Our burdens are lifted—it’s spring break, after all.

Though ocean breezes, surf sounds, the smell of sunblock,
fresh tans and bottomless margaritas at the beach can be healing,
we decided to vacation on campus and find joy in small, everyday things.

Yesterday, we went to the farmer’s market, where one coffee vendor was making real cappuccinos and another was baking fresh breakfast pizzas. The combination reminded me of the 'Antico Forno Roscioli' caffe, near Campo de' Fiori, in Rome.

Then we hit the gym pool, climbed a rock wall (slowly) and played racquetball (rather poorly). We tried a dance & fitness class too—I thought I was in shape but ugg, it was hard to keep up. Peter (my 27-year-old bf) practically collapsed, but maybe he was angling for mouth-2-mouth.

Straight brag: Peter and I are getting new laptops today—MacBook Air M4s—mine’s baby blue, his is silver. So today seems like Christmas.
I don’t know if you people have computers, or use the Internet, but if you do, you’ll get it. I don’t know exactly when it’ll arrive, of course, so I’m pacing our suite.

I’ve always loved tech. My brother started teaching me about computers when I was 10—you know—hard drives, logic boards, power supplies, all of it. I remember it taking about two days to set one up and move all of the data. Today all I’ll have to do is set the new computer next to the old one and click migrate.

You gotta doff your hat to the tech wizards that came up with that, but the hours spent doing it the old way were fun.
“Something’s lost yet something's gained” - I think Joni Mitchell sang that.
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Songs for this:
Am I the Same Girl? by Swing Out Sister
Mountain or a Molehill by Kris Berry

University midterm periods bring early mornings charged with energy drinks and espresso shots. Evenings are spent trading quizlets in Bass Library or in late night cram sessions in the common room. After several days of stressful testing, midterms suddenly end.

But we’re like those Indianapolis race cars that’ve just run 500 laps, we come off our midterm tracks with our proverbial metal popping and creaking from intense heat and stress. For the first day or so after midterms I can’t sit still. I pace around like I’ve forgotten something—then it sinks in—I can have fun, in fact, it may be mandatory.

My bf Peter is spending spring break with me—for the most part in my dorm room. It’s night two of our 18 romantic days and nights. We spent our first day wending around campus. Peter went here for years—earning his master’s and PhD here. He knows Yale even better than I do—it’s a nostalgia tour for him—he works for CERN in Geneva now (Europe’s most boring city—I think that’s their tourism tagline).

As we lay snuggled in my twin-sized dorm room bed, beneath one of my very freshly laundered sheets, it’s about 41°F and windy. I keep my lattice windows wide open, because I like to sleep cold, with just a sheet. Peter complained once, when he’d first earned sleepover privileges—until I explained the alternatives.

We’ve been dating for over two years now, and I think he’s learned to enjoy it. An arm or a leg left outside the sheet will start to tingle after a minute but the touch of a human hand is like a soothing flame. Snuggles are welcomed and spoonings are almost required for survival.

Looking up and out, we can see the cloudless and deeply azure, New Haven sky. My mind is drifting and lazily unfocused when I realize Peter’s been talking about something.. the search for extraterrestrial life?

I begin to focus on his words, mid sentence. His voice is a low, rumbly, western drawl - think Henry Fonda in some old black & white western.
“.. when SETI’s searching the heavens (for electronic signals), they listen across a sliver of two microwave regions that are unpolluted by radio waves from natural sources.”

My head’s on his chest and I’m listening more to his warm tones than the words. I say, “Mmm-hmm” and snuggle more deeply into his warmth.

“They call these frequencies the ‘water hole,’ because they correspond to hydrogen and hydroxyl wave lengths (key components of water), in hopes that intelligent life will pick these quiet zones for communication.”

I yawn, drawing in air like a gasp and sink deliciously into his slow breathing rhythms. Peter’s a physicist (that’s spelled ‘nerd’) and I can’t say I understand more than a third of his ellipticals, but the next thing I know it’s morning.

His astronomy lesson was a lullaby.
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The Flower Called Nowhere by Stereolab
Stick Figures In Love by Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
Moby Octopad by Yo La Tengo
If I Didn't Have You (Live) by Tim Minchin

The pressure to create constantly
makes those creations feel disposable

It’s Thursday morning, usually no one’s favorite, but this one seems sugary new, as if beamed in from a different, better universe. The clouds look fluffy and freshly washed.

Even the freshmen, who’re everywhere, multiplied, as if they’d been cloned overnight, seem less dramatic with their endless droning-on about insignificant political points.

Could this explosive sunniness be because midterms were stupidly easy and spring break is one day away? Hmm, maybe, but it’s not the whole story. Peter (my bf) will be here tomorrow night and for 18 romantic days (and nights) we’re going nowhere except New Haven night spots and my dorm room. I’m so happy, in a pure pop euphoria way, I almost feel guilty about it.

It’s 45°, the high will be 52°. New Haven’s warming up, I think we have winter on the run, next stop:spring, baby. Sunny, Lisa, Leong and I are breakfasting together before we scatter, like Confetti, for our day.

We’d picked a table by the windows, because it looked relatively clean. We dumped our stuff and began raiding the breakfast bar. All of the choices look depressingly healthy—does anyone else miss grease for breakfast—you know, bacon? Anyone? Oh, well, at least there’s ‘specialty coffee’.

After we’d all settled in, we were quiet. Most were visualizing their day, I supposed. I wasn’t. I was thinking about last night. Last night, Leong was making Chinese soup—she’s a gourmand—and teaching us how to make it. It’s elaborate, and as she worked she married the instructions with details from her life growing up in China.

Like how, back in Macau, they lived in this great house with many servants (her dad is an industrialist) but her grandmother insisted on raising chickens and growing a garden—and somewhere in the mix she added, with heart-on-her-sleeve vulnerability, “My dad doesn’t know how to show his love.”

And we were like, “Oh, wow, Ok, that got real - quickly.” It seemed sudden and off-kilter, at first, but as we talked it out, I decided that there was something kind of poetic about using food to talk about the emotional barriers you’re facing with your Chinese father.

“I need some high energy, smashing,” Sunny confided, after her first few sips of coffee.
“It’s 8:23am,” Leong moaned, closing her eyes as if to say, “It’s too early to start.”
“Who says femininity is shy and retiring?” Lisa asked, rhetorically.
I made a face. The pastry I’d gotten was stale. I dropped it, but I didn’t spit out my first bite. “It’s the non-stop of disappointing little things that **** our joy,” I stated sagely, around the stale mush.
“Epicureanism?” Sunny asked no one in particular. But no one entered the debate.
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Songs for this:
You Can Have It All by Yo La Tengo
Cry! by Caroline Rose

He’s a peculiar star
he comes from TV
ambition is his sphere
and his every line is a trick

all know him a notorious liar
whose business is schadenfreude
but many curry his sweet favour
for he has the cowards fury
and an actors need to be flatter'd

He has no quality worthy of entertainment
but we must see him every hour
for he is an hourly promise-breaker
for rashness, superfluous folly and thievery
the world has noted, he has no historical equal

In moral retreat, he outruns any jockey
the treasures of his idolatrous worshipers
he straightway began to strip away, by tariff
too late their despair they will proclaim
but the misery will be well earned
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Fool by bôa
TROUBLE (feat. Nikki Williams) by Parov Stelar
Who Let the **** out of the Bag by Tape Five

How many women here
have been impregnated
by Elon Musk? looking for hands

He plans to repopulate the planet
single handedly - well, not handed
exactly - you know what I mean.

In Australia, great swaths of Texas,
and of course Mar-a-Lago, he’s a serial offender,
because his ***** is legal tender.

Factoid: you might catch a disease,
he’s sleeping with everyone north of Belize
and several of them, frankly, look ******.

Of course, you’d have to listen to him talk. shivers
Unless you say, “Hey, can we do this without conversation?”
That’s when you’d slip on your sleep mask, and, well, you know.
But what would you be thinking about?
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FUN! by KiNG MALA [E]
BLOODONTHETIMBS by Bren Joy  [E]

Peter in the summer morning sun
his cool smile shaded by shadows run
his voice as soothing as coffee’s scent
tell me he wasn’t heaven sent

Peter of Malibu moss and Spanish rose
his lips like light-coral, in kissable repose
his legs slouched akimbo, like a tiger’s limbs
how I long to re-entangle myself in them.

Peter’s quick caress, on windy Tropez beaches
aren’t men the most delightful, of nature's invasive species?
I miss the jeweler’s precision, of his warm and playful hands
and how the sun slowly gifted him, with a model’s golden tan.

Peter sipping coffee under a brittle, New Haven sun,
his rough laugh following something silly I’d done.
There’s no cryptic, localized pathology, happening at the beach,
when the two of us are together, our worlds just seem complete.
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Songs for this:
What the World Needs Now by Tori Holub & James Wilkas
be mine by strongboi