Back from Outsidecon...

[rivka]

...and sleepy. Very sleepy. (Bear with me, please.)

Outsidecon turned out to be a small (maybe 100 or 150 people, tops?) relaxacon held at Camp Marymount in Fairview, Tennessee. We'd been picturing something like a state park campground, but it turned out to be a bona fide children's summer camp, run by the Catholic church during the summer and rented by Scout troops and fen in the spring and fall. I had intense flashbacks to my childhood summers at Camp Comstock, although I was glad to see that this camp at least had electric lights and screens in the cabins, and indoor plumbing. Some things, you just don't want to get nostalgic about.

We shared a cabin with saoba and Mikhail, their roommate Jim, and ororo. The cabins were furnished with bunk beds, meaning that I hit my head repeatedly all weekend, every time I got in or out of bed. I don't know if it was the light (there were shades for the windows, but if I have to choose between darkness and air in a Tennessee summer, I'll choose air), or being unaccustomed to sleeping with so many other people[1], or the discomfort of sleeping on what was essentially a thin, narrow plasticized mattress set on top of a sheet of plywood, but I didn't sleep well all weekend. Friday night, for example, I went to bed after three and woke up, wide awake, at 8:30. That's just unacceptable.

Not much happened all weekend, which I guess was kind of the point. Marc and Julie were handfasted - she was one of the loveliest and most radiant brides I've ever seen. Other than that brief ceremony, we lounged around in lawn chairs, gossiped and drank, sang a little, played Fluxx and Set, ate lukewarm institutional-type food as it appeared sporadically, drank gallons of lemonade and iced tea. It was good to see Barbara and Mikhail in such relaxed circumstances, given that the last time we saw them they were hosting fifty-odd people on their front lawn. (Some of them very odd.) Mikhail and I spent a lot of time wandering around together, enjoying each other's company.

I overcame my longstanding aversion to mixed drinks, the occasion being that fernblatt presented Barbara with a lovely bottle of Cabana Boy brand lemon-flavored rum. It went very well indeed with lemonade and Sprite. ororo made Irish cream, which was incredible. I met some folks named Mickey and Dutch, who had set up an impressive travelling bar under a tent fly, the better to throw parties and coerce people into preregistering for Galacticon. They seem to be well-acquainted with the entire rest of our Tennesseean social circle, so heaven knows how we managed not to meet them before. Mickey's hardly the kind of shy, retiring fragile flower I'd have overlooked. She gives Barbara a run for her money in sheer force of presence, and before this weekend I'd have said that was impossible.

Saturday afternoon I slept for a couple of hours. I needed the rest, but I also thoroughly enjoyed the sensory experience of drowsing on my cot uncovered, warm but shaded in the dim cabin, light striping the floor where it shone through cracks between the boards, listening to the leaves rustle and watching them change the patterns of light and shadow in the cabin, knowing that I had no responsibilities and nowhere to be.

Eventually I got up and went down to the lake, alone. Really, it was more of a large pond, with some concrete diving platforms built at the far end and a lopsided wooden dock on the near side. An older man, leaving as I got there, gave me advice about depths and so forth. Then I had the lake to myself. The water was still and cool. I swam lazily across to the diving platforms, got out to rest, swam lazily back. In the middle of the pond I stopped swimming, rolled over on my back, and just floated for a while, watching a hawk circling overhead, perfectly comfortable and happy and serene.

I think I would feel a lot more balanced and sane at other cons, if there could only be a nap in the afternoon and then a solitary swim in a lake in the woods. I carried the stillness around with me for the rest of the day.

We left the con early this morning and drove back to the Nashville airport in time for a 10:30 flight. This evening I had to present my posters at the IHV's annual meeting. I wish I had been able to just bask in the glow of the weekend, instead. But I think there'll be enough glow left over to last me a little while, anyway.



[1] There will be no comments from the peanut gallery.

Comments

Same time next year?

[ororo.livejournal.com]

It was wonderful to see you and Misha. I think some of my favorite times were just the being able to walk and talk quietly on the way to and from things. Not that I didn't love generally hanging out, or playing Set, mind you. :)

I'm really glad y'all were there.