Challah! Challah!
Sense of self-reconfirmed by outside actors and familiar reminders of what I like to do. Boston was really perfect - perfect in the sense that I haven't had fun like this in a month of Sundays. Today marks the second consecutive Sunday I've spent driving home in the rain. Today though, I was willing to forgive the precipitous driving conditions on the Mass Pike as I was thrilled to be in the car, rediscovering Rufus Wainwright, and having thoroughly enjoyed several of my favorite things, namely Katie, Casey, Aaron, Border Cafe salsa, beer(s), and being lazy on a Sunday morning and drinking coffee. I think this weekend might have bought me another month of being home and under stimulated. I just like being reminded that a good night out is a cure-all for all that ails ya'. Katie was kind enough to nudge me toward the existential crisis that hovers, looms, around the unkind age of 23, a little preview of coming attractions, if you will. We all agree that 23 is much older than 22 and more than just 365 days closer to 30 -- it is an undisputed truth that 30 is scary. Lots of gossip this weekend, condemnation of marriage and aging and settling down, poverty, shared disgust for employers universally and the institution known as
work. For a change this weekend, rather than feeling out of sync and in between, I felt like I was right were I am suppose to be. Just like we all shudder at the question of normalcy, secretly sizing up the competition and taking stock of our own assets, I felt in-tune, in-line, and just perfectly capable and adequate and well, for me this weekend, it was nice to see that there is some true substance in those little mantras I keep repeating and affirming to myself. Home still looks like a sensory deprivation tank when I get out and soak up that urban air, but I felt a little more than two dimensional after a bizillion glasses of beer and good company.
Strong sense of purpose and motivation coming out of today. Remembering how deeply satisfying it is to have a clean room or how great it is on a rainy Sunday to seclude one's self and read, think, stay up late and drink coffee and set down concentrating on some literary matter. Hardly a difficult read, prompted by a debate round at Brown and just a genuine curiosity over this new academic trend to analyze fairy tales, I bought myself a copy of Grimms' fairy tales en route home. I am embarrassed to admit how long it has been since I've sat down and read something non-academic, for gasp,
pleasure -- but I think this is a good place to begin. This morning I decided that it's time to turn back to Sylvia Plath's unabridged journals, several hundred pages worth of wonderful vignettes that I've picked up and put down a dozen times over summers, breaks, and random Thursdays while at school, and it accompanied me on at least one trip because I am using a 2001 New Haven train schedule as a bookmark. She is a master of the craft and I need to remind myself, forcefully at times (and this is notably harder without a subscription to the New York Times), that language is not always utilitarian. My life has become a little too routine lately - and a droopy one at that. I just especially like reading her because I am a "journalist" too (if such a classification exists) and it's like the precursor to blog culture, in a romantic pen to the paper Old New York, small New England College, adjectival kind of way. I've actually kept a journal faithfully since 4th grade. While we're on the subject, I was inspired to do so by South Windsor's very own town historian, one Porter Collins, when he came and talked to my elementary school about being a local historian and passed around a piece of the Berlin Wall a friend had sent him. The piece of the wall was just an added bonus but it really impressed me at the time. In his "school assembly" talk, Mr. Collins urged each of us to write one-page per day and keep a journal, saying it was the best gift you could ever give yourself. I could never agree more. When it really comes down to it, it's amazing what sticks with you. This is probably one of my most vivid memories from elementary school � this, sex ed from a 65-year old wrinkly lady, and maybe square dancing in gym class.
posted by lmjasinski at 10:06 PM
