we have many interesting neighbors who i am just beginning to meet -- i am particularly fond of the retired english professor (19th century american lit: twain, dickinson, james) who is funny, warm, self-deprecating, ferociously smart, and everything else that a good academic should be. i love my advisor to death, but you know, [evans]he's a scientist[/evans], and there's just something about english professors that gives me the warm fuzzies. this one came complete with walking stick, culinary prowess, and a happily-partnered lesbian daughter (with kids), so you can already imagine my unabashed delight. he told us about how he left berkeley mid-phd to join the navy for wickham-esque reasons, how the vietnam war was, like for so many in his generation, his life's great eclaircissement. upon returning to berkeley, he discovered that he did not want to be a medieval lit scholar after all, and made a career out of (i think) deconstructing poe. i informed him that i mostly hang out with people who have the cp philosophy that anything written in the last 300 years is not literature, and probably not even worth reading, and he admitted that when he was still in short trousers he often thought the same thing, but that people come round. "i teach a class on the main line," he said "just so i don't get rusty, and sometimes we even read books by authors who are still alive." i confessed that it was no great taboo for me, and we shared a moment of conspirational solidarity.

it would be nice to have him and his wife over for dinner some time (or have him for reading club? he might die!), but i don't know if it's incredibly weird for someone in his twenties to invite a retired couple over. maybe he'll ask us? i realize increasingly that i have no concept of social convention whatsoever; i feel like i've been shielded from having to think about it all my life, and now i have no idea of what to do with myself. therefore: i'm treating this as the official adolescence of my social development, where i get to metaphorically break vases and spill soda on the carpet and do other awkward things. better late than never, after all.