October Surprise

It's 2:00 in the a.m. Here are some nocturnal emissions.

I had my own little October Surprise, courtesy of the Law School Admissions Council. The dirty sausage-making that was studying for the test was evidently worth it. But as so often happens when I get what I want, I felt empty, barren. Like Bea Arthur's uterus.

I needed some perspective. To get that, I had to put some distance between myself and my computer, where obsessive midnight Googling indulges and enables neuroses. I started walking. In which direction, it didn't matter. North, east, south, west: my patch of suburbia is the middle of nowhere and every place you've every been to at the same time.

Which isn't to say it can't be beautiful. Beauty is almost everywhere you go and the ability to see it is more dependent on you, yourself, rather than anything external.

I walked the dark for hours. Over by the public golf course, wading through leafy pools of blackness and the scent of cut grass. The trees hissed. No street lights in this area--again, just shifting masses of darkness. But cloud cover trapped the city lights, evenly diffusing a bright pink across the sky. I wanted--and have frequently wanted--for someone to be able to be behind my eyes and in my hollow chest, to see what I see.

Terribly mawkish I know. Just terrible. Perfect communication would be to share all that is interior without the profanity of words.

A cell phone would have to do for the time being. I called my friend Alissa, in Thrilladelphia, PA. Her neighborhood is one that a realtor might call "eclectic." She lives next door to a black Baptist church and behind a crack house. The crack house has recently partnered with a whore house and is now, appropriately enough, a crack-whore house. Merger pending approval of the SEC I imagine.

Conversation ranged from movies: we loved "Maria Full of Grace." I abstained from commenting on Michael Moore (I sympathize with his politics of course, but one doesn't need creative cropping, editing or an ironic soundtrack to expose Bush. Just put a microphone in front of his face and let him talk. Even his best performance is its own counter argument.) Books: she is reading Azar Nafisi...which makes me one of the only people I know not to be. Music: she has made peace with the fact that she is just a classic rock/ glam rock kinda girl e.g. the Stones and older Bowie stuff. "Where was the moral crisis here?" I thought.

She also brought me down from some high-altitude spazzing. Earlier that night I saw one of those anonymous people you see everywhere and develop the inevitable love-jones for. I wanted to pull whatever card I may have had. I've relayed our exchange elsewhere, but here is how it went.

"At the bookstore, I saw this person I had the urge to jump. I wanted to say: look at this LSAT score! Have sex with me!"

"That would substantially reduce your chances of having sex."

Very true. But the odds were never great to begin with.