Possible to be Weary: NORA
Nora,
Hi, how are you?
I just got off the phone with Simon. Poor dude, Someone-In-Charge has informed him that he has to have a psychological evaluation in order to take time off. (I think he wants to go to Argentina. Did he knock someone up? Do you know anything about this?) That is, he has to demonstrate that he needs a break or else he’ll do something nutty. (I guess he didn’t get the grant?) Can you imagine your own Cuckoo’s Nest audition?
There’s no accounting for weariness, I suppose, if that’s what it is.
So I helped him rehearse, like any proper older sister would (we are two minutes apart, and that counts, you know). I thought maybe he could talk about his fifteen-inch freckle…in detail. Sort of like the time he convinced the Dean to let him drop Philosophy 8 with ol’ man Wollheim once he covered Plato (we got into a big argument over this one). I liked that guy! Sure, he cringed at taking on my honors thesis on Walter Benjamin (‘Yes, he’s something of a poignant figure, isn’t he?’ back then, that statement totally confused me, but I thought W was cute anyway). Simon claims he persuaded the Dean to acquiesce to the pointlessness of anything after Master P. At the time, I’m not sure I believed him exactly, but he did get out of the class without a blemish on his record. I’m sure the poor old guy just wanted to run off to some terribly collegiate sporting event or to catch Tina Brown at Zellerbach, anything, Anything! Just shut this guy the hell up!
How about the time when we were in England and we saw an old woman on a talk show who had a potato chip collection? One, she said, was a race car. Another, the silhouette of Winston Churchill, but then the breaking news that the Berlin Wall was coming down, and we looked at each other and couldn’t stop laughing?
Or maybe you can talk about how much you really hate mangos — at length. Or that it bothers you to walk 112 city blocks, ESPECIALLY when the weather permits!
Anyway, all that conspiring made me miss him. I told him so, but you know how shy he gets.
By the end of all that it was bedtime on his coast. I walked him through the Treaty of Westphalia and the links between the Crimean War and World War Numero Uno for oldtimessake. Then in the twilight just before you hang up the telephone and listen for the line to go dead: “Max, they folded the tents; you pitch like a Tennyson poem: they walk down the beach/ they folded their tents….”
Love,
Max