My life has always tended to be rational, deliberate.
Until this week.
This week, I bought oranges and tea.
What is irrational about this, you ask? I'll tell you: I don't like oranges. I've never liked oranges, with their slightly bitter taste and white strings and huge pips and sticky skin. I don't like tea either. It's too bitter for me.
And yet, when I found myself inside the grocery store, I really wanted to eat an orange. I really wanted to drink a cup of tea.
So I bought both. Those were the most delicious oranges, the most satisfying cups of tea I have ever eaten or drunk.
But that's not even all:
Despite the apocalyptic flood on Friday morning, the afternoon was beautiful. As I walked home, I felt the need to stay outside. To enjoy the day.
So I didn't go home. I did cartwheels by the Turtle Pond and explained to a little boy that the turtles wouldn't drown in the water.
I asked my friends which of them wanted to have a tea party, or a picnic on the Large Expanse of Grass by the Tower for dinner, or get on a bus with me to explore downtown (namely Clever Beatles Reference Store, which sells earrings by the millions for practically nothing). But all of them were busy for the evening. I was disheartened.
Then, unexpectedly, someone suggested that we could have the picnic after everyone was back from their respective activities. At midnight.
Thus, at 11:45, I found myself packing bread, Nutella, peanut butter (another one of those irrational purchases that I am enjoying for the first time in my life), tea, cookies, hot water, mugs, and a blanket into several bags and heading to the Tower.
An hour and a half later, I am inside Venerable Old Dorm discussing fourth dimensional tetrahedrons and hypercubes with Childish Booksmart Friend and Friend Who Likes Science Fiction.
The next day, or rather, later that day, I put on old clothes and head back to Large Expanse of Grass by the Tower, where hundred of people have gathered. For the next three hours, I throw colored rang and water balloons at strangers. Pink, green, red, yellow, purple, turquoise, a rainbow is bleeding on the grass. At the end, friends are indistinguishable from strangers, and strangers have become friends. I have powder on my face, in my eyes, in my ears, in my hair, on my arms and everywhere.
In the shower, the colors wash off with difficulty. I scrub.
Later that night, Internet-Savvy Friend gathers us up and drives us to her house in Woodsy Area In City, where we eat ridiculous amounts of food, pet her ridiculously tiny puppy, and play a ridiculous video game that involves portals, gravity, homicidal computers, and the promise of cake.
By midnight, I am so incoherent from tiredness that they decide it is time to go home.
And today, I woke up early but did not get dressed until the middle of the afternoon, wrote an entire essay about why I love biology, and made insignificant headway on a Statistics project. All the while chronicling with interest the different colors that came out of my nostrils every time I blew my nose.
Interesting times.
Until this week.
This week, I bought oranges and tea.
What is irrational about this, you ask? I'll tell you: I don't like oranges. I've never liked oranges, with their slightly bitter taste and white strings and huge pips and sticky skin. I don't like tea either. It's too bitter for me.
And yet, when I found myself inside the grocery store, I really wanted to eat an orange. I really wanted to drink a cup of tea.
So I bought both. Those were the most delicious oranges, the most satisfying cups of tea I have ever eaten or drunk.
But that's not even all:
Despite the apocalyptic flood on Friday morning, the afternoon was beautiful. As I walked home, I felt the need to stay outside. To enjoy the day.
So I didn't go home. I did cartwheels by the Turtle Pond and explained to a little boy that the turtles wouldn't drown in the water.
I asked my friends which of them wanted to have a tea party, or a picnic on the Large Expanse of Grass by the Tower for dinner, or get on a bus with me to explore downtown (namely Clever Beatles Reference Store, which sells earrings by the millions for practically nothing). But all of them were busy for the evening. I was disheartened.
Then, unexpectedly, someone suggested that we could have the picnic after everyone was back from their respective activities. At midnight.
Thus, at 11:45, I found myself packing bread, Nutella, peanut butter (another one of those irrational purchases that I am enjoying for the first time in my life), tea, cookies, hot water, mugs, and a blanket into several bags and heading to the Tower.
An hour and a half later, I am inside Venerable Old Dorm discussing fourth dimensional tetrahedrons and hypercubes with Childish Booksmart Friend and Friend Who Likes Science Fiction.
The next day, or rather, later that day, I put on old clothes and head back to Large Expanse of Grass by the Tower, where hundred of people have gathered. For the next three hours, I throw colored rang and water balloons at strangers. Pink, green, red, yellow, purple, turquoise, a rainbow is bleeding on the grass. At the end, friends are indistinguishable from strangers, and strangers have become friends. I have powder on my face, in my eyes, in my ears, in my hair, on my arms and everywhere.
In the shower, the colors wash off with difficulty. I scrub.
Later that night, Internet-Savvy Friend gathers us up and drives us to her house in Woodsy Area In City, where we eat ridiculous amounts of food, pet her ridiculously tiny puppy, and play a ridiculous video game that involves portals, gravity, homicidal computers, and the promise of cake.
By midnight, I am so incoherent from tiredness that they decide it is time to go home.
And today, I woke up early but did not get dressed until the middle of the afternoon, wrote an entire essay about why I love biology, and made insignificant headway on a Statistics project. All the while chronicling with interest the different colors that came out of my nostrils every time I blew my nose.
Interesting times.
3 comments:
What a memorable couple of days and the joy which you bring to life absolutely sparkles off the page (well, off the screen but you know what I mean!),
Weekends like that are great.
I love this post.
Heavens. I really have missed the last few days not getting to my computer and reading your blog. And Scriptor's got there first again and said what I would have said but with such greater eloquence. I think that I might just leave him to it!
Je ne peux pas même commenter en français pour essayer et sembler intelligente parce que le Français de Scriptor est bien mieux que mon Français.
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