Over the weekend, in the wake of the hurricane, I went down to Maryland. It was eerily dark everywhere (mass power outages). I took the train alone, fidgeted and looked out the window and avoided Pamela, until an unsavory, tattooed character sat next to me, and I was obliged to read. I came to terms with my moral outrage at the book about a hundred pages ago, and I even enjoy, somewhat, this chronicle of feminine poise under pressure. I got into Union Station and met my mother and father, who drove me home through the remarkably wide, clean, and grassy monument area of DC. I told them it looked like a college campus on a larger scale: large, beautiful buildings with surrounding greenery.


At home it was already dark, so they handed me a (faulty) flashlight, and I dropped my duffel bag in a corner of my room. My room, incidentally, was disconcertingly small and boxlike; what Arielle and I have is so wide and angled and inundated with light. It was probably partly a function of the inescapable darkness, but my mattress felt harder and uncomfortable too. At around 7:00 PM, I invited Seth over; we kissed right away, which I'd missed, and then I got a candle for the family room. We sat around the candle, on the red couch, and discussed our lives. There was something intensely self-contained about the whole weekend, and about that evening in particular - an inability to focus on anything but what we were saying and doing, because everything else was black and cold.


The next day, we ate pho for lunch, and it was the first good meal I'd had in weeks. We went to the bookstore and perused and talked. He dropped me at home, and I had another good meal (with my family) at my favorite childhood restaurant. I felt there was no limit to what I could eat; I was stocking up for my return to Penn. After dinner, I met Seth again in Bethesda, and we saw the very cruel and mildly relevant Lost in Translation. Walking around the partially blacked-out city afterwards, Seth stopped in the street to kiss me. I asked if the movie had affected him after all, and he confessed he was a sap. Bethesda was so tidy and charming; I gushed, "I feel like that Walcott poem about Borges and Buenos Aires" - and we joked for a moment about Borges' secret loathing for his home city.


We passed under a bridge in the middle of the city. "Let's find a way up to it," said Seth. He found a stairway to a small enclave of high-end shops, an unfilled fountain, and an art gallery. Conspicuously, there were also three or four shopping carts on either end of the bridge. Some boys were whooping and riding them back and forth; we stood and gawked. "We have to try that," Seth said. I agreed. The boys tired of the pursuit and prepared to leave, when they noticed our interest.


"Let's watch them," one of them said. Affecting bravado now that we had an audience, I climbed into the cart, gripped tightly, and Seth gave a running start. The shopping cart screeched and swiveled a little across the concrete (I braced myself), but we didn't hit anything, and we ended grinning. Seth said that fulfilled our quota for memorable revelry for the night, and he helped me down. Eventually, we drove back to my house again, after an abortive effort to go sight-seeing through the "nice" part of Chevy Chase. It was just as dark and insular but not as intense as the night before.


I slept well that night and did errands efficiently the following day, before coming back to school in the late afternoon. I worried it would be wrenching to go back again, after an idyllic (if bizarre) weekend in my old life. It was very comfortable, though. I told Seth, at some point, that I was mostly lonely and insecure in early high school, but that I was happy senior year and very happy now. I tried to credit him with it, but he said maybe I was just coming into my own. Maybe that's true; maybe happiness is easier now. I feel it everywhere here - that I'm so full of youth, and I have so much destiny left to determine, and a gorgeous, exciting backdrop. But I'm a sap too, after all; I get moved by cliches (grin).


This week (all two days of it) has been alternately bewildering and uplifting. I had a delightful moment in Rise of the Novel, when I spoke for the very first time (I had been so intimidated, being the only freshman there that I know of). My prof gave a synopsis of 18th Century British Common Law on rape and statutory rape. She said the offense was considered to be against the nearest male relative, not the victim herself, and restitution was made to him. She asked how Pamela was innovative or subversive in light of the law of the day. I spoke into the silence, "Pamela possesses her virtue." And I cited text for language of ownership - and I saw people copying down what I said, and the boy in front of me turned and nodded approvingly.


I spoke again into another protracted pause, and I felt exhilarated; I felt, as silly as this is, like Neo when he discovers he can repel bullets. I knew the answers to all the questions, all at once. My mind was fixed in a way to appreciate literature again - and I left English, as I did sometimes last year, swimming with the experience of it, with such a fervent joy in the possibilities of the English language. History can make me feel that strongly too (sudden, absolute awareness of interrelationships, an intuitive burst of analytical truth), and so can math, even - so I have to defer judgment, but I am tempted to be an English major, impracticality aside.


A bewildering thing is still Biology; I decided to take it because I loved it in ninth grade, and maybe part of me is still excited at the theory (the existence of countless tiny units of life, with coded heredity), but I feel bogged down in the practical reality of it - and I'm certainly hopeless at all practical things. Also, my social life is more confusing than I expected (btw, Seth and I have an "open relationship" - that seems to be the status quo), and I'm still working out how to get involved in my community here. I have several options, but I'm not settled in anything. I know I didn't make (many of) the friends that mattered or join every future important activity in my first month of high school, so I'll be patient here as well.

I just wanted to note that I looked especially ridiculous walking past the Law School today - I was wearing my Penn t-shirt and jeans, but otherwise I was probably indistinguishable from a small child: I carried a melty cup of free Ben and Jerry's ice cream (handed out after the weekly 60 Second Lecture outside the dining hall), which I ate as I crossed the street, and my nose was runny (allergies compounded by little sleep), and my shoe was untied.


Later today, Nick and I sat on the grass (isn't my blog more approachable when I include photos from the Penn Admissions website?) for nearly two hours, binging on candy and some bizarre orange-cream novelty beverage he'd picked up (it had a cartoon monster on it for no good reason). I explained at great length, as I will for anyone who'll listen, the ridiculousness of Pamela, my current reading project for Rise of the Novel. I like to reduce what I'm reading to informative one-liners; for a while, Pamela (Samuel Richardson's 1740 collection of epistles & more on a virtuous servant girl vs. lecherous employer, and a contender for the "first modern novel") was "a Christian soap opera." Near-scandalous moments followed by pages of moralizing, followed by more near-scandal (it was serialized - he had to keep the masses emotionally invested). Now I just cite the following passage:


"I found his hand in my bosom; and when my fright let me know it, I was ready to die; and I sighed and screamed, and fainted away.... Pamela! Pamela! said Mrs. Jervis, as she tells me since, O--h, and gave another shriek, my poor Pamela is dead for certain! [Pamela wakes up, hours later, no worse having happened to her.] Hush, my dear, said Mrs. Jervis; you have been in fit after fit. I never saw any body so frightful in my life!"


I don't understand the author's intent well enough to say why she's so tiresome. Oh, incidentally, I'm sort-of-dating a member of the Richard Montgomery Homecoming Court.

SaffyCat (8:35:11 PM): do i get some popularity by association?
SaffyCat (8:35:13 PM): please? :-)
GMSlippy (8:35:30 PM): no
GMSlippy (8:35:32 PM): NO

Oh well.

After Orientation ended, the next exciting event was our Flash Mob on September 5. Arielle and I found out about it from Franky, roughly 10 minutes before it was supposed to occur. We scrambled to find the requisite hats and sunglasses and paraded, en masse (our entire floor), to the Barnes & Noble across the street. There, maybe 50 people stood around, looking shifty, and then erupted into spontaneous applause and hugging and shouting of "Erin/Aaron Beige!" in the bookstore aisles. We dispersed a few minutes later, looking awfully proud of ourselves; I commented that I was impressed at how many people showed up, but, then again, it was an ideal college campus thing to do (people are centrally located and have too much time on their hands).


We ate a quick meal at Kings Court before First Friday/the Philly Fringe Festival - I went only to First Friday, the free monthly gallery openings around 2nd Street, where I was mostly unimpressed with the quality of the artwork and preoccupied with the free Coronas in an unattended cooler. (I was too wimpy to take one.) Those of us who didn't have tickets for the festival - four guys from my floor and me - decided to make for South Street, to sample its legendary nouveau bohemianism.


More city description, quickly: Philadelphia is really a lovely place. The historical district, where we were, is remarkable in and of itself; I always enjoy seeing American History and modernity coexisting, so I loved watching the masked street performers, puppeteers, and musicians (and their ultrahip, art crowd audience) on the narrow cobbled alleyways. South Street probably would have been better with Arielle along, because she actually knows the city. As it was, we five stumbled across plenty of promising restaurants and indie theaters, ubiquitous shady lingerie stores, and the Condom Kingdom (we didn't actually go in, because I thought it would look bad for me to browse for condoms with four boys).


Eventually, we headed homeward through some suspect neighborhoods (but it was only 8:30 PM, and I felt safe with my entourage), and we decided at some point to try to walk the distance between 2nd Street and Kings Court on 36th. I protested that the Schylkill River was in the way, but nobody seemed to mind. We walked to Rittenhouse Square, a very lush and well-maintained urban park near Curtis Institute, and directly encircled by tidy commercialism. (The surrounding area is an upscale shopping district; all the store signs glow golden with the effect of holiday lights.) We decided to abandon our walking project in Center Center, with its high rises and a majestic public statue of Benjamin Franklin apparently peeing (we were nearing the impenetrable Schylkill), so we took the subway two stops to 36th.


As a postscript, Arielle, Andre, and I wandered around later that night looking for a frat party, but we were unsuccessful - proving, I guess, that the "party Ivy" is still the "party Ivy." Arielle, Nick, Anne, one of Anne's friends, and I did indulge in some partying the following night, but it was an unpleasant experience for me, and my new strategy is to get drunk vicariously by hanging around drunk people. Courtesy of Saturday's revelry, I spent Sunday feeling kind of sick to my stomach, which made me homesick for probably the first time since I've been here. I missed easy access to adult concern and a stove to make soup. By Monday, I felt better and was dedicated to a new life of sobriety - but also to holding onto the things that made that night fun: flash animation, a godawful kung fu movie, and giggling out of all proportion at every joke.


This weekend, I had only a sip of vodka and Crystal Light out of a water bottle (which was fundamentally, elementally disgusting - gross to the core of my being (grin) ). Instead, I had: so-so West African food; Meaningful Conversations with Amy, Reem, Kiara, and Danielle (which slipped, bizarrely, into Kiara talking at great length about breasts and defining our annoying qualities... she said I was "fine, but like a doll - like I could push you over and break you"); a great time entertaining drunk friends, including a very worse-for-the-wear-looking Nick (he had a pink stain on his shirt from where Anne had spit a Jello-shot, oddly wrinkled clothing, and a vacant, manic grin); a somewhat uncomfortable experience viewing Henry 5 on a wet tarp off Locust Walk; and a lazy Sunday afternoon, during which I have to write my Very First Paper.

Sorry for the long delay between posts; my life isn't really action-packed enough to justify it. As anticipated, I'm very happy now. I have "friends", which helps (to the extent that anyone can be friends after only two and a half weeks), and I absolutely dig the urban lifestyle. One of my favorite (day-to-day) things is waking up in the morning and sitting on my bed, brushing my hair, and overlooking the city people four stories below. There's live music at odd hours in the square by Cosi, as well as an alley populated with two snooty independent coffee shops; a tiny, disorganized, and very adorable bookstore; and the Bubble House (which sells bubble tea to me three days a week, since I'm addicted).


Also, I live adjacent to the University of Pennsylvania Law School - which means I walk past young Americans in dark suits, myself wearing a jean skirt and a rain slicker and alternately feeling incongruously young and like I've just had a brush with my own soulless future. Other daily life things: I walk alone still, because I enjoy the rush of apparent independence, which means I get yelled at sometimes by passersby. "Hey gorgeous!" I was told, followed immediately by "Hi shorty!"


I also attend classes. So far Calc III is inscrutable (my prof speaks English with a heavy Russian accent and has poor penmanship), but luckily I know most of it already from high school. Bio is very introductory but periodically interesting. Classical Islamic Thought, when I read my first texts on the Life of Muhammad, filled me with a whiz-bang admiration for religious studies and reinforced my career path interest in not-Biology. Finally, The Rise of the Novel beats high school English at this point, and it's certainly worthwhile to be studying something other than modernism (but I love modernism - I want to learn the construction of standards and practices for the novel so I can appreciate their dismantling). I'm intellectually challenged here and not overworked yet, and I procrastinate on all sorts of exciting assignments and voluminous readings. Also I party. But I'll get to that (grin).


About extracurricular activities, I chickened out on auditioning for a cappella groups (I go to an enormous college, filled with frighteningly talented people), but I opted for the University Choral Society, and my friend Amy and I are joining Penn Musicians Against Homelessless. I plan to write for The Daily Pennsylvanian, our tres impressive school newspaper, and I'm nervous already about learning to frame interviews and write copy. Finally, I'm trying out for ubercompetitive Penn Mock Trial, expressly to (attempt to) kick Hershel's ass for the second time in four years (grin). I suppose I should talk about friends, as well. My hall houses a humanities residential program, as I said, so the people here are overwhelmingly artsy-academic. Plenty of debaters and Quiz Bowlers who did high school drama, Chamber Choir, a cappella groups, marching band. Thanks to them, I've already brought to fruition my college dream of having a bunch of kids in my room, playing illegally downloaded music and harmonizing to it. Meanwhile, things with Seth are pleasantly ambiguous, and there's nobody else I want here.

One last general note: Penn rules. Really, I love this place. People are smart but down-to-earth, and there's such an uncontainable atmosphere of happiness that even I can't be moody.

Now for stories: I made it through (most of) Orientation, dubious about prescribed events but completely sober. One highlight was the Penn Reading Project - a small-group discussion of The Quiet American, facilitated by Penn faculty, and my first indication that I was going to school with intensely bright people. Discussions here are so smooth and articulate and not weighed down, as in high school, by repetition. Later that day, Nick, Arielle, and I bummed around the hellishly hot Hill House and eventually collected Reem and Chris from the Bookstore Social (live music + standing room only on the top floor of Barnes & Noble), and Amy and Kiara from a street corner. We stood in a circle while Nick took photos of me brandishing his knife. Then, on my insistent suggestion, we went to Locust Walk to play in the sprinklers.


I actually spent quite a lot of Orientation getting wet, as the next day Jessica, Hillary, Monica, Arielle, and I made a late-night diner run in the pouring rain. My jean skirt and tank top got plastered to me, and I sloshed around trying to sit down on the diner seat. I had sub par mozzarella sticks and we got flirted with by drunk frat boys on the way back.

More to come….