Last night I drove down to Richmond from days of pleasant listlessness in Northern Virginia, listening to the three good songs by the Postal Service over and over again. The Food Not Bombs benefit Tania was throwing and Karen with her band from Philadelphia was playing at was my destination. Two kegs, a vat of chili, and a bonfire attended by a conference of activists, and I'm joking about flatulent anarchists setting the town on fire by the end of the night when I find out they practically did earlier and seven folks, including half of my IMC collective, were arrested and no one's in the mood for jokes about it.
So today was spent mostly inside my small house with Jen Lawhorne, posting IMC articles and photos about yesterday with her all day long. You should go check them out--there are pictures of fire and comic strips. You'll like it.
But before that, before last night ended, Karen and her band made of two boys named Jim and Paul played rock and roll. And they all looked like and acted like and sounded like, and so I guess were by all accounts, rock stars. It was rad and inspiring and made me wish to see them again soon and that Andrew motherfucking Bourne would take seriously my attempts to be in a band with him, because Karen was the only rock and roll girl all night long in a set full of six bands, and she was beautiful.
Between it all and throughout, I was able to be a comfortable combination of social / sincere, productive / lazy. At one point today, I managed to ride my bike around in the beautiful sunshine, if only long enough to get bagels, and I swear I will wake up in the mornings and ride my bike for hours before I let my time slide away to other things. I will start doing things again, starting with finding xmas presents and answering email and buying transatlantic airplane tickets.
Look, I've already started. I'm on my way. Jeff Tweedy's singing about distance making love understandable and you are out there somewhere and I am thinking of you.
I finished everything on Thursday and graduated for good on Saturday. This is the short and sweet of it all:
Thursday afternoon I came home from my last two finals ever and my single final research paper. I was ecstactic, I wanted to call everyone in the world, but no one was around. I was overflowing, still full of energy and when I caught myself making yet another list of things to do, I stopped myself and said Oh no, Muna, the thing to do is walk yourself to the store, buy yourself some beer, and come home, watch television, and chill out. So I did and had a jolly good time drinking a six-pack and watching the Simpsons until Jonathan told me to leave the house so he and Nicholas could clean it -- ! woohoo ! -- so I did. Jason Laferrara came and picked me up and we went and ate pizza with Zach Samons, and then we all went to Andrew Bourne's house where Amanda Blackman was baking homemade cookies -- !
Friday I slept through the list of things to do I'd made the night before, which felt wonderful, and didn't wake up until I went to meet my newly arrived folks at the Marriott downtown for dinner. I ordered the swordfish, though really all I wanted was shrimp cocktail, because that's what you're supposed to eat on special occasions, right?
Saturday night I slept fitfully, having dreams that were almost nightmares, and I woke up before the sun rose to put on what passes for fancy clothes as far as I'm concerned. I picked up my plastic bag full of cap and gown, and ate the always not actually so good hotel breakfast buffet with my parents before traversing the traffic to the gymnasium. I jumped out at the light while they went to park and found my way to the weird white rectangular room all of us soon-to-be graduates were squeezed into. I swear there was not a single person I know out of all of them, and I was stuck trying to work that odd black garment, creepy cap, and disconnected tassels all by myself.
The ceremony was dry and impersonal. I walked only to my chair next to complete strangers, designated as only a part of the large impersonal group of Humanities and Sciences graduates. At some point, we all stood up and threw confetti that someone had passed around a bag of earlier up into the air. It was good, it was fine, and my folks got some pictures to prove it all happened.
I came home to a grand old party, full of delicious food like homemade samosas and vegan chocolate cake. People filtered in and out all day, and I drnk throughout. Jonathan and a bunch of other people sang me "Happy Birthday" and I popped open a bottle of champagne. We watched Mars Attacks and later Dogtown and the Z-Boys and were hard pressed to think of things cooler than invading martians and skateboarders. It was great, it was easy. It was a good solid time and by night fall, the real party time, I was too tired but even more so, too satisified, to venture out to the other happening graduation celebrations.
I slept til noon today, and only woke up really because Andrew Bourne and I were supposed to have band practice this afternoon, but he decided to buy groceries instead. I just now returned from the Ellwood Thompson's xmas party, which was totally worth it because Jonathan Arp sang a jaw-dropping, gut-busting rendition of Pat Benetar's too often overlooked hit "Hell is for Children."
Good stuff. Terrific stuff. Really happy and things are fine stuff. It is a very, very good feeling.
I am up, eating chocolate, worrying about my little sister, listening to Fischerspooner and Jurassic 5 over and over again, taking a brief break from primates primates primates.
Nonhuman primates. Is there anything you've ever wanted to know about behaviors of cooperation, reciprocity, and altruism in nonhuman primate populations? I'm trying to cut a thirty-page paper all about it down to twenty pages. I will have to take out the part about cool protean unpredictability. Here, you can have it instead:
“The adaptive logic of proteanism is simple. Animals generally evolve perceptual and cognitive capacities to entrain, track and predict the movements of other biologically-relevant animals such as prey, predators and potential mates…. Such predictive abilities mean that unpredictable behavior will often be favoured in many natural pursuit-evasion situations…. Predictability is punished by hostile animals capable of prediction. Thus, the effectiveness of almost any behavioral tactic can be enhanced by endowing it with characteristics that cannot be predicted by an evolutionary opponent.... Humphries & Driver termed this sort of adaptively unpredictable behavior ‘protean behavior’, after the mythical Greek river-god Proteus, who eluded capture by continually, unpredictably changing form." -- Geoffrey F. Miller
I am almost done. I mean that in more ways than one.
my head is zooming and staying still. my fingers work funny. i am in bed. sick. there is snow outside, six inches of it, and the last day of class ever was cancelled. which i guess is maybe nature working on my behalf, as i couldn't go anyway, and wouldn't have had my work done anyway.
perhaps i have the same sort of plague amanda lewis has. i could definitely go for some of her soup and some of her france. a coincedence: walker allen is also coming home to richmond on december 16th.
jonathan is watching mr.rogers in the other room. he is happy to have a day off. i am happy he is here.
