we're not in our pajamas in these pictures. we're playing dress-up, of course - the scavenged clothing items and fabulous fabulous hats are just a fraction of the many strange, wonderful, whimsical items that fill every corner of the lavish, slightly lurid, but lovingly adorned, antiquarian-aired apartment: an appropriately remarkable home, certainly, as our unwitting host is clearly a truly remarkable woman. perhaps you can get a sense from the background clutter in those hazy dream-portraits, if not from our outfits themselves. i'm pretty sure it's the best house i've been in in philadelphia. it was also pretty surreal - the house and the whole experience - which i think the pictures catch as well. we look like we're ready for some sort of drama, don't we?

i don't want to say too much about it - there was some of that sort of nebulous specialness that you want to keep a little unexamined, to keep it sacred but also on the suspicion that it might just end up sounding silly and inane if you pay it too much attention. we weren't really sure what we were doing, i think - we were just trying to satisfy the criteria for the quintessential pajama party, as best as we could figure. things started out particularly well, with the novelty of the enterprise, starting into a pot of mulled cider and a fifth of maker's mark, the excitement of exploring the apartment, donning hats and costumes, commencing an impromptu photo shoot - there are clearer, better, posed group costume shots that i don't have (yet, but i'll try to put them up here - in the mean time i finally added a halloween picture to the bottom of the last entry, so scroll down and look at that.)

after photos, and a round of desserts ordered up from the restaurant (ah yes, the restaurant) we changed into our pjs - i'd just thrifted a set of red plaid jammies that morning, which was actually one of my favorite parts of the whole affair. i also really enjoyed playing default dj, digging into my extensive supply of twinkly, somnambient lullaby tunes - what quickly got dubbed "fairy music" - including colleen's et les boîtes à musique, yokota's unfailing sakura, the lovely auburn lull, and lullatone's oh-so-appropriate plays pajama pop pour vous (oh those frenchy japaneseys.) also erlend øye's dj-kicks, marit and tracks 3-10 of in rainbows, all of which feature their own variety of twinklings. (i didn't say i was gonna stop talking about music, did i?)

it all seemed to fit with the sweet, dreamily childlike game we were playing. as far as actual activities go, well we played apples to apples - a game that's a lot less interesting than it used to seem (but still decently enjoyable, and was right-on with the adjective cards this time: i am indeed sappy, sexy, sharp, witty and weird) - and ha ha ha (i guess it's called) or 'human plaid' - we took a just-pre-closing jaunt down to the bar, partially in pjs, to catch last call - we lay on a bedspread on the livingroom floor, gazing up at the 3-, 4-, 5-, 6-pointed starry ceiling (that's a clue) and trying to think of jokes or questions - somehow there was clamor for a dance party at around 4am, so i decided to play ¡OhSiX!, which went over well, even if the dancing dissolved after a half-hour or so.

dawn came and we hadn't slept (well, save for one who'd drifted off before the dancing); we took the dogs out for a walk and to greet the day - frost in the field - though the sun had already cleared the horizon by the time we made it out. we slept some - in the pile on the floor, and eventually, after something like an unintentional approximation of a game of sardines, in a couple of the beds upstairs - but only some. four hours at best, not enough to shake that lessening that comes when you don't quite make the all-nighter. it's really better not to sleep at all than to stay up til the morning and sleep just a short while - that little bit somehow casts the disproportionate sleeplessness in a garish harrowed glare it's easier to squint out when you're just going on the wisps and fumes of the liminal hurdle, the second-wind of sunrise, the wan and achy weakened deepened wakefulness of coasting on through.

so - despite the generous, delicious orts in lieu of brunch, the concluding come-together clean-up, and especially despite the gloriously sunny morning we walked out into - there was this nagging anxiety, a tiny disquiet lingering about the whole business, that it was hard to quite apprehend until the light hit it. there was the physical futsiness of the suspended sleeplessness and torpor (i guess the whiskey didn't help, though it passed generally unnoticed the night before; the brownies neither perhaps.) this diverting but indeterminate agelessness we'd been engaging in - an imprecise précis not to act our age (our ages), but to be...school-children? high-schoolers? (like little scandinavian children on christmas morning, i said at one point - shades of fanny and alexander, natch - from the apartment too - our gay apparel courtesy of, perhaps, hannah andersson. i also felt like a 1950s norman rockwell suburban junior, with the plaid pjs and my thick specs) - and a timelessness too of just being out of ourselves, out of our lives, out of time - somebody was wishing it could go on for a whole week, but even the briefest span seemed enough to capsule it off fully, so more time would've just belabored the point, diluted the essence - these things aren't bad, per se, they were just the nature of the unreality, the oneiric otherness of it - (not, also, to haze it up in hindsight - but i haven't slept since, either, really, but at least in this state that's my lingering perception. the night, and the surroundings, and the mind, can do strange things.)

but i do regret a little that it didn't become more of a personal, communal self-sharing sort of experience - there's the opportunity with these things for surprising connections, those late-night deep talks that might end up seeming preposterous in the morning light (or they might not), but can establish and consolidate some real and lasting bonds, regardless. i can't say i really feel substantively closer to the participants now...of course, it was only one night, so that's not too surprising or upsetting. but instead, there was - maybe, the other direction from actual intimacy - this little, stupid sort of sexual tension - maybe it comes with the territory, though i'm not sure it has to - maybe a little sweet, silly, but just a little too unconscious to acknowledge or deflate. the sort of fun at the time, but, ugh, ultimately just limiting, since it's just inhibiting. even as it is itself inhibited by the pervasive, put-on, but no less inexorable, innocent wholesomeness - so that just puts things further at odds.

meh - don't want to say much, or feel like i should dwell on it. it bothered me (not specifically; generally) for much of the day, in an imprecise way. it was a shapeless day, sort of shot from the start for anything of much substance to happen - and a sunday anyway. i mostly channeled my restless, fragile energy into playing guitar and singing - songs from edith frost's it's a game and the mountain goats' get lonely - two of the finest collections of mopey, post-break-up folk formalism in recent memory; not sure why but those were what was coming to me. played keyboard too (after being asked not to use the intriguing player piano in the parlor at the party) - mostly just big churchy organ chords and gospel IV-Is. i wanted to go for a ride or maybe a hike/walk in the woods, but i couldn't find a partner for it or get up to going alone, so i just walked around the neighborhood a bit. the strains of curtis mayfield drew me towards a party in malcolm x park, with a circle of youngish breakers dancing to an afro'd laptop dj who turned out to be a penn student (freshman?), so i chatted with him for a while, and then hung out with a four-ish year old who wanted some help getting onto the jungle gym, until his mom came back. nice.

also - it was just nice to come home from the party and see my housemates at the dining/living(?)room table, doing the sunday morning. here they are: