At the high school reunion yesterday, Zach P. reminded me of this line from Catullus 51, which is an adaptation of a Sappho poem in which Sappho/Catullus jealously observes the woman of his/her desires flirting with an/other man. Ah, sapphic strometer. The apostrophic line above, roughly translated, means "Leisure, Catullus, is a problem for you." (Otium, "leisure," being the opposite of Negotium, "business.") What does this have to do with the Gang of Four lyric after which I named this blog fourteen months ago? Nothing. Nor is it an accurate representation of my mental state. And i've abandoned, for the most part, my youthful obsession with Catullus's self-centered and misogynistic recriminations. But i'll humbly submit my vertex all the same.
The reunion was bizarre and overwhelming but fun, although my "afternoon subway posse" was mostly absent, and i felt the loss of Lauren and Lucas walking home afterwards. One guy i was friendly with senior year kept saying he thought it was reassuring that we were all the same. I don't buy it. I think we all revert a little in the unfamiliar yet eerily extremely familiar environs of a high school reunion in a bar that used to be owned by people we went to high school with, and I think there has been some continuity between who i was five years ago and who I am now, (I remain a mildly hairy Jewish anarchist named [Redacted], and many formative experiences from ages 0 through 18 or 19 retain their weight but emphatically I don't think we are all "the same." I don't want to get all sappy, and i can only speak for myself, but i think I've been through some pretty intense shit from the pee-on-floor incidents on, and i think i'm a fundamentally changed person in someways because of it. And with the exception of carefully instilled Yalelitism(c) i'd love to expunge from my psyche, i tend to like alot of the ways i've been impacted by all the stuff i've learned and experienced.
I'm going to wisely shut up now and try to figure out apartment-hunting. Et tu, desinatus obdura.
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