the verdict is in

three twentysomething teachers-in-training, chewing the early morning pedagogical fat:

guy: i'm more of a cat person myself. you know what's great about cats? (he asks this in a tone so sincere -- *cough* condescending -- that, for a brief moment, i wonder if he actually believes that his fellow educators might not have already encountered a cat at some point in their lives. or thought about what a cat is. or developed an awareness of how cats behave.) they're independent. they clean themselves. (one of the girls, with a little giggle: oooh, self-cleaning!) they do everything they need to "do" in a little box. basically, they're the perfect animal. this last statement is practically punctuated with a gavel hitting its sounding block.

given my admitted pet bias (aka my personal disdain for felines, on account of allergies to dander and impertinence -- atchoo!), i find myself thinking many things. but mostly: 1) i'm not sure how i feel about the fact that it's just a matter of time before this guy's educating a litter of young'uns (or maybe i am, for better or for worse, very sure about how i feel about that); and 2) he's surely single...maybe i should set him up with Little Miss Memo?

and now back to translating...

Mat(ters of the heart)

[march 19, 2014]

one of the baristas, who isn't working tonight, has just waltzed in -- excited -- with news for her colleagues: so, i'm on this date! (as in, at that very moment.) it's this guy i met at the lieutenant's pump the other day. wanna come join? (is that how first dates work now? y'bring your co-workers along for the ride?! *takes detailed notes*) i went into the date with zero expectations...but he's coooool!  to which one of the working baristas responds (subsequently receiving an affirmative reply): oh, this is the guy named Matt, right? but Matt's nowhere to be seen. (he's apparently next door at a pub, waiting for his date to reappear.)

this promptly reminds me of the first guy i fell in love with. i was fourteen. too young, i suppose, to know what love really is. and, as is often the case in the Department of Romantic Affairs (perhaps particularly when you're "too young [...] to know what love really is"), the feeling was not reciprocated. wa wa waaah. but i made a friend. and, while we were hardly best friends, a long-standing acquaintanceship emerged, involving regular razzing-and-banter and, on rarer occasions, the kinds of conversations that feel (and therefore end up being) "profoundly important." you know the ones: a mushroom cloud of adolescent epiphanies -- the stuff you'd be truly mortified (though surely also curious) to hear played back to you verbatim but that you now still thoroughly enjoy through the delightful fog of your selective memory, where the feelings associated with raw and riveting conversational communion remain fully intact. his name was also Mat (no second "t" in this case). well-liked, sincere, and sufficiently cheeky, he had a big laugh, tended to underestimate himself and, throughout our friendship, did wonders for my self-confidence. in other words: he, too, was coooool.

suddenly, a crash test dummies song begins to play. "afternoons and coffeespoons." i'd loathed this single when it was released in high school. (probably a knee-jerk reaction to my younger sister being such a fan.) in any case, that was long before i knew about the song's links to T.S. Eliot's 1920 poem -- which i (not unlike gadzillions of other people) quickly grew fond of:

[...]

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

[...]

that was also long before the song was retroactively inserted (without my permission; possibly by my sister...) into an as-yet-unreleased musical tribute to my high school years and all the people in it. like Mat. who celebrates his birthday today. and who, a few years after graduation, just as he was glimpsing adulthood, was involved in a very bad car crash and, weeks later, died. now nowhere to be seen. 

then again...how should i presume? perhaps he's waiting next door, at the pub. or maybe he's right here, calmly tucked beneath the music from a farther room. 

and now back to translating...

[this entry is (also) dedicated to another Matt: the friend who wrapped up and mailed me a chuckle, a hot chocolate and a hug. all of which arrived this afternoon.]