78uuu lumière des étoiles

Dusty:Starlight:Culture



away, far away
2006-03-04   10:26 a.m.

I'm floating in and out of sleepiness, drifting with the tide I'm inches from. I grind my little toes down deeper into the hot sand, and turn up the Verve Remixed version of Gershwin's "Summertime". I'm not dreaming, on hallucinogenic psychotropics, or finally abandoning the last bastions of sanity that life in a neo-con state can rob a nice socialist girl like me of - Steve and I came down to West Palm Beach cause we just couldn't take it at home anymore. It was a really cold week, the kind where the wind hurt your face and your fingers. His parents offered us a place, and we took it. Oh, and we brought my mom.
There are some nice things about being a grown-up, after all: a career that pays well enough for you to skip town for a few days and buy your mom a ticket, too, top the list.

It was 82 here yesterday, 90-something in the sun. I think it is or was snowing at home; I'm trying not to think about home at all. I'm grateful to the friends who agreed to cover my Friday classes by giving my students an in-class writing assignment, but suspect one of them may have forgotten. But guess what? I don't care.

I rode a borrowed bike about five or six miles yesterday, in shorts and a bikini top. I wake up by 8 every day, despite being out/up late, because the heat from the sun coming in through the windows won't let me stay asleep.

I'm doing a good job avoiding thinking about Monday, when I have to be back and unbelievably "on" at work - I have a Pakistani poet and scholar coming to speak to my Women's Studies class, and then later in the day to a larger university community. And since I was part of the team going around soliciting money and trying to plan for her visit, I have to introduce her and make things go smoothly. But how can I stress? I'll be lounging in the sun, infinity pool-side in just twenty minutes or so. It is hard to remember why we live where we live when we retreat to the sun and absorb as much as we can. What do we like about New York, again?

Oh plenty, I know - it's just so cold right now, and dark. All this sun makes me glad we'll be northern-hemisphere travelers this year. Can't quite handle another season of Winter-spare sunlight. Hooray, Italy/Tunisia (or Thailand/Cambodia)!

I think I'll be happier when I get back and write nicer things.

I'm certainly happy right now.

xoxox