A Mood Swing in Three Acts

As everyone may recall, I've got a nasty habit of romanticizing trips to the US where I get to steal moments with my favorite people. My red-eye back to the UK yesterday was no exception, and I left all grumpy because I felt like my life was somehow happening in my absence, and that I was missing it by being abroad. (I'm starting to think that this is precisely because I jet out of the UK as soon as every term ends, and that I'm not giving it a chance to feel like home in any meaningful way, but I'm trying to decide whether I buy this theory and the jury's still out on that.) Anyway, I think it's particularly acute because I'm teaching in Oxford in June and July, then doing fieldwork in the Philippines in August and September, and it turns out that multi-city flights from London to Manila to Fargo, Wichita, Boston, or New York and back to London again are all about as expensive as you might expect. (To give you a rough idea, the tickets cost about what I'm worth, except tripled.) And my parents are thinking about spending this Christmas in the UK, which puts my return tentatively at the end of 2009. (I'll definitely fly back before then, but when you're in a bad mood, this sort of runs away from you.)

Anyway, I was shuffling off to buy coat hangers after my much-deserved nap this afternoon and thinking about becoming a part-time flight attendant for the free miles, and all of a sudden, I saw a friend of mine up ahead who pointed and beelined for me. He was the first person I'd seen since I got back. And we didn't stop and talk because he was on the phone, but we did a quick man-hug on Folly Bridge and I realized that my mood was markedly better after that. So I not only bought coat hangers, but also picked up a guide to the Philippines, because I was no longer too fragile to do that.

On my way back from Borders, I swung into the kitchen to microwave a plate of chicken and rice for dinner (because buying groceries for two days is a delicate art, and my usual MO of stir-frying vegetables in bulk doesn't make a whole lot of sense under those circumstances), and stumbled across a bunch of my friends making what appeared to be a pan of fishes, with heads, scales, and all. I caught up with everyone as my box of Sainsbury's rice bucked and exploded in the microwave, then went back to my room and got cracking on this review that I'm supposed to send out before I meet up with Emma. And I felt better yet.

And then, just as I was thinking of popping into bed, I heard pounding footsteps in the hallway and Erika burst into the room, and then my mood improved about tenfold. My end of the conversation wasn't really linear - James Joyce, whether it's irreparably neocolonialist to do poverty research in Southeast Asia, love, etc. - but that's exactly what I needed. (We still need to talk about my trip to Israel and the West Bank, but we decided that it's usually best to tackle things like sex, drugs, and rock and roll immediately and then get to war and peace at a later date.) And by the time I was showing off my turquoise tiger-striped top and making a cup of coffee as a nightcap, I was in a great mood.

The moral of the story is that I think I might be hormonally imbalanced.

Kimya Dawson!

So this trip to Boston has been waaay too short, but I did get to swing by Diesel, grab dinner with Steve, Luisa, and Nicole at Dali, and then go see Kimya Dawson at the Somerville Theater, which is a pretty great way to spend your last night in town. Kimya Dawson was awesome - she's so, so funny live. I'm totes buying her children's album.


i took the polaroid down in my room
i'm pretty sure you have a new girlfriend
it's not as if i don't like you
it just makes me sad whenever i see it
'cause i like to be gone most of the time
and you like to be home most of the time
if i stay in one place i lose my mind
i'm a pretty impossible lady to be with


now i'm home for less than twenty-four hours
that's hardly time to take a shower
hug my family and take your picture off the wall
check my email write a song and make a few phone calls
before it's time to leave again
i've got one hand on the steering wheel
one waving out the window
if i'm a spinster for the rest of my life
my arms will keep me warm on cold and lonely nights

(Sadly, Kimya Dawson has no songs about hanging out with old friends, your closest family, and ex-boyfriends before flying to Croatia, but somehow this works. Except for maybe the spinster part. Give it fifty years and I'll let you know.)

Coup de la Journee

I may be only so-so at meeting up with everyone I wanted to see in Boston, but I'm pretty awesome at finding pink paisley hoodies, which I've been proudly sporting all morning. My goal is to talk about my style and have people go, "what style?" and then say, "EXACTLY."

On Urban Living

I've fallen in love with David's apartment, which is about twenty times warmer and more inviting than the Graduate Centre, which still feels like a Travelodge even after I've lived there for six months. (They've got art on the walls, they eat communally, there's antique furniture and people drink out of jelly jars and watch Tyra Banks together. Back in the Graduate Centre, we occasionally have fajitas together, but only when the one person on our floor who cooks takes pity on the rest of us and fears that we're going to starve.) It makes me want to find a flat for next year, except that that means that I'd have to pay rent during the six months of the year that I'm intermittently not there, and then I couldn't afford furniture and that defeats the purpose. I wouldn't be gardening because it's cute, I'd be gardening for sustenance. And knowing my survival skills, I'm pretty sure I'd die. Someday, though!

Beantowns and Big Apples

Wow, it really sucks to try to get online at Harvard when you're no longer a student. I ended up paying $10 for 24 hours of wireless at Starbucks, because it was nominally cheaper than paying for it at the hotel. Mostly, though, I've just tried to avoid my computer entirely. I hung out with my brother on Wednesday, spent Thursday pretending to be a student at the law school and living vicariously through others, and then went to tea on Thursday and caught up with everyone in Lowell before dinner with my mom and brother at the Bombay Club. (I ate one of those syrup balls that feel like they'll kill you, and while I still don't know what they are, they're crazy delicious.) David's show, Blasted, opened on Friday, so my mom and I spent it on our own while he finished up logistics for the opening. When we checked into our hotel, my mom and I met in the lobby and the concierge apparently thought our reunion was cute, because he mentioned that he hadn't seen his parents in years and gave us a free breakfast coupon for the restaurant. The other concierge was like, wow, dude, I had no idea. And the breakfast was delicious, and I had many types of fruits and granola and when the waitress was like, but what about pancakes? I was like, whatevs, why not? and had those too. We mostly just poked around all day after that, and I got a couple of cute shirts at American Apparel (which were wholly unnecessary because I'm going to be in the Philippines for most of the summer and the last thing I need is extra clothing to deal with when I have to pack up my room at Oxford), we picked up wine and flowers for the show, and then we went to Mariposa for baked goods and took a post-scone nap. (Let's be real, those are the best kinds of naps.)

The show was good - incredibly uncomfortable, but in a very productive, provocative way. I told David at the afterparty that I don't do well with a) clipped dialogue, b) the presence of an unused gun onstage, and c) theatrical rapes, and there are of those things in abundance in the show. (A gun is in someone's hand, often pointed at someone else while clipped dialogue is spoken and rape is occurring, for probably the majority of the show.) It ended and I realized that I was drenched in cold sweat and had to put a sweatshirt on so that everyone at the afterparty wouldn't be like, psst, see that sweaty guy? That's the producer's brother. Anyway, if you're in Boston, buy tickets for next weekend's shows.

I slept very briefly, then my mom and I went to New York, met Brady (who graciously stood at TKTS and got us orchestra tickets to A Chorus Line), had brunch at Eatery (where I had sangria at 11:30am with granola, candied pecans, dried mangoes, strawberries, blueberries, and vanilla yogurt, and it was awesome), and then wandered up to Columbus Circle and down through Times Square. My mom had never been to New York, and it was a total blast to take her for the first time. I thought the production of A Chorus Line was pretty good, although after the previous night's show, I was like, stop complaining, it's not like you've had somebody tear your vagina or eat your eyes. Try dancing after that, kids. But it was still good, and I developed a fairly intense crush on Paul McGill, who was probably in the cast of La Cage Aux Folles when I saw that, but apparently wasn't wearing tight enough pants or something at the time. Because now, I think I may be in love.

Afterwards, Brady and I took my mom to Tasti D-Lite in Chelsea, then met up with Emma and Mischa for dinner at this Cuban place in the Village, then we all went to Magnolia for a cupcake. (I'm all about the dessert-meal-dessert combo. It's hard to pull off, but awesome when it works.) And then we caught a late bus, and David and I just stuck my mom in a cab and now I'm just hanging out till I fly back to London on Wednesday. I should probably do work soon, but I'm worried that I might have forgotten how.

Broken Social Scene!

Rockin' the BVM

The highlight of my day was buying a $35 shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It has an obscene amount of glitter and opens so you can put flowers inside it, and may or may not be the centerpiece of whatever property I eventually own. Sometimes, I do things like this and feel like emailing my Catholic schoolteachers and Susan Sontag to let them know that I'm turning out okay after all.