseated when a Sarah McLachlan song came on my playlist because she and about two other wispy girls singers were all I listened to in high school.
I don’t think I need this can of worms (or, as Mark calls it, “barrel of worms”). Really. I don’t want to know most of these people again, and I don’t want to remember anything beyond the surface about my first love. Because I forgot, really, how consumed I was with him and how I had no doubt it would go forever and ever and ever into the silver unicorn-laced clouds, and how when it didn’t, I nearly dropped off the face of the planet. So, thanks Friendster, but no thanks. I know the past year and half of my life has been sketchy at best, but I’ll take that over just about anything I experienced when I was 16.
Though I would take that 16-year-old body again, thankyouverymuch, but that’s a moot issue.
“2 years later I guess I understand a little more about the frailties of architecture and a little less about human beings.” - Paul Ford
Ftrain says it best for me, so I’ll just leave it at that.
What’s been on my mind lately is to explore, in writing, what happened in the year and half following the terrorist attacks to the dynamics of a group of people I was close to. Essentially, we broke off into warring islands. No loyalty was present; allies were bribed and traded. And this began to happen long before the major event in our nerd world that seemingly scattered everyone. I want to write this story, to examine it, but I don’t know how to do it in a meaningful and unhistrionically verbose way. But maybe I can make that my project, for now.
In other news, I might be up in Duluth this weekend for the Sunny Wicked gig at the Deep Blue Water Festival. It depends on a lot of things, like if I want to risk my skull again by being trapped in a car between a million pound amp and the razor sharp new strings on a guitar, but I would really love to camp out on Timothy and Minh’s floor, and clink glasses with old friends.
I slept about two hours last night due to another fantastic flare-up of my ulcer, and now I feel the wonky overheated dizzy achiness that comes from lack of sleep. The ulcer really was fantastic in the way it seemingly ripped an acidic hole in my upper left chest and then squeezed. I cried like a baby for a few minutes, as I tend to do when my body betrays me, and then I calmed, counted heartbeats, fell asleep sitting straight up in bed after playing numerous alphabet games (”Alice from Alabama sells Antlers”).
So I’m woozy. I’ve read more books in the past two months than I have in the past year, and in a vague exciting way, I’m finally developing a life philosophy of my own, one that takes bits and pieces from the books I’m reading and the people I talk to. I know that’s how all philosophies are born, really, but it’s thrilling to me. If only I could really believe what I formulate in the evenings when I’m sitting in bed in my glasses and a totally inappropriate flowered kimono, turning pages with deliberate quietness as to not wake my lounging buddy.
But when it comes down to it, I don’t even want to tell you my new philosophies. I guess I’ve talked those subjects to death with other people, so all that comes to mind is that I still dream about him, even though there’s no reason to do so. (And there’s always a “him” or a “her” and they will always remain ambiguous.) But I do dream, almost every other night.
The dreams are nothing big - it’s him wearing a shirt I’ve never seen; him talking to a blonde in thick eyeliner; him passing me a china plate in the cafeteria line. When I wake, I’ve constructed this whole life I don’t have with him. And it’s not a romantic longing, not really. And I don’t dwell on the past like I used to; I don’t cut it into small slices in the evenings and savor it like an anorexic with her one meal of the day. So, I don’t know what these dreams mean, unless they just represent a living haunting, a fork that could’ve been crossed and is now closed.
But the most important thing: it doesn’t matter. I’m not interested in history anymore. And I can tell you for certain, in the most koan-like way, it’s not interested in me.
My photographer friend Kip who went to Oregon and sent me a postcard with a picture of cows on it because it was the most un-Oregonian image he could find, visited me this weekend. He, Chris and I went to a restaurant called The Cheescake Factory, a place decorated in odd reptile/vulva memorabilia and had so much food to choose from that, as our waiter put it, you could be stuck like a deer in headlights for hours looking at the menu.
Kip pointed out immediately afterwards that deer were rarely stuck in headlights for a matter of hours - it was really a one second and impact type of thing. This was followed by a story of a woman breastfeeding her cat, and that’s why Kip is fun to hang out with. Because I was feeling silly, I left my phone number on the bottom of the check as a joke I won’t get into, but as I left the restaurant, I realized this was rather stupid as the The Cheesecake Factory is across the street from my house and I’ll probably go there again and I’ll probably have the same waiter again and while he was undoubtedly a great server, I really don’t want to be that “weird giggly girl with the cowlick who left me her number.” I didn’t notice the cowlick until after I left the restaurant, which was rather unfortunate.
. . .
I have two friends that are engaged now, and of course I’m having the inevitable, “Holy shit, people my age are old enough to get married?” jitters. It’s mostly just the displacement of time I feel. Luke is getting married, and I still remember the freshman year party in which Luke got so drunk that he puked into a plastic bag Abbey held out for him (the bag immediately broke, but that’s really a moot point now) and then locked him and I in the bathroom upstairs and made me read him articles from Playboy while he leaned on the toilet seat and made vague suggestions on how to get us out of the locked bathroom.
ChrisJ. is also getting married, and I have a few embarrassing stories that I could tell, but I’ll save those for the wedding. But I do remember making out with him in some long Truth or Dare game sophomore year (also the same game in which Dane ended up naked and handcuffed under the kitchen table) and there was also the time he somehow ended up with bright red lipstick and blue eyeshadow on and was made to knock on the girls’ next door apartment. And now he’s graduated, working a prestigious job and getting married. Married! It blows my mind, really. I think the real horror will come when people I’m even closer to get married, like Abbey or Matt or Erik (which will be a special kind of horror in itself, as exes getting married most often is).
Marriage for me is an issue I’m hot and cold with, especially since I very nearly married my last boyfriend or at least that’s what it seems like. Marriage isn’t important to me, I don’t think, but it seems like I should eventually go through with it because that’s what one does when one grows up. I’m not in a hurry for it because I’m a perpetual bachelorette in many ways and of course, I’m struck by the finality of it.
Where was this going? Oh yeah. Everyone is growing up around me, and I’m feeling left behind.
Mark and Ted laughing/groaning at what I’m sure was some sort of dirty joke.
Note: Just because the server decided to give you a free drink due to a mistake she made does not mean you must drink it. You especially don’t have to slam it right before you leave because you feel college-guilt leaving a free drink untouched on the table. The free drink will only put you over the teetering edge, and cause you to go from civilized drunk to college drunk the moment you walk in your house. This has its perks, none of which, however, carry over in the morning when you wake at 5:30 AM with your contacts in and clothes on, and blinding unforgiving pain between your eyelids. Say no to free drinks!
Chris and I had a lovely time last night with a group of irreverently witty nerds from Metafilter. We were sitting on the rooftop of Joe’s Garage and the night was gorgeous, cold and starry, as nights should be. I did feel a little out of my league in regards to a lot of things, meaning I was the youngest person there and felt my age, not in terms of maturity, but in terms of success and accomplishment. I wasn’t made to feel this way at all; everyone was just so dashingly funny and ambitious, and I felt a little like a gangly bedheaded wandering kid. Whatever that means.
But it was a great time, and I was really surprised at how well a group of strangers clicked and played off each other. It was extra cool to finally meet Mark, whose website I’ve been reading for the past few years and on whom I’ve been nursing an internet crush.
And now it’s time to buy a refill of Advil. Ach. My head.
I can’t wake up today. I don’t know what the problem is. I shouldn’t have washed all the bedding yesterday because I keep trying to work on various projects, but the Bounty fresh smell of the covers keeps luring me over there. So, I lay down, fully clothed, above the sheets, for ten minutes and then get back up. I’ve repeated this at least eleven times today.
One advantage of working at home is that you can do these sort of things. If you desperately need a popsicle break, by all means, take one. If you want to go outside in the backyard, barefoot (not really a pleasant experience, considering our grass is yellow and dead) and zone out in front of the garage for a while, it’s well within your bounds.
However, when everyone else is away at their real jobs and all your work is done for the day and you’re trying to save money by not doing things that require money, the day becomes extremely boring. Seriously, I’ve gotten my thrills lately by sorting the recycling and lining up the shoes in the front hallway. I have also rearranged the refrigerator, written lists and crossed nothing off them and cleaned other people’s bedrooms for them.
Anyway, that will soon change when my schedule changes.
. . .
And totally stealing from Sarah B.., facts about my roommates:
Robert Englund, aka Freddy Krueger, went to Abbey’s parents’ wedding.
Chris has never had one drop of alcohol in his life and doesn’t plan to.
One time, back when Andrew was a purist and didn’t drink, I spilled liquor on his sleeping bag during a (sort of) camping trip and he yelled at me. I bring this up at least three times a week.
Rick’s father toured with Bob Dylan. I think.
. . .
I am feeling a little off-kilter, and my face shows it.
Well. Today is the first day of school in Duluth, and I feel weirder than I thought I would not being there. In fact, I think I miss it, an odd conclusion considering I left Duluth and school rather deliberately and quickly. Education-wise, I know I only miss the first few weeks of school, which have always been my favorite. I love the first-day speeches from professors who are either trying to make you love them or make you fear them. I love the new notebooks and old bookbags and syllabi and the discovery of friends in your classes and the confused, yet electric feel of the hallways. I love coming home from the first day, flopping all the new books onto the floor and sitting around with friends drinking coffee and beer and Kool-Aid, listening to each other’s day, who hates which professor, what class is going to suck, what extracurriculars are going to take up more hours than thought.
But this is all I like, education-wise. Not counting my acting and speech classes when I was a theatre major (I loved every moment of those), once the first two weeks of school pass and everyone gets swamped and less friendly and professors start doling out dull paper assignments and busy-work group projects, my attention wavers. My brain shuts off, even if it’s a subject I’m interested in. I still manage to do well for the first three-fourths of the semester - usually all As. But then crunchtime comes and I give up, stop going, retreat. I repeated that pattern one too many semesters, and so now I’m taking a break from school.
Though I know I have more school left, more first two week euphorias, I know I won’t be going back to school in Duluth, which hurts my heart a little. My last year in Duluth was mostly terrible, and I have no desire to repeat that, but the years before were everything college should’ve been. I don’t just mean the parties and the liquor, but just the general carefree craziness, the new friendships, late nights at Perkins with coffee pots, watching the sun creep up over Lake Superior.
I feel like I’m about to cry, which is a combination of an aching for what I’ve left and also PMS. I have to remember what Duluth would be like now, with the majority of the nerds gone. Erik is still there, on staff now at school, and it’s comforting to know he’s still owning the hallways late at night, just like he did our freshman year. He did tech set-up back then, projectors and televisions and such, and I would go with him at midnight on school days to keep him company. We’d lay on the floor of the ballroom and watch ourselves talk in the big mirrors. Matt is still at school, with his Phish messenger bag and silver tumbler of coffee. Minh is still there, sneaking up on people from behind the basement poles. Beth is there, with her huge black art bag and shirt sleeves rolled up to her shoulders. There are many people still there, and yet the dynamic is gone. So I had to go, too.
I made a whole new set of friends right before I left, a group of wonderful geeky people that were fun to hang out with and always had something going on. But I had already left Duluth in my mind, and I wasn’t ready for a new group of nerds, not yet.
So. I hope everyone, still in school, has an incredible year. I miss sitting with my feet propped up in the lounge and knowing if I went into the cafe, there would be any number of people to sit with. I miss getting coffee at the cart between classes, and seeing bands in the Bullpub and speedreading assignments before class.Mostly, I just miss you. And the lake. Always the lake.
All I seem to be doing is taking pictures of the sunset lately. It’s like I’ve never seen it before.
Stiftungsfest was a grand old time, if people these days can have “grand old times.” The car ride there was the highlight because the four of us (me, Chris, Abbey, Andrew) listened to Meatloaf’s Bat Out Of Hell II and not only sang along at top volume, but also made the stunning realization that the album is pure brilliance. Meatloaf is genius! You heard it here, uh, first. When the husky-voiced girl part came on during I Would Do Anything for Love, we all, in synch, quieted down. The sky was apricot and the wind was sweet and Meatloaf was breaking our hearts the good way.
As usual, we ran into Chris’s entire family plus his entire senior graduating class at the fest. We ate delicious fair food (corn on the cob dipped straight into a vat of butter, funnel cakes, onion rings, fries with the skin on) and stretched out on a bench in front of the polka tent to gab. Right next to us, a large man with an even larger knife was chopping pungent onions for the fryer. Next to him, two little boys were playing some odd game that involved sticking their fingers in each other’s mouths. That came to an abrupt end when the older boy accidentally chomped down on the little one’s pinky. Red balloons floated to Mars.
On a side note, this is the first September in 18 years that I’m not starting school. I feel a little off-kilter and a little envious, but mostly relieved I made this decision.
