I'm Going to Make a Tin Can Telephone

Yesterday was certainly a day. It was probably the most perfect day I've had here so far. It had everything: breakfast, grocery shopping, my first lecture, elation, lunch, an hour walk in the park, a horse to touch, a creek to watch swans in, a bridge to shake, an apple to eat, fancy Italian coffee, some slightly better reading, my first tutorial for my dreaded major course, elation, a street corner jam session, a home made dinner, some bluegrass practice, and a really really good evening. And a good night's rest. And beautiful weather. And it was Tuesday, my favorite day of the week anyway.

The lecture was great. 200 students in a great big hall with 500 foot ceilings and I understood what the guy was talking about.

The tutorial was even better. Way better. It was scary and intimidating and held someplace I'd never been at 6 p.m. He'd ask a question I simply couldn't answer. He'd describe the concept to me, sometimes using absurd situations: "So, if I knew that I had a big nose and I said, 'ok, everyone gets paid according to the size of their nose. The bigger the nose, the more you get paid.' Now in the original position, you don't know how big or small your nose is going to be so..." I made the conscious decision not to laugh. It was funny. It should have broken the ice a little bit and made me feel more comfortable. I wasn't having it. I can't imagine how uninviting I must have looked. Well, I can because I was intending to look pretty freaking unamused.

After about 20 minutes of him looking bored, shoes off, knees propped against the table, hands constantly rubbing his head, neck, face, eyes, or what felt like a lot longer, the facade was dropped. "How much of the reading did you actually do?" I was asked. "Because there's no way you could have really done the readings and not be able to remember what reflective equilibrium is." I'd done a lot and told him what I'd done. "Right, Ok. I get the feeling you're being forced to do something you don't really want to do. This isn't what you really wanted."

So after much prodding, he was finally able to get out of me what it is I wanted to study. What I was interested in. "Ok, did you vote for Barack Obama?"

"My husband's in the Army and stationed in Iraq right now."

So we went from there. He tagged me as having slightly leftist tendencies exhibited by my slightly leftist haircut. Yeah, the mohawk. So we'll spend the next 6 weeks looking at "the cool stuff." Distributive justice, morals/ethics of war. What is a just war? Combatants vs. Non-combatants. Terrorism. Torture. Things that he's just as interested in and excited about actually teaching.

He's really young and was married really young too. Chatted about our weddings. He really like that we were married under a picture of a black Jesus and then went to the northern most Denny's in the world afterwords.

And still stars are aligning, things are coming together, pieces are falling into place.

Coming out of my tutorial I was elated. Things were magnificent. I heard a busker playing the guitar. I walked over to the bearded, scruffy haired man and asked if he knew the song "Wagon Wheel." No. So I told him the chords and he played them and I stood there leaning down and sang what lyrics I could remember. He played it really fast and not quite the right chord progression but it was close enough to make it work. We made it work and it was - really something special. He got to play with someone and I got to sing with someone.

I also saw a man with the biggest eyebrows I think I've ever seen. They were royal. Dark dark brown and grew straight up and inch or so. What fantastic eyebrows.

Well, again I've managed to spend my morning on not incredibly pressing issues. But I've got no plans for the rest of the day. Read. Read stuff I'm excited to read.