Basically Amorphous
The monumentality of certain events seems to preclude their being capturable in print media. Such a first sentence is purposefully ungainly in order to emphasize subconsciously the difficulties inherent in transcribing immensities. The first two sentences should indicate I am back in Cambridge, studying, reading, writing, a whole heck of a lot.
Over the holidays, after a brilliant time back home and in Colorado with my brother and his wife, I was in Switzerland for a week playing ice hockey. It is this trip which in a sense is problematically monumental, as I really want to communicate how beautiful and clear it was in Switzerland in this south-east, in a region called the Engadin but understand that it would take quite some time to do so. I will let pictures do most of the work eventually, but will say to begin that it was a brilliant first step onto the continent proper for me, and that touring around the valleys and villages of the Engadin on foot and by train, playing hockey all day and drinking coffee and reading when I wasn’t playing hockey was a wonderful way to get ready for Lent term. Stay posted for pictures.
So back in Cambridge. Wind so strong today, and there was a major ghostbuster sky. Started raining like madness and then hailing alongside the rain, the winds whipping it all into whips and it cleared all the streets right out. I watched from my bay window and it was quite a scene.
My coffee maker is in play again, and I forgot how good the coffee vendor’s houseblend is - especially if you have it ‘black as the devil and sweet as sin’.
For those of you who are avid comic/graphic novel readers, the quoted phrase above might give away that I have now read Alan Moore’s ‘The Watchmen’. Simply amazing. Mike thanks for the Christmas gift - it kept me up till three on a number of nights.
Want to shout out to Louie at the records office. Man put a human face on bureaucracy, renewed my faith in the kindness of people and got me five transcripts within a day. I walked out of the records office stunned and beaming, and am incredibly thankful for his kind gesture. I got him a good bottle of red as a gesture of appreciation and in an effort to pay it forward.
Out playing music in the streets one night, a violinist walked past and I asked her to join me for a few songs. She did, and we dashed off a few great numbers. The combined strings, guitar and vocals called out the homeless people however, and soon we had a madman drunk named Mick hanging out with us, and another homeless busker who heard us playing and wanted to join in. The busker had a really out of tune guitar, but he asked if we knew Bob Dylan and started playing ‘All Along the Watchtower’, so we played along with that while Mick clapped along and drank. It was quite a motley assembly of riot and music, and the cctv cameras noticed: at one point while we were playing I looked up at the street light and the cctv camera that watches the intersection was trained on us, the cold dark eye of the man staring down at us kids, as Dylan might’ve sung it. Anyways, after the song myself and the violinist headed off realizing things were getting a bit dodgy. Walking her home I found out that she is a guerilla gardener, and has been planting flowers and shrubs and things all over Cambridge in the dead hours of the night. It was quite a night.
Crashed my bike. Hit a speedbump in front of Fitzwilliam College that I didn’t see and went over the handlebars. Broke the fall with my hands and then just lay there for a while; when one crashes like this, the feeling of being safe on the pavement and just lying there peaceably while you sting is so comforting. I collected myself and then went to meet my supervisor and a Clare scholar I was meeting for the first time. I think things went well despite my entrance to the College. I then had to get back on my bike to get to a lecture, and found out my brake cable was snapped from the shock of the crash. I rode it ‘cross town anyways, and made it to the lecture on time, which turned out to be well worth the risks involved in biking through British traffic without brakes. A bit of hardcore blood-sport academia here, if I might say so.
Other than the above such things, it is library and library and then a drink at 10:30. I really can’t complain. I will make sure to keep the updates, commentaries and inconsequentia more regular now since I have started this up again. I hope you are all well, and big hugs. I, of course, remain your most humble and obedient servant,
Peter Morelli