About not having access to the internet at the barn (which will hopefully be remedied within two weeks or so, thanks to Joel's continuing efforts to get through the skulls of the covad operatives), I don't mind so much the lack of instant e-mail (since I come to campus often enough, and it's an excuse to when I don't) or the inaccessability of e-reserve readings (I just finished my first chunk of them for the Murder class, one fairly dry and another interesting enough, about Lowell mill gals in the '50s), but rather the resulting infrequency and thus length of these blogger posts. Last night's was made from the Willets dorm lounge computers, a new addition this year, with Ester alternately distracting me and haranguing me to wrap up the entry (and read her journal for an amusing account of our amusing encounter with the amusing Rogg Rogg as this was going on.) I still sort of feel that I was unable to capture the true grandiloquence of the party under in that rushed atmosphere, but I'll press onward in my chronologism.

Yesterday (what a way to start all my entries) I slept in a bit, just until noon. Jennifer Ku, a transfer student whom I encountered first in Lodge Two during orientation week and then in my French drill section, called during breakfast, and I invited her over. We had a fairly non-specific assignment to create a dialogue, so we discussed les orage de printemps and fetêr mon anniversaire, branching out into constructions we had not yet learned with the help of Ester's middle school French. Jennifer looked through my collection and picked out Modest Mouse and Billy Bragg to accompany our work; I had started the day off with Sublime's "40 oz. to Freedom," and continued it with the Boards of Canada after she left, to accompany Tennyson and yogurt.

Alyssa called (back, after our brief discussion in the middle of Friday's dinner which consisted of figuring out when she could call back) and we talked for the first time in a while. It seems that she's having as good a time as I am, although the activities in her daily routine (slow and fast walking meditation, lectures in the Buddha hall, etc.) couldn't be more different from mine. I love her approach to learning about cultures and religion in general and Buddhism in particular; more good-natured amusement at the novelty of it all than what some might deem more appropriate reverence, but ardent interest nonetheless. She told me a funny dream about a performance I would put on when she comes back to swat (the afroed director of a sort of conflation of the Muppet Show and an orchestra performance), and that she had sent a package, and that she loves me. And she does, and I love her too, but it's a funny love that sometimes is hard to notice (at least in my case) because it isn't set in opposition to anything. Our relationship is so free of tension and pathos that I forget how it could be otherwise, and thus how lucky we two are. As Ester might say, it's very functional. Functionality belies feeling, but our balance of the two seems to be both sustainable and fulfilling. Ester asked me yesterday whether I was looking for someone to fool around with while she's away, or would consider it. It's not that I wouldn't consider it, or that I would worry about Alyssa's reaction (she has effectively said it wouldn't bother her, and I believe that), because I do think that if the opportunity came up I would be willing to become involved, at least to a certain extent, with someone else, but my eventual response (which surprised me a little) was that no, I am not looking, and I don't have even the slightest desire too. I think that speaks to how satisfying my relationship with Alyssa is; it's neither more nor less than what I want it to be, albeit that it's obviously nicer when she's around. On a related note, too, I have of late been, as in many (particularly particularly busy) periods of my life, in a fairly desexualized mindset, which is at once convenient, becuse it does tend to take up time, and somewhat unfortunate, because sexuality, to me at least, is largely about fun.

I didn't leave the house until after Rebecca and Joel's delicious dinner of gnocchi and farfalle with vegan/non-vegan cream/mushroom/pea sauce, and then just to write that monster post and chit-chat with Peter and Ale, among others, in Willets lounge. Joel's theory is that the administration is trying to "gentrify" Willets, and certainly many of the cool freshman I have met live there (Annie, Dante, Milena.) Of course, stinky carpets and Brandon Carver remain as reminders of what came before. Ester and I took a mini-tour of Worth courtyard, dropping in on Rob (his white-board read debauchery, and his pinneapple shirt and stock of vodka belied the fact that he had neglected to invite anyone to his intended soireé) and Lodges 1 (a gaggle of girls being entertained by Marc sandwiched in a sofa; clearly they didn't need us) and 4 (the company all dolled up, having just returned from Danielle's birthday at Penang, Allison defiantly and oddly splayed across a couch like some lipsticked Matisse subject against a bed of dizzyingly patterned fabrics; they had been to the "pretty good" frisbee party the night before rather than my "ok" one [ester], dominated by "freshman ravers") and then returned barnward to intercept Ben in his metallic skirt attempting to escape.

We three and Joel debated the effect of Diet Coke on a happy body, the questionable appropriateness of the name "love seat" to our new piece of furniture, and the relative number of "conventionally pretty" people in this year's batch of frosh versus 99's, partook of the sublimely warm cheeses I had left out the night before, and then began "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control," soon joined by Sarah and Jonah, who had seen it before. The film is an excellent documentary by Errol Morris ("The Thin Blue Line") which focuses on the work and ideas of a robot scientist, a lion tamer, a topiary sculptor, and a naked mole rat specialist, interspersing interviews with footage from cheesy sci-fi flicks, animated cartoons, and circus performances. The juxtaposition of images, narration, and music very effectively creates and sustains a mood that encompasses the inherent eeriness of the circus, the humor and the grandeur of animals as seen through an anthropomorphic lens, and both the hopeful and frightening aspects of the future of technology. While the subtext for all of this is a group of individuals who are hopelessly extreme in their choice of career and even their mannerisms, Morris creates a unity among them that speaks to recognizable and innately human tendencies.

After finally completing "The Lady of Shallot," I slept on the sofa that was once my bed. Woke up ten hours later and plunged back into Tennyson: excellent "Ulysses" and "Locksley Hall," which I remember from AP; the fragmentary songs from "The Princess," which include a line we used as a vocal exercise in a theatre class once ("the moan of doves in immemorial elms, and the murmur of innumerable bees"), and the epic "Maude," which is captivating for its multiplicity of approaches, in form and style, to the telling of a fairly simple tale (my favorite parts were some of the simple descriptions of his interactions with Maude, which appear unexpectedly out of his melodramatic waxing of his own feelings; "I kissed her slender hand/she took the kiss sedately/Maude is not seventeen/but she is tall and stately.") I popped in "When I Was Born for the Seventh Time" (a great morning album, starting from the snaky accordian waking up on the left side), and then "Discovery," the newer Daft Punk album which, I've decided is much more listenable than "Homework" although the individual songs can't compare to the highlights of the earlier album. Where "Discovery," in the words of some Spin reviewer "toes the line between clever and stupid," "Homework" comes across, depending on your attitude, as either extremely innovative or extremely inane. I played "One More Time" at the party (by request), and I'm not sure how well a lot of the rest of the album would work at one of those parties, but I want to try "Harder, Better, Stronger, Faster," probably my favorite track, which is sort of a capsule history of techno dance music from early electro-pop to the vocoder infusion of the late nineties. The vocodorized keyboard/voice stuff at the end is positively awesome in its goofiness. Part of the problem/kitsch appeal of this album is the lyrics, which are just hopelessly bad ("I want you more than anything in my life") besides which vocals don't really belong in techno unless they're just shouts to get up and dance, but here they fit in so perfectly with the tone of the music, and you just have to grit your teeth and smile.

I moved from breakfast (maple-walnut muffins topped with Jarlsberg, and grapefruit juice; not a particularly workable combination) straight into lunch (reheated farfalle and cream sauce augmented with leftover tuna) without skipping a beat, and later, when Rebecca awoke, went with her to campus to try to squeeze into "Shut Eye." After a tense moment when Felicia paused after reading the names of nearly everyone else in the room off of the waiting list, she finally read Rebecca's name, and we were ushered in to front row seats (albeit on the floor.) The production was incredibly fun, as well as ambiguously meaningful and thought-provoking in that boundaryless experimental theatre way that I'm most familiar with from Shipping Dock shows. This one, which was described as an exploration of the concepts surrounding sleep, primarily evokes hospital wards and corporate boardrooms, with occasional forays into the home of a newlywed couple, a supermarket, and beds of all description. The company demonstrated considerable talent in dance, gymnastics, ladder climbing, singing, accordion and saxophone as well as acting, while one of the most enjoyable aspects of the show was the sound design (best captured in a brilliant interweaving of EKG bleeps with cell-phone melodies.) The climax was a G&S-styled patter song performed by the whole cast in the "Sleep Lab," at the end of which one of the actors jumped up brandishing a plastic scimitar and the scene devolved into confusion.