Last weekend I...

Went apple picking with Audrey (mentor) and Margaret and Hannah. The rest of the dorm was either asleep or working, it was 12 in the afternoon. Then Rosette came down and helped caramelize and candy the apples.
(photo: Margaret)

In the evening Rosette made pasta and zucchini Parmesan. I haven't seen so many of us in the dorm together at once.
And then she made pie. Basically she went cooking crazy. :)

Sunday night (technically Monday morning) Hannah and I procrastinated from doing hw by reading poetry. Then we wrote one by passing the computer back and forth.

Spinning and Spinning
(or A New Discourse on the Poetics of Procrastination)

The day relapses into evening and now she says
how come I’m not asleep? my brain is absolutely asleep.
Absolutely. And curled up, cold, under a pale moon, sailing
to a faraway land, like Max from “Where the Wild Things Are,”
away and away. She sighs and wishes
that she was a small child and it was appropriate to not
feel obliged to sit up for late-night wrangling, to worry about,
in the back of her head, the constant worry worry about about
Gertrude Stein and irony and semantics.
because there is too much sarcasm and not enough sincerity and that’s what
she said. That’s WHAT SHE SAID!!!

She said that she didn’t, and then she started hypothesizing that.
Oh, that hypothesis. Yes. She tangled herself in
the sweetness of familiar self-annoyance and music,
constant, irritable music of constant, irritable uncertainties—
uncertainties about will be and what is even,
so much so that her thoughts were like small strange birds perched
on an exposed electric wire.
Easily scattered, they were,
more easily shocked up into the air and falling down like
warm and fluffy snowflakes. No—suspended
and drifting like pale stars, they were.
And it’s just she, but actually me.
not here, because of its uselessness and long pointless words.

Someone told her, finally, said, Just wait—
wait for it, because at some point
it’s all going to start spinning.

having people see poems is always embarrassing, but I'll live :)

Wake up in the evenin' feeling like P-Diddy...

I hear an alarm go off. It's maybe like...9pm.
I go into Jeff's and Jack's room.
Jack is staring at Jeff.
Jeff is asleep.
I come up to Jeff and shove him in the side.
He wakes up and shuts off his alarm.
Ten minutes later I come in to their room and Jeff is asleep.
I ask Jack if I should wake him up. He says Jeff said not to wake him up. I leave.
Two hours later Rosette wakes Jeff up. He
doesn't remember telling Jack not to wake him up. I think Jeff is just always asleep. Forever and
ever asleep.

The picture is of dinner. Hannah, Margaret and I are very tired of Klien (dining commons). Actually, everybody is very tired of Klien. It's not always bad. But today I ended up having a little bit of pasta, soy milk and a banana for lunch. That's not lunch. But everything else was disgusting. The omelet we made had tomatoes, parmesan, pepper from the community garden, salt, milk and black pepper. Rice I bought awhile ago, thankfully it still exists. We also had a salad of pepper/tomato and Greek yogurt. And then we fried apples we had picked with brown sugar and butter. Dollop of sour-cream on top and mmmmm .

And THIS week...oh my.

We had a weird luau food thing at Klein one day. Hanz took the pigs head that was lying on a table with pulled pork and took it to Tewks. He stuck it on a stick. I saw it, it had a cigarette in its mouth, and a lei about its nose. A group of Tewks people was sitting by it.
Amanda took a drag on her cigarette and said
"we are savages"

A kid got kicked out. From my dorm. So now it's 20 of us. It was very strange, the whole process of him moving out and everything that happened, but it isn't worth going into, since hypothetically we aren't supposed to know (though everybody on this side of campus does). That night we went dancing in the rays of the Fall equinox.

Saturday I made blini with Margaret, which was awesome.
And then lunch was Maggie's leftover Indian food, and dinner Hannah and a bunch of minions (including myself) made felafel.
So I fully avoided Klien for an entire day.

We also went to a contemporaneous concert. They play modern classical music, same group as did the Parliment of Reality Unionized Chaos
But at the Sounds Good concert there were pieces with more structure, and at least three written by Bard students.
Some of it was amazing. Though the concert was from 8-10:30, the time didn't drag by, though it was a little stuffy in the Chapel, a lot of people showed up.

meep.

Breakfast and a sprinkle of Weekend

Woke up at 12. Went downstairs to eat Rosette's scrambled eggs and blueberry pancakes (made from muffin mix). Adrienne brought her maple syrup. Hannah made french-press coffee. We sat around reading the New York Times.
Last Saturday Rosette and Hannah brought breakfast to Adrienne and me in our room. Friday Rosette made chocolate-chip cookies too, and left one for me on a plate on my bed. Basically we have an awesome floor.
I'm probably making blini (блины, blintzes) next weekend, I miss them.

I also watched "A Hard Day's Night" with Adrienne. It's a weird (but rather amusing) Beatles movie. Doesn't require any thinking, just a lot of "wtf is going on? why is there a little old man?" There were 7 people in the entire theater. Rosette was just playing Such Great Heights (Iron and Wine version).

I also went to the Parliament of Reality with Hannah and Jack yesterday. There was an experimental jam ("Contemporaneous presents Indeterminate Meltdown -"Unionized Chaos")
All played in C. Hypnotic and went on from 6-7:30 (but we only stayed for half an hour, since dinner is also around that time). I people watched: this one girl would get hypnotized and then come back to reality, over and over.

anyway, i need to finish reading Symposium, outline Genesis essay and work on Mama's photos. Also clean my room and respond to a snail mail (YEAAAAAAHH!!!!). But the other stuff first.

Freshman -7

Mama asked me before I left to make a list of things I bought to see how its dif. from what we eat at home. Basically to see what I've been deprived of during my childhood :).
I haven't gotten too much stuff though. I came with some tea (black loose leaf, chamomile and lemon-ginger) and coffee (ground beans, symbol of Mama's love).
I feel to guilty not using the swipes at the cafeteria, since those are already paid for (forced meal plan=ug)

but here it is
non-food: books, composition notebooks, bed risers, shampoo, conditioner, blistex.
food: block of Cabot Chedder (yes!), two heathbars, a kashi bar, a box of Ritz crackers, rice, gum, peanut-butter.
at food-places: coffee*2 and fudge (at "Tastebuds"), burrito (at an unlicensed burrito stand), coffee ice-cream (at Holy Cow).
Received by snail-mail: more books, Gunpowder Green tea, headphones, rain-boots, sleeping bag, ether-net cord, camera lens filter, and letters.

I also still pilfer fruit from Klien, and I have two glass bottles from Lipton tea (side effect of eating at Manor), in which I carry milk. They have good milk here.

but yeah, I've managed to loose 7lb anyway.

Yet another weekend goes by (five weeks)

I want green skate shoes and a pair of shiny silver sneakers. don't ask what's wrong with me.

Rosette's friend Jeff from home came to visit for the weekend, so we gave him a tour, except they didn't go to Hannah Arendt's grave with us.

Went to smog twice. Smog is an abandoned garage where people play music. It was re-painted, but last year it had tons of spray-paint, as well as some glow-in-the-dark pieces (awesome, no?)

We had been hanging out on the field adjacent to the garage, but security kicked us off. And then the guy gave us a speech about how he needs to catch someone (common, your speaking the the only sober people here).
First night it was dj's, a weird video being projected onto the wall (it had barney in it). It felt like armpit, and we left pretty soon after. A girl came up to us and asked us our names, and invited us to a party the next night, but I didn't go, though I know a few of the kids who live in that dorm (and that one of them was making moonshine).
We came and went to the bunny ears, which are actually called "stargon". There was a boy and a girl there, both of whom I knew, but barely. She was so excited that she knew me and that we had had lunch together, and her breath was sooooo alcoholic, it was ridiculous. Though I guess at least she was throwing up or passing out. But I still don't understand why she was trying touch my hair and being more feely with me than the boy she was with. She looked so bad the next day at breakfast. I'm surprised she was up.
The second night of smog some of the Bard bands played, and it was actually a lot better than I expected. still tons of drinking, and a puff of smoke hanging over, but the music was energizing (and really loud).
A lot of the people I came with went to a "stop light party" (wear green if single, ect). But I figured it would either be a bunch of awkward girls and a few even more awkward boys, or tons and tons of sleaziness (and drinking, which it turned out to be). People who are taken probably just went for amusement.

Fysem today managed to connect Plato's Symposium to The Dark Knight.
win.

Parliment of Reality

Hannah, Sam and I went to the Manor to eat today. It is about 15 minutes to walk there, and the selection is much smaller. The Space used to be an insanity asylum, but really it just feels really fancy; there is intricate wood paneling and dim lighting, and the window-doors look out onto a field before ending off in the Hudson. The food isn't as mass-produced, and so it tasted much better (plus we had to walk further to get there, which probably made it even better).

Sam went off to wander and Hannah and I went to the Parliament of Reality. It consists of a very small, very clean pond with little red fish, and island with stones and a bridge. Here is a picture.
At night there is a spotlight on it. It made our silhouettes very clean. Even though it was only around 8, it felt very late, as if instead of being out in the world you where in some other reality (though perhaps not the real reality, as the same seems to indicate). If anything, a feeling of "alternate calm". Those were the words that came to mind as I left. Bats flew overhead and there was a single (sleeping?) toad that later disappeared. The sky was cloudy and the spotlight felt like the moon was right by our faces, except that we couldn't turn towards it.