Dear Simone–
The answer to the question in this post's title is no. No, absolutely not. It's okay. Sit down and be quiet now. There's a good dear. This weekend was one spent in a frenzy of various physical activities. But first, I have one major piece of news.
I quit my job. That's right. Zumba instructing is no more. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting–my boss was extremely understanding and even gave me a name and a number to help in my efforts to find a replacement as soon as possible. The girl taking over for me is thrilled. The first two sentences of her email in reply to my request were written in EXCITED CAPS!!! so I feel really good about the switch. I might still throw in a couple hours as a sub for some of the instructors if anyone needs a cardio class covered and if I'm not too busy, but that will come as it comes. Relief is all that I feel now.
Friday got easier after that. My sister and I got together for our now-normal pie date. This time the game was pear-and-spice custard pie. We tried a new way of dealing with our lack of pie-pan: instead of making a square pie like we did last time, we used a muffin pan to make tartlettes. It was a good move–they baked beautifully and came out in these nice, portable single portions. I have recently discovered cloves as a favorite spice–I want to put cloves in everything. It's gorgeous on the tongue in a pie. Apparently while we were watching a movie post-dinner-and-pie I dozed off started to babble in my sleep ("I think the pirate-planet lady deserves a planet. Because she learned their language. I'm NOT asleep."). Sleepy-Hanna can be extremely unreasonable, especially when logical people like my sister suggest that Sleepy-Hanna is not, perhaps, at her most lucid.
At 11:30, three of my friends (Ben, Duncan and Luke) came to Kate's house to take me and Kate to the Eno River Rope Swing by moonlight. For once we had the swing all to ourselves. Chilly night air, clear moonlight over the trees, and much yelping through the air cut off by splashes into the deep river below. On the way back we tried to find a drive-through that would be open at 1:29 in the morning. Where Wendy's failed, McDonald's came through.
The next morning started off with tea and pastries, followed by Ben and Duncan's 10:20 arrival to whisk me (only me this time) off to the Haw River Rope Swing. Relative to ourselves, all three of us get more daring each time we go there. I spent a long time lying through this water-dipping tire swing that hangs right beside the real rope swings, letting the almost-unnoticeable current spin me and swirl my hair, letting the sun close my eyes, letting the water block sound from my ears, letting the electric blue dragonflies that were out and about settle on my knees, elbows, wrists and nose.
We went to this soda shop in Pittsboro (Ben's hometown). I had a birthday-cake ice cream float in Sprite. It was like being three again. This one little boy watched avidly as Duncan and I made idiots of ourselves slurping up the overflowing fizz from the saucer that the drink was served on with straws.
After a little frisbee-throwing at Ben's old high school, we drove up to Raleigh to spend two hours at the gymnastics space used by the N.C. State Parkour team for their training. So many padded surfaces, and a lot more turning upside down in the air than I realized I was capable of. The swinging and the flipping kind of have me ready to give up education and shoot to become a stunt double or an acrobat or something. It was fabulous. Unfortunately the sleep that had been missed the night before caught up with Duncan and me, so we left about a half hour before the gym closed. We will return though, I hope.
Sunday morning I was sore as FRICK. And yet. So I hauled myself out of bed to meet up with the Orienteering Team for a sprint at Bond Park in Cary. It was my first time orienteering, but I didn't do so poorly. Running through the wilderness with only a compass and a map is probably one of the greatest ideas that anyone has ever had–it gives you purpose enough to slither through briars and dart off-trail for the promise of a slightly faster route. My legs are scraped to hell, but I had a blast.
And then dance class. Simone, it is like nothing I've ever. That simple. Everyone's bodies were so different that what I'm used to seeing in dance classes, so much more real. And everyone was so talented. There was a difference–so much more physicality, so much more weight and power in conjunction with this natural fluidity that just doesn't exist in ballet. The class was super chill. Sadly I'm only going to be able to make it to the weekly class–I have actual academic commitments at both of the supplementary class times. :P But god if I'm not excited. The emotion of returning, this strange, deep kind of (happiness?) actually caused me to sink to my knees at one point on my meandering route home. I missed dance more than I realized.
Wandering dorm to dorm on the way back, snagging a hug from South Campus, walking in through George's open door, showing off my room to Aneesh and Han from 3rd Joyner. Here and there.
Today is University Day. I'm still not sure what that commemorates. The founding of our school...? I should make it my mission to find out. Or maybe that could wait until next year.
Something awesome. Courtesy of Monsieur.
That's about it for the time being. I hope you're well, babe, but more than most I wish that you would notice that I'm posting these again. I miss being in touch with you.
Yours to the end,
Blue
Monday, September 12, 2011
Saturday, September 3, 2011
The Mercies of Time Spent Away
Dear Simone–
God, I hope these reach you. I miss you dearly.
I write to you from the midst of a Labor Day that really could not have come soon enough. Don't get me wrong (something that I can never actually remember you doing). School is cooler than wearing pants in public places. But it's nice to get to breathe after a week of class-shuffling, relationship drama (mine and that of the people who surround me–it's a problem) and other various and sundry excitements.
I dressed as a workout-warrior princess for my first Zumba class of the semester–I even had this psychedelic headband around my forehead like a crazy circlet (kind of like this). The studio stereo buzzed like it always does, the microphone broke (hell yeah–I love having an excuse to just yell things at my participants and not wear the cumbersome microphone junk), and everyone there seemed to have a lot of fun. It kind of made me remember why I loved my job last semester. I'm still not sure if I want to (and if I even can) keep it up this semester. Every day that is one of my first thoughts waking up: "Oh God, I have to teach that class on Thursday." Not good.
I found a (definitely identifiable) blue feather on my regular running route at the beginning of this week. I put it in my shoe (because that's how normal people carry things they like) and proceeded to have one of the best runs I've ever had. So... I might be developing certain superstitions about this feather. And I could also be pretending that it's the Roc's Feather from Zelda: Oracle of the Ages. But let's pretend that I'm not that dorky, okay? Excellent. I knew you'd understand. :)
Ready for this? I auditioned for a dance group on campus. And I'm in. It's a modern group with technique classes every Sunday night. One of my good friends from Governor's School kind of recruited me to go to the audition. I was nervous and excited before doing it (after all, its been almost exactly a year since I last took a class/danced), but now I'm pretty much down to the straight excitement side of things. I am fully prepared to surrender to the fact that dance will always be a defining force in my life if such an admission will let me take it up again. If I could hug dance, I feel like I would right now for having missed it so much.
On Thursday, my French conversation class went to the awesome local museum (free entry for students–hell yeah) and took a guided tour in French. At the end of class we broke into groups and picked paintings to interpret (en français, bien sur). My group is going to present on this Cubist painting called Composition by Albert Gleizes. I've enjoyed time spent in foreign museums before, but this class (the best meeting we've had all semester in that class, à mon humble avis) made me realize that I just have this weird thing for discussing art in foreign languages. Does that make sense? Art is great, and foreign languages are great (obviously I would think that). But combining the two gives you a chance to talk in a range of technical and abstract terms that one doesn't often have occasion to use in foreign languages, and I feel like the limitations and liberations of one's foreign vocabulary force you to push harder on the art. It's as satisfying for my brain as a really rigorous workout is for my body.
As great as school has been, I feel glad to step away for a minute. The first little stretch has been a lot of grappling–all those things that are in the air as you get to school had to come down, and it took a little wrestling for me to finish the job. So this weekend my sis and I went up to the mountains with my parents, visiting my Oma and Opa at Lake Cherokee in the Tennessee Smokies. I used to beg my parents to go here all the time ("hey mom, when are we going back to paradise?" because that's what I called it when I was 8-12 years old). It is still a haven.
The night we arrived, I was so beat that I had to go to bed almost immediately (it was only about nine at night). But today was full. Teaching the two new puppies (Nick and Nora) that my Oma and Opa have about how to walk on a leash, baking some experimental pies (one was almost a disaster but I managed to turn it totally around just before the final baking happened), racing a thunderstorm in a swim to/from the closest island, going for a run (I kind of danced half of it, and I kept getting distracted by pretty sights), climbing high into the boughs of a tree to look over the roof of the house at the lake, dancing on the dock in the shadow of an evening cloud-mass, attempting acrobatics on the old childhood swing that hangs from a large old tree, and finishing the night surrounded by family and the smells of after-dinner coffee. Tomorrow means skinny dipping at six in the morning and a hopefully-as-strenuous-as-promised hike to a waterfall not too far from here. Which reminds me: I ought to go to sleep soon.
Miss you, babe.
Your adoring friend,
Blue
God, I hope these reach you. I miss you dearly.
I write to you from the midst of a Labor Day that really could not have come soon enough. Don't get me wrong (something that I can never actually remember you doing). School is cooler than wearing pants in public places. But it's nice to get to breathe after a week of class-shuffling, relationship drama (mine and that of the people who surround me–it's a problem) and other various and sundry excitements.
I dressed as a workout-warrior princess for my first Zumba class of the semester–I even had this psychedelic headband around my forehead like a crazy circlet (kind of like this). The studio stereo buzzed like it always does, the microphone broke (hell yeah–I love having an excuse to just yell things at my participants and not wear the cumbersome microphone junk), and everyone there seemed to have a lot of fun. It kind of made me remember why I loved my job last semester. I'm still not sure if I want to (and if I even can) keep it up this semester. Every day that is one of my first thoughts waking up: "Oh God, I have to teach that class on Thursday." Not good.
I found a (definitely identifiable) blue feather on my regular running route at the beginning of this week. I put it in my shoe (because that's how normal people carry things they like) and proceeded to have one of the best runs I've ever had. So... I might be developing certain superstitions about this feather. And I could also be pretending that it's the Roc's Feather from Zelda: Oracle of the Ages. But let's pretend that I'm not that dorky, okay? Excellent. I knew you'd understand. :)
Ready for this? I auditioned for a dance group on campus. And I'm in. It's a modern group with technique classes every Sunday night. One of my good friends from Governor's School kind of recruited me to go to the audition. I was nervous and excited before doing it (after all, its been almost exactly a year since I last took a class/danced), but now I'm pretty much down to the straight excitement side of things. I am fully prepared to surrender to the fact that dance will always be a defining force in my life if such an admission will let me take it up again. If I could hug dance, I feel like I would right now for having missed it so much.
On Thursday, my French conversation class went to the awesome local museum (free entry for students–hell yeah) and took a guided tour in French. At the end of class we broke into groups and picked paintings to interpret (en français, bien sur). My group is going to present on this Cubist painting called Composition by Albert Gleizes. I've enjoyed time spent in foreign museums before, but this class (the best meeting we've had all semester in that class, à mon humble avis) made me realize that I just have this weird thing for discussing art in foreign languages. Does that make sense? Art is great, and foreign languages are great (obviously I would think that). But combining the two gives you a chance to talk in a range of technical and abstract terms that one doesn't often have occasion to use in foreign languages, and I feel like the limitations and liberations of one's foreign vocabulary force you to push harder on the art. It's as satisfying for my brain as a really rigorous workout is for my body.
As great as school has been, I feel glad to step away for a minute. The first little stretch has been a lot of grappling–all those things that are in the air as you get to school had to come down, and it took a little wrestling for me to finish the job. So this weekend my sis and I went up to the mountains with my parents, visiting my Oma and Opa at Lake Cherokee in the Tennessee Smokies. I used to beg my parents to go here all the time ("hey mom, when are we going back to paradise?" because that's what I called it when I was 8-12 years old). It is still a haven.
The night we arrived, I was so beat that I had to go to bed almost immediately (it was only about nine at night). But today was full. Teaching the two new puppies (Nick and Nora) that my Oma and Opa have about how to walk on a leash, baking some experimental pies (one was almost a disaster but I managed to turn it totally around just before the final baking happened), racing a thunderstorm in a swim to/from the closest island, going for a run (I kind of danced half of it, and I kept getting distracted by pretty sights), climbing high into the boughs of a tree to look over the roof of the house at the lake, dancing on the dock in the shadow of an evening cloud-mass, attempting acrobatics on the old childhood swing that hangs from a large old tree, and finishing the night surrounded by family and the smells of after-dinner coffee. Tomorrow means skinny dipping at six in the morning and a hopefully-as-strenuous-as-promised hike to a waterfall not too far from here. Which reminds me: I ought to go to sleep soon.
Miss you, babe.
Your adoring friend,
Blue
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