I don't do that kind of thing!

Today, I am sorely tempted to call this post "Landlords of My County," simply because the strangest experiences of my summer have been with local landlords. This afternoon, for instance, my flaming-sworded friend and I learned--in typical Gambier fashion, by talking to someone random on the street--that the college plans to house students in the faculty apartment complex to which we moved my possessions at the end of June and in which she'll live this year. Since we--and pretty much all the faculty and staff who live in these apartments--thought that our living-with-students days ended when we stopped being students, we're collectively less than thrilled by this development. Underwhelmed might be the word.

And then there's the studiolord. This summer, as I told you back in May, I've been sharing a studio in a neighboring town with my excellent photography instructor from last semester. Because it's oppressively hot and humid here, I decided this afternoon to decamp for the studio to do final (for this stage) proofreading on the article I finished drafting yesterday. When I arrived at the door into the building, though, I discovered a sign listing hours for a new financial management and debt counseling service. I unlocked the door and went up the long flight of stairs, at the top of which I found a sign announcing, "You've arrived!" and pointing me down the hall... to my studio, which now has a sign on its door marking it a financial counseling service.

Strangely, though, the landlord didn't bother to change the locks--which is good, since my studio partner and I still have possessions in there. I let myself in and found a fully furnished office: desks, chairs, fake plants, couches, rugs, telephones, a photocopier. It was like stepping into an episode of the Twilight Zone. All of our things had been consolidated into a corner of the space and hidden behind some craftily arranged cubicle partitions. For a few minutes, I thought that an entire revolving bookcase full of my books had disappeared, but I discovered it in a storage space, obscured by a full-size refrigerator that was also a new feature in the studio.

The whole experience is so bizarre as to be almost unbelievable. Fortunately it looks as though it's going to resolve correctly, in the financial sense.


As for my search for air-conditioning: it led me back to the officehouse, where I eventually found myself rewatching one of my favorite finds of the day (courtesy of the Superhero). I believe that that song might become one anthem for the year ahead. I believe that you should get get get to know know know know it better, baby. I know you want to dance.

But in between all the other things I did and saw today, there were the resurrection lilies, and they're what I actually want to write about, even if only briefly.


Resurrection lilies are funny: they come up as green leaves in the spring, then wither away to nothing (which, this year, probably just made them look like one more plant that was decimated by that freak cold spell that was, well, April). But in early August, they suddenly shoot back up with no warning and incredible rapidity, then bloom translucent pink. Somehow, though I generally dislike lilies, I have come to love this subset of them, probably because they're so strange and then so otherworldly when they do arrive. They bloom in huge clusters atop improbably thin stems. They are shell-pink and ghostly on their return to the air. I braved the heat to get them for you, because I have no recollection of how long they hang around once the first blooms start to wilt. And these are certainly wilting; it's been a brutalizing week, meteorologically speaking.

The current version of my article is in, which means that tomorrow is for Other Things, a development about which I am nearly beside myself.