friday night

four of the second- and third-year psych students occupy an entire house not 3 minutes walk from where i am. the owner of the place just graduated with a phd in medieval history, and is taking a year off to "find herself" -- obviously something only a person who owns a bloody house in the heart of university city (at the age of 30) can afford to do. there was a party there last night, and i got my first peek inside the building. the decor was mismatched, the furnishing eclectic, but all this is par for the course for grad-student-tenants i suppose. to be fair, all the rooms did feel lived in and homely. we packed the place to the rafters, spilling drinks and pepperidge farm goldfish all over the beautiful hardwood floors. there were too many limes, and too much chambord. also, the ice-cream drinks were brought out and consumed towards the end of the party, a fatal mistake for many.

i spent a lot of the evening in the kitchen, partly because it was rather difficult to get out of it, and partly because that was where the jose cuerva was. it was there that sean told me the Quite Interesting fact that dave brainard's other big achievement (besides creating psychtoolbox) was acting in the film fat man and little boy, starring paul newman and john cusack, in which he had a very important line counting down the alamorgdo, NM test launch. six degrees! (another quite interesting fact which i learned from richard powers: the trinity test site was named that by oppenheimer because he was reading a lot of john donne's poetry at the time, and had just got to batter my heart, three person'd god. digression: jy gets lots and lots of points for telling us the oppenheimer story while we were enjoying the sunset in angkor wat, the one where he tells how the nuclear blast reminded him of the bhagvad gita quote: now, I am become death, the destroyer of worlds, (a) because it was apropos, and (b) because i realise that we were all a little ignorant in not knowing that, and now we are a little less.) anyway, david brainard. searching imdb tells us that he was also in chicago hope and sex and the city, but i will take that with a pinch of salt until i get to ask him personally.

towards midnight, i found myself telling army stories about decapitations and sliced scrota (don't ask), which usually means that it's time to go home, but i was accosted by ewa and somebody's boyfriend at the door and got sucked into a conversation about whether it's better to live and work in warsaw or gdansk (answer: if you want the cultural immersion, gdansk). by the time i got walking, it was after one, and a light mist of rain was falling, giving the streetlights that lovely, hazy quality, like being in a poem. a group of intoxicated freshmen staggered by, singing the national anthem at the top of their lungs, and i thought: i could live here.