jere7my | Day 1: Alumni, Weakened

We arrived at Swat on Thursday evening to find that we were staying in a 3rd floor Hallowell lounge. A lounge, yes. No phone, no gift basket of toiletries, and the closest thing to a bed was a singularly unsavory mattress leaning against the wall. I didn't want to feel like a demanding alum, I wanted to feel like a laid-back Swattie, but I couldn't manage it (though I managed it better than K). An inauspicious beginning to the vacation, which was already on rocky footing: our answering machine had crapped out as we were on our way out the door that morning, leaving us unable to receive messages from movers and cable companies and employers. (The point was moot, anyway; our dear cat knocked the phone from its cradle within hours of our departure, and our phone was effectively disconnected for twelve days.)

Happily, our lovely and talented dorm host Miriam was able to drum up a new room for us on the first floor, for which we were profoundly grateful. K. went to bed; I spent the evening in the Science Center, investigating the vibratory properties of the tables, then found a cluster of people (

jedediah,

carpenter,

ceciliaregent,

jaipur, others) chatting in Ha-Ha-Hallowell basement. We found a bit of Yeats's Leda and the Swan scrawled on one of the couches, and spent some time in epigraphy:

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.

We wondered just what had happened in that basement lounge, under what circumstances our vandal had carved those words. And then I thought of our third-floor mattress. Oh dear.