Today is like a movie. Your letters make me feel like I am sitting in front of a roaring fire in a hardwood living room, with snow sifting down like flour outside the picture window. I can hear your voice echoing inside my head as though you are narrating this scene of my life, and I will suddenly get up with the last skills I need to tackle the crisis from Act I.
This isn’t the first time I’ve felt like this today. At eight o’clock I left Ytterboe and noticed the snowflakes falling in time with my booted footfalls, each one carefully chosen to keep me from wiping out on the ice from yesterday’s rain.
It’s funny how fast things change.
You’ll be back before long; all my projects will be finished and I will be crossing my fingers for good weather in Denver on my way home for Christmas. I will be thinking about December 20 last year, and inevitably mulling over the conclusions of 2010. 2011 is coming soon and I will be a different person. Harder, like JJ said – jade is only possible under pressure.
***
It’s an evolutionary game of chicken. The two phenotypes – wimps and machos – are competing for the Fittest. It seems obvious which one will win in this classroom full of football, hockey, and rugby players majoring in economics – but as it turns out, there is only a single polymorphic strategy. The population will settle at an even number of wimps and machos. If one more macho walks in, no matter how brawny and invincible he is, he will lose the game of chicken.
I sit there in class laughing, the wimp among the machos, and think about the implications of this game for hegemonic masculinity in the United States today. If we glorify the football players, is it because the majority of our men are wimps and we need more machos to even the score?
I wonder if the fact that I’m thinking about this makes me more evolutionarily fit in the long run, or less.
Or maybe it really is just a game…
***
I hope I never become not fun. I hope I never find myself in a place where I can’t laugh (at dumb jokes and bad puns and double negatives) and I hope that I never lose the ability to start a dance party, even if I’m alone in the room.
Thanksgiving resolution: laugh and be merry, dance ‘cause you can’t help it and sing even if you can’t hit the notes. It sounds cliché, but that’s just because it’s important.
***
A few Wednesdays ago I noticed that Mary’s laugh was different. Louder, sharper, from the gut. I thought it was desperation at first, but maybe it’s just happiness. When I said something about it, she told me I was crazy. Maybe it had just been too long since I’d heard her really laugh.
A few semesters ago my roommate told me she didn’t like the guy I was seeing because he made me laugh unfamiliarly. I was actually really worried about it, and mulled over it for days until finally bringing it up with someone else who said, “Yeah, he makes you giggle like a middle schooler with a big whopping crush.” If we’re being honest, it’s probably for the best that I didn’t laugh like that around my roommate.
***
I don’t need a man. None of my friends do either. At least that’s what we always say. We just like them, and we like having them around, and we like when one of them likes us.
Sean sent me a poem about how everyone is just constantly searching for love, and how that quest is what drives everything we do. His latest letter turned into something of a philosophical rant about love-seeking, and how our society corrupts, hides, delegitimizes that search because we’re all afraid of ultimately being rejected, or maybe even afraid of love itself. I’m sure it would have made a very good narration to this scene in my life.
