Friday, April 29, 2005

Lighthouse Park, and more tales from days of yore

Yo.

Stayed up past 4:00 last night, for no better reason than that I was talking to Berdie on MSN and we had to try out all the stupid new animated creatures now that we both have 7.0. My favourites are the dancing pig and the dude smashing a guitar. It's possible that neither of us should ever have left high school. Go maturity!

I just got back from hiking Lighthouse Park with Berdie and her older sister, who is getting married in a month. Berdie asked me to write a poem that she could read at the wedding, based on this one that I wrote for my friend for her wedding. Except of course, that my friend has never read that poem. And I would need ridiculous quantities of personal information to write one about her sister. Well, I'll see what I can do. I have never been asked to write a poem for a specific occasion before, and I may turn out to be crap at it.

It was a lovely sunny day (AGAIN!), and we got to take Berdie's sister's car to the park, a lovely little indigo blue thing (see how much I know about cars??) which has a respectable stereo and isn't a total piece of crap like the station wagon we had to drive last time. Oh, and this time I wasn't poisoned, which also made it much more entertaining.

Now I'm going to a film festival with the girl from my film class, let's call her April. So I'm kind of feeling like I have friends at the moment. This is good because soon they will be all gone!

Thought I'd post another excerpt from my old blog. This is my description of the night I went to the ballet in celebration of D.'s birthday.

2004-05-23 - 2:19 p.m.

Hey y'all.

Haven't written since my entertaining Friday afternoon spent in the stuffy and mostly-useless library.

So I'll update you on the last 24 hours or so (how exciting).

Friday night I came home from the library and got Dag to put some eyeliner on me, eyeliner being a substance I don't buy and just about never wear. I was surprised by the reactions I got from all sorts of people. I spoke to Teebs on msn and went over to his place as he was running out the door so I could borrow a movie from him. I literally spoke to him for about three minutes as he's frantically throwing stuff into a bag and we barely even look at each other the whole time, but as I get up to leave, he asks "so, what's with all the makeup?" I'm shocked that he's noticed, and not sure whether this is a compliment, a criticism, an observation, or a not-so-subtle attempt to gain information on my personal life. I tell him I'm going out, and we head downstairs where we run into my roommates Gabi and Em and the tall guy V, friend of the Romanians though I think he's Bulgarian, but I think he speaks Russian and Romanian, as well as French. It's hard to keep the Eastern Europeans straight sometimes. Em asks me where I'm going looking so made-up, and I chuckle at the second comment ABOUT EYELINER I've received in five minutes (I'm starting to wonder whether I normally look like such a scrub that when I don't it's headline news) and tell her I'm going to the ballet with D, then dodge her inevitable cooing ("NO EM, IT IS NOT A DATE!") so I can go and get ready.

I'm throwing on my white skirt with the embroidery on the front and putting my hair up, running back and forth in various stages of preparation from my room to the bathroom while Gabi and V are smoking on the balcony (I think Gabi took my hint about the smoking) and craning their necks to watch me get ready. I go into the kitchen to check the metro schedule as Em continues her cooing, and insists that Gabi see me before I go (as though he hasn't been getting an eyeful from the balcony). He looks me up and down and says in his very Romanian fashion (how many times have I heard these words and stupidly believed them?!) "Tu es vraiment belle." Thanks Gabi, just let me take that with a grain of salt the size of a male Romanian's ego.

I meet D at the metro, and it takes him a good ten minutes to get up the courage to comment on my appearance and tell me he feels privileged to be with me for the evening. I feel like a bit of a houseplant but decide to let it slide.

Houseplant syndrome: The desire, usually of a member of the male persuasion, to invite a female to an event for the sole purpose of having her add to the scenery and atmosphere, not unlike a houseplant sitting in the corner of the room. Said female can be pretty and admiring her is encouraged, but at no point may she be mistaken for having a brain. Unlike trophy-bride disorder, houseplant syndrome is usually temporary and confined to the 15-25 age bracket.

We went to see the Ballet Bejart, choreographed by a tiny 79-year-old guy by the name of Bejart (oodly enough). His work is decidedly unclassical, pretty experimental, and highly symbolic. The sort of thing that makes you feel like a bit of a moron if you don't understand and yet you're never sure how much you're really expected to be able to understand. The ballet was The Magic Flute, a dance piece set to the German music and lyrics to an opera, a most strange technique indeed. It was incredibly difficult to follow since the narration is in French (fine for me, bad for D), the lyrics are in German (and I sprechen nein Deutch), and the plot is half mythological, half theatrical, and 100% confusing. We couldn't even figure out who most of the characters were for the duration of the ballet. But it was very beautiful visually, with spectacular costumes and amazing colours, and while my mind did wander to what I was going to eat when I got home, it was a nice experience nonetheless.

I've cut that short because the rest of it was a lot of esoteric ranting that won't make much sense to you if you weren't there. The guy I call 'Teebs' is Dag's ex, and my friend and neighbour in Switzerland.

It all makes me a wee bit nostalgic for those slightly-debauched-but-rarely-boring days. Ah well.

Off to the movies!

-N