Contrite

Today I am in disgrace. So what: she walked in on me leafing through her private stuff. Get a grip.

The idiot and some others went to Hawthorne this afternoon - that grungy Boulevard I have managed to avoid so far - and I stayed behind to do some 'maintenance' work on the dorm room. She thanked me, and said I was a thoughtful Consette, and off they shopped.

I changed the sheets to these new fluorescent pink ones from Fred Meyer (not imaginary), picked some fluff and put it in the 'trash', arranged the books in chronological order, ate the last of that British gum, sighed a bit, drank Mountain Dew, and then caved and reached for the idiot's diary. Aside from the general angst (an ominpresent undercurrent of sludge), it had a few interesting details about the weeks I missed. I spent a good hour reading about Reed Orientation week. There was lots of waffle on the Honor Principle, and Hum 110, pronounced Hume ONE TEN, and this mysterious concrete owl called the Doyle Owl.The idiot is going to all the Hum 110 lectures to see if she can absorb even the smallest amount of knowledge on Ancient Civilisation, without doing any of the reading or attending any of the conferences, without even enrolling properly for the class. On the first Monday of term - when I was still in Washington State - her diary says that a group of early-bird seniors stood outside the lecture hall in togas (one girl opted out, and turned up naked) in order to pour libations of beer onto the heads of all the new students, for whom Hum (haha) is compulsory. Then she was taught to sing the opening lines of The Iliad and the opening lines of The Odyssey with all 400 freshmen. This, I concede, must have sounded kind of great. Although, I accompanied the idiot to the most recent lecture on Osiris, and I noticed that most of her attention was focussed on a comprehensive shopping list for the 7/11. Inspiration wanes.

However, she's really, embarrassingly, into her other classes: Experimental Poetics of the Americas, Literary Theory - Thinking through Literature, Henry James through Theory, and Tai Chi. I think she may have a small pash for Knapp, who declared at the end of the last Lit Theory class: 'Derrida. Just L. O. L.'

Right, more from the diary, yesh yesh. There's nothing really juicy yet, she's still her old awkward self, but there's enough to make me jealous for missing Orientation. Noise Parade, the fire dancing lot in the outside ampitheatre (Weapons of Mass Distraction), and President 'call me Zeus' Colin Diver in a pink gown. I've seen him around, he's quite the dish. The idiot gave me a link to the speeches from Convocation, and Lena's is definitely worth a read if you feel Odyssey-inclined, and check out the headshot of Diver while you're there. Orientation was also, unsurprisingly, the week in which the idiot went on her first, tentative Portland ventures. I guess our year and a half on opposite sides of the world must have taught her some degree of independence, but still, the thought of her all alonesome in a new city without her Consette makes me a bit choked up. Especially the parts in the diary concerning Voodoo Doughnut cramping. If I had been there I would have advised a heavy dose of prunes and water, and all would have been okay. She also benefited from the summer weather in my absence, while I was still stuck in that VW van with the hippies. Then the first of the heavy rains came on Tuesday, only 5 days or so after my arrival, and both of us had to sit through Theory smelling like wet dog.

So she went apeshit, on returning home from Hawthorne, to find me with her diary on her lap, supping a Chai Latte from Caffe Paradiso (why the two fs?). Thus, I am now in disgrace for the rest of the weekend. And the diary has been hidden somewhere private and oh so cunning,

Consette x

PS. The diary is in the sock drawer.

Landings

So you think you know a person. You think, yes, this person will collect me from the airport when my flight arrives on the 20TH OF AUGUST. You think this is granted, secure, a happy consequence of imaginary friendship. Because you have known this person since this person was three years old. Fat and snotty, you knew her and you loved her.

Any former supporters of Chez Consette - we reached a giddy readership of 12 at one point - may recall the somewhat abrupt conclusion. I apologise for this. For a year and a half now I have been, to paraphrase the idiot, otherwise occupied with 'missionary work in the Amazon'. The idiot and I have been having time off from each other, as things can get kind of stuffy in an imaginary friendship. Like someone needed to get off their bum and open the windows. And don't be silly, it is of course perfectly possible for an imaginary friend to indulge in sequestered globe-trotting. The imagination of the idiot is more potent than it seems.

Anyway, you think you know a person.

Today it is September the 3rd, which means that it took me fourteen days to get to Oregon from the Canadian border, unwelcomed at the airport and distinctly unamused. I arrived in Vancouver just one day after she arrived: she was on the nineteenth, and I was on the twentieth. She said on Skype that she'd wait for me, and then we could catch one of those tiny planes for Portland, together, and we could talk, and I guess that would have been nice.

As it turned out, in a spectacular display of negligence, she managed to imagine my non-arrival.

Idiot.

It's a long story, which I won't go into now because it's late at night and she is emoting about a poetry class tomorrow morning, nevermind my general state of dirt and exhaustion. Don't you worry, love. Get some shuteye, there's a lass. Suffice to say, though, that thanks to a load of hippies on their way down to Haight Ashbury in a VW Camper, I followed the trajectory that a very stoned and peaced-out crow might fly, thus accounting for a 2 week meander of only 300 miles.

First impressions to follow,

Consette x

PS. The above is just an elaborate preamble. What I really intended to say was: sorry for not starting this sooner.