Seagulls

//

I was sitting with Kristina on the back deck the other day. She's really good about writing down the awesome parts of every day in her little Moleskine notebook that she carries with her everywhere, as far as I know. She's also really good at finding the best sentences in passages, like from the book Siddartha or in our World Religion's textbook, which I found wholly uninteresting.

Anyway, she was writing on her computer yesterday when I came to sit by her, and I asked if she was doing work. I asked if I was distracting her from work and I should go sit elsewhere, but she said no, she was writing an email. But that it was too her boyfriend, and I think she said that it was sad. I won't share details, but in either case, I didn't want to make her concentrate on it, so at some point I went to my standby of, "Hey! Let's not think about that. This conversation is now about trains." And I think she said she didn't want to talk about trains. I explained it was just my way of trying to distract people from conversations they don't want to have.

Every time I use that line, I think of the train to Brown.

I sat in silence for a little bit and I think she was still writing. I didn't know what to say, so I just flipped through my rolodex of memories to see what I could come up with.

"When we were at the beach, sometimes we'd leave the fishing rods outside."

She: "Hm?" [still concentrating elsewhere, understandably]

"My dad fished all the time and at the beach sometimes we left the fishing rods outside after we used them. Once or twice every summer we'd come outside and find a seagull hooked onto one of the lines. We always had to go get my dad to let them off because we thought they would hurt us."

Still not completely paying attention. No problem, I was kind of just talking so it wasn't silent.

"We always wanted to touch the seagulls, but when we got the chance, we were really just kind of afraid."

"Wait, what's that?"

"Hm?"

"That last thing you said. Say it again."

And she wrote it down in her little Moleskine notebook.

//

I was playing piano in The Union yesterday, and after playing for a little bit, Margalit came and sat beside me on the bench. I was playing Difference. She sounded impressed at first, but then she got up and I was afraid I had lost her interest, which would have been kind of sad. But she just pulled up a chair and set next to the bench instead, and I felt a little relieved.

I finished the song and she asked me what it was, and I told her it was a song I wrote. I didn't tell her what that one was about. She asked me to play another song for her. I asked her what kind of song to play, a catchy one or one of my favorites, and we went for a catchy one. So I played Sleep in Peace, and she agreed it was catchy. She asked me to play some more, so I told her the story behind High on the Fever, and played that for her, and told her the story behind Tragic Story and played that for her too.

Thinking about how long ago I wrote Tragic Story makes me sad for some reason.

She seemed to actually like my music, which was really nice. Jen and Kristina came in too, and I played the same songs again because they're my best, and felt bad because Margalit had to sit through them again. But I think they actually liked it somewhat genuinely and that made me feel pretty good. Hooray music!

//

The International Date Line is tonight. Right now it's 10am for me and 5pm for you guys on the same calendar day (February 2nd). So right now, I'm "behind" you guys - I still haven't gotten to 5pm on February 2nd yet. After tonight, I'll be 17 hours *ahead* of you guys instead of 7 hours behind. So tomorrow when it's 10pm for me, it'll just be 8am for you guys. So today is the last day that things happen first for you guys.

//

Everyone here feels very out of touch with the real world. We're allowed to look at nytimes.com for free but we rarely do because many of the links on it won't work. We can also check CNN, but CNN sucks. I don't know what's going on with the health care bill. I read something about a new effort to do away with Don't Ask Don't Tell but I'll probably have huge trouble keeping up with it. I did hear that Howard Zinn died, and J. D. Salinger too.

We all wonder what kind of music and pop culture we're going to miss while we're on the boat.

//

I found a group for Global Studies that wants to do a project about happiness. I was happy to join them.

Peace out.