In the dreary skittle-puddle of life, few things excite the heart as much as cute things getting tickled—hedgehogs, Mr. Whiskers, lemur-type things—on the internet. My dog has a broken trachea and coughs bloody violent when too excited, so we don’t often tickle him. I made up Mr. Whiskers, but I picture him as a lovable cat—the kind that roams Providence streets all orange and fierce-like, sitting places and peering into the depths of hipster hombres and all manner of skunks. I don’t think I would tickle a skunk though. Maybe I would, but only if the mood struck free.

I tell you this because the lemur on the internet turns out not to be a lemur at all. It’s a slow loris, and he seems to truly be one with the energy of the well-manicured fingers strumming his pits. Tickling is not a violent act, it is merely suggestive; a glimpse of the wellspring of that loveable infant glee that swoons and coo-coos at the barest touch. Not to be all prescriptive, but I remember a friend who took Special K once and found the too-muchness-of-the-world blowing his gourd, walkin’ hills left right and sideways proclaiming the gospel of our lady of the hustle. “The world is too much, the days are too big,” he yammered clutching the nape of my stolen-goods-store sweater. Big—odd quantity, a heavy sense of profundity laced with the intangibility of a day. I felt it too when he grabbed me, his oversize mittens an emblem of that holding us closest to earth; the sheer grip of those nearest and dearest who yearn to see us breathe wide as we rush towards somewhere but nowheres in particular, miss.

I digress—it’s what grounds us, those moments sitting back appreciating the endangered lorises love and awaken to their own inner wide-mouthed-smiles; one gentle tickle at a time. The fresh fresh weeks of a first-year are dazzling and afraid, of you and of themselves in their interlocking webs of wisdom, flip cup nirvana and anal sex lubed up with shampoo bottles your parents left you from their hotel stay as your roommate comes back to a sud-laced doorknob. It’s all relative to a point—the all-together-boom boom-boom-mazel-tov-it’s-gonna-be-a-good-night reverberating through your domepieces may signal it, but more so than that it’s the flood of new folks, epiphanies and new adventures that will strangle you to an appreciation of the in-between moments – the ones a little less easily caught up in a facebook thread to your home friends or a momentary snapshot that you just can’t find the right adhesive for. Like shucking the sweetest juice from a Ratty grapefruit, or tossing skittles into rain puddles to see the colors transform.

Staring into the loris’ eyes, you begin to wonder the depths of his moment and the intangible rush he must feel as he desires and craves nothing but the barest tease. I’m still rambling a bit, but we all have cats and dogs and squirrels and all manner of cuddlies to adore and come home to—the trick is to stay with it all the while and appreciate the tickle when it comes. It’ll be great, it’ll bring life, it’ll even wash away the sins of missed decisions and foibles a-plenty as time trucks the barest Providence snow upon freshly hilled heads. There’s plenty of worship to be paid at the altar of product—of what is to come, of what’s next after next after that other thing. In the ends we make for ourselves, the whole Brown deal is a lot more about the process anyway; so be the loris, take it slow, and smile at that bug eyed freak mounting Marcus Aurelius in the cool midnight hour. Let your almonds scatter wide, wide, wide as your zephyr bumps—these hopefully won’t be the best days of your life, but they are big and your tickle bounty runs infinite.