apple butter

I went home on the 11th for October break and went to the ICA museum. The rest of the time I studied for my Cognitive Psychology exam. Studying for psychology exams always feels (for lack of a better word) very 'meta'. For example: attending to information on attention. or trying to memorize details on memory. or being anxious about an exam on anxiety.


Friday the second time I woke up it was 6:30. I got up, burnt an egg for breakfast, and went to wait for the bus, so I could take the train, so I could take the subway, so I could go to CCNY by 11:30 and discuss the logistics and outline of my senior project, which is going to be an offshoot of my summer internship. When I got back to Bard it was 7:30 and the moon was full.

I also went to a small concert with Hannah
Frank Corliss, piano, and Marka Gustavsson, viola, will perform works for viola and piano including Hall Overton's Sonata (1959), Nino Rota's Intermezzo, Christopher Theofanidis Flow, My Tears (1997), and Sonata (1922) by Arnold Bax

on a side note, I figured out how to jar apple butter this month.

french toast

A German a Japanese and a Russian-Jew are eating french toast.
It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.
Bianca said she would visit me as soon as she got a job. She has a part-time unpaid internship showing art in NYC. Close enough. She came on Saturday. We walked by Blithewood and the waterfall, enjoying the sudden onset of autumn. In the evening we went to Christo's sisters band Tinmouth at smog. At some point we had texted Shinno telling him to come join us. He showed up on Sunday and Monday morning we ate french toast.

I received some advice about The Future. Bianca was an art history major. She's planning on going to Vienna for a year come December and then grad school for geospacial analysis. Shinno was a psychology major. He's planning on grad school and deciding somewhere between design and fashion and making sure to not get deported - he's on an extended student visa, but he's lived here since he was ten.

They both left Monday evening. I was just sweeping the floors and stairs (on my chore rotation) listening to Built to Spill.

soup

After being sick for ten days and feverish for seven health services gave me antibiotics. My friends boycotted movie night, telling me I was too sick to host anything. If only boycotts of vodka and pasta were as effective (and sensible). Instead I watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012 USA) alone, drinking tea with clover honey.
Last night Zoë's parents arrived and we made dinner. Jono finally convinced me to watch The Room (2003 USA), allegedly one of the worse movies ever produced.

I had a dream Shimon had been wed when he was four. Three years later, that being now, I was at Yosef's arranged wedding ceremony, held on the rail road tracks cutting through the Hudson River. A thin strip of land surrounded by water, tufts of grass and thin trees growing on it. I did not understand why Yosef was okay with it.

smork

smork is a word Kostya and Eloosha came up with to say 'blow your nose' from the Russian word сморкаться - smorkatsya. I have a cold

Léon: The Professional (1994 French in English) – I wanted something faster passed but got a cold instead. Tonight I had a dinner for four instead of going to a party of I-didn’t-find-out-how-many.  

The first TBL recording of the semester was yesterday

 I’ve only ever watched one zombie movie in my life, and, minus the whole ‘walking dead’ bit it was a teen romance (Warm Bodies), not horror. But I’ve had two zombie dreams in the past month. In the first, it was zombies merged with vampires: they ate brains, crowded together and had to avoid the light. I had to walk quickly to get to a safe room before the sunset, while they reached out to me from the shadows. The decay had not yet set into the city, but the cement was cold.

The second Hannah and I were walking around and occasionally I had to kill zombies by cracking their skulls open and jumbling their brains. It felt like…snapping a lobster claw when I pushed through the temple-area (I’ve eaten lobster once and won’t ever again – as Папа said, it felt like eating a giant cricket). One time I ripped the jaw off first, going through the roof of the mouth. I was afraid I would get infected, an accidental broken bone penetrating my skin. 

And then there was a house with five doors, each leading to another world. The house connected the five but I had to choose which one to live in before the house ceased to exist, and I with it. All the world had zombies in them, so there really wasn’t much choice.

where

七人の侍 (Seven Samurai 1954 Japanese) - the first week of the last year of college, day one through seven left me exhausted but optimistic: I can do this; I can take all that was good from last year and make it better. I am present I am here (I am not in Berlin I am not in Moscow I am not in Manhattan).

Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum 1979 German) - the second week I started re-started the movie club. I don’t think I could have eaten after that film but soon it was Yom Kippur and I was fasting anyway.

Soy Cuba (I am Cuba 1964 Soviet-Cuban in Spanish) - The Land The Land. Friday I approached the black car from which Hannah waved at me, parked in someone else’s driveway, bags ready. We drove past our destination and parked on an empty lot. We walked along the highway, past skipping silhouettes of deer, then up and through rows upon rows of pear trees. I untied the string and swung open the gate. The yellow moon was rising.

We felt up the trees in the dark, picking apples in the light of equinox eve. Hiding 60-70lbs of spoils in the bushes, we ran back to the car, feeling the pressure of imagined ski masks on our faces. We drove up and picked up our bags (apples, pears, quince) the tires grating against the gravel, the gas pedal pushed as Dean changed gears and said “I think we got away with it”. We threw our heads back and laughed.

The next night we were good citizens and went to Poughkeepsie to see Nina in a community theater rendition of The Children’s Hour. On the ride back Nina said that a lot of the cast members (of all ages) idealized Bard as a place where people are free. Be present be here be present be here.

Саша и Эвелина

on the 7th Kirill picked me up from Redhook at 5:30pm instead of 12 so we missed the wedding ceremony.
but
I heard that, when they kissed, someone let out butterflies that quickly spiraled up into the air.

Later, we released Chinese lanterns mimicking their flight.
The bonfire, the candles, the sparklers, the younger sister spinning wild a fire hoola hoop.

The chatter, the pastel dresses and freely flowing wine, the tables laden with food and the grass stamped out from late and later-night dancing, the glow of song in the air melding with the hum of sparks and smoke.
The smiles and fretful caring of the happy couple.

The morning after we cleaned up and left "joy to them, joy to them".

buy sugar

The morning that I left for Bard, Mama told me that I look like an Urban Outfitters model. Sima asked me what I was going to do after college and Потемкин tried to get attention but a belly rub was an unrealistic dream. Yosef promised to try to call me more, as he does every year (and we did talk for almost an hour last night). I got salt&vinegar chips at the rest stop and Papa got tea. 

the kitchen in this house is quite nice. we don't really socialize & we have a similar level of expected cleanliness.
functional.
the fact that I do not have any sugar, however, is not.

Rosh Hashanah is always a bit lukewarm at Bard (the undercooked tilapia, the doughy challah, the one bottle of saccharine Manischewitz for each table of ten) but Le'shana Tova. Yesterday I joined the tennis team, though I can only make it to 3/5 practices a week and have to miss some of the meets.