--{ guilty pleasures }------
In the aftermath of all of the deaths of last week, I am reluctant to admit that I am enjoying my vacation. It is the first long vacation I've taken in two and a half years, and I am having a good time. I am staying up till 4 am, not even partying but just mellowing out and reading stuff, and sleeping until noon. I am watching all too much television, all of it network news because there is no cable here. I am having lovely geeky conversations, of the sort I adore, some about criminal law, some about war powers, some about what John Ashcroft (a.k.a. "Bossman John") is saying, some about law reviews.
The interactions between me and my friends have devolved into full-time mockery, a state which I actually enjoy.
I am taking a class, and had so missed taking classes. I am reading, I am wandering, I am (oh lovely of lovelies) walking from locale to locale. I am telling people that I am in between jobs.
I have walked through my alma mater, MIT, seen the ways in which the Institute is the same, but different. I have read the students' discourse about last week's events, written on banner paper spread throughout the Infinite Corridor. I have been touched and I have been scared by the things they wrote. And I have looked at the students, and for once, they looked young.
I have eaten tender marinated chicken with friends, over glasses of gewurtztraminer. I have bowled with them, or at least watched them bowl. I have cackled on the phone and drank pearl tea and window-shopped up and down Newbury Street. I have admired my own restraint.
I have read a few books already, and one entire book while hiding out in the Harvard Coop. It was a fabulous book.
I have been to the aquarium, screamed awwwwws of cuteness, much to the chagrin of Andy, my friend, host, and former law school classmate. I have seen the cute things -- the sea otters and the sea lions and the puffer fish and the seals. I have seen the penguins; pengi wa kawaii desu. Or something like that.
I have walked down the streets of Brookline and Boston and Cambridge, sighed, and felt satisfied.
And I am doing nothing especially special, which in and of itself is rather special.
These are guilty pleasures, because I know that thousands will never get to do such things again. These are guilty pleasures, because I am doing simple things, things mostly unrelated to the events of last week or to the complicated politics that led up to those events. I wish my elation did not come at a time of so much sorrow. Here's to wishing my joy could be shared somehow.
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