Today for about thirty seconds I decided that I should write a play. Then too quickly I realized that I don't have the skill or subtlety to make it come out right, just as with that short story years ago that seemed so important at the time. I hate it when I feel helpless to express things that I think need saying, but using words to express things that occur outside the realm of words is like using a sledgehammer to sculpt a statue -- clumsy, unwieldy. But writing is the only craft with which I have ever had much skill. Maybe someday.

In some senses though, language is so overrated. I mean, a lot of us, myself included, run around expressing ourselves and being articulate and clever and occasionally eloquent and priding ourselves on our ability to use language to come infinitely close to expressing what is just beyond expression. What was the mathematical term? An asymptote. Reality is an asymptote that language will never reach, even when I do remember to use big, precise words like that one. What we should really be proud of, I think, is when we can learn to have so much meaning take place beneath, around, and in the absence of language, when it is the situation and all the little factors surrounding it that can combine to say something for which there are no words. It is the silent speech of actions and surroundings that is truly subtle.

I love too many people and have loved too many people, which in itself is not terribly strange. I have hid my love from too many people, even from myself, and looking back I see it clearly, and I start to understand all the emotions going on in that back part of my mind that was kept carefully roped off for so long. Entire parts of my life, huge parts of relationships with people exist only in subtexts, in half-said words and meanings carefully ignored. But the worst thing is that I have let love lapse in too many cases, and never spoken about what was or might have been, even between the lines, which sometimes is just as well, but sometimes is the last step towards breaking a connection that meant more than I ever could have known.

*ahem*

I would like to point out that Stealing is Wrong, in a general sense.

Why, you ask?

Because I had a conversation today that indicated that some people believe that stealing is only wrong if they are stealing from a minority population of some sort.

The short story: Food was stolen from the house I live in. A friend of mine knew the people who stole the food, and told them "That is Safe House, I know people who live there, please do not steal from them again." The people in question then said that they hadn't realized it was Safe House and would not do that again.

The irritating thing about the whole exchange is the implication that it would have been okay to steal from another house. Just not from Safe House (which is largely perceived to be the gay house, although it is actually a safe space in a ridiculously wide variety of ways, an alcohol-free space, a safe space for Republicans, for minorities of various sorts, for geeks, you name it. It's just that LGBTQ-allies-people are the only ones who have bothered to have programs of any sort so far.)

My point is, it is not okay to steal from Safe House. It is not okay to steal from Bunche House. It is not okay to steal from 84 Broad or from a frat. It is not okay to steal from anyone's dorm room or apartment or even from the university. If it is not yours, you should not take it, because that is stealing, and stealing is wrong. Who you are stealing from is not the point. (You may insert your Robin Hood arguments here, and I will still say that glorifying stealing does not make it not stealing.)

Apparently the people in question also asked, upon finding out that they had stolen food from Safe House, "Does that make it a hate crime?"

Gaaaaah.

You know, sometimes the biggest relief in the world is affirmation. You can say and say things to people, you can come out of the closet and get a reaction (or not), but sometimes the best thing is when someone is willing to ask, and listen, and not just cut off what you want to, have to say over another shot late one night when you think (wrongly) that everyone has drunk enough to just let you talk. Sometimes all you want to do is have someone ask, and be able to say "I loved her (even though that was then, long ago)" and know you still have your voice, and your experiences are real, somehow, even after all the silence.

And I've been here, silent all these years.

It's been too long since I've gone to sleep in the same place I woke up in the morning. Too much travel can be disorienting. Now I need to do work, but I feel off-balance and can't focus.

Incidentally, I hate watching movies on buses. It's something about being a captive audience. The sound and picture are there, so it's hard not to watch it (unless you have heavy-duty headphones.) But what if I wanted to do other things? What if I wanted to read, or sleep? What if I just found the movie offensive? Even if it's a good movie, it's just the lack of choice about the matter that pisses me off. That and that no one can appreciate a nice quiet bus ride these days, they need to inflict media on us all and constantly have something to watch on a TV. Control-freak me.

Also, for those of you who don't know, this year as part of some new-and-exciting initiative, they changed the name of the student activities office to the Center for Leadership and Student Involvement. Which no one can even remember. Why not call the office what it is? But anyway, their offices were also moved up to the Coop. Now, over break they were putting some finishing touches on the newly-renovated Coop building. This included gold lettering outside the now-CLSI offices and additionally a small plaque by the door -- both of which say Student Activities.

Perhaps I will get up early tomorrow, be focused, and write my Spanish composition then.

And break is over almost as soon as it began. It was hardly a break -- too much time on the road, too much trying to fit in too many different activities and visits and so forth. But all the same, this brief taste of a different life has only made me hungry for more.

Things that happened last night (Or, how to watch a Sox playoff game in Boston without selling your soul to a scalper.):

Went to Boston with my parents, driving to Braintree and then taking the Red Line in to Park, then the Green Line down to Kenmore Square.

We didn't have tickets to the game, but we circled the park watching all the excited fans.

Saw the "Go Sox" on the Pru for real. It looks much nicer in real life than in that picture.

Saw hordes of police in full riot gear.

Saw scalpers buying and selling right next to aforementioned police officers.

Got really tired of the phrase "Cowboy up!"

Heard the national anthem from outside Fenway.

Went into the Uno's restaurant on the corner and were seated in a six-person booth right in front of a big-screen TV. We all sat on one side of the booth, facing the TV, and got settled just as the game began. From a nearby window we could see the Monster Seats and the lights over the field.

Decided to have the longest possible meal in Uno's, which in the end consisted of: onion petals for an appetizer, house salads, a large veggie deep-dish pizza, desserts, and then tea for the parents.

Early in the game, someone was standing in the aisle blocking our view of the TV. I considered yelling "Down in front!" (but didn't.) A few seconds later, my father asked me if it was acceptable to yell "Down in front!" in a restaurant.

My father went to the bathroom just in time to miss the Sox's first home run of the night.

Our waiter took his own sweet time bringing us our food and our check, for which we tipped him well. He knew perfectly well that everyone in front of that TV was trying to stay as long as possible.

Heard applause in the restaurant for each out and good play the Sox made, and a rousing cheer followed by a chant of "Yankees suck!" each time they scored.

In the top of the seventh, a large crowd of people were clustered in our aisle, blocking the TV, as a waiter cleared a table to seat them. Someone behind us yelled "Down in front!" My father and I laughed.

Spent a full seven innings watching the game in Uno's.

During the eighth and ninth innings, walked back and forth along the street behind the Monster, listening to the game on a radio in my backpack.

Saw people on the street clustered around small TVs. One sausage vendor kept his stand busy by having a TV set up next to it. There was another crowd of people staring intently in the window of a nearby bar.

As the radio announcer explained that Nelson was coming in to pitch for the Yankees, hearing the crowd chant "Nel-son, Nel-son" inside the stadium.

In the top of the ninth, heard the cheer from the crowd at each strike drown out the radio.

Saw the rush of people running out of Fenway and yelling and cheering and chanting "Yankees suck!" as the game ended.

And so the Red Sox go on to the ALCS. And here I am in Hamilton, NY, running around wearing my Sox cap, with a Sox banner hanging in my window, and feeling really rather isolated about the whole thing. What I wouldn't give to live in Boston right now. There's something about the passion of the city for its baseball team that results in huge amounts of energy, and draws everyone together, when the Sox are playing (and especially when they're winning, and especially especially in the postseason.) And there's something about the familiarity of old Fenway that makes me wish I could be there during the series, even with the old dull cement, loud crackling speakers, potholed and dirty aisleways, and seats that manage somehow to face away from the diamond into the outfield.

In an email from my dad: One of the guys who works for us spent last weekend with a friend in a hotel room in Boston, Friday and Saturday night. They didn't have tickets to the games or anything. They figured they'd find a restaurant or bar or someplace to watch the game, but they just wanted to BE in Boston while it was happening.

Read here after game three: I stepped out on the porch right after he hit it, and I swear I could(just barely) hear the roar from Fenway all the way up here at Porter.

My sister, who goes to school in Worcester, says she could hear cheers all over her dorm complex when the Sox won one of those last couple games.

They've been lighting up the Pru with "Go Sox", but the only way I can see it is in the picture that's now my desktop.

These are the things I miss, out here.

But. Soon, I will be home for fall break, and on Monday night I can wander around Boston during the game just as much as I please. Just to be there, and see the Pru's glowing message, and hear the roars and the cheers and see people watching the game in every restaurant and bar.

This semester seems to be about topics from my classes hitting me right at times when I'm struggling with something similar in my head. And here it is again, with anthropology whipping out the term "fictive kin" for genealogy just as I'm trying to figure out the implications of deciding (or is it perceiving?) that you are connected with someone as if they were family of some sort, of using kinship terminology in your head to make someone something that they're not, and whether this tie is strong and the term nearly accurate or if, in reality, it is a self-destructing fallacy.

I have only recently started to understand how much the people around me make me who I am, and how much choosing my friends is equivalent to choosing a self. As I think back through the past few years, and the choices I've made and continue to make daily, I realize how clearly each decision has directed who I am and how I see myself. As if looking down long, straight roads on a clear day, I can discern what futures I could have been living if I had visited different people one weekend, or stayed in touch with different friends from home, or chosen a different group to live with, and so on. But now, with this new awareness, I am almost frozen by the implications of my decisions. It's Friday night. What do I do? Suddenly the choice isn't simple -- it's not just what do I feel like doing, it's who do I feel like being, and how do I want to be valued tonight? And really, it always was. I just didn't pay much attention before. No, it shouldn't be a terribly big deal, and yet -- I have also realized that it is all these little choices that pile on top of each other to form my opinion of myself, one which has been low lately, but could be higher, if only I thought a bit more about all these little decisions, about all these people who reflect me back to myself like mirrors of various sizes and shapes.

The Dismemberment Plan's remix album, A People's History of the Dismemberment Plan (which you can listen to on their website), isn't bad overall, and there are a few tracks that are really quite good (namely, "What Do You Want Me to Say?", "Following Through", "The Other Side", and "A Life of Possibilities"). But mostly it just makes me wish there were more real D-Plan music to be had.

Maybe it'll grow on me, though.

earlier -- later