State of my Union

March 11th 2009 by E..

It’s been a long enough time between posts, so I thought I might give this blog a good kick in the hind quarters…

What have I been up to, you ask?  I’m currently on the week-long dispatch that Temple dares to call ‘Spring Break.’  While the classic image of the swarm of sweaty,  socially (and otherwise) lubricated college masses flocking to exotic archipelagos might be difficult to attain and recover from in a mere week, I have no doubt that some of my more adventurous classmates are attempting that as I write this.  Instead, I have taken to 1) reading Everything Is Illuminated, 2) waking up after 7:00am, and 3) not doing much else.  I had an idea for the story I need to write this week, but forgot it sometime between a ‘M*A*S*H’ marathon and being sucked into the gilded ramshackle that is Philadelphia Park.  If it weren’t for the frequent, if meager, free electronic credits that I get from time to time, I would resist feeding my slots habit until my summer trip to Las Vegas.  As if losing money there will be any more satisfying…

Those of you who have seen ‘For Your Consideration’ will appreciate it when I tell you that this week was the week of Purim, one of the most ignored Jewish holidays.   Sean Altman is right when he summarizes every Jewish holiday’s backstory by stating, “they tried to kill us, we survived: let’s eat!”  In the case of Purim, “let’s eat” is joined by “let’s drink.”  One of the traditions of Purim is to get so jazzed up that you cannot tell the difference between someone like Mordechai (a real mensch) and someone like Haman (a real alter kaker…look it up).  In case you don’t already know, Jews aren’t usually big drinkers.  The most observant won’t drink any alcohol that one wouldn’t make a kiddush, or prayer for wine, over.  Even the non-observant raised on Kosher wine (read: lighter fluid) tend to be goofy enough without booze.  I recall my years (or maybe only “year”) in the United Synagogue Youth, in which unsuspecting synagogue auditoriums were turned into sanctums of bacchanalia (liquor was absent, though I wouldn’t be surprised if the younger, more rebellious generations snuck in their own).  The Purim festivities aren’t too different, excepting the ages of the party-goers.  It served to show that, no matter how old you are, there’s still some correlation between how many drinks you need before submitting to the oom-pah of “The Chicken Dance.”  I’m sure there’s a Nobel Prize in it for whoever pinpoints that ratio.

I’ve already turned my clock forward, though I refuse to believe that it’s actually Springtime, because there is still the smell of snow in the air.  Even going to the Flower Show with just my blazer to keep me warm, a haze of chill lingered in the cloud-covered sky.  The Flower Show would only be up for one more day, and the procrastinators had finally snapped to attention.  SEPTA, who claimed to have longer and more frequent trains (like they did for the day of the Phillies parade in October), was running characteristically behind schedule.  Once the train arrived, I got on as newbies behind me hemmed and hawed with themselves before deciding that this was, in fact, their train.  My chosen car was packed far more than usual.  A smell hung in the poorly-ventilated cabin.  It was the unmistakeable smell of Spring: sweat, perfume, tank-tops, premature sandals, and everything else.  Not entirely basking in it, I sat down next to a woman who may or may not have been headed to the Flower Show.  A pair of cardigan-wearing girls nuzzled their pierced noses together in the seat next to mine.  A bowl-cut boy with khaki cargo pants twisted excitedly in his seat, unaware what toll the floral display would exact on his sinuses.  It hit me that everyone here, no matter where they were going, was in a really good mood.  It wasn’t sunny, it was even slightly muggy, but none of that (or anything else) mattered.  Clearly these people never set their clocks back last fall.

More concert pictures to come…

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E.

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