Japandamonium!!!

I have been having a really good couple of days.
Yesterday morning I got up nice and early, with a plan to go to the lecture for Restoration Lit even though I’m not in that class. The classes here are divided into giant lectures and smaller seminars, and with the lectures the idea is for them to give you background info and interesting topics for thought and exploration, and each lecture is self contained; you don’t need to do any reading or prep for them. With this in mind, I have decided that the lectures for classes I’m not in should be as accessible as any, so there’s no reason not to go to them and get some free learnin’. It’s like they’re saying, “hey, we’re handing out some free learnin’ … cooooome ‘n’ git it!” And yes ma’am, I think I will. So anyway, I didn’t. I thought I would, but I definitely wanted to take it easy yesterday morning; I was still mad tired from the AikiSunday before it.

So I was having my nice bowl of cereal in the hall kitchen instead of getting my free learning, and I met some people! In particular I met this girl Selena from Nottingham who lives a few doors down and is in her fourth year, studying French. She was actually quite friendly, and later in the day when I got home from classes I found a note from her inviting me to go salsa dancing at night! I went, and it was loads of fun. It was she and a friend, and this club down by Leicester Square (we went through china town to get there – more like china street than town, but very neat) where they go for Salsa lessons every Monday. I went and joined the intermediate group to stay with my new friends even though I haven’t salsa-d more than once ever and it was like two years ago at Oberlin. I held my own, let me tell you. Felipe, Latino boys, you would have been proud of me. The first part of class was partners in a ring with instruction in the center, and every couple minutes we changed partners. We learned a bunch of moves in succession that eventually made one long salsation. It was fun and laid back and very non-scary and doable. The second part was the Wheel, a different kind of salsa-ing with lots more partner switching and set steps which a leader in the group calls out, kind of like a quarterback calling spot plays. This too was fun and doable, and afterwards the place opened doors into normal club operation and we stayed and danced for a few with our newfound salsa prowess. It was really fun, and with British kids, and made me feel very successfully social.

I didn’t go to the Brazilian club tonight, although that had been a tentative plan for a while. Instead I went out to drinks with Aikido people after class, and actually found it a bit disappointing. I think that I will start directing my social energies away from the club. There are very few other students in it, mostly realer people with jobs and things who have been training for years and years and years, and I feel a bit stranded in the conversations. That’s okay; the training is marvelous. Lots of drills and exercises, lots of very technically oriented instruction. Tonight lots of suwariwaza and hamni-handachi, and very specific direction with them, It’s quite technical, and very helpful. I feel like I will bring home very good skills and habits from it. Yo, I mad suck at suwariwaza. I need to get better at that.

Directing my social energies away from the club shouldn’t be too tough though, I am beginning to think. I met some more American kids today that seem really nice and friendly (friendly Midwesterners yo, I’m saved!), and we might do touristy stuff this weekend together, as well as checking out the London Mime festival (as long as it ain’t people in glass boxes kinda stuff, and is cheap). And now I have met British kids too. And I’m getting back in touch with Becket Brits, including my co from years ago who it will be marvelous to see. And maybe Brazilian night next week, who knows! Things feel good, I will go to sleep happy … and bloody exhausted! Aikido, Salsa, Aikido … enough is enough (although tomorrow night I may do some capoiera at U of L, just to spicen it up a bit!).

And there’s studying to do too! Tomorrow I hit the library to find out what Coleridge wrote about Venus & Adonis, and to read what other people wrote about Coleridge! Very exciting, believe it or not. Read his Eolian Harp poem, it’s quite good. We discussed that and some others in seminar today, but I didn’t agree with the class’s treatment of This Lime Tree Bower My Prison; I thought it was too easy and simplistic and that there was really more there. I will have to email John Olmsted about it.

By body’s sore, but content. I’m gonna russle up some ibuprofen and food and maybe a shower and Don Delillo before bed.