Loose Cans

I am presently writing from my new friend Cristina's lovely house. Situated just outside the small town of Gorey, Co. Wexford, the house is delightful in every way, except for the heating, which is a wee bit slow to take effect. It is very cold where I am. But it's a house. With things. And permanence. Let me explain how I am here.

I more or less hijacked this group, and was feeling a bit guilty about it. When my friend Meaghan told me she was going up here, I uncharacteristally asked if they mightn't object to my coming along. She said she'd inquire, and the next day reported that they (Cristina, her boyfriend John, and Margaret, whom I'd met, and whose company I'd much enjoyed) were, surprisingly, perfectly in line with the proposal. I waffled a bit, as I had not met Cristina but once, and then she was ill at the time. So a meeting, an interview, was arranged between Cristina and myself, mediated by Meaghan. It occurs to me that the H needs to be removed from Meaghan's name and put into Cristina's. It went well enough, despite my total exhaustion, and it was agreed that I might make a perfectly serviceable addition to the group. And so here I am, getting along grandly with all involved, no matter Cristina's tremendous tact when it comes to my Judaism (she asked me to come over the other night at Halls essentially for the sole purpose of inquiring as to whether I had undergone a ritualistic surgical procedure generally administered to Jewish male infants...). Even that is charming enough. The house is wonderful, the people are wonderful, and I'm perfectly happy. Also cold. So I'll stop abusing my fingers. Cheers.

I have just bought my tickets to Paris. I fly out at 7:10pm on thursday 6 May, arriving at 9:35, and fly home at 1:50pm Saturday the 15th, arriving at 2:20. Nine nights and eight days. In all, this will cost me...wait for it...

...€59.79.

Boo, ya.

Ah humma humma...hummahumma...word.

...to describe myself, that is. Following yesterday's game, some details of which will be related shortly, everyone went to the Pav for a pint or two. Some had more; I stuck with two. This was because I was interesting mostly in throwing more. And we threw for hours on the lovely newly seeded cricket pitch in front of the Pav, which they usually throw us off of immediately. For some reason, no one gave us trouble this time. Go figure. But we threw until it was too dark to see. Then we went for another pint at MacTorcaill's (pronounced McTurkle's). I was still pretty rank at this point. My leg especially was caked in dirt. I was accompanying three delightfully vershtunken females, mostly propping them up. I remained sober as a grave, even after the third--which did of course come a good two hours after its predecessors. This story has nothing very interesting to it, outside of the name McTurkle's, and serves only to excuse my returning to Halls at 1am, where I was finally able to take a shower and get the blood and grime off my leg. Then I had to wake up at 7. Brutally early. On five and a half hours of sleep I dragged my swollen, wracked carcass into college for my 9am CritCult lecture. Gender Studies. I love CritCult and hate missing the lectures, however often it happens. But now, when I finally manage to make it in, the lecturer doesn't. We sat there for a good 15 minutes, we brave few who schlepped in bright and surly. Finally, we left, and went to a cafe for a little much-needed coffee. I still want to go back to bed, though. I'm going home right after my 1pm Theatre lecture. It's on Hamlet. It better be on Hamlet. Because if it's on something like Sophocles' Vacuous of Thebes, I will shatter into a million pieces and all the king's horse and all the kings men.

The game yesterday, though. We were crushed, predictably, 15-5. UCD, aside from having three times the number of players that we do, also have some of the best players in Ireland, and who are twice as experienced as our most seasoned players. There was never any doubt. We played a stellar first point, and then it went pretty steadily downhill from there. This is because they have all kinds of weird, weird ideas about Ultimate, like having "practices" and "drills" and a "team."

I did, however, extend a personal record: I took out yet another UCD player. My third. I do not do this on purpose (although we know what Freud says about accidents...), but somehow, whenever I play with UCD people, I end up injuring them. It just happens. The first time, this girl Liz and I collided violently (we were both going for a disc and neither of us saw the other), my left shoulder drove into her ribs, and I knocked the air out of her. She went down with a sound vowels cannot express. We do not have the letters or accents to render this sound. It was quite ghastly. It was later discovered that three of her ribs cracked. This was the first, and I did and do feel pretty bad about it. Also I feel bad about the next thing, which was when I hurled a hammer (not a real one, the frisbee throw--overhand, like a baseball) bang into Mick's ear. It was supposed to be a low throw, but still go over his head. I missed, and the disc went slamming into the side of this head. As I've said before, I throw uncommonly hard. This was my second. At this point UCD were starting to worry about me. But I confirmed their suspicions yesterday. Their handler threw it deep. Your man, known for some reason as Dark Horse, was camping under it, waiting for it to come down. I went sprinting back toward him, looking up. My teammates were urging me Go after it, it's yours, and I looked up over one shoulder at the disc, then forward at the crouching Dark Horse, and then back over my other shoulder at the disc, which was almost in range. Then, because I was worried about trampling your man, I looked ahead again. Suddenly he was a lot closer. It was too late; I jumped for it, he jumped for it, and I realized I was going right into him. I forgot about the disc and tried to avoid crushing him, throwing up my arms to break the force of impact. Then our heads collided. Hard. We both went down. My temple had hit the side of his head. It hurt like hell, but not nearly like him. He was in agony, clutching his ear, which, when he finally removed his hand, was found to be smeared with blood. He was okay, though. No concussion, okay to play. Brutal hit, though. These things can happen; it's a dangerous sport, where players are barreling around the field, looking up all the while. You run into people all the time. This was one of those freak accidents. The impressive thing is, though, that he held onto the disc. It's not like I came out unscathed, either. The head still hurts, plus I managed to rip up my leg. Also walking hurts. I need to go back to bed.

So now UCD are afraid of me. They've taken to calling, "injurer!" I'm the assassin. I should put that on a shirt. Ashassin.

If there are more embarrassing yet appropriate ways to get injured, I would love to hear them. See, today is Colours, the big showdown Ultimate match between TCD and UCD. It's a nice enough day, a wee bit windy, but decent. Not pluvious as yet (kinehora). But I'm a little bruised. See, first of all, a week ago, in the course of throwing for about two hours, I managed to tear off a little skin on the side of my index finger. This sounds totally innocuous. It isn't. As Mike can testify, I throw forehands uncommonly hard. Do it long enough, and it wears on my fingers. The cut, of course, came from throwing those forehands, which means that it's in exactly the place where the disc comes off my fingers, making flicks painful. I'm going to have to wear a bandage and likely a glove the whole match. I'm a jerk. But that's nothing compared to the really stupid one. My right butt muscle is so sore it hurts to walk. This is not a result of too much running. This is the direct result of awkwardly sitting on a bar stool for too long last night. That's right, it's a drinking injury. And the worst part is I only had one. It was just that it was the big Arsenal-Chelsea champions league match (two London teams head-to-head, hugely important), and I just sat on this stool for a good two hours. And you know how you sit on a bar stool (or maybe you don't): one foot on the floor, one on the rung; one cheek on, one cheek off. Anyhow the end result is that my arse hurts like hell. I don't see how I deserve this. Only in Ireland.

By the way, Chelsea won last night. Appalling. They haven't beaten Arsenal (my team, and unbeaten so far in the Premiership) in their last 15 meetings. And now this. I was disappointed, but I cannot imagine the grief of Duncan, a lifelong Arsenal fan. He was on the verge of tears all night.

Also to everyone's great delight, French powerhouse Monaco staged a miraculous comeback against defending champs and evil empire Real Madrid (you think the Yankees are evil; you know nothing), winning the match 3-1. They will meet Chelsea in the semifinals. Stay tuned.

A wee bit knackered this morning; I was up until 1:30am finishing Northanger Abbey, and then got up at 7am to make it to the 9am Hero tutorial for which I had gone to the trouble of reading it. See, the Hero is the most unfortunate class. Firstly, excepted Paradise Lost and Don Juan, it suffers from a dreadful reading list, which features such thrilling, canonical texts as The Adventures of Roderick Random, Pamela and Joseph Andrews. When one has to read up to six texts per week AND cook dinner AND drink beer, one or two of those texts are going to fall by the wayside. Worse yet, it falls on a tuesday, which is the death sentence for a less-than-stellar class, because all my other, preferred tutorials (CritCult, Writing Ireland, and, until this week, Theatre, which just moved to Tuesday) are on Monday, and I do all my work for them on Sunday, my designated work-day, the Tuesday classes are just shit out of luck. I get home at 7pm on Monday, exhausted from my long, sweaty, dirty day in the mines, and the Simpsons are on. For an hour. Little work occurs. This means I have not read the book come Tuesday morning. Furthermore, loath as I am to attend a class for which I am unprepared, I am even less disposed to come to one where no one else has read the book, either. Unfortunately, the rest of the class (we are six) feel the same way. Finally, it's a 9am course, and it usually takes more than Samuel Richardson to spring me out of bed at 7am. The end result of this is that last week, only two people came, and neither had read the text. Very embarrassing for them. The rest of us prudently stayed away.

So this time, Kathy--one of the unfortunate two, along with Aidan--went on the warpath. She verified that I had gotten that dreadful novel and demanded status reports on my progress. She threatened vague and menacing consequences for the absent. She was generally despotic. And of course effective: this morning, the whole class showed up, most had read the whole text, and I was able to slag the book with great confidence.

On the other hand I must, as I have been compelled to do so often in the past week, affirm my great respect and, yes, affection, for Jane Austen. I do not blame her for the tedium in her pages; no, she does the best she can with what she's been given to work with. Unhappily, she has not been given much. I do not mean in terms of genius (she has that to spare--though I must say that in Northanger Abbey she certainly does spare it), I mean in terms of circumstance. Her books are boring because her circumstances (read: England) were boring. There are only so many balls and shops one can go to before one goes stark raving loony and ends up raging and banging like "The Madwoman in the Attic." It is a testament to the incurable optimism of Miss Austen, and her "good-nature," that the muffling of her particular, irreverent genius did not cause her to hurl herself like Tosca from a parapet.

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I really shouldn't spend any more time blogging now, but I will. I have a good forty lines of Beowulf to translate (sample line: "feorhbealo frecne fyra gehwylcne." I can scarcely pronounce that, much less say what it means), and now only two hours in which to do it, because they have most rudely scheduled the new Old English lecture for noon today, square in the middle of my usual four-hour free blogging/translating time. Very inelegant of them, I think. I suppose also that I should go to this lecture, as I do not know the first thing about any of the texts we've been doing. The exam--and it's the only one I'm worried about--is two parts essays on the texts (for which we have Bradley's Translations, bless his soul) and one part translation, which is petrifying. Apparently we will be fully familiar with any text they give us--it's promised to be one of the simplest and most recognizable passages--but even so we are quite entirely filled with dread. I would have also liked to get at least some time to read more Doctor Faustus for Sin at 4pm, which I wanted very much to read in the first place, as it is somewhat more important and, dare I say, better, than Northwanker Abbey. This is not possible, though, as they have most uncharitably moved my theatre tutorial (with some new tutor named Andrew Power, a known wimp, whom, I have been been informed, I will eat alive) to today at three. There went my relaxed Tuesdays. So Faustus, one of the great works of one of the greatest playwrights, is sacrificed for Northanger Abbey, a poor, juvenile book (albeit from a rightly significant author). Bollocks.

A few more things: next week is the last week of tutorials. Yay. So all this shuffling and disruption won't be a problem for long. Afterwards come two weeks of lectures only. Term ends 7 May. Maybe I can finally get some work done. Next, exam dates have finally been posted. I have, in the space of ten days (I have a five-day break), 18 hours of English exams. Lovely. Anyhow they begin on 17 May and end the 28th. This means I fly to Paris on the 6th, and return the 15th or 16th. Sound. I will come home the day after exams end, the 29th, because the next day, Jacob has a major concert with New York Youth Symphony, which I am very eager to see. They're playing the Mahler 5, a favorite, at--correct me if I'm wrong, someone--Carnegie. Y'all should come. Apparently they burn the house down.

Finally, I must kvell. Because Jacob received word back from the two summer music programs he applied to: The Quartet program (never heard of it) and Tanglewood (definitely heard of it). He got into both. He even got into Tanglewood for the violin, which is shocking, as he's a much more valuable and rare violist. But my brother--this blew my mind, at least--turned down Tanglewood. The Quartet Program, wherever it is--Pennsylvania, I think, is apparently better. They play mostly chamber music, and it's only 30-some-odd people, of ages ranging up to 40, and you get all sorts of personal attention and it's shockingly high quality and the guy who runs it is a genius and so forth but frankly all of this is secondary to the fact that MY BROTHER TURNED DOWN TANGLEWOOD. I am appalled, and almost intimidated, at the frequency with which he makes me proud. Cheers, man.

Oh yeah, and Happy Pesach.

Mike, the girl playing Wanda in Scooby-Doo 2 is Linda Cardellini, who I think was on Freaks and Geeks. And I maintain she looks hotter than Daphne.

And I figure I should weigh in somewhat on this alarming HM situation, which, might I add, has prompted a greater blitzkreig of commentary than this page has ever seen: 33 comments at press time is more than enough to brighten an intermittently rainy day. Though there is something about all keyboards which do not belong to Macs, specifically, that the stupid Dell people have the impression that all their users have fingers of lead , and they make their keyboards accordingly. And I know this isn't because it's a crap keyboard this time, it's just that it's so stubborn that my right thumb--which invariably is the one used for the spacebar--is throbbing already. By now you've all realized, liebchen, that my complaining about keyboards is the same as a disclaimer apologizing for short blogging. Because I just can't cope.

Anyway, Ho Mann. I was sorry to hear about Mullady's departure, as she was a tremendous and positive force in the school. However, I can't say I was too surprised, simply because it's been a long time coming. She needed to stop. She's been there ten years, and that's enough to kill anyone. No one who talked to her last year (and I did, often) can deny that she looked terrible. It was time for her to move on. On the other hand I was devastated to hear about Weiss. That man--I don't know whether he really should have been head of the upper school, as it took him out of the classroom, where I can safely say that the few periods of class time I had with him--those magic days in 11th grade when Gellens got sick or decided to stay home and kick his dog or something--constitute some of the most singularly enjoyable moments of my time at HM. Of course, he was also so damn good at his job that he should have been chained to his desk and never allowed to leave, except for tinkle breaks. I don't need to kvell about Weiss; that, I will leave to those who had greater exposure. I can only say, Fuck you, St. Ann's, you dirty jammy thieving bastards.

Although I would like to add, parenthetically, that at least Weiss will be in the company of other like intellects. I know little about St. Ann's--outside of the obvious--but I know that the Dean of their History department is a man named William Everdell, a significant figure in Academia, who wrote one of my favorite works of nonfiction, The First Moderns. He's a big enough deal.

As for what "responsibility" we have to the school, I don't think we have any, for one reason: they don't need us. It is not something we need to get righteous or self-important or, god forbid, indignant (I am accusing no one, don't worry) about. I will allow that, as Rebecca says, we were not your average class. But we are gone now. That's how the institution sees us, and that's how we should see ourselves. That's not to say that we can't interact with the youngsters we knew when we were there (I still mean to pen an op-ed urging juniors and seniors to look abroad for college), but we have no agency when it comes to the school itself. From now on, all we're really allowed to do is be nostalgic, and let's hope we can get over that quickly.

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Okay, my laundry's probably done now. €11 or something. Hopefully I can hold out on my next load until they get the Halls machines up and running. This last load was over two weeks' worth, though. The weather just turned filthy again, so I don't think I'll go to Ultimate. I'll stay in and read Northanger Abbey because my Hero tutor will kill us if we all show up not having read the book again. I swear this has happened the past four classes. Lately, we haven't even been showing up period, as it's a Tuesday 9am, which is impossible to get to, plus the books suck because honestly who, if faced with a choice between Cultural Materialism for CCT and Roderick Fucking Random for the Hero, is going to pick Roddy Random?

Right, probably everyone but me. But still. Northanger Abbey or forget the teacher, my friend Kathy will kill me.

And Rebecca, I haven't forgotten to mention you, nor your brightening of my bedchamber, nor the SPECTACULAR, FABULOUS meals you treated me to, but I am in a cybercafe, where time is money, so I promise I will address your visit as soon as I am able. Until then, my new fighting technique is unstoppable!