uno mas

there was a cake, to begin with, propped on the desk with a crown of burning candles, a plate of pringles mixed with timtams, a cup of orange juice, a strange looking rose with a bulbous chocolate head, and about fifteen giggly students, singing. there were photos taken by the latter, mainly of their teacher, sitting at the desk of the cake, with a curiously designed whiteboard behind (flowers and hearts and love radiating) and an expression a five year old at the circus would be envious of.

there were at least two emails sent by different people bearing photos of david hasselhoff in set ups i didn't think were humanly possible (in terms of the astoundingly large quantity of un-selfreferential kitsch embedded in each image. i mean if kitsch were energy these photos alone could have powered a large city). but the point is there are at least two people out there who thought it evidently appropriate to be sending me 'birthday' images of the hoff. who went through the effort of selecting the prime specimens of the hoff's photomodelling career. pure gold.

there was copious amounts of cooking to be done, crepes rolled and veal strips beaten and pumpkin chopped and pinenuts toasted and mushrooms peeled and wine to be just, tasted, to see, and then, and then there are four happy faces at the door singing, out of tune, a tune more like a christmas carol, bearing gifts and good times.

later in the evening mike is strumming bluesy which merges into a song about the hoff (because, recurring theme) and back again, and miss emma's head is dropping somewhere within the crevice of her neck, sleep oriented, and i manage to figure out skype, for the first time, with valentina, who is like a bubble made of pixels, who occasionally swills from an unspecified bottle, who is showing me pictures of meatballs she is cooking (because, is true, even after not having spoken for several weeks or even months, italians in fact tend to propel to talking about food upon meeting again)

as of yesterday i am twentyfive. i have little to no idea where i am going. i have the fastiduous remnants of year-turning nagging, slight auto-guilt trips about not being of more use to the world and do on and so forth, and i have about a million things that must be organised, altered, redirected, reconstructed, accepted and thrown out. but i am quite happy to be alive.

ps: i wanted to welcome mike officially to the links, because he is new, and i had forgotten to do so. and because he has recently made a collage that possibly confirms that he is in fact a genius. so yay to mike.
pps: i am aware of the repetitiveness of this blog, particularly when it concerns the words 'kitsch' and 'hasselfoff'. this is not intentional and will hopefully be reduced in better times to come.