Jolly Folly

Last night, we had a party. A Jolly Fall-i-day party. A costume party. We made pies and truffles and caramel corn and funnel cake. We set out chips and salsa and guacamole and crackers and cheese. We offered hot spiced cider and coffee. We had piles and piles of cookies. We made candy sushi out of rice krispies treats and fruit roll ups. We rearranged the furniture. There were sugar cookies to decorate. I dressed up like the Riddler from Batman. My other roommates dressed up like 1) An Avatar, 2) The Count from Sesame Street, 3) A Dolly, 4) An annoying next door neighbor in a bathrobe, 5) a Ninja, 6) A Hot Topic model, 7) Sara from the show Chuck (her boyfriend came as Chuck). We played the Nightmare Before Christmas on the TV in the garage. We sang Christmas carols. We put floating tea light candles in the pool. We played Apples-to-Apples and other Christian party games. We laughed and mingled and talked for hours. All the guys from our "brother house" came over. My best friend came dressed up like the Queen of Hearts. We tossed whipped cream up into the air and tried to catch it in our mouths.

I don't like parties.

OK, I like tea parties, but that's it.

I think there was a time in my life when I found parties interesting, but that phase has passed on. It really has. I like hosting parties about one billion times more than I like going to them, but still. I hate parties. What is wrong with me that I think fun is boring?? I like tea parties because they're all about drinking tea and looking at pretty things and sitting down and eating scones with clotted cream and having conversations with your bosom friends. That's the only kind of party I ever want to have or ever want to go to.

Why am I 97 years old? I had several moments last night where I remembered the last time I lived in a house with a bunch of women and had parties all the time. That was 5 years ago. I think I've died and been reincarnated into my exact same life. That is punishment enough. Thanks be to God that I'm graduating in the Spring. I'll be 25 then. That ought to mean something, right? I need something to change.
I need life to be more than rolling up gummy worms in rice crispies treats before a party. More than making sure guests have places to sit and anxiously awaiting any lulls in conversation. More than painting my roommate blue and trying to make sure we stash all the last-minute piles of homework and books underneath the furniture. More than wrapping up all the extra pies at the end of the night and not getting to bed before 1:30 am.
My favorite part of the whole night was after everything was cleaned up and everyone had gone to bed and all the lights were off. I went into the living room and sat down in one of those big, round Ikea chairs. It was the best moment of my entire week.

If it were within my power to join a convent, I'd do it now.

Autumn's Waif

Update.

My life is the same. As you may have already noticed, this is a post for the post's sake. The last month has been full of back to school things, 7 new roommates, a new house, grad school plans, a new job, and of course the loveliest weather change of the year. Today I am wearing a sundress, cardigan, and tights. Because the sky is that tranquil grey-blue---the kind that makes me want to listen to jazz and drink chai green tea and cuddle and eat squash and bake pies. I love fall. What am I thinking about just now? I wish I knew. I've been feeling so overwhelmed lately, life is really full this year, and I don't like fullness. I do college by living like a desert hermit, and so having things like a house and roommates who are kindred spirits transforms all of my academic fervor into more of a feverish hallucination. Right now, I'm mostly just tired of having to study things I don't care about. I don't want to read Cicero, and think about rhetoric. I want to write a play, and bake a pie, and wear cute sweaters and crazy tights and tramp about in wellingtons and mind my own business and step on crimson leaves and be glad. Just that deep, simple merriment that comes from the comforts of the material world in the year's grey-beard time. I want to take communion from a golden chalice at an Anglican church, I want to turn into the spirit of autumn, and participate in a glorious Bacchic frenzy.

Oh, to be the spirit of an autumn wind!

I want to read poetry, and write poetry, and hear poetry, and snap my fingers. I want to waltz across my wooden floor. I want to paint with gold and red and blue! Fall is full of surprises and secrets. Perhaps because Christmas is at the end of it. Autumn, the season of promise--what a fullness of life is fall! Fall is not the decay and corruption of old age, it is the maturity, the fullness of a life well lived. It is a red rose fully bloomed, just before the petals start to wilt. And if death is what comes after, then death itself is a beautiful gift, because it's all wrapped up in a smoky, cloudy haze of awful mystery, and I love it.

Everything is richer now; truer, bolder. Not happy, but joyful. Not pretty, but beautiful. Not well brought up, but well preserved. Regal. Mature. Real.

How full is fall!