Gabbro B-Sides

Last night I went to band after six months of utter non-practice, and not only did my valves still go up and down when they were supposed to, my lips did not fall off my face. Since my lips have dripped off my face into a little puddle on the floor in far better circumstances than these, I count myself very lucky here.

At some point I was vaguely concerned that moving back to the States would make me less exotic and fascinating, thereby causing me to lose valuable minions and otherwise explode. Then I managed to convince myself that fascinating-ness is a property of one’s personality and mental state and writing style, things which are only vaguely influenced by geography. Now, I’m beginning to realize that my mental state is influenced very concretely by geography: when I was in Denmark, I paid more attention to detail, because details were often completely bizarre and unexpected. Apart from the horrible ooze of patriotism, small things here don’t call themselves to my attention, and so I’ve been ignoring rather a lot of them. Since I’m happiest when I live mindfully, I really ought to stop doing this and give some fucking respect to the texture of lecture hall chairs and the super-cultivated plots of grass and the contrast of the peach physics building with the alternately pale and bright blue sky, not to mention the yucky slugs. Living mindfully of the yucky slugs is the part that the fluffy crystal-toting hippies never mention, because no one wants to attend a workshop entitled “Paying Attention to Really Disgusting Shit.” Maybe I should try out some kind of mindless authoritarian cult movement instead - I bet I can find one that’ll make me never have to do another physics set ever again. Yeah.

Meanwhile, the contents of my suitcase, which broke from one useful piece into a single but totally useless piece an hour before I had to leave Iowa, should be waiting for me somewhere in the disorganized caverns of Campus Central Receiving. If my luck holds, they’ll be able to find it for me. I need some more socks.
—–