TO ALL TASPS BOLD & FIERCE: (for Michigan!)

Oh Darling Fellow TASPers and Ye
Proud Denizens of Other-TASPs
Far, Foreign, and Wide:

Hurrah for all attempts at an unabashèd leveling of any and all attempts at diplomatic tact, and huzzahs eternal to all great Hegelian notions of synthesize. At risk of destroying all sense of intimacy and solidarity that this our sneaky and moderately fiendish Danforth Blog has fostered, I am offering over the wires a type of public service address that voices well my own mind and perhaps the latent sentiments of a few of the more daring, reckless and squirmy-hearted of We Proud Urbanists. Firstly, I think we are all bound by so many strings of half-shared experience
and love and nostalgia that despite our avowed (and, yes, quite intentional) competitive growlings, we have all been quite amused and tickled and astonished and above all else, immensely flattered and excited by the volume of cross-blog discourse. I would like you to know that although we are largely Horrible People who cannot crawl into our dirty,
urine-stained beds at night without having kicked at least three small children and spit upon the face of Modern Poetry, a good deal--a substantial portion--of our prodding and reckless (and largely irresponsible) comments about Wash. U superiority and the "lesser nature" of other TASPs has been in jest. Such are the things we do, my faraway dears, to bind ourselves closer together, and I hope this is understood. On many counts, I feel personally responsible for much of this, and if only for my own screaming heart, would like it to be known that I AM QUITE HOPELESSLY AND OBSESSIVELY IN LOVE WITH ALL THINGS TASP, including but not limited to the fascinating and yet-uncharted waters of the UMich and UTAustin TASPs. I am memorizing and sorting and clinging to names and photographs and disparate stories of experience and Ridley's (O! Look! I cannot be so horrible, for I speak with affection and even some faux and internet-induced sense of familiarity!) Grand Challenge to All TASPs (especially the nasty, fiesty ones) rendered me a mess of protests and ideas. I put myself in clear lines of fire, because the most of us are quite adamant about our own glory, but I do not think that very much would be compromised if we all were to exchange stories and band together in some grand and overarching world system of praises & huzzahs & nostalgia for Telluride. Such an idea excited me from the beginning, even if such sentiments stem from the fact that I cannot handle the existence of other experiences and other things just like our TASP that I could not be a part of (MAXIMIZER!), and I think that it must happen.

All of this is very doctrinal and idealistic and belies the stacks of homework and applications and quelling of larger passions for life and community and connection that plague us all, but if for those reasons alone--the fact that we are all bound in having-been-a-part-of-TASP and having-forever-sold-our -pounding-hearts-to-L.L. Nunn, we must unite and do grand and furious
and passionate and madburning things. Indeed, this proposal then extends not only to you, St. Louis, the closest-s to my heart, and to Michigan, whom I feel am beginning to know and want to know so very much better, but to the rest of you (of us, truly) who have not yet shown so much obsession or zeal for charting, destroying or saving the relationships between the TASPs.

So this shall serve as an apology from me and those who stand with me to Michigan. We know that you are beautiful. We are all beautiful and our professed hatred and the sheer amount of time we pour into our wargame speaks volumes of how dynamic some kind of bridging-organization could be. We are kind and compassionate and amazing just as you are, and nothing in the world--save for a reclamation of the wonder that was those long and melancholy and charged last nights of TASP-- could approximate how incredible it could be if we all could, as your very own "Henry Clay" said, feast off of each other's eccentricity.

I agree with Adam--collective blogs would be disastrous. And there is something so very wonderful to our closeness and to the exclusivitity of all that we've been through together,
and I would never want to do anything to compromise it. Knowing everything would be impossible, and too much to handle, because one TASP alone makes my head spin.
But something can happen.

Can you imagine it?
If all of the ComComComs (or equivalent committees dedicated to the promulgation of all things filled with Quirk & Philosophical Significance!) could band together to arrange for some forum in which we could all share our stories and tell of who we are and who we became together and what happened in those weeks when very few of us slept. Think of it, Danforthians! Will our memories not leer brighter and glow stronger if we can tell them to others? Imagine how much closer we will become if we must try to qualify the glory of playing Pruitt-Igoe at the end of the hallway at 2 am! And explaining Doug's slurs! And the Planetarium Apocalypse! And Maggie's...eyesight! And the comics! And the battle against ResLife! And Christmas! Ah! The glory will not cease!

Ohdearohdearohme, I see great things from this. Overwhelming things. Things which are too wonderful for words and make me excited beyond the realm of too much AP Government work and too little concern for practical matters of school-and-college-and-the-world.

But stories are wonderful and people are wonderful and we are all so closely bound on the outer edges (concentric circles!) of each others' social periphery that things could only get better and closer and more strange if some uncanny and equally passionate Pact-of-Friendship could be had. We are kind and charming and delightful, Michigan, we really are, beneath all of the war paint! Remember: we signed ourselves up to The Nation's Capital of Rot for six weeks. We had to have something to be irrefutably proud about. Will you like us? Can you forgive us and dig the brightness of our hearts out from under all those things that seem like cries for battle? (And! I must add that I re-read my post, which I fear may have started Most Everything, and it did sound remarkably cruel and unflinching, and it was not meant to be exclusively so! My allegiance to the inner "WE" of St. Louis is greatgreatgreat, but I meant to speak of how tormented and fascinated I was by the fact that there were others and that we couldn't
all experience the all of it).

That said, some of us really do hate you. Irrationally. Without grounds. Regardless of beauty. We don't want to castrate our glory by admitting that we joke more stridently than anyone else.
Henry Clay Day alone should serve as an example... But most of us love you for worrying about our professed hatred, (right, my TASPers? Please do not let me stand alone on this one?)
and the idea of some sort of Bond is a very exciting & sustaining thing indeed!

Love Dearly,
Jessi (speaking without the neccesary endorsement of St. Louis.
I am convincing, and play the banjo, so it will come. I hope.)

My TASPers: Oh no! Have we lost anything in my posting of this message? Do we dare to open our closed world of bursting, unrestrained amazingness to others? Do we dare consider what has been haunting us all along--that they are equally amazing and could share in the glory? Please say yes, because I love you. Tell me what you think, and refrain from throwing stones! My head is fragile and filled with the delightful mucus of mid-autumn illnesses, and will break!

Why are we so beautiful?

Michigan: Love us! We will be kind. I've already memorized all of your names and am sosocurious to move beyond the clever spying to some form of collective friendship/alliance.