14:45 - May 22, 2002
flashlights
I'm back from camping, despite the fact that I didn't mention I was actually going camping. On one of the days we were out, the temperature reached a record low. Most of our time was spent huddling around the campfire and trying to will it to be warmer... it only listened to Mr. Jones, who deserves cookies. Also, I almost killed myself bouldering on this mountain. I hit my head on a sharp rock on the way up, and kept climbing, even though I was a bit disoriented and wasn't focusing right, and on the way down, I plunged down some slippery rocks, right into a steep crevice. If I hadn't reached out my hands and caught the very edge of the overhanging rock I probably would have died. When I got to the bottom and my foot hit grass, I started laughing manically, so hard I fell on the ground and gasped at the sky for an indeterminate amount of time; as I was still sort of out of it. Mr. Chmela looked at me. 'No canoeing for you,' he said, and got me a ride back to camp. I was choking on my own laughter.

While I was there, I had this thought that it would feel like those three days had never happened, once I got back, and I was right to a degree.... I mean, if somebody asked me what I did over the weekend my first reaction would be not to know. Then, slowly, it would seep in, from tiny reminders... the torn muscles in my pectorals from catching the edge of that rock, my twisted knee, my sunburned nose, the fact that my 60 degree room feels like a sauna and showers feel like heaven. The fact that I almost forgot to be nervous about playing my concert last night.

It hit me eventually, but not until about five minutes before I went onstage. Dr. Fodor, in the middle of the performance, was recognizing the seniors in the band, and my name was called first (a first for me, my last name starting with E and everything..) I stood up. People clapped. Then he started talking about me, how I should win the multiinstrumentalist award for playing so many different ones, and so on... and I'm standing there forgetting to be nervous, completely, given up in place of simple small pride, that somebody finally noticed. I have never stood in front of an auditorium full of people. I don't like recognition, I don't like performance. Not since elementary school, at least... those four years, 1st through 5th grade, when I was the center of the music program of the school and accompanied the chorus and all the musicals on the piano, my long straight blonde hair spilling over some awful printed dress or another, drowning in self-satisfaction. How fucking obviously vain I was, at seven, even... 'yeah, i know i'm good...'

Camping gave me some kind of perspective that I'm still trying to figure out. My subconscious image association, currently, portrays the roaring campfire, right after Jones started it up again with his magical turkey power; Nora on my left, splayed on the ground, Mike on my right in his tiny portable chair, Camille on his right, staring into the fire, and Dan leaning on Cam. Mike's sharp ribs are my pillow, and Camille's got one eye in the shadows, so whenever she talks she looks like a pirate, and Dan's got these shadows such that only his eyelids and his upper lip and the tip of his nose show. Mike has the classic fireside look; the light under the chin and falling only in the peaks of his face. Nora is completely lit up, leaning into the fire and burning the tip of a stick. In the distance, Alan plays the song about the big black limousine, probably somewhere in campground three. Some stoned kids shriek in the woods with flashlights.

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