Working backwards in time (as usual), Tuesday was a half-day, constituting 3.5 hours of school and 3.5 hours of free time before drama rehearsal. Whee! I don't stay for drama normally, but I did drop Seth off, at which point we saw Pouya, Jeff K., and Kainoa loitering on the grass nearby. Pouya bounded up to the hood of my car and pressed himself against the windshield. Kainoa and Jeff stood by, approvingly, until Kainoa's nose began to bleed onto my side view mirror. I stared sort of dumbfounded at the unexpectedly thick, bright globules massing on the green chrome, until Kainoa remembered his manners and... licked them off (shudder). He also called me Shannon, which Pouya found tremendously funny but I found somewhat depressing.

Then I stole Pouya's hat and ran away with it for a couple minutes. I dodged Pouya ably, and he said, "She's tougher than you are, Seth."

We walked inside and found a group of friends congregating outside the chorus room. Ben E. flirted ineffectually with a circle of us, and I played along and probably scared him. Hank rammed me and carried me linebacker style into a corner. "See, you have to watch out for that with her, cuz she's so small," he said to Seth, as if dispensing brotherly advice. They invited me to stay for rehearsal and help with Set Con, but I couldn't imagine I'd be useful. I'd like to contribute somehow to Hello, Dolly!, especially now that my friends are a majority of the leads, but, as always, I have no applicable skills.


On Wednesday, I accomplished several things of note: first, I passed mean/arcanely "funny" notes to Sandy during our second Mock Trial, including the following (we wrote it together based on Randie Vaccio's damning testimony that she was "so foggy--it was like I was in slow motion" as she attempted to care for her dying friend):


"I was drunk with worry for Jessica, which contributed to a high of appropriate response. In short, I was foggy with CONCERN. I had partaken of the sweet liquor of responsible party hosting, but I had been fortunately denied the hangover of negligent entrustment. I had been unprepared for the drinking game of foreseeability. And now I sing the bawdy drinking song of perpetual regret."


We are, as Sandy wrote in her case notes, "the funniest people in town." In spite of us not paying attention, our team won by two points against the ostensibly formidable Hebrew Academy team. Also on Wednesday, I was named a National Merit Finalist, and I broke my second pair of pants in two days. I am now down to one pair of blue slacks, which, yes, is very pathetic. On Valentine's Day, the roses I'd purchased through Fine Lines were delivered to Seth and Alison. The card attached to Seth's read: "Dear Seth, Please do not eat this flower. Happy Valentine's Day! Love, Sharon."


"Aww," he said, "you remembered," (how he'd once consumed a carnation). He baked me cookies and attached a sarcastic note in purple and orange magic marker. On the matter of Valentine's Day as an institution, I had previously been noncommittal. I’d never had a boyfriend then before, and it had never really bothered me. Yesterday, though, I felt somewhat uncanny, carrying my rose and my cookies; everywhere I saw flowers and balloons as red splashes in the hall. I felt like a small incidence of the basic drive to couple off - something that linked me, against my will, to that gross pair that blocks the stairwell.

But I say
Why deny the obvious child?

My mood has been a bit sinusoidal for a week. I was very happy on Tuesday when my wife Alison gave me a birthday hat; it's red and beautiful and has a netted veil that I didn't know quite how to position. I wore it everywhere all day long, as a badge of pride for having a cool and wonderful fake wife. She also gave me a wedding bandaid in a ring box, which I wore until it became cruddy and Seth half-ripped it off.


Otherwise, I've been in a funk. A friend said sometimes my blog seems ingenuine, like it doesn't cover how I actually think and feel - I suppose I've felt resigned or condemned to that, because my thoughts don't translate well to public places. I'm trying to be accurate now though: I spent Wednesday morning's commute recalling what the sky looked like at times when I've thought concentratedly about religion - how, as a freshman flirting with Christianity, I lay in a sleeping bag at Christine's house, staring at the stars through a half-obscured window and willing incomprehensible forces to exist. As a sophomore, I was bored on a Bivalve camping trip and half-listening to Deb and Ben going through some sort of dialectic - when it struck me like a fundamental blow that there might not be a God at all. The stars looked infinitely further away, and I felt sick and abandoned (I don’t like what R&G has to say about this; I think mortality, or loneliness, can hit you all at once, and be shattering).


Anyway, I thought also about the sky a week or so ago, when I was at school late for some activity. It was a thick, deep blue and full of fog, at eye-level from the breezeway, and I felt a stirring of something strange and unrepeatable. It occurred to me that I probably didn’t matter very much, and I kind of liked that – the freedom from universal responsibility or reckoning. By Friday, my existential angst had petered off, and I was thinking sort of leisurely about law and morality (I was lying in bed trying to think of general moral standards, and I realized I was just rehashing legal principles).


We had Friday off for snow, and my bad mood & accompanying pseudo-depth evaporated. I saw Seth, which was great, and Say Anything, which was mildly disconcerting. I can't watch a movie where John Cusack is inarticulate, 80's nostalgia notwithstanding. Saturday was truly excellent, because I double dated (sort of?) with Nick B. and Julia. It wasn't at all romantic; we sipped coffee and smoothies and later French onion soup at a series of men's hunting lodge-type venues. There was lots of wood and few cushions; Julia and I mourned our repressed femininity. We also told stories, practically all of which were at the expense of Nick or Seth.


Another popular topic: a.) what if the Pope transubstantiated the moon? and, a corollary, b.) would we have to eat it? Both of these were my questions originally, and I think they're damn important ones. Julia, as the resident expert on Catholicism, reassured me that, in the unfortunate event that the Pope transubstantiated something inedible, we wouldn't have to eat it. Privately, Seth and I had also wondered if the Pope could transubstantiate people, making, for example, Seth into Christ. Julia commented, sagely, that then we might have to eat him. Then there was awkward silence. Hehe, no, not really. I really like Julia; she's way cool (grin).

So I passed through the crucible of my first Mock Trial, and we won handily (53-39 I think, which is a killing). I enjoyed myself and finally feel competent at something useful to our team: I can deliver Closing Statements. Who knew (grin)? I'm worlds better than I was at Opening, anyway, and I take confidence and solidarity from my girls, Sandy and Lijia. Also: Sandy confirmed that I'm not marginalizing her with my dumb jokes. She said she rolls her eyes because she can imagine herself saying what I just said. In that case, I can deal (grin).


I also managed at some point on Saturday to turn eighteen. I'll spare you a description of the time and anxiety I spent mourning my childhood (my Mock Trial worries were all-encompassing, and fused with philosophical trauma as well as senseless moodiness, when I sat down to reread Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead). I sang in the school play and basked at home in the loveliness of Stoppard and Italo Calvino (If on a winter's night a traveler is a birthday acquisition, from Ben K., and I like it so far). Oh, R&G, though - I felt myself physically missing it, since the last reading, and I have trouble conveying how basically cool and all-encompassing it is.


Maybe I'm just remembering how it feels to be profoundly nervous and lose all sense of proportion and natural law - how for me it takes the form of questioning basic assumptions, like time and identity. I was babbling about this to Sandy, how at the Mock Trial State semi-finals last year I kept getting periodic shocks that I was myself, and that I still had to make choices and take actions that affected the present. If self-confidence is strained enough, I guess, life can seem like an absurdist play. I wrote in my English journal today, lovingly and pretentiously, "This irony [in R&G], and layering of play-within-play exchanges, is certainly humorous in its basic questioning of expectations, but provocative, as well, as a basic challenge to premises of free will and privacy." Ummm, I'm going to love this unit, and I hope within reason to be airy and pompous and have a good time with buzzwords, like "existentialism."

LATER NOTE (3:43 AM, February 4): I didn't communicate very well last night (seems kinda nonsensical and spacey in retrospect), but I meant to say I was amused/appalled by my own arrogance earlier that day, and by the potential silliness of R&G class discussion. Ah well, I still hope it'll be fun.