Gentle Musings on the Demonic Presence in my Apartment

I really don't like to jump to conclusions ("I took a tiny step, and there conclusions were." - Buffy), but I've been harboring suspicions for quite some time, slowing amassing evidence, and I think I can safely make some ridiculous claims with complete conviction.

I share a two-bedroom, tiny but not tiny-as-could-be, Manhattan apartment with flatmateMichael. It has a general common room that we have sectioned off into living room and kitchen, and a corridor decorated with tasteful black and white and grayscale photographs in black frames. And then there's the bathroom, which I am convinced in my heart of hearts is the reason we chose this apartment, as it is tiled - floor and walls - in black marblelite.

How could we know, sixteen months ago, that that very marbelite bathroom and its contents would now be the subject of my concern and scrutiny?

But finally, after much surveillance and experimentation, I have reached this conclusion: I suspect that a demon may be living in our pipes.

Sometimes You Just Gotta Rhyme

So ... my brain had an interesting day. And that manifested in my writing over twenty three-line poems for my friends. And then later getting into a disagreement with coworkerDaniel about Haikus versus Rhyming Poetry. The results are below.

Lisette has awesome hair and dresses.
Lisette will help you clean your messes.
Lisette also steals coffee presses.

Nicole works in disaster zones.
Nicole answers all the phones.
She bakes her bread from ground-up bones.

Forever Young

I just finished reading Pastoral by Nevil Shute, a quiet little romance set during World War II on a Royal Air Force base. It's an incidental story of several young pilots, a number of their bomber missions, fishing, and interactions with the WAAFs (the female branch of the RAF). It's not monumental - rather, it's about the small moments of pleasure and beauty several young people can find in the midst of a World War. It's a story that recognizes its own ordinariness (as the story concludes, we are told that nothing special has happened, a pilot is marrying a WAAF, that's all), but in its quiet detail, its stoic characters, and the importance placed on competence, honor, and dignity, it achieves a simple purity.

The majority of the characters are in their twenties - correction: early twenties. I sat there reading conversations among young men who considered the protagonist, Marshall, a old veteran pilot at the age of twenty-two, and marveled at the maturity of these fellows. Even ignoring the horror that I felt at realizing characters who seemed in my head to be emotionally in their thirties were in actuality younger than me - even ignoring that, the contrast between these characters and the college boys I knew is stark.

The Speech My High School Will Never Ask Me To Give

(inspired by cousinTerra's attempts, at the ripe old age of 21, to give high school students tips about college life)

Well, here you are. You're done. You are done being slaves to the public school system and you're ready to go out and start running the world.

Some people say that high school is the best time of your life. If your teenage years have been anything like mine were, I bet you're twisting in hope that not only is that not true, but that it's a big flaming lie. Look, teenage years are rough. You're scared, you're changing, everyone has it in for you, and you're only just starting to become a person after having been a kid for so much of your life. And the problem with becoming a person is that makes you suddenly different from all the other newly-becoming-persons around you. And everyone else is just as scared as you are that everyone else will notice. High school ... does not make it easy for you to be you.

Home: Hat-hanging and Picture-hanging

Home is the sailor from the sea,

The hunter from the hill.

-A.E. Housman, "Home is the Sailor"

friendBrian, who has been studying in London for some time, is gearing up to head back to the States, and saddening at all the things he will miss, or never got round to, in his time there. But, in trying not to wallow, he reminded himself that "Life is a whole tapestry of things that are home." cue: A girl named Zelda's brain starts whirring.

When I was a wily young college student, I had a routine whenever I moved into a new dorm. It was called "attacking the walls." Okay, it was actually just me hauling out pictures that made me happy, either candid photographs, postcards of paintings, posters, or particularly pretty ads for plays that I like. I would then proceed to cover up nearly every inch of white with said pictures (speaking of tapestries). I always restricted said decorating to my half of the dorm room, and would leave space open, knowing I would continue to contribute to the collage as the year went on. It was my way of branding the room, making it mine, and declaring it home - at least for nine months. When May came back around, I would carefully remove all pictures and store them until I returned to campus in September.