not falling down

As of today I have a cell phone and an iMac. It’s the Day of Things I Never Intended To Own.

The iMac is an ancient one, probably older than the PII I’m typing this on; it belonged to the former superintendent of Diocese of Lexington schools, and she donated it to St. Mark, where my mother works. As nobody there has any desire for it, she asked me if I wanted it, and the I Want More Computers instinct kicked in before I even realized what I was doing. I think I can make it acceptable, though, if I can gut and reformat it and make it a Red Hat box. I think I’ve heard about people doing that. Anyway, if I went to comp sci grad school without something that runs Linux, I bet they’d kick me out.

The cell phone is a little harder to explain. I’m going to have all my interweb through cable for the next couple years, and my future flatmates (DC and Maria) already have cell phones, and in theory I could save big bucks by just getting a cell myself and not even bothering with a land line.

This still took deliberation on my part. I loathe cell phones. I hate their omnipresence and their ugly faceplates. I hate the way people spend hours on end staring dully into the tiny screens and thumbing tiny buttons. I hate worrying about how many minutes someone has left when I call him or her. I HATE the ringtones, every single damn one of them. Given the choice between listening to a cell phone ring (especially in theaters, but really anywhere) and watching a baby get kicked to death, I would cheer for the steel-toed boots.

But we wound up doing it anyway, assisted by the most archetypical All-American Con Man I’ve ever met (Jaymes!) at Radio Shack. The idea was to get a calling plan for all four Adkinses, just adding three extra lines and getting phones for free. There was a lot more hassle and many hidden charges, predictably, but eventually we walked out with a big fat bill and four red Nokias.

I knew I shouldn’t have opened mine. I should have given it a cold and forbidding look and left it in the box, outside in the (metaphorical) snow. But I was weak. I turned it on.

I’m smitten. I love the way it lights up on the sides. I love the (surely soon-broken) pull-out antenna. I loved putting in all my contact numbers and email addresses and voice cues with the horrible keypad (I don’t think anyone’s ever designed a worse input device, including punch cards, but I loved doing it anyway). And I loved immediately setting the thing to Silent and Vibrate. May lightning strike me if I ever allow myself to produce any of those hideous sounds.

But as it turns out, we’ll probably have to return them all in the morning. Why? Because Sprint apparently doesn’t cover our house. We go on analog roam about half a mile before we get there, and it’s not like we live in the hinterlands–it’s in the suburbs, maybe five minutes from downtown Richmond. It doesn’t matter to me or Ian–we’ll be in Louisville for good pretty soon–but Mom still lives here, and Caitlan will at least be around this summer.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll have a Cingular phone instead, I don’t know. It’s my own fault for getting attached so quickly. I feel like I’m in The Caucasian Chalk Circle. I’m getting sentimental in my old age! I know better than to let myself get seduced by some two-bit piece of gadgetry I don’t need or want!

(I was going to name her Layla.)

So Richmond suddenly has a coffee house. It’s called Live Wire, and they’ve got a logo and that browny-orange paint on the walls. There’s a stage up front and an XBox in the back, and they’re so hip they’re standard.

This is distinctly unfair. I’m moving to Louisville more or less for good in two weeks, and my mom is selling her house, so I’ll probably never live in Richmond for any length of time again. And now they get a coffee house, when I’ve been hoping and wishing for something of the sort for like ten years.

It looks like it’s doing good business, anyway. I can only imagine the hipster pressure that must have been building up all this time, without a hot spot in which to smoke and chill, and it’s clearly on the loose now. Two of Caitlan’s friends (well, my friends too) played guitar and sang their original songs tonight as Horn-Rimmed Pop Explosion, which is not a bad band name at all, and I was happy to see that Erin Mic (another GSP refugee) works there now. It beats Wal-Mart.

So yeah, we went to see that, and then I came back here and gave Idaho’s bowl a thorough scrubbing. I realize that he’s a betta and used to dirty water, and could probably care less if his bowl is sparkling, so it’s much more about my aesthetic sensibilities than his quality of life. Then again, so is owning a fish.

And for the record, I can’t believe I’ve kept him alive this long (or rather, that he’s stayed alive in spite of me). I know bettas are hardy, but my family home is known in fish circles as The Pit Of Death By Morning. We used to kill fish faster than they made new ones. I thought it was a religious obligation.

Coffee house hangouts! Fish stories! I’m such a damn blogger. If I start recommending obscure brands of spinach, please shoot me.

I didn’t realize I’d spent so much time on the computer today, but in addition to PSPing the hell out of all the mullet shots below, I shoehorned the final version of Blind Loop–now “Blind Loop in e minor”–into Noteworthy Composer. It’s not, rhythmically, quite what I intended, but then it’s a computer playing it for me and I’m not that great at notating rhythm anyway.

You can get the mp3, or if you are for some reason interested, the midi or sheet music in Noteworthy format. Consider it open source, not public domain–that is, be sure to give props, but sample all you want!

Also you can complain about the bugs and lack of plugin support, and then wait while I do nothing about it. I suggest the tar pit.

I want the last two shots to be the last Idiotcams© from in Rodes 2, but there’s a problem: apparently I spent all of senior week adding to the Plastic Mullet Series.

Yes, I am aware that thanks to the Fox network, mullets themselves have jumped the shark, but I still find the plastic mullet itself (which turns out to have belonged to Lisa all along, and which she ended up donating to me) a singularly baroque object. It possesses a level of absurdity above and beyond that of the standard mullet picture. It is, in short, a higher calling.

That I might better answer its siren song, I present to you Plastic Mullet Extravalooza 2K3! This unprecedented collection not only the mighty Darren at last, but new inanimate objects and the only girl who’s ever seemed happy to be wrangled into the headdress. If you order now, you’ll also get Jon’s whole entire dang family, not to mention a couple of Lallys (elder and younger). To top it all off, this one-time-only special captures the elusive Evan and–yes!–my own sister!

Back to bittersweet angst soon, I promise, but right now I’m going to have to glory in the possession of this much dirt on so many people. I hope none of you ever want to run for office, guys. I own you.

This is how I graduate: the only Centre commencement in living memory on which it has rained, in alphabetical order yet in the middle of the pack, ending up shivering in the library halfway to the auditorium, which was in neither the sunny nor rainy day plans. Our baccalaureate speaker was a fervent liberal and our keynote speaker a stolid conservative; hackles were raised at each and both. I tried to dry the rain off my glasses and found that polyester robes don’t soak up much.

My apartment has been messily slaughtered, furniture shoved and stolen and hidden mold revealed. One more time I’m the last one to move out. The walls are bare, and most of what I own is in piles on the floor. I’ll never live with Jon or Amanda or David again.

I said goodbye and soon to many, many people, and went to my uncle’s house to see Ken, Jon and Emily one more time and to be astounded by the generosity of my family. I fell asleep sitting up before we came back here. I’m going to pack all night and leave in the morning, which I was explicitly told not to do.

Those of you who know me from my first Governor’s Scholars Program will be gratified to know, I hope, that I brought an umbrella onstage with me at the ceremony. As we were leaving, I ended up facing the wrong way and didn’t notice I was supposed to be moving for several long seconds after the rest of my row had gone. I jumped and cursed onstage (at my own commencement) and scrambled out. I was so flustered I forgot the umbrella.

On my way out to meet my family I stood for a few minutes on the stage in Weisiger. That was the first place I found myself on the first day of GSP, here at Centre; I stood in the dark, having come in out of the rain, and wrote about quiet stages on a chalkboard. Later that night, Milton Reigelman would point it out in his opening convo speech, and I would feel a strange mix of shame and pride at having something I’d written read.

This is how I graduate: I am bone-deep nothing-left weary, and I have miles to go before I sleep. I know my time here is done and I am satisfied with it, and I’m ready and willing and glad to go. I’m hurt and hollow, childish and scared. I want desperately to put off the deep wrench I’m feeling, because it means I’m really leaving home.

I did something to which I thought she was resigned yesterday, but I was wrong about that. I don’t regret it, but then I’ve never been able to see a way out of the whole situation that didn’t involve pain for somebody–or, really, a way out at all.

Cleaning out my suitcases in preparation for filling them up again, I found the birthday gifts she gave me almost a year ago: bubbles, candy, a balloon animal kit. Cleaning out the secret spot under my desk drawer where I kept my secret admirer notes, I found the picture her parents sent me of her: five, costumed, grinning wickedly. The history of a relationship that never was.

Useless Words I Hate Because There Are Other, Better Words For the Same Thing and People Only Use These To Sound Fancy, and They’re Usually Wrong:

• domicile

• incessantly
• plethora
• slumber

Words I Hate For Other Reasons Entirely:

• tomorrow

“It’s going to be damp and smoky, and it’s certainly going to be crowded and loud, and I’ll be the one cold glass in the middle of all the hot fuzzy overmedicated haze. Last time I was introduced to Lucky Boys Confusion and Manu Chao, and my hat smelled like campfire smoke for months. I don’t know where I’m going to sleep.

Once I went into cold water. Once I went to the farm. Tonight I’m going in again, and I don’t know if I can articulate why.”

I wrote that, earlier tonight, and didn’t post it. I didn’t go. I stayed here and played video games with Lisa and Flora, hung out with Eric and Emily and Ian and Adam, talked to Maria for a long time, and was generally very happy with everything. Very glad.

I could maybe have been happy at the farm party tonight, in a reckless lost uncertain kind of way. I could also have been miserable, and I would have been breaking plans with someone who matters to me more and more as the end of college grows in my mirrors. But I made the right choice. As it turns out, I’ve got angels everywhere.

Strother brought me a graduation present tonight: a floating crane-kick Trinity doll. Remind me to put it up on the cam when I’m done beatboxing.

Strother is a friend and a frosher, which of course makes him somewhat subhuman, but he’s really grown on me this term. I think he’s the only talented actor I’ve seen come into the drama program here without a chip on his shoulder, and I think that’s terribly admirable. He’s also, like Sumana, someone I was surprised to find brilliant at Dance Dance Revolution (at which, I discovered last night, I am exactly as good as you would expect).

So. A graduation gift (and Lisa got me another one–remind me to talk about that too), and tomorrow morning is my very last final, and tonight I wandered around this campus in the half-light and thought about how very small it was. I am leaving it in a week, more or less for good. This evening it felt like the quiet part in the suite, where the flute is playing, right before the timpani come back in.

Ender had been so long without sunlight that the light nearly blinded him. He squinted and sneezed and wanted to get back indoors. Everything was far away and flat; the ground seemed to fall away, so that on level ground Ender felt as though he were on a pinnacle. The pull of real gravity felt different and he scuffed his feet when he walked. He hated it. He wanted to go back home, back to the Battle School, the only place in the universe where he belonged.

–Ender’s Game

Gollum Spam?:

gamruddin@dinovoyrll.com		ttiBBootttlleedd hheeaalltthh

We stayed the night (all five hours of it) in Nashville with Jon’s cousin Tracy, who is astoundingly kind and has a really cool apartment, and who might even be reading this if she happens to remember how to spell “Xorph.” I was thinking about getting little cards or something printed up, until I remembered that I hate plugging for this site. I don’t plan on any kind of advertisement until I’m satisfied that my work is good enough for more than a few friends and friends’ friends to see it; I always like getting mentioned on bigger sites or whatever, but that’s more for the sense of recognition than for the thought of big counter numbers.

Also, as long as I’m giving shout-outs, I think Emily Tate wanted to have her name mentioned in my journal, but I’m not giving her the satisfaction. Unless she takes her pants off and dances around in my room, maybe. I mean hey, quid pro quo.