pastiche

I breathe in the pauses, and I live in the flurry of activity from moment to moment.

I turned in the last paperwork that I'll ever turn in for tutoring at ESF. This is depressing to me, and I'm not sure why it's hitting me in that particular way. I mean, let's be honest. I spent a good portion of my undergraduate career forgetting to turn in my paperwork.

Today I am feeling more calm than I have in a while. I think it's because I have managed to pull my head up out of the sand, and the view up here is not as bad as I'd feared. After all, I'm taking the necessary actions, and my life is going to end up working out.

It's nice to feel like my life is going to work out.

Pretty soon here I am going to eat lunch, and then I am going to do some tutoring. The plan is to sit around and work on the bits and pieces of things that need work, and then at 8:00 I'm going to go to DJ's concert because I've skipped most of his concerts.

I felt particularly bad about this when I went to his sax ensemble concert a few weeks ago (was it a few weeks? I've lost all concept of time...). I sat in the sparse audience and felt really sad about the way the they perform even for a mostly empty auditorium. And this is just depressing to me.

I mean, it's a free concert, and the music is done just beautifully, and DJ's professor works so hard at it and I feel like no one can be bothered to appreciate it. And after the concert, DJ seemed like he was really pleased that I'd gone.

And that was really sort of convicting to me. Because I've been skipping his concerts for two years, and he really does like it when I show up to hear what he's done. Sometimes I forget that he's my little brother and he actually does care what I think sometimes, and I'm always so proud of him when I go to these things.

It just sort of makes me want to cry, the ensembles playing for the empty auditorium, because it's such a picture of what's happening everywhere, you know? In society and everything and it sort of leaves me with this hopeless feeling. Since our symphony shut down and everything, I guess I'm more aware of the way the arts are collapsing to less admirable pastimes.

Ugh. Depressing.

So to lighten the mood I shall tell you a story. It is the story of how I came to discover that DJ has a concert tonight.

Scene: as I bend (in my pajamas, mind you) to pick my previously worn clothes off of the floor, I catch a whiff of something that smells oddly reminiscent of high school. Crinkling my nose, I straighten and open the bathroom door.

There stands DJ, black item of clothing in hand. At first I think it’s his leather jacket, but I slowly realize that it is his tux jacket. In the other hand, he has a canister of Axe (ah, the good old days of high school).

He looks at me mournfully and lifts the can. “This smells so bad,” he says, lifting his hand to signify that he is talking about the jacket. “I know this isn’t going to help. But I’m a boy. And I don’t know what else to do.”

At this point, a quiet laugh erupts from me as he sprays Axe onto the jacket - and then I practically see the lightbulb go on over his head.

“Is there Febreeze in that closet?” he asks, and I move so he can look. Sure enough, he finds a can of Febreeze, drops the Axe, and begins dousing the suit jacket in Febreeze.

"DJ," I say, "You are going to reek of Febreeze tomorrow!"

“At least it doesn’t smell like BO anymore.”