the rain pervaded the campus for two days, inspiring poetry, community and solitude, asserting itself as a topic of conversation with partygoers and public safety officers, resulting in the loss of at least one umbrella and the always aesthetic array of many more at the entrance to sharples, moistening but somehow never soaking me as i trodged back and forth, and manifesting that phenomenom that has always fascinated me of simultaneously muting and making more vibrant the sensory experiences of life. rain was a subject there, but in some ways this weather was a paragon dummy subject, without agency, merely continuing.

continuing into the night, but this morning (morning, i say, and yet it's 4:24 in the pm) the sky is fantastically luminous albeit still overcast, the air is wondrous clear; humid, but seemingly purified. hannah and i have made it through poses, out of our heads, and xo without accomplishing more than a few pages of the prince, the times, or this. but that's okay. it's break. and here i am writing about the weather, and paraphrasing my personal e-mail. there's recounting to do.

forever ago wednesday, i brought a cheesecake to seminar and only spoke, for the most part, after it had been almost half-eaten, but then with some frequency and some passion about potential unrealized implications of dada. stayed after to wipe up spring-form drip and chat with janine about parallels in modern music. i think she likes me. i practiced and spent too long in sharples and watched the combined african class. a deep lesson found tony contradicting himself, perhaps, on chopin interpretation, and telling me i should stick with quiet sensitive music for now (ravel perhaps?)

from there to a collapse in kcb and an absolutely preposterous dance rehearsal for terpsichore. the group was about half different from sunday. free-form warm-up exercises led into a "break" which was actually spontaneous leaping and twirling around to the t-heads' "blind." we didn't work on the dance per se; we did self-aware-ly "flaky" modern improv and composition exercises, which drew on african, kathak, capoeira the electric slide, rhythm, and so on. all with an impossibly giddy energy. i stuck around too, after pushups and such, for a briefing in breakdancing basics. i intended either to sleep or clean my room, but too much energy after dancing, so i hung out in alyssa's for an hour or two.

i roused myself in time for class thursday morning, but i couldn't bring myself to it, and forget about bach (even though the chance of actually listening to music in class was tempting) that afternoon. as for drill yesterday, i was already too far into break, it would have just felt incongruous. eh, so what. but thursday i definitely needed the spare time.

we assembled at ten: mark drove, ben purchased liquor with his superpower of being 21, while sarah and i did the genuardi's portion, doing quite well at sixty bucks or so. she was my co-conspirator/sidekick/cheesebaking expert/minion for the day, uncomplainingly following me from worth to sharples to ben west to wrc (an obviously inefficient route that i blame on the residual faultiness of my mental map of campus from living in danawell) to the weinstein's kitchen, where we were able to chat up tofu-boy, dissect and groove to midnite vultures, and get our bake on in a real kitchen. a real kitchen. lots of rummaging through cupboards to find something we knew we'd just seen. ("we, kemosabe?")

there was some difficulty in getting the wrc key (my id is still misplaced), getting sarah (henceforth to be known by the name of rose - speaking of which i hear u. eco is speaking at bryn mawr) the key, and opening the friggin' door even when we had the friggin' key. that last procedure involved standing in the rain for a good twenty minutes, chatting with number 23, and then giving up and going to sharples. i ate a sandwich as i walked back to shower and change. help too from ester on the sidelines and laurel, who i think somewhat begrudgingly drove me back to weinstein's to pick up the baked goodies.

i squeezed in the budget hours, where geoff made me some allowances but not all (will require a tiny bit more legwork). and then to the party. but there was nobody there to help, and too much to be done with a half hour left. we frosted the cake (banana with chocolate ganache on the top layer, lemon buttercream on the bottom - damn tasty cake, at least to my taste) and set out the cheeses (brie and camembert baked with apricot-pineapple preserves) and grapes and cheesecake. when people started arriving, in a lovable range of attire, we were still in frantic prep mode ("we, kemosabe?").

some things made me frustrated: we never got a satisfactory music setup, and it took forever to get the drinks going (the only appropriate vessel i could find for heating the cider was an old electric dispenser thingy which created large amounts of alternately noxious and pleasant-smelling smoke when i tried to use it). and the whole thing felt pretty disjointed - ben mentioned that it was sparsely attended for the space, but actually it was about the number i wanted/expected to attend; it was just a shame i hadn't had time to think through spatial arrangement. so, it wasn't my best party.

but, whatever. many people that i love were there, including all of the at-swat bloggers on my sidelinks except for duffy, who it now occurs to me completely slipped my mind when i was writing invitations - so sorry kate! - and zabby, who seems to be disappearing completely (i'm not going to link to them, you can get there by yourself). joel performed "birthday rós" for as far as i know the first time in public, which was precious and very well received. (i wasn't really expecting any presents, and in fact only got one - a tilebag from rose in the morning - as well as sweet cards from two-thirds of the freshman contingent.) the drinks, when we got them going, were fantastic: a bowl of minty mojito served with straws and lime wedges, and improvised hot cider (i finally gave up and just dumped a large quantity in the dispenser; it smoked less and came out tasting great) with copious spiced rum. all had a good time, i think, in the end.

we were tired and somewhat drunk, and left messes for the morning - i {rose and/and rose} went back to the wrc at 8:30 to mop and dishwash; made short work of it and made sharples breakfast like a typical friday. all that was left for me was to return the pa to soundmachine, so that accomplished (with the help of a comradely p.s. officer) i came back to my bed, to recover and deal with another mess - in the space of a few hours my floor went from almost invisible to clear and vacuumed. bed made. closet overhauled (the sweater shelf my folks sent has gone along way to systematizing closet and dresser). other surfaces still cluttered, but still it's satisfying.

i only left for sharples, and only then at dinner, after several stabs concluded a little game of birthday card monte with benjamin. i found lots of nice folks to talk with, and eventually hannah arrived. we came back here to talk for a while and play an aborted game of scrabble. then made a lovely night of it in pitt, with the natural history of the chicken, laundry retrieval and painting appreciation, and a tindersticks cd found on a bulletin board. we took turns serenading each other on her neat little martin (i sang "chicken with its head cut off" in honor of an episode in the movie.) in the morning, oatmeal with nori, a missing sock, and lavender hygiene products. and so it continues. back on campus (at noon, respectably), i finally got the iceland tickets, and i took a cheese danish from the 350 years of quakerism conference. but the library was closed, so we've come back here. we listened to lovesongs #1-23. hannah has forsaken machiavelli for kundera. we're thinking about going into the city. but no definite plans. it's break. it's break it's break. i'm excited, and, happy. am i ever not happy (answer: yesterday, briefly, but that's done now.)

i've heard many songs in the last few days, but not this one. for some reason i wanted to quote it:

i sit two stories above the street
it's awful quiet here since love fell asleep