flotation devices

ted has gone away for the weekend, and with him, apparently, my ability to sleep. to clarify: at times i would be perfectly able to sleep, if time permitted; but at the moments when time seemingly permits, such as now, i cannot. somehow i feel this probably has nothing to do with ted. but i do like him.

herewith a flurry of notes attempting to give an impression of the past few days (weeks?). i'm losing my sense of time. if only you could see me! how you would all admire my long, white beard.

the school of the arts, umbrella for all MFA programs at columbia, decided in a moment of fantastical frenzy to herd all artists, actors, filmmakers and writers onto a so-called "booze cruise" aboard the seaworthy vessel "temptress." (already we're in deep water, with a name like that. i was expecting the boat to have breasts. it did not.) we sailed around the island of manhattan with no visible way in sight of leaving the boat, besides jumping into the uninviting waters of the east river. what the s.o.a. had in mind by this booze cruise, i don't know. i can see them now, thinking, "well, since we are buffoons entirely unable to fund the education of our students, let's liquor them up on a giant boat so they don't notice." which is more or less what happened.

last night i went to see sam be a rock star. his band, kinopalatsi, was playing at the continental. i arrived with my dork-quotient well in tow. easily the dorkiest one there, except maybe sam, who is my equal in this aspect. which made it all the more amazing when sam, a practiced guitarist, rose onto the stage in a mighty flare of hard-rockness and transformed before my very eyes into a completely unlaughable, kick-ass rock star. i swear to you, i've never seen such a thing before. it was like a time machine, or a microwave! sam was utterly changed. next thing you know, adam will become an immediate astronaut, or abby an immediate rastafarian. these transformations will also be available to people whose names do not begin with "a."

and so, this morning, after a sleepless night of freelance editing, i trotted dutifully -- yea, like a dog -- off to work. however, my work life was short-lived, and i quickly fled the building in an attempt to see smithson's floating island with pomona-cory. it occurred to me that i don't know why or how i began to refer to him as pomona-cory, since i never knew any other corys from whom to distinguish him. since he is the only cory i know, and the only cory i anticipate knowing for now, i hereby change his name to "cory," which is what, incidentally, it actually is. the only problem with this plan -- the floating island one -- was that i totally misjudged how long it would take to walk to the east river from the office, the result being that we kind of caught the ass of the floating island as it hightailed it away back up the river. we got the idea (trees being, well, tugged -- along the east river by a tugboat), but the grandeur of the effect was severely diminished. nonetheless i am glad we went. i think this will not be the strangest thing we see floating along the east river in our lifetimes. i'm hoping for the next installation to involve a raft of cupcakes.

you may be wondering how my resolution to learn czech is going, ye who laugh at my lust for the language of the site of my former terrors. it is going okay. can i conjugate a verb? yes, i can... sort of. can i introduce myself? yes. mostly. can i say anything of merit and/or interest to anyone except for my conversation partners in the class? no. but surely that's asking too much of me. if anyone would like to know "at what hour do you...?" or "what do you like to...?" or other similar questions, by all means, bring it. bring it, my friends.

a shout-out to my brother daniel, aged 13, whose wrist was broken in a heroic chase for a fly ball. o, sports, why do you wrong us so?