I've been home for just about two weeks now.
It's not as strange/horrible as I thought it would be. In some ways, it's strangely comforting. I am not a huge fan of suburban MA, but I am managing to do okay. My days consist of either working (more below), fishing, boating, sitting on the beach, looking for cafes, reading, music-downloading, seeing friends, etc. My parents are fine, basically sitting back and letting me do my own thing. L is working in a special-needs classroom and R is working at BC for the summer. So I have the house to myself.
My last week in Vermont was excellent; I spent it with good friends, instead of doing a lot of the senior week stuff. It just didn't interest me much. I spent some time with B, and meeting his crazy, loveable rugby friends, watching
A Clockwork Orange and eating Tiny Thai with R, hanging out with LA and H in Montpeiler and Burlington. Some other highlights:
- I was wasted (and when I say wasted, I mean wasted), the last weekend that I had to myself. I remember having about four Old Speckled Hens, and then a Guiness, then going to KKD where I proceeded to meet another friend and we did shots. Overall, it was rediculous and I haven't been that drunk since first-year. I was stumbling around Burlington the next day looking for my car, driving up to campus, and then going back downtown with LA and H to eat breakfast. Mine consisted of three glasses of water, two pieces of toast, and about four cups of coffee. I was hungover for what felt like two days.
- Going to Mr. Mikes for beer and pizza with R, where a really drunk girl begged me relentlessly for my hair elastic. "Please, please, it's an emergency." When I finally gave it to her, she started singing my praises and then said, "Oh my God, I love you. I would hug you but I don't want to assault you." Right. I can think of only two reasons why she'd need my hair elastic (throwing up or "giving dome" as LA so kindly put it). Fabulous. Second only to the the pirate who said to the ninja in Muddys, "So this is what you look like in person."Sketchy. B's face: priceless.
- Playing rummy in Langdon St. with Hizzle.
- The guy in Uncommon who told me that the endless rain was punishment for bombing Iraq and ignoring global warming.
- Going to Smith to see "A Genius for Place" exhibit with E, and to the vegan lunch place. So much fun. And yes, the Smith College police did send my license back.
Graduation was nice. It was indoors, so I thought it would be terrible. But overall, it was fine. The speaker was good (I could hear the conservatives cringing throughout the entire speech), and it poured rain during the A&S ceremony but the English majors stood their ground. I'm much happier that I walked with English than Political Science, which is probably a sign for what I should be doing with my life. After a talk with T, I might change my mind.
I came home and relaxed for a couple of days. Drank endless amounts of coffee at DG, and wrote a lot (in the normal, not cyber-space journal). Tried to make up my mind about things, but failed. I watched
American Idol for the first time. I didn't like the girl, but Taylor was okay. More people voted for
AI than for any American president. Hmm. My mother said that she would stop at BestBuy on the way back from school to see if it was on so she wouldn't miss the winner. I'm sorry. I just don't understand it. My mother told me, "Ali, you cannot be a pop-culture snob. Not everyone sits around reading Bill Shakespeare." Obviously. And yes, I guess I can be a little snobby when it comes to pop culture. But here's the thing: I don't care. I've seen reality tv and the stiletto novels, and they just don't interest me. So I think it's part snobbery, part confusion.
Then I went to the Cape. I went fishing, casting off the jetty, but caught nothing besides some small stripers. But it's early in the season, so it's okay. Drank a lot of wine. Went out on the boat. Then I went to work. Sunday was horrible, there was this soccer tournament with all these brats and their parents, ugh. I worked for 10.5 hours, no break, all alone. I came home, cursing myself for majoring in English and Political Science, scouring the classifieds, vowing to move back to Vermont. Monday wasn't as bad, still 10 hours, but with other people. I think I can swing it for the summer. The other day, I went to the beach, where I got extremely sunburned and then went to see
Wah-wah, a movie about Swaziland at the brink of independence. It's very good. I also want to see
An Inconvenient Truth. I also watched
The Graduate, which was good, but the book was better. Yesterday was orientation at OE (I've worked there for four years, but whatever), with scary corporate videos about "Changing lives and building relationships" and other bizarre brainwashing tactics.
Today I finished F. Scott Fitzgerald's
Tender is the Night, which was really good. The beginning was a little dull, but once you muddle through it, it's a well-written story. The prose gets a little flowery at points and it's not a good book to read when you're tired or you'll miss something. But his style of writing is very classic. An example:
McKisco's contacts with the princely classes in America had impressed upon him their uncertain and fumbling snobbery, their delight in ignorance and their deliberate rudeness, all lifted from the English with no regard paid to the factors that make English philistinism and rudeness purposeful, and applied in a land where a little knowledge and civility buy more than they do anywhere else--an attitude which reached its apogee in the 'Harvard manner' of about 1900.It's not stark, like Hemingway's, but it's good nonetheless. I wanted to start
Old Man and the Sea, but I am on an F. Scott roll, so I started
This Side of Paradise tonight. The beginning is a little better than
Tender. A favorite part:
School ruined his French and gave him a distaste for standard authors. His masters considered him idle, unreliable, and superficially clever. That and:
My dear boy--All you need to tell me of yourself is that you still are; for the rest I merely search back in a restive memory, a thermometer that records only fevers, and match you with what I was at your age. But men will chatter and you and I will still shout our futilities across the stage until the last silly curtain falls plump!
upon our bobbing heads. But you are starting the sputtering magic-lantern show of life with much the same array of slides that I had, so I need to write you if only to shriek the colossal stupidity of people...I wish I had taken classes on The Lost Generation in college. The authors are so complex: often poor, multi-lingual, drunk and adultrous, but wonderful writers. I think it's both funny and sad how Zelda, in a fit of jealousy over her husband's writing, would get drunk only to make F.S.F so angry that he was unable to focus on his work. Or how Hemingway took his own life, as many in his family did, in the early 1960s. So interesting.
I also mailed out fingerprints for my rap sheet (step 1,00023 on getting a visa) and a CD (
Sing-a-longs and Lullabies) to C in Paris. I think she'll like it.
But anyway, if you have read this far, you probably deserve a prize. I'm just blabbering, mostly out of boredom. Tomorrow I'm going to Cambridge with M, probably to go to the Coop and hang around. I like that city a lot. If I was to ever live in MA as an adult, I'd want to live near there.
Goodnight.
