goodbye blue monday (subtitled: manufacturing moments)

since i've been home, i have been obsessed (even more than usual) with creating these perfect moments. sitting on the deck at my cabin, watching a storm roll in, smoking a cigarette and finishing the catcher in the rye. listening to joni mitchell and cooking dinner with my mom. drinking huge cups of coffee and making long distance phone calls to people i love more than i understand. burning a cd to accompany me on a country drive to northfield.

the drive from shakopee to northfield is one of my favorites, especially when made alone. there is something about the windows down freedom to sing as loudly as possible while intermittently exclaiming to myself about the song on the radio or the idiocy of the person in front of me. the drive is broken up into four ten-minute chunks. a lazy curve approximately 35 minutes in is when the hill comes into view. today, the hill impelled me to start wildly clapping, saying "yea" to myself, over and over.


i don't know why this place still holds so much for me. i've orchestrated multiple goodbyes to st. olaf over the years. additionally, i've never believed in going to cemetaries. i don't think people's spirits would hang around their gravesites. but there is something about this cafe, this table, this town. though the most-loved regular cast of characters is nowhere to be found, the extras provide a certain security. the waiter at chapatis, the cars with wellstone bumper stickers, former professors. beyond all reason, i still glance at the door when i see a person enter, expecting someone who will nibble off of my monster truck brownie and take a sip of my now-cold caramel latte. despite my intense nostalgia for the past, it's been a long time since i have this fully unearthed this, seemingly, my favorite version of home.

since moving off of the hill, away from the tree-filled lane of ole ave., i have discussed monday innumerable times. tory told me the other day that she lived by a bunch of coffee shops, but "nothing compares to blue monday." it's increasingly evident (though no mystery or surprise) that this place (olaf in a larger sense) maintains a particular place in my history. somewhere i cannot wholly jettison. as i drove through campus and turned onto ole avenue toward monday, i had a feeling of being awake. maybe it's that the exhaustion of typhoid is starting to leave my body. or maybe it's something about this place, about who i am in this setting. i read breakfast of champions because of its subtitle. and the subtitle has come to illustrate something for me. in a way, of course, we knew the meaning without the specific context. a place of refuge from work, stress, school, etc. now, upon return after almost a year since graduation, it still holds the same exceptionality. and, whatever is to come, there is a karass of people who share this home, too.

"the motto of the robo-magic washing machine cleverly confused two separate ideas people had about monday. one idea was that women traditionally did their laundry on monday. monday was simply washday, and not an especially depressing day on that account. people who had horrible jobs during the week used to call monday ‘blue monday’ sometimes, though, because they hated to return to work after a day of rest. when fred t. barry made up the robo-magic motto as a young man, he pretended that monday was called ‘blue monday’ because doing the laundry disgusted and exhausted women. the robo-magic was going to cheer them up."

(KURT VONNEGUT, BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS OR GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY, 243)

like we said, ash. truly the "chateau in the know." and here's to jeff, who always played the big wu at closing time.