Norfolk Terrace, Day 56. Thoughts Unconscious, Thoughts Reflective
I was simply reading a card I had received on my birthday and I was in a side-room to a Hogwartsian Great Hall, which bore vaulted arches in the ceilings and large slabs of grey stone for walls. As I was reading the card, I began to sing it—then my flatmate Charlie, who was leaning over my shoulder, sang a fifth and started into a solid harmony line. Alvin led the second harmony part below Charlie’s, with Dan supporting. Then a few other flatmates joined various parts—strangely only the guys were part of this—and we went to the Great Hall to perform it in front of our female flatmates and other friends. I don’t remember if we actually did it a second time, but that first time was legit.
Swirling along in a mist, I wound up on a busy street in Cambridge. Cobblestone was beneath my feet. I walked along and stopped into a store by impulse. There, singing in full glory, was my high school choir, consisting of alumni to current seniors, rehearsing. After spotting the face I always remember for its noble expressions, Mr. Slabbinck’s, I joined along in the front where the seniors were singing the opening part to “One Song” (a tradition in real-life at the end of the school year), standing next to my old friend Morgan who hugged me, so happy to see me. Tavi was there too. After the song, I wandered along the rows, might’ve seen my brother and his friend Mitch at one point, and then looked out the window and realized I would sacrifice my rhetoric minor to spend one last semester in this choir. Then the terrible truth arose that this was high school, not college. I could never be in this choir again.
There was a bedroom. The next scene. Dumbledore, Harry, Hermoine, Ron, and a bunch of high school friends were in the room. I was Ron. My brother was there too, as himself. Holding us to attention, Dumbledore solemnly explained that a malevolent ghost would appear and play tag with us. Our defense lay in playing Words with Friends, casting words out as spells, since the ghost did not favour words. If the ghost tagged you, you disappeared forever. As Ron, somehow I had an inclination to believe that I might wield the Elder Wand. I asked. Dumbledore shook his head. The ghost arose and after minutes of rampaging ominously, the ghost locked on someone and she vanished. Then the game restarted, and the next round I vanished. Strangely, before any of this, I had been playing Words with Friends with my brother in a grand dining room of hovering candelabra, as if a Friday tradition (which it’s never been) and I picked out a word that gave me 1,000 points. Somehow that became a ghost game.
After the land of Nod and its three gifts of entertainment to me (music + Harry Potter-esque dreams), I got up refreshed at 1 in the afternoon, sans alarm clock. I know that at some point in my life I will look back and envy the “me” that can get up at 1 and not feel behind in skipping out on half the day. As for this day, I did a list of very simple things, after one activity I just picked up another one as effortlessly as the changing of the wind. I read more on Shelley—one thing struck a chord. His overarching theme of nonviolent resistance, as a protest against the outcome of the French Revolution, is exemplified in his poem Mask/Masque of Anarchy. Guess who cited this poem to crowds of people in a resistance movement? Gandhi.
I read through poems, an essay of his, some commentary, and then shifted into playing guitar. I am this much closer to doing the barre chord for F major.
One fragment of news in my day cast a shadow of devastation: when I see an old friend on the list of my friends on facebook chat, I sometimes IM them and ask how life is. I did this with my old theatre friend Caleb today, and his response hit me like a brick wall: “not good. My girlfriend passed away a few days ago.” Her name was Hanna (Hannah de la Rose) and she was an oil painter. She was 21, just a few months older than him. He knew her for eight years, but only in the last few months did they connect romantically. I remember reading on his sister’s facebook wall earlier this week about one of her brother’s best friends being in the hospital and brain dead. I had no idea. Caleb wishes I could’ve met her and I wish I had to. All this got me thinking about life and death, as any big event like this usually does, and how blessed we are with who we have in life. Those we care about. Those we love. When someone dies, a vacuum arises, a numbness in the void, a pain that can never go away by anything immediate, anything we do—only by the passive passing of Time does the pain soften. Life fills in a bit more, a trickle at a time—the gap in life becomes less resilient, less a sharp agony in daily living, but the memory is imprinted in the mind and heart and is recalled in proportion to how much that person impacted those still living. Rest in peace, Hanna de la Rose.
No matter what topic I change to, this will be a dramatic tone shift, but the flat celebrated Steff’s 20th birthday tonight with order-in Chinese food. Hot and sour chicken balls, fried rice, mushroom chicken, mmm…then watched How I Met Your Mother, studied a little more, and went to bed.
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