this is the thing with weekends, things slowing down and general quiet: you feel the little aches and pains on the ankles and waist. you tell the ankles and waist to slow down, you are not weaving through people walking to different exits, in marvelously myriad paces, certainly no neat filings here. no orderly columns here, making me think of the futility of fire drills for, really, would anyone put order at the top of his list when burning structures are around and over you?

i think i'm developing weak joints from all that coffee i drink everyday and the little calcium i temper it with. somebody should really establish once and for all if coffee really does deplete your calcium. as p. quipped over lunch, man, you're getting old.

i did feel old when i sat in my two grad classes. no, it wasn't the fact that many of my classmates' student numbers ranged close to the end of millenium, worse, after the millenium. it was more of the looks on their faces when they listened to the professor already making headway with lectures. i said to myself, man, did i have that look on my face ten years ago, when i wasn't sure what i was doing at this campus?

or maybe i'm just amusing myself. first week, slow week.

as i can only mark my days with people i talk to lengthily and substantially, i'd rather detail how things went with conversations and people.

the most recent conversation with p. was long overdue, though a phone call sometime in may helped keep her abreast of the employment dilemma i was in at the time. i could sense that she was very pleased that i was back in qc, even if not with the same department as she is. there is always that long lunch at the end of midday classes.

always on our conversations is j. and the recent flou involving another faculty member. predictably j., letting her mouth and her temper get the best of her. (then again, it'll always be this trait that endears me most to her, knowing that you know who you're dealing with.) p. and i are both raising our eyebrows and shaking our heads but really, if push comes to shove, we'd rather be raising our glasses and celebrate what little achievements we have in our academic pursuits with her. she's the real deal, the biggest heart i know this side of the metro.

what wonder preconceived lunches morphing to merienda would yield. how seamlessly the mention of m. (p.'s friend) being in close proximity to my workplace brought up the subject of r. now i met r. at the baptismal party of p.'s third kid and he was pretty congenial, not knowing that he was the r. who was doing work in this and that research topic. (then again, i never really held such awe for many people. maybe except yesterday when i sat beside another r. and i couldn't help but mention his performance of creon, but that's for another paragraph.)

anyway, i was in for a surprise when p. casually told me that she and r. are no longer on speaking terms. no, it was not because of money and no, it was not because of ideological differences for it was because of ideology that they first became friends. it was because of the most fundamental of things, insecurity.

now i wasn't sure if p. realized this already for, judging from the way she tells the story and the way she kept repeating certain details, it was clear she, until that moment, could not understand why r. did what he did.

as this is already a cumbersome piece at this point, what with all the initials and hazy details, suffice it to say for now that it involved academic generosity returned with childish secrecy, with a journal publication thrown in between. i hope the reader will be content with this.

me being the eternal listener that i am, i could only formulate one conclusion: the person is insecure. the only question bugging me was insecurity? at that age?

obviously, p. was incredulous that it ever happened and with that particular friend. i told her she clearly felt betrayed that he didn't know her well enough for that act not to have had taken place at all. i could only say that people surprise us everyday, even the ones we think we know like the back of our hand. (the film closer comes to mind.)

when that story died down, we turned to other topics, such as that conference they're mounting in november and the collective crossing of fingers that an eminent theorist and a maverick c.e.o. could be persuaded to join.

dream researcher jobs and not having to teach college english came a close second.

oh, and reading forever and having unlimited credit line to wipe out amazon, borders and kinokuniya was hovering in the air.

result: a four-hour lunch.

mmm.

soul food. no shit.