sixty-second theatre (continued)

so like i said, i spent a massive amount of time working, even though i was technically on vacation, but there was also plenty of good stuff.

christmas gifts were fun. probably the most exciting was that i tried to buy a piano for carissa. the money is all set aside; unfortunately we're still trying to find one though. (i asked aunt eleanor to ask her piano technician, which she did, but he hasn't gotten back to her yet.) probably i'll start exploring some other leads sometime soon.

of course the best part of any trip is the people. saw lots of old friends. got to do a couple things with treye, and i even got to see jon wall, who drove up with his family to see some aunts and uncles for christmas. that was pretty awesome, even though we only got to spend one evening together. caught up with jaime, and her new boyfriend shawn, who is pretty cool---if for no other reason, then because he winks from time to time. instant bonus points in my book. don't know why, i just think it's amusing. and steve, of course steve. the poor guy's been marooned in japan for the last two years; hadn't seen him since graduation at oxy. they've restarted the band, now named "matinee," and i saw a show they put on in the mississippi pizza pub downtown. damn, people just started coming out of the woodwork; there were PAA people there, there were oxy people there, there were friends of steve's cousins that i hadn't seen since that godforesaken youth camp years and years and years ago (been trying to forget the camp, but the people were still nice and good, so it was okay). ben and natalie were both there. ben is doing bronze sculpting and looking at a graduate program in england. also apparently has that enviable talent of just meeting random people and making friends with them; he was telling me about a girl he had met a few days prior, and it sounds like they hit it off rather well.

i think the most "interesting" part (it's really hard to pick the right adjective; it wasn't really weird, or strange, or enlightening, or re-affirming, or surreal... but some bizarre mixture of all of the above...) was seeing some of the people from my old high school drinking. it was likely amplified by the fact that i wasn't, since i had driven myself, but listening to them talk while mildly intoxicated somehow made them seem infinitely more human. i know this isn't going to make any sense to anyone but me, and i don't care; just nobody take it as an insult ('cause it's not), okay?

high school is awkward for everyone, i'm sure (or at least that's what i try to tell myself), but i think there are huge chunks of it that i actually have finally succeeded in forgetting. i remember fear and uncertainty, self-loathing and a general overarching sense of unhappiness, but most of the specifics have finally faded from my recollection. i suspect that this is actually a good thing, though clearly i have no idea. in what few images that remain accessible, i remember how i must have given all of them more credit than they might have deserved. i don't mean to say that they were deficient in any way, they just weren't flawless the way i idealized them at the time... seeing natalie, i am sure she was always kind to me, but just as sure that we never belonged to the same caste, at any time during the four years together. which i suppose is why it felt just a teeny bit strange to have a conversation as equals. later, she was a little tipsy, and said a couple of things which gave me pause; i wish i knew what she was thinking at the time. anyway, if i understood correctly, she should be in colorado now with her boyfriend (i think they moved there so he could be a ski instructor). i hope they're happy and doing well.

overall, from all these people i hadn't seen in forever, i was again getting a little bit of the vibe i described before when i was talking about having seen "garden state." a lot of people seem to think i'm off in exotic places doing amazing things, but i don't feel like i have anything to show that warrants that at all... okay, i'm going to stop, or i'll end up rambling on incoherently for hours.

on a brighter (or at least more humorous) note, surely no trip home would be complete without the requisite maniacal shopping spree! i was really out of control in a couple of cases, but the most amusing (i think) was when i realized that lots of places had these display stands selling dvds for like seven or eight dollars... and renting a dvd for one night here costs about seven or eight francs... (you do the math). hahahaha. so, of course, over the couple of weeks i was there, i started my own dvd collection, eventually amassing somewhere between 15 and 20 pretty decent films that i brought back with me. in fact, now that i let myself start, i can feel the collector's itch, and there are several other titles which i would like to have, but that will have to wait for another trip, i guess.

and of course i bought lots of clothing, and stacks of books---the gods will smite you if you come to portland and neglect the pilgrimage to powell's. pay homage where homage is due. god, i love books. i always have. i wish i had more time to read... well, we make do with what we can.

my cousin grant is turning into an unbelievable jazz pianist. he just turned 15, and he's already got a combo together from his high school, and has made a few recordings both with them and on his own. it's rather awe-inspiring. well, that, and it makes me jealous. but it's my own damn fault for not having practiced enough, i suppose. or, more accurately, for still not practicing enough now. though i have been playing a fair bit recently; i photocopied some piano scores of philip glass music that i got from the library, since they're apparently all out of print and i couldn't find them anywhere to buy (i really looked everywhere; i wanted to buy them, i just couldn't). the guy is crazy, and i remember when dr. grayson had us listen to a couple of excerpts in that music history writing seminar i took at oxy my first year, not thinking that they were all that interesting, but now, i can't seem to get enough of it. i guess i understand how to appreciate it now; it's quite simply genius, in my opinion, though others will probably disagree.

when buying the plane ticket, i couldn't resist saving $350 by flying sunday->sunday instead of saturday->saturday. the stupid part about this is that with the time change, the return flight lands 24 hours after it takes off, meaning that i was scheduled to land at 8:00am monday morning, and i had a 10:00 group meeting. amazingly, i actually made it, by coming directly to work from the airport, suitcases and everything. but for the love of god, i hope i never do that again. complete insanity. and again, this time less intentionally, getting over the jet lag was a reasonably long and painful ordeal (like nearly 10 days to get fully straightened out again).

alright, i'm sure i've forgotten something, but at least we're making progress, and we've made it back to switzerland. hopefully after the next one we'll be back up to current time.