Cambridge 3

June 21, 2010

I had forgotten to mention that Matthew B, Graelin, Casey, Sally and I went to Great Saint Mary’s Sunday morning. It was not sung matins, but rather family morning prayer, with the adjunct sweetness and silliness. We played bingo. That was supposed to alert us to the community of Christ, which gathers together, like bingo players, even though the rewards are modest. The choir was horrible.

Walked after a frugal breakfast (honoring the sickness of the night before) to the train station to test whether the distance is walkable in the time we have. It is, but it is not pleasant. Visited the Sedgewick Museum of Natural History, which was sweet, but. . . mostly fossils. . . and I realized there are some things in whose existence I can rejoice without actually seeing them. However, hanging from the ceiling they have huge kites made in the shapes of the creatures of the Burgess Shale, which is the single coolest thing ever. I got into my travel mode of much walking, then finding a café to drink a cappuccino and write. Wrote a poem under the trees at St. Paul’s, about Byron and Trinity and the half moon, which had been inspired the night before. I realized that the moonlight angler had been Aengus Og, which is why the perfection of the night came to a point in him, and why I had not–this was mysterious to me at the time–dared to look him in the face. Lemonade in the garden of the Fitzwilliam. The clerk was studying Swedish. I was so happy. Cambridge by then had open to me like tapping the last stone coat away from a gem.

The sad student gave up and went home. I think she will regret it always.

Class, then exhaustion, then these words upon the page.