The Lonely Opera

My weekend has been unusual.

Recently the situation with James and Adair has become more complicated. Or rather, a previously existing complication has refused to stay sublimated. Adair does not like that I visit so incessantly. She wants her time with James. We get along very well, but she began to develop a dislike for me despite herself. The solution to this situation would seem very simple. I just give them a weekend off every once in a while. But it was complicated by the fact that James insisted on my visiting as frequently as I please. He did not and does not want his relationship with Adair to interfere with my visits. Unfortunately, that is an unrealistic desire. He's bought a ring and intends to propose when circumstances allow. I let him know as much, in a delightfully homosexual metaphor, the comedic nature of which made it easier for him to take. Up the butt.

Because tensions between myself and Adair had begun to build during my last visit, due in part to my misidentification of the subject of one of her portraits as a man, when it was in fact herself, I wanted to allow the situation to settle down without delay, and opted to not visit this weekend.

On Friday I purchased a season pass to this city's premiere institution of the arts, which includes a museum, a theatre, and a symphony hall with accompanying orchestra. I walked there up the core street of the city, through Midtown, a total of seven blocks. I walked past a lot of places. A house museum, a branch of the federal reserve, apartments with an entrance flanked by granite fountains and shaded patios, and a business-executive restaurant where a film was being shot. I picked up my pass and got a ticket to Janacek's Glagolitic Mass.

I went to visit my parents. It was nice enough. We talked and went places. I gathered up all of my parents' Halloween decorations, since they won't be using them this year (My father will be in Hawaii and my mother doesn't care to set it all up herself), as well as some firewood and a portable fire pit. More on that later. Or not.

At one o-clock this morning, I noticed that the moon was shining extremely brightly, and the stars as well. It was so bright that it left an afterimage on the eye like the sun. I later learned it was a full moon, the harvest moon. It was cold outside and the air carried sound well. I could hear the planes at the airport five miles away. I went for a walk through my neighborhood barefoot. It was so quiet that I heard a cat walking. I can't tell you what it sounded like, because it was such a small noise that it had no quality or dimension to it, except that it was brief and soft. I turned to look and saw the cat, sitting there in a driveway. I crouched and held out a hand for a minute or two, making the little vague motions that we always seem to think will attract cats, and when I gave in and stood up it ran off. Further up the hill a dog in his yard noticed me and took offense at my late-night walk. He began to bark and did not stop for the remainder of the time I was outside. I know because I could hear him no matter how far away I got.

I got back in town an hour before the show. I had planned to take the trolley to the Xth Street rail station and take the train one stop up to the (X+7)th Street station next to the arts center. I was delayed by Marie telling me about hr typical party-filled weekend and then waited for the trolley before remembering it doesn't run on the weekends. I walked to the station and payed two dollars for two trips. A dollar for seven blocks. Not economical, but in this city it is not the best idea to walk those seven blocks alone at night. At the station a little mouse ran beneath my bench and sniffed at my shoe. When I moved my head to see it better it panicked and ran off. The opera was not an opera; it was a concert with a choir and four solo singers. There was also a pipe organ. It was, as the title indicated, a mass. The music did not move me. It held no meaning to me. It was decent music, to be sure, and at times moving, but it was like a different language to me. I did not understand.

On the way back I waited alone on the platform for the train to come, rode one stop, and then walked once more through the dark and very nearly empty streets back to my dormitory. It is hard for me to tell what it is like for me to walk alone at night. It is the perfect example and expression of my feeling that I am placeless, a particle set loose to drift loosely on my various paths. It was dark and quiet and lonely. It was depressing in the extreme.

When I got in my roommates were all sitting around in the dark just finishing a movie. How happy they were in their friendship. I drank a glass of tea and retired to my box to write a depressing and needlessly pseudonymous journal entry.

Depression is the worst drug.