The Fire Swept Through

Must've passed up two opportunities for poetry on Friday. First one was when I was wandering through campus in the daytime, listening to some Pinback with the air fit to break into rain at a moment's notice. I'd gone out to find a professor in the Writing Seminars department, but no one was there. While walking aimlessly through the winding brick pathways between the library and Mattin, I saw a cat. A little tabby thing, rather clean-looking, sitting in the middle of the path outside of the Merrick Barn. I stopped to look at it. It kept meowing at me, as we both held still, facing each other in a staring contest.

I considered moving closer to it, or petting it, but my mind kept coming up with reasons why I shouldn't: what if it clawed me or something? Eventually I walked away, and over to the steps going down to Maryland, but then I stopped and leaned against the railing, watching the cat from across the grass. Several people paused to point at it; eventually a girl in boots and a long black coat stooped--couldn't hear but I think she talked to it--and tried to pet it, whereupon the cat began to mosey away down the path, the girl following a step behind. I thought it was quite an entertaining sight.

The second occasion was coming out of Sonar after the Ed Rush & Optical dance party: an old man with wild eyes, white hair and a grey sweater, hopelessly out of place on Saratoga in the shadow of the rust-amber bridge across from the prison, amongst studded belts, tight black pants, sweat-streaked mascara, bleached hair, with an armful of roses in pastel pinks, whites and yellows, an Eastern European accent chanting, "roses, roses. Roses, roses," as if that were the only word he knew. I don't know how he got plucked out of a children's folk tale and dumped outside a club in downtown Baltimore on a Friday night, but damn, the more I thought about it, the more I wanted one of those flowers. I didn't even know what I would do with it--certainly there was nobody around I could've possibly given one to--but I wanted to get one, if only because I knew none of the walking zeitgeist, hipper-than-thou kids coming out the door would ever have given him the time of day. But John and Sterling, obviously seeing no worth in such endeavors, dragged me away. "It'll just make you depressed later," John said. Little did he know...

I should count up all the things like that that ever happened. Make a little list of things I could've done, and probably should've done, which might've changed my day, my week, my life. But I won't. That would be depressing.

The party itself was quite a blast, though. I quite like dancing for its own sake, and the 180bpm grooves definitely upped the intensity from average dance parties; by the end of the night my neck and shoulders ached. During the opening act, there was still enough space to flail about, maybe do a little perfectly-timed (bassist rhythm sense) jump-tuck when the break came back in after a droning synth bridge; when Ed Rush & Optical came on, though, the room became so packed I couldn't move five inches without bumping into someone. All sorts there: some of those people I could see at a drum 'n' bass dance, some hip hop looking locals, but then there were the metal- or "punk"-looking kids who kind of confused me. I suppose the industrial connection might've brought them. And then there were the few people who walked in wearing North Face fleeces, looking like they'd come straight from some college bar. One of them brought a girlfriend, who looked so stiff leaning against him I thought she must've been passed out, or whacked out, or both. It was a funny sight. The urban electronic "scene" is a pretty fascinating thing to observe, even if it's not something I particularly want to get completely wrapped up in. Viscerality can be pretty undiscriminatory.

I danced by myself, as I usually do. Drum 'n' bass really isn't the best music for dancing with others, I don't think. I probably elbowed quite a few ribs and stomped on quite a few feet. Couple guys came up and expressed their appreciation for my enthusiasm (what?). Weird things like that happen sometimes.

Later, on the cab ride home, John told Sterling and I about the UMBC girl (always fucking with Hopkins guys' heads, them, apparently) he met in the Taxlo room, who sent her friend to get his phone number because she was dancing with her boyfriend. I leaned my head against the window and blanked out, too deafened to hear anything I wasn't actively listening to. Every time I come back from going out it's "situation ignored, or just missed?" All I know is, I don't get caught up in scenes I know I don't like.

Sometimes it feels like my friends don't add a whole lot. Sometimes it feels like I'm being written into a script where the only free space left is in the footnotes. Most often I react by rejecting that and becoming a jumble of words floating in a void.

"I appreciate your nobility...sometimes I think you might help yourself by watering it down." That's what John told me today. Call it what you will, but sometimes it feels a bit immovable. I get wrapped up in identity I can't shed, and then I wonder if I want to. Sometimes being in my body feels like sitting on a train charging straight for the edge of a cliff and being unable to do anything about it. Sometimes watching myself feels like watching any other person; being outside myself, critical but detached from the inevitable course of action.

Which brings me to another issue: I feel as though I've been watching, and still right now, how the consequence of two people simply striving to come into themselves can tear everything apart for those two people, despite their best efforts to the contrary. Sometimes compromise seems so impossible to achieve. Breach consumes everything standing in its way until its emptiness is complete. If contact can only be maintained through concealment, and honesty cascades into disconnection--what's the solution? Honesty's the only reaction I know. Won't hide, can't hide, no good at it.

I don't know what to do. I feel like I've done what I could. I don't blame anyone for what they do. What they become. The logical sequence of events never seems to lead where we want: we are less in control of our disasters than we think.

Sometimes I just can't win.