Fin in a Waste of Waters

"These moments of escape are not to be despised. They come too seldom....Leaning over this parapet I see far out a waste of water. A fin turns....I note under 'F.,' therefore, 'Fin in a waste of waters.' I, who am perpetually making notes in the margin of my mind for some final statement, make this mark, waiting for some winter's evening." (from Woolf's THE WAVES)

03 October 2006

Just let me roast.

Dignity. The last word that should come to your mind when thinking about university-owned housing. True, it was easier & cheaper than finding my own flat in Brighton. True, our flats are self-contained, and, for the most part, self-sustained. And there's that weekly cleaning service. It didn't seem like much of a sacrifice, then, that every now & then a pair of enthusiastic & charmingly British RAs barge into our flat to put up signs about floor meetings, pub crawls, etc (my non-attached female roommates come out of their rooms whenever they hear these male voices; makes me glad I came with my own!)...

Until the 9 a.m. fire drill. I was already awake (thank God), and getting my breakfast ready: I was hungry, and those scrambled eggs looked promising, I tell ya. The second that alarm hit its high wail, I knew it was a drill. So I did the smart thing, and turned off the stove, and took my pan off the burner (no sense setting off a fire alarm for real with breakfast-smoke). I already have a sweater and shoes on (just ask about the dirty carpet), so I just lock up my door & head out with my roommates (in various stages of sleepiness, with the exception of Evo [our one man], who had early class, and Efwah, who is still MIA). We get outside, then, only to be chastised by a woman holding a remote alarm trigger (the cause of the evil) for not making it out in less than three minutes (I'd like to add that I live on the 5th floor; or in the U.S., that'd be the 6th floor - that's a lotta stairs). "Should've just let me roast," I mutter sarcastically, not, I have to add, to the unappreciation of my similarly grumpy flatmates.

And when I get back upstairs, my eggs? Burnt. I eat them anyway, watching the sea, which I planned to write about this morning. It's calm today; yesterday, angry and gray and flinging its white frothy arms against the stones. I like its moods. So like a woman like me.

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