My friend (Ariel) and I met up with Em for lunch, who had already completed a couple classes in the morning. We relived old times we never had at the Frist cafeteria, imaging the student center of Princeton to be the basement of Usdan. With the new student center, even the basement of Usdan isn’t the basement of Usdan anymore.

We then proceeded to the Chancellor Green Library, undoubtedly the coolest interior space on the Princeton campus we’ve yet found. Most people, upon seeing it, immediately dub it the “Harry Potter Room,” though that distinction arguably might be more apt for the Grad College cafeteria, which generally looks primed for an address by Dumbledore himself. In any event, Chancellor Green is an octagonal room with two floors topped by an ornately woodworked dome, adorned with stained glass and bookshelves galore on each level and each edge. Below are comfortable reading chairs and above study desks. The expectation is silence throughout, if not to read than merely to appreciate the hallowed halls surrounding.

I rejoined my Russian friends in Toltsoy’s world, lamenting how little I’ve been able to read amidst the writing lifestyle I’ve developed. Some have said that one should never be writing at a higher volume than one is reading, but I feel that writing takes its toll on the desire to read. Besides, most of my reading is usually done either during a commute or just before sleep. I have no commute and I’m going to sleep after writing sessions that leave me utterly drained as dawn is threatening to break. Yeah, not exactly conducive to reading.

So I appreciated the opportunity to bury myself in a book for the afternoon, spending hours with 75 pages of the world’s most reputedly epic tome. Having discussed my general progression of becoming a slower reader for much of high school and college with Ariel, I was grateful to have sped up enough in subsequent years that I could read at such a pace. There was a time that I was convinced I would someday have to take whole days to read just a single page at the rate I’d been going.

Then home, phone calls, dinner, a brief time with Em as she worried over the day to come and we finally caught up to the current episode of “The Office”, having traversed the show’s entire history with frightening alacrity via Netflix and Hulu. Not everything I’ve done out here in Jersey can be strictly described as productive.

And then writing, the whole of chapter 35, a chapter I’m profoundly fond of suddenly, unanticipated in its depth and implications, all the more satisfying for how much it surprised me. There are chapters I know are going to be powerful, momentous, vital. Some have already passed. This one I wasn’t expecting and I deeply appreciate the characters therein for revealing themselves to me in this way. Really.

And here I am, just this side of five in the morning, worn out and really content. Not content as a proxy for slowly settling into the sediment that one’s life has become, but content in its truest, highest form. Not happy or elated, for I lack the energy for either. Just satisfied, at peace with my place in the world. This life is everything I hoped it would be, for all its solitude and strange freedom. God help me find ways to never let go, now that I’m here.

Last week: Round 2 (re: chemical weapons)

Today’s round takes us back to the beginning of the tournament, the first filmed round of my career since the quarterfinals at Columbia, wherein Emily and I dismantled a case about China and Taiwan and then Mike Specian, APDA filmer extraordinaire, lost the tape. Before that, it might date back to Dartmouth 2000 outrounds or something, which I have somewhere and would love to get converted as well.

Regardless, this was a pretty fun case for first round. Involving one of my favorite movies of all-time, “Dr. Strangelove”, this case encouraged the speaker to conduct a full nuclear strike on the Soviet Union rather than trying to warn or negotiate with the Soviets. Suffice it to say that I had a little bit to say in response. Generally in debate, nuclear war is the worst-case scenario that everyone’s trying to avoid. When the Gov makes it their case statement, you know you’re going to have a good day…

Stanford 2002 APDA Round 1 from Storey Clayton on Vimeo.

Last week: Round 3 (re: Enron executives and their wallets)

Today’s round features one of my favorite opp-choice cases from my senior-year case-writing binge. The case was pretty successful, though it did lose handily once. It engaged in a question I generally didn’t believe in, that being the nature of war crimes. While I personally feel that the concept of “war crimes” is redundant, this case posed an interesting scenario as to whether a breakaway republic should use chemical weapons against an oppressive power if the power they’re fighting made those weapons.

This round featured the surprising choice that the republic should in fact use the weapons, which tended not to be the side opposition chose. Generally people sided with the Geneva conventions and conventional war over taking the risky but potentially effective move to break with international law and go after the power. But the round always made for fun international debate that didn’t rely on having just read the Economist.

This round also features one of my more absurd themed rebuttals, something that was generally my signature, but rarely had such tenuous links as this one.

Stanford 2002 APDA Round 2 from Storey Clayton on Vimeo.

There are two ways I can make this trip that are almost identical in mileage:

One is to take US Route 1, a literal straight line road that hearkens back to legends of the tsar drawing plans for a railroad from St. Petersburg to Moscow. While straight as an arrow, the route runs south of both my origin and my destination, adding a bit of time. More importantly, Route 1 (in Jersey, at least) is perhaps the worst four-lane road in America, a bizarre combination of highway lane structures and traffic with endless stoplights. Despite the lights, left turns are strictly forbidden, requiring “jug-handles” where one exits to the right to then turn onto a crossover lane. There are no conventional exits, just jug-handles. And the thing is filled with trucks and Jersey drivers, who remain the only people worse than drunk New Mexicans, murderous Manhattanites, and raging Massachusetts drivers, somehow blending the worst aspects of all three.

The alternative is NJ Route 27, a pastoral winding road whose frequent elevation shifts are outnumbered only by the number of times the speed limit changes between Princeton and New Brunswick. If Route 1 is the express (or tries to be), Route 27 is the local, plowing through the center of random townships and dropping the limit from 50 to 25 with almost no warning. This is a two-laner (one in each direction) and is frequented by these aging gray buses that seem to run local routes in this thickly settled part of the state. There are no trucks, however, and very little traffic at all late at night, when all the lights are green. There are lights, but probably fewer than on the “highway” counterpart.

After doing round-trips on each, I’ve settled into a vague pattern of taking Route 1 up to New Brunswick in the evening and returning on Route 27 in the middle of the night. Route 1 seems to have a stagnant amount of traffic 24/7, which is more palatable in comparison to the fairly heavy traffic on 27 at around 8:30, but less palatable compared to the emptiness of same past midnight. But more than anything, there’s just something peaceful and rewarding about taking 27 home, soaring through empty silent communities like a high-schooler the night after graduation.

Tonight, however, the road was deader than ever. It was ghostly, the kind of night that inspired Ray Bradbury’s story “Night Meeting”, where a Martian and an Earthling colonist cross paths through the midst of time on desolate night roads. The first leaves were covering the road in some places, sent sailing as I would race through in an effort to stay ever 5 miles an hour above the mercurial legal maximum. I think I passed all of two cars going my direction the whole time, both fairly close to New Brunswick, and maybe 5-7 in the other direction the whole way. In 25 minutes.

There is much time to ponder in such settings, though they have a way of dominating the mental space with their own unique offering. We spend so much time surrounded by people, their structures, the possibility of interaction. To be moving swiftly through a voided landscape is at once solipsistic and comforting, calling attention to one’s place in the universe and focus to the significance of each passing minute. The more I noticed my aloneness, the more I felt both isolated and somehow unified with a larger presence and could feel the awareness of the moment pile upon itself.

I had a CD to keep me company, but its significance was only to underscore the larger reality around, not to take center stage. Like Kitaro on a road to Jewell that suddenly became endless and transcendent, with my Dad so many years ago. The songs were like leaves, like the occasional droplet collected on the windshield, to be considered and passed like most days on the wind.

And then, as Princeton approached faster than normal, and cars six and seven northbound, Dave Matthews Band’s “Christmas Song” came on the disc. And the world of silence, of sleepy village churches and big box brand name signs illuminated for overnight advertising of empty stores, shifted. It transformed to a seventeen-year-old kid who made the decision to buy his first-ever CD (after years of accumulating cassette tapes) because it was the only way he could acquire this song he’d heard just once on the radio that had captivated his feelings about Christmas in a way he could handle as a no-longer-Christian. Who had looked everywhere for a tape, knowing that he already had one DMB tape, finally settling ironically for the older album on CD only and wondering how to deal with the technological shift. Who came home and skipped right to the last track, wondered at the trail of lightning sounds that followed the track, played it on repeat most of the night. It was a cold night, beckoning to Christmas still a couple months out, a night not unlike this one. Then there was a play to direct, a year to get through, somehow, colleges and a future to seek (up). Tonight, not so different perhaps, a novel in place of a play, colleges behind but not forgotten, a year to be savored instead of endured. Perhaps life really does get easier over time, after all.

I listened to the last three recitations of the closing chorus in the stopped car in front of my current residence, smiling at the yellow porch light and the barely visible Christmas lights within, decking the top corner of the living room walls. “And the blood of our children all around.” The last fade of notes, the car switched off, and a gathering of paper for the trek inside. Crossing the threshold, I felt the wind swirl behind me and wondered what message it carried from what past or future self. I am never (and always) alone. But tonight, oh tonight, it all seems to make sense.

I went inside to find Pandora staring at me as though she’d been waiting this whole time.

Last week: Round 4 (re: Stalin vs. Lenin)

Today’s round is the only time in my career where I remember someone running a counter-case against an opp-choice case. Traditionally this practice is considered illegal, so that it’s possible to have rounds between two bad scenarios (e.g. opp-choice, would you rather eat a banana slug or a cockroach, where it would be unfair to counter-case with eating an ice-cream sundae). Nevertheless, this round matched us up with a NPDA team, from the rival circuit to APDA, and they have a slightly unconventional approach.

The round was about a case we wrote specifically for the tournament, whose theme was the Enron scandal and its associated corruption. It was a rather simple case about an Enron executive dropping their wallet and whether they deserved it back or you should keep the money. Because of the counter-case, it ended up being more about police and their role in society.

My MG features one of my few uses of props in a round which, while technically barred, could have very persuasive effect. Sadly, my chalk-eating round was never recorded, so this is probably the best documented use of a prop from my days on the circuit.

Stanford 2002 APDA Round 3 from Storey Clayton on Vimeo.

Last week: Round 5 (re: Native American Reparations)

Today’s round features one of the best cases I ever hit in my tenure on APDA, run by a future National Champion and his wacky then-partner.

The case was one of the few “infinite opp-choice” style cases that were generally reserved for final rounds. While not technically infinite, the round involves picking something out of a list so long that it might as well be infinite, then having Gov pick another side. Or, as in the 42-way opp-choice on the seven deadly sins that Jeff “Crack” Nelson and I ran in Fairfield finals, having Opp pick both sides.

These cases can be deceptive, however, because they don’t necessarily require a Gov team to prep an infinite number of possibilities, just two (a first choice and a backup). And in this particular round, we didn’t grab their first choice (Lenin), but came close by picking Stalin. The question was who the Man of the Century should be in terms of influence, leaving out moral or perceptual considerations.

So heat up some canned borscht and potatoes and enjoy the round:

Stanford 2002 APDA Round 4 from Storey Clayton on Vimeo.

The rains have been sweeping through, often hightailing it on the back of even stronger winds. Today is the first really chilly seeming day and I can already envision the crispness of my breath emerging as the barracks become even more depressing and the walls seem even thinner. Already I’m starting to wonder when we should start moving stuff away from the heater so we can be prepared.

And yet there’s the anticipation of October that seems even more exciting on the East Coast, what with the promise of leaves changing and falling and eventual snow. This is what I’ve missed so dearly, the real seasonal change that is present in most of the world but sorely lacking in the Bay Area. A change in the surroundings that matches the internal perceptual change of the time. People do better with external confirmations of their internal understanding.

Which, I guess, is why I revel in the visualization present on the page. So there you go.

Today’s round continues our regression through the tournament, featuring round five which, interestingly, was against the same team that faced us in Quarters. This was the debut of the case that Emily and I ran about giving $1,000,000 in reparations to every Native American born on a reservation. This case is about as open (easily debatable, beatable) as they come, and yet went on to win a bubble round at Nationals (Tirrell & I overcoming MIT-A in round 6 at UMBC Nats ‘02) and Quarters at BU ‘06 (sadly beating my Brandeis teammates, Samburg & Collins) when Emily & I went back to defend the honor of dinos against modern whippersnappers. (Incidentally, that round was also recorded, though on audio, and can be found here.)

Like my Lottery case, this one gets much of its power from being something that I fervently believe. But you don’t have to take my contemporary word for it – see how Emily and I sounded seven and a half years ago:

Stanford 2002 APDA Round 5 from Storey Clayton on Vimeo.

The poem is brief (briefer than I remember), but conveys powerful imagery of the pull of the ocean and its eternal hold on those who sail upon it. I was adorned in a cap not unlike what I’d worn as Oliver Twist (but newer and nicer) and some sort of scarf that the director had determined sufficiently aquatic. Despite these elements of costuming and the placement of a stage beneath my feet, I think this may have been the birth of my understanding of the power of spoken words. Not the magic of theater, in full regalia, which I’d long known and loved, but the actual power and presence of mere strings of syntax, dramatically spoken.

Of course, there was my third grade talent show rendition of the Gettysburg Address, which I remembered made a couple teachers cry. But I’d been disappointed with my performance there, forgetting some words and feeling immense pressure. I had not felt the command over that performance that I did in the practiced rhythms of Masefield’s cadence.

It is somehow fitting to remember that preface on a night back from introducing members of the Rutgers class of 2013 to the basic tenets of parliamentary debate. Just as every word written makes for better writing next time, so every word spoken has led me to this point in my life. And perhaps I can forgive myself for sacrificing tonight’s writing efforts (unless I can start after completing this post) to the twin duties of education and navigation.

This last is the true inspiration for tonight’s title, for a navigation bar has been introduced to The Blue Pyramid for the first time ever. Over the course of the next few weeks, the navigation system will filter out through the rest of the website. The focal points of this bar also come with an acknowledgment that several projects have been archived, most permanently lost at sea.

I would like to say that this move will usher in a new era of updated content at the site, with quizzes and new projects abounding as long planned. I have learned enough over my millions of spoken words, of course, to know that such promises are of no worth. Either I shall make good, which will speak for itself, or I shan’t, which will undermine the promises’ purpose.

So I present what is done and will call it a night. Perhaps to write briefly before sailing for sunrise.

And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
and quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

Returning to a regular APDA tournament (Nats just feels different, especially if one is in the tab room as I was in ‘07) was pretty surreal, though I adjusted fairly quickly. I was surprised at how many people I did know and recognize, most of them freshly minted dinos who are many years my junior. Of course, there were also a slew of people who became three-dimensional for the first time – people I knew pretty well from APDA Forum Werewolf games that I’d never met or seen in person.

The tourney was at Hopkins and I had a chance to see Freez and his (relatively) new place, which is pretty swanky. The original 1904 hardwood flooring definitely being the highlight there. The entire weekend featured buckets of rain, including visibility-limiting sheets on the drive down, which probably aided our getting lost and almost mistakenly heading to Washington DC. Though after this summer’s cross-country trip and some more recent events, I’m seriously starting to doubt the quality and veracity of Internet driving directions.

Surreality aside, I really love APDA and being back in the thick of the community. I enjoy judging, though close calls give me a sensation approximating what I imagine an ulcer feels like. I enjoy the quality of the discourse and the intellectual caliber of the people, something rarely assembled so consistently and thoroughly in any other environment. I’m not going to go so far as to say that APDA is wasted on the young (I certainly appreciated it at the time, as do many of its participants), but maybe it’s more to say that APDA ages incredibly well. Even after college, it’s time well spent. It horrifies me even now to think how close I was to not joining when at Brandeis and how fervently my high school advisers told me there were better things for debaters to do in college than debate.

The Rutgers team did well, going 3-2 with losses only to break teams, and speaking impressively. It’s an auspicious start to what looks to be a breakthrough year. We have no fewer than four (4) meetings this week, serving as an intense week of novice training to prepare for the Swarthmore Novice Tournament in two weeks, so the intensity will not ramp down for some time.

Last night, I had a classic school anxiety dream, mostly about going into my senior year at Brandeis. I had my own place that was nicer and larger than I had reason to think it should be and a slightly different course schedule than made sense. But I spent a lot of time thinking about how not to waste the year, how to appreciate it, and how to make sure to get my diploma.

I woke up, quickly realizing where I was in real chronological time. More importantly, I realized that these dreams will be back in force for the next two years.