Van Morrison was thinking of our fair lady M when he sang Brown Eyed Girl. M and I turned twenty in the same week, and we both found that the beating muscle located within the confines of our left chest cavities swelled with an unfamiliar emotion we can only attribute to stone-cold fear. To quell these irrational fears, our compeers helped us re-enact some childish flippancy; that is, we decided to forgo the classic “let’s bring some chips and salsa to the party and see what happens” tactic in favor of a Halfway to Halloween extravaganza.
We celebrated the little-known Halloween Solstice by donning costumes the way we would in Halloween. For instance, in a bid to mirror the declining standards of our society, I went to the festivities dressed as Entropy: I started out the evening a wholesome young woman, and ended it a complete floozy. M went as I Don’t Really Know If I Want To Be Here. Other curious characters of the evening included Social Science Broadfield Major, Super Poker Face, and Hammered Nepali.
There was plenty of laughter and inappropriate giggling. The physical manifestation of all this happiness whittled away what little maturity we had, and we were essentially one ice cream cake and two magicians away from turning into ten year-olds. My friends are very good; they are quality human beings, and if they were not human beings they would be morbidly fat chickens who consciously walked into a slaughterhouse with intentions of alleviating global hunger.
Only one week of classes before finals, and already History 220 wants me dead—dead I tell you, just like the people we talk about in that class. Still, because my skills for setting good priorities are at an all-time low, I will spend the rest of the week wallowing in denial by listening to the Bee Gees and watching good movies. My weeks need to be occupied with more classic motion pictures befitting of greatness, because I glow that rich pregnant woman flush when it happens, with the difference being I’m not pregnant.
But I digress. Happy birthday, M! I hope the party lived up to your standards. May your trigger finger remain click-happy, your D70s equipped with sexy lenses, and may a contract with Corbis/Magnum/AP/Reuters await you upon your ejection from the shackles of tepid academia. Mazel tov!
(M is a conflict photographer in the making. It’s shots of flowers and sunsets today, tanks and riot gear tomorrow. Check out her stuff on her DeviantART and Flickr accounts.)
The Deluge
Posted on May 5th, 2007
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