Silk Road, 12.8.02.
Arraigned for premeditated illegitimate book-buying at lunch. Never have I heard such baseless speculation, circular arguments, sensational fabrication. I sat, like St. Sebastian, an innocent martyr, being pelted hexalaterally by so many "arrows of truth", fervently shot by a round table of jurors and Justices. Of course, the crime is far more heinous than this. It is in fact a theft perpetrated against the entire global readership, a desecration of a shrine of learning, a detraction from a communal treasury. The proceedings drag, even more than typical legal tussles, until the Court realises that they have forgotten to pay for the duck noodles. And thus commences a further dialectic on the merits of playing Robin Hood and being agents of income redistribution from management to service staff by leaving a "tip" of the value of the omitted item. What lunacy to reward the waitress for her auditing blunder, though! In the end (although of course the Court was nowhere approaching a cogent verdict on either of the mooted malfeasances), foundering in indecision and ill-focus, waitress attendant and anxious to shoo the overstayed guests away, our quixotic do-goodiness was countered by their more spontaneous and munificent "suan le, suan le".
* * *
A fairly large crowd turns up to see Huang Huang the panda on his last self-exhibition in this part of the world before returning to his native Berkeley, but everyone is quite satisfied with just knowing where he went to school and what he majored in.
"What a stupid woman you are, Lydia...Intelligence would take the bloom off your carnality...We are a perfect couple. She needs a patronising man, and I need a patronisable woman...The perfect murder is one in which the victim did it."
* * *
Thrilling, mortifying, tantalising, stupefying. Conversation was surprisingly fluid for a group which gathers (maybe) once a year. Whether this was merely glossy garrulousness, the freemasonry of the victorious, whose self-possession stems from a nominal kinship or titular association with excellence, was of course at the back of my mind throughout. There were unbelievable coincidences (what a publicity fillip it must be for R(A) to be able to bill their first three pioneering/consecutive editors as Harvard admits), enticing half-advice (who would want the giving to famish the craving?), a suspiciously comfortable ease...but that's just me, the cautious asocialite always wary of fast friends. And V's a Singaporean art history student! Encouraged me to "do something fun...like VES!" What a whiff of originality, glorious disregard for pragmatism.
In time, in time. Now - the horrid task of clearing up here. Two weeks to departure and still in a mess in as many ways as you care to name.
Arraigned for premeditated illegitimate book-buying at lunch. Never have I heard such baseless speculation, circular arguments, sensational fabrication. I sat, like St. Sebastian, an innocent martyr, being pelted hexalaterally by so many "arrows of truth", fervently shot by a round table of jurors and Justices. Of course, the crime is far more heinous than this. It is in fact a theft perpetrated against the entire global readership, a desecration of a shrine of learning, a detraction from a communal treasury. The proceedings drag, even more than typical legal tussles, until the Court realises that they have forgotten to pay for the duck noodles. And thus commences a further dialectic on the merits of playing Robin Hood and being agents of income redistribution from management to service staff by leaving a "tip" of the value of the omitted item. What lunacy to reward the waitress for her auditing blunder, though! In the end (although of course the Court was nowhere approaching a cogent verdict on either of the mooted malfeasances), foundering in indecision and ill-focus, waitress attendant and anxious to shoo the overstayed guests away, our quixotic do-goodiness was countered by their more spontaneous and munificent "suan le, suan le".
* * *
A fairly large crowd turns up to see Huang Huang the panda on his last self-exhibition in this part of the world before returning to his native Berkeley, but everyone is quite satisfied with just knowing where he went to school and what he majored in.
"What a stupid woman you are, Lydia...Intelligence would take the bloom off your carnality...We are a perfect couple. She needs a patronising man, and I need a patronisable woman...The perfect murder is one in which the victim did it."
* * *
Thrilling, mortifying, tantalising, stupefying. Conversation was surprisingly fluid for a group which gathers (maybe) once a year. Whether this was merely glossy garrulousness, the freemasonry of the victorious, whose self-possession stems from a nominal kinship or titular association with excellence, was of course at the back of my mind throughout. There were unbelievable coincidences (what a publicity fillip it must be for R(A) to be able to bill their first three pioneering/consecutive editors as Harvard admits), enticing half-advice (who would want the giving to famish the craving?), a suspiciously comfortable ease...but that's just me, the cautious asocialite always wary of fast friends. And V's a Singaporean art history student! Encouraged me to "do something fun...like VES!" What a whiff of originality, glorious disregard for pragmatism.
In time, in time. Now - the horrid task of clearing up here. Two weeks to departure and still in a mess in as many ways as you care to name.
posted by D at 03:12
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