It's the little things, often, especially today. Finding cumin cheese at the most sedate mall I've ever visited (masquerading as Leyden.. we'll see how it compares to my normal shrink-wrapped personal-air-delivery type), the ease and freedom of my bike, frying polenta to a delightful crispy outside with a solid but tender center (just like the perfect french fry), swiss chard with peanut sauce, roasted pork loin with the leftover orange juice to drink, inane conversation with Ethan, another forty papers graded. The way that you can whistle through a pen cap and it sounds like a kazoo - the same sort of reedy resonance and vibrating amplification. My favorite form of distraction when I'm working. Works best with cheap pens, I've discovered, Bics and Papermates especially. Tonight was a medium point blue pen, breaking the hearts of eager core-satisfying students (or maybe causing them to delight) capped over the back of the pen, trilling along with my Mozart or Radiohead or whatever snatched up bit of song I whistled forth. Lovely. I have renewed hope for greek yogurt, for the farmer's market, for Regionals, for my fate in Urbana, for friendship. Little things that stand out if you bother to look - maybe we're up to a knitting needle in the haystack.
In other words, my last post was 101 and this will be 102. I suppose that the hundredth was more exciting in pure numerical terms but there's a lovely symmetry about 101 and a hint of futurity about 102 that I enjoy more, somehow. 100 is just so expected and uneventful, rather like my twenty-first birthday. It's been a numerical sort of weekend - I spent two hours in a car with a mathematics graduate student (ah, how things never change) driving to Chicago for a tournament although this one was a logician, really, and was teaching a course that tried to make math exciting or at least palatable to otherwise uninterested core-appeasing students. The result of this conversation is that I now know how to make a convincing fake ID in Illinois, or at least a convincing license number. The actual manufacture I'd have to leave to someone better equipped and with more experience. Essentially your identity is converted into your number - I hear social security numbers work in a similar fashion although I don't know the details there. And then there were the numbers on Saturday: 4-0. I've never done that before at a tournament and I have to say it felt Quite Good. Almost Spectacular, although the driving rain in our last game was rather disheartening (despite our very chilly offense that managed to not turn it over in the zone). Then Sunday, a less exciting 1-2. A win over Third Coast (hard but well fought on both sides) then an expected loss to Briefcase although we matched them in the second half which makes our first-half lackluster defense and three throwaways on the endzone line rather painful. Then a long break before a rematch with Third Coast - having lost the finals we were subjected to play in the second-place backdoor game. Which, as we concluded during our break, should really be a backdoor bracket for fifth (i.e. the last spot to Regionals). The difficulty with this attitude being that my team essentially decided they didn't want to play the game and therefore gave up before it began. Not fun. And Third Coast, having been beaten by us twice before was eager for revenge. So we lost, badly. I don't recall the numbers involved but it was fifteen to much less, perhaps even less than ten. So. We shall see what comes about at Regionals. The last good number to leave you with is Six. My jersey number (which finally arrived). Bonus points to anyone who can tell me why I picked it. Ethan figured it out straightaway, but then again he's a rather smart chap. Part of what I love about him.
For the first time we each have toothbrushes in each others' bathrooms. We've never really lived together, apart, like this. Last year there was an almost comforting distance that provided scope and time and regularity. This year there are hurried weekends and inane phone calls and dashed off emails. I feel like we see each other more but the time itself has been cheapened by the careless nature. I'm sure that somehow this is unfair to him or me or us. But I think about our weekends - full of work or ultimate with very little actual time to focus on each other in shared company. Not in the kitchen, the bathroom, on the couch, little things like racing each other up the stairs or hiding around corners or holding hands on the way to the car. Mundane things that I could screen out by enough space for denial at Penn that now are contrasted so sharply with weeks of extra space and weekends of too short comfort. I wonder if my much larger room this year helps or hinders. The unconfining space seems large enough for more than just me, the microwave and bathroom means I never have to leave once I unlock the door and step through (which, being fire-safe, closes right after me). It is a strange kind of melancholy, which makes me distrust myself all the more. Four weeks in. One hundred posts. Still the same themes. For how long can I keep this up?
I still find it hard to begin again. Every day, right now, may be a stretch since I am trying to wean myself off my computer dependency (it helps to have television again) and am trying to get in the habit of not keeping it on all the time which unfortunately conflicts with writing right before I go to bed (which I don't turn my computer on to do). This blather is not why you read though (I hope) so I'll try to get to some sort of point. I must be tired to digress like this...
I have wondered why I find it harder to write than in the spring. It could be an exhaustion of ideas, but since I can apparently prattle on about nothing forever my mind should be rife with options. It could be that I'm worn down from classes and grading and ultimate and trying to balance my personal life but most of those factors existed in the spring also and yet I was not impeded. It could be that I have lost my sense of obligation to my unseen audience, my void, which I note in my less pressing moments of guilt when I lie in the dark or scramble to class and think to myself forgot again. It could be that the subtle fulfillment of married life and more time with Ethan has removed any need I have for vicarious connection with the outside world as I retreat slowly to inner comfort. I imagine that none of these and all of these are true - whatever the case may be I have always been proud of my promises however I may falter during the course. If my mother's fifty-odd year friend can join the cross-country team at her community college and shave off three minutes between her first and second 5k race (after not running competitively for at least ten years and having at least one foot surgery) surely I can sit back at my keyboard under the harsh fluorescent lights, look out my window at the leaves (no more planes!) and think of a few words, however light and slender, to drop onto the page.
I hope the farther down the hill this stone rolls, the harder it'll be to stop
I don't really know where to re-start things or how. There seems to be a plethora of choices since my silence the past few months has opened up wide avenues for recent past history as well as ruminations that might otherwise have gone unthought. I suppose I ought to do some justice to my name here, though, and fill in those of you who weren't around a bit on the whole marriage thing. Briefly. I have an appointment with my pillow shortly that I intend to keep.
So. Where we left off is hard to say. What is easy to say is that planning a wedding requires a huge amount of energy and decision-making of a sort that I hope I never have to go through again. What color tablecloths, what color napkins, what colors for the head table, the family table, the guest tables, what kinds of flowers, invitation fonts, paper color, quality, size, envelopes, guest list, seating chart (or lack of one), favors, chairs, music, photography, cake, officiant, licensing, insurance, transportation, shoes. Not forgetting, of course, all important food and wine. I didn't count the number of hours I lost to this crap although I wish I could hang it up in my apartment like a marathon race number - something to inspire a feeling of greatness in myself and awe in others... But the end result worked out okay, as far as we can tell. People appeared to enjoy themselves, we had a good time, no one passed out or got belligerent so all in all I call that a success. The funny thing is that the ceremony wasn't legally binding at all, really. We signed our names to get the license two weeks earlier at the courthouse and then handed the form to our officiant who filled it out a few days after our wedding and sent it in. That's it. Nothing at the ceremony itself - nothing to sign, to seal, to avow. That part is just for the guests, really. People ask if things have changed for us and they simply haven't in any way we notice. Emotion doesn't depend on legal documents and since our living situation didn't alter (at least not under the traditional system) our daily lives with each other interact on the same plane. Maybe I am fooling myself and subconsciously there's something new that I'll only realize at some pivotal moment in my life. Maybe. Until then, I'm content to travel on in the same path with only a new appellation to designate my changed status. It's a little odd to hear people talk about me with the word "wife" and not mean that I should make an iso cut or look up for a disc or cover my girl better on defense. I suppose I'll get used to it at some point. The being a wife thing - that I've got under control.
So I am rather ashamed of myself - coming up with such grandiose plans of writing which I shirked rather vehemently this summer (can you shirk vehemently? I choose to believe so) - and I wish to apologize to you, my faithful (and probably only) reader and promise that there will be more to come. Not too much will present itself tonight as I am saddled with more badly written papers than I care to contemplate and a pressing need for a shower and bed, but it is a beginning again however pathetic it may present itself. The short story of the past month-odd gap is that I have been Wifed (although not trophied, to my knowledge) and embarked upon that great journey of life known as Graduate School. This entails absence from the now-husband for temporary perpetuity so never fear! depressing lamentation will never be far off from this page unless I spend a few lines extolling married bliss. Which is really just living-together bliss. We'll do the "nothing changes" post later. Yes. A whole new sphere of reflection opening like the great stone door into Moria. May I fare better on my dimly lit travels.
