Alphaville is proclaiming themselves from the speakers on my lap — there’s an image, eh? How much farther from stadium Euro-rock could you get? But the distance shouldn’t be measured from concert venue to little laptop: the distance is really from being an undergraduate studying in a dorm lounge to being a professor grading assignments the night before the final exam.
Back in chilly suburban Philadelphia, I would have just come in from class, or in from the graveyard (where I would often chill for a bit after class). Orion would be twinkling over the parking lot, someone would be making hot chocolate in a hotpot, and I’d have Milton, or Turkle, or Piaget to review one more time… There would be some drama, some impossible thing to sort out before morning, there would be the uncomfortable memory of a less-than satisfying cafeteria meal, and sense that too many things needed to be done before the end of the week, oh God, and then I’d have to be back in Jersey remembering how to live at home again.
Here, in Elsinore, I slog through other people’s mangled thinking and my own spreadsheet formulae, while trying to postpone thoughts about social obligations [who will be where? when? for how long? how many presents need to be completed before X date, given who will be where, when, etc? were we getting a tree? were we going to try to bake anything? could I pretend to be Russian Orthodox and buy myself another week of time?]……
Rethorykal Questions 