The first full day of summer vacation has been suitably awesome.
We were planning to go to Shelley Lake today, but the weather was unwilling to commit to being sunny so we all just went over to Erica's instead. We climbed trees (or at least some of us did). We sat around. We played ping-pong; we played ultimate; we threw water on each other. Let's see if I can think of everyone who was there... Elena, Erica, Trevor, Hannah, Claire, Diana, Sam, Rini, and myself... I think that was everyone.
I remember playing several games of ping-pong; first Hannah and I played Diana and Sam, and creamed them; then I played Hannah and was beaten by a fairly small (and therefore not overly humiliating) margin. Then we all went out to the front porch and shot the breeze until the pizza got there. The pizza was devoured in astonishingly short order, and sometime after that I kind of wandered into the backyard.
It's such a great thing to be able to abandon self-consciousness, and sit in a tree or hammock, and let thoughts crawl lazily through one's mind while watching the clouds sail unhurriedly through the sky. I'm not sure how much time passed while doing that; it could've been a few minutes or it could have been three-quarters of an hour. Hannah was out there too (in Erica's backyard), and Rini was off somewhere relatively by herself, but everyone else was off doing whatever (baking or something?). It felt timeless out there, just lying and watching the sky through the leaves and branches of the tree above me. It's good to know that even if I don't often connect to Hannah that well, I'm still at ease in her presence.
After some indeterminate period of time, everyone else came out. They seemed to sense the mood present and respect it, but it still wasn't quite the same. Self-consciousness returned rather abruptly when about four more people laid down (crosswise) on the hammock, due in no small part to having Claire right beside me. Nothing against her, but I don't know her well enough to feel comfortable about letting my mind float while her presence is that pronounced.
And so it came to pass that we went and played ultimate at a park a rather short distance from Erica's house. It was fun; Trevor was being moody all afternoon and didn't play, however; he didn't seem able to just enjoy himself.
Then, after playing ultimate, there was again lot that kind of blurred together. Hannah and Rini did some brief and giggly sparring (most amusing); then Rini went inside and came back out with a cup of water, drank about half of it, and ended up throwing the rest at me. Naturally, I was obliged to return the favor with a full cup of water. Then Rini threw water over those who were lounging on the hammock; and then Elena and Sam ganged up on me, for what reason I don't know. The end result of all this was about a half-dozen soaking wet people.
After we all went back inside, Trevor, Erica, Elena, and Rini went upstairs; all I gleaned on that was that Rini was sick and was coughing a lot. Hannah and Diana played piano downstairs while the rest of us lounged around some more, munching on grapes and suchlike, and that was about when parents started to arrive. It seemed like a lot more than four-and-a-half hours that we spent at Erica's.
That evening, to celebrate my dad's birthday (which wasn't actually until Monday), we went to see the Flying Karamazov Brothers at the outdoor ampitheatre of the art museum in Raleigh. They call themselves jugglers - and that they do well - but they could be comedians, musicians, actors... I think it was the most talent I've ever seen in one place. They were hilarious, not only with planned jokes but with spontaneous ones as well, and amazingly good jugglers, both as individuals and as a group. They sang a ludicrous call to intermission with well-trained voices, performed a skit about the "Polish Appalachian Clog Dance," made double entendres by the score. I was expecting it to be good, but they were way better than that.
Like I said, an awesome day.
posted on Sunday, June 01, 2003
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