2 June 2008

traveling through the wilderness

Being home is like slipping into comfortably worn pyjamas with something unknown left in the pockets. Subtle differences--a new outdoor thermometer--and huge ones--the burnt husk of the house down the street, chimney standing tall and confident while the roof collapses around it. Walking up to the library, I was startled to find that they finally began construction on the combined library/school building they've been discussing for years now.

I told my dad yesterday, as I always do when I get home, that I'd love to see any new pocketwatches he'd picked up (he repairs and resells them as a hobby). It was sad to learn that he hasn't had the time lately, too busy with work and work travel and dealing with his brother's estate.

1 June 2008

nothing clings like ivy

Up early, graduated. Said goodbyes, still not grasping what they meant; finished packing; left. Thought, in the car, about how I will not be going back.

At home, went for a swim with parents. I'm really out of shape, but hopefully by summer's end I won't be.

And, just like that, it's over. I could tell you about the honeysuckle along the side of the road as we drove, or the white rose that was pinned to my robe, or the blimp that was our senior engineering prank, but I'm too worn out.

17 May 2008

lehre doch mich

I wanted to see a free afternoon concert in Philly, so I took Ben with me and we made a day of it. Walked up the Schuylkill and around the Waterworks; past the art museum construction; went into the new prints and drawings annex and saw three small but good exhibits (Ansel Adams, 20th century kimonos, Modern Design, with the requisite Eames chair). Lunch farther up Fairmont at Zorba's, then a visit to Book Haven (which is to say, we paid homage to Holly, the resident sociable, fluffy cat). Somewhat astonishingly, I managed to not buy any books.

A stroll through the Book Festival; gelato; sitting in Rittenhouse Square watching dogs. The tail end of one set at the Festival, a brief jaunt to Whole Foods, the first chunk of another set. Then we caught our train home after a pleasant day, almost falling asleep on the ride home.

("This is so pretty!" he kept saying to me, continually surprised at the loveliness of Philadelphia. I just nodded, slightly smug but also enjoying sharing the city I've grown so fond of.)

13 May 2008

what do you do with a sentimental heart?

Sleeping alone most nights, I curl up and stretch out and curl up again, waiting for sleep to notice me. My own fault, I know, for sleeping in these past few days, but it is such a luxury to sleep, and keep sleeping, without guilt.

Sleep-without-guilt is not possible for the moment, actually, since I have picked up my take-home exam and have been (unsuccessfully) banging my head against FFTs and DFTs for much of the evening. There comes a point when I do more harm than good, making myself sick of the material without making progress, so I can't work on it now in my current sleep-seeking state.

(Yesterday evening I was bored, so I decided to make a dress, and I did. It turned out well, aside from some sloppiness around the zipper that I decided I was too lazy to fix, but the weather is chilly and I don't know when I will be able to wear it.)

(Zooey Deschanel sounds to me like a cut-rate Jenny Lewis but I've been listening to the She & Him album on loop anyway. Her voice works well with the arrangements.)

8 May 2008

you turn me on, i'm a radio

This time of stasis, feeling finished but not. With no need to wake up I turn off my alarm, sleeping later and later with each day. I lose track of time, forget to go to the dining hall. When I do, the people who are there surprise me, everyone thrown together without class times to keep us apart.

"The last...", I keep thinking. The last exam period, the last load of laundry I'll do in these unfortunate machines, the last time I'll run to Hicks, late.

An after-dinner snack, reheated noodles with jar pesto. I open the microwave door early, press the STOP/CLEAR button twice. It blinks at me, its poker face as good as ever. Top the noodles with grated cheese and walnuts; devour stretched on my bed, reading (not working).

Time is infinite, I can always do it later.

Time is short, already gone. I don't want it back, but I do wish I knew where it went.

3 May 2008

herr, unser herrscher

Suzy pinned on my "I am a senior" corsage before the chorus concert--I didn't know how. ("Cotillion," she said, and I laughed.) Since our rehearsal on Wednesday--the best he's ever had with a college chorus, John told us--I've had the songs running through my head. The man singing the Evangelist was incredible, and the other soloists, students here, were all amazing. During the concert I found myself smiling when I wasn't supposed to, but I couldn't help it.

And then it was over, and I realized that classes were over, too, for good. In a week E90 will be over(ish); in two weeks, I'll be done.

Stayed up late and slept in, feeling like one of my cats on a lap. Right now I'm baking cookies instead of working. With the realization that classes are over has come a misplaced confidence that I need to do no more work. So we'll see how that goes.

28 April 2008

take my hand

Walking back to Mertz from a concert in the damp night, Hemingway darts out at me from the wet bushes. I squat to pet him, and after a little while he puts his front paws up on my legs, then climbs into my lap, so I pick him up. He purrs as we walk to the bench outside Mertz, where we sit for a while. He curls up on my lap and I pet him; when there is a lull, he reaches out for my arm imperiously. I briefly consider taking him up to my room, but his paws are wet and dirty and he would want to leave before long. Also, he is shedding like crazy, covering my coat with cat fur. My book falls to the ground with a bang and he starts, tail puffing, but I soothe him. I pet him until he is dry, and sleeker. Then he is abruptly bored, jumps off my lap onto the bench, then the ground. I say goodnight and we part ways.

"He must remember me," I think as I walk inside. His eagerness in greeting me and the willingness with which he jumped into my lap both speak (to me) of prior acquaintance, although I concede that I do not think like a cat.

So nice, though, to spend time with one.

18 April 2008

he said i'd be better dead than

Just back from the history field trip (Eastern State and Vietnamese food with Tim Burke: what could be better?), I got a call from Kit. "My parents are here. Want to come sing?" Of course I did.

It was beautiful, amazing. The night was warm enough that my T-shirt and short pants were sufficient; we stood in a Clothier alcove and then in the belltower and it just worked. There were a couple songs in particular--"Mingulay Boat Song", "Grey Funnel Line"--where the harmonies came together and it felt exultant. There is nothing more amazing to me than hearing my voice mesh spontaneously, perfectly with others'.

(As they were heading out, Mair said to Kit, "she's got a beautiful voice" and that made me happier still.)

08 April 2008

give me more time to pray

I am staring at the beautiful woodblock print on my wall, thinking: Last semester, when I was taking printmaking, I had a justified creative outlet. It was a credit; I was allowed to spend time working with my hands, doing something calming like carving wood.

This semester, all time given to physical rather than mental projects (less and less as the semester continues) seems to be stolen, furtive, wrong. I cannot escape into it because always, in the back of my head, is the knowledge that there are other things I ought to be doing.

Going home for almost five days wrought havoc with my sense of time, my sense of what I've been doing, my sense of what's done. I've forgotten everything but the fact that I have so much, so much work to do before I can relax and stop thinking.

03 April 2008

is how it falls

One of my few clear memories of my father's father, who died when I was six or seven, is of driving with him in heavy rain. He told me that he always hated to use the highest windshield wiper setting; that it seemed frantic.

When I drive in the rain, I always think of him.

Helen and I are driving home for the funeral of his second son, my uncle. Soon after we depart, it begins to rain, and then harder. My windshield wipers, in need of replacement, flap against the windshield but still remove water. I weather my least favorite driving experience, driving on a wet road in the dark between a semi and a jersey barrier, the semi's wheels throwing up spouts of water that fall into my field of vision. The headlights of oncoming cars rise like dozens of tiny suns in the mist thrown up by their predecessors.

We leave at 7; a good compromise, I think as we leave, between rush hour traffic and getting home before my father goes to bed.

Aside from the deteriorating condition of my windshield wipers, things are going well. Then, just south of Baltimore, the windshield wipers start to work less well...

And then the alternator dies and the car loses power.

I'm in a central lane on I-95, one lane of heavy traffic to my right and two lanes of lighter traffic to my left. The car is rapidly losing speed, slowing even more quickly when I, unbelieving, hit the gas. My sister, next to me, is asleep.

I yell at my sister to wake up, somehow pull through the lighter lanes of traffic to my left, and park on the left shoulder, breathing hard. I turn the car off and the hazard lights on; call my parents, AAA. AAA says they should have someone there within the half-hour; my parents will drive up from D.C. to bring us home.

Half an hour passes. The battery is dying and the hazard lights are getting dimmer and dimmer. I call AAA again; they still say half an hour. I'm beginning to feel the cold; Helen, as always, is immune. My parents are half an hour away.

Parents arrive first. I run to their car, shivering. Tow truck follows shortly thereafter. It is almost eleven. We follow it to an auto repair place, embark upon a minorly epic quest for a bathroom that concludes non-optimally, and then head for home.

We get home after midnight. The trip has taken five and a half hours, more than twice its usual duration. My car, we all agree, is probably done for.

The alternator died; it was not my fault; the car is now fixed. I'll be driving back up in it on Monday, very carefully.

27 March 2008

satellites ahead, so hold on

On Monday I heard from my Peace Corps recruiter that I have been accepted.

Today I put my name in for a position somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa working in the IT field. If I get this posting, I will be leaving in October and gone for a little more than two years.

Excited, distracted, not really scared. The future is determined.

23 March 2008

i won't dance, madam, with you

I do not often get actions stuck in my head. It seems to me to be an inherently strange thing. But, for the past few days, the feeling of sitting on the floor and then being pulled to my feet by someone standing has been resonating through me. I'm not sure why, or how to describe it. That particular action is not one I perform often, preferring to stand under my own power.

17 March 2008

i'll be back in the spring of the year

Before going to sleep I finished reading Forster's A Room With A View. My dreams were full of Edwardian restraint and (quite inexplicably) werewolves and vampires.

I woke with the certain knowledge that I was sick, throat feeling as though it's coated with cement and nose like a block of wood. What a strange and unpleasant way to start the second half of the semester.

16 March 2008

what it was i left behind

This is the playlist I've been listening to the most.

8 March 2008

i wish we could still pretend you're near

And so home again, back on the loveseat in the sunroom with a cat on my lap, feeling as though I never left. My father leaves for Africa (for the third time recently) tomorrow morning, so I haven't had much time with him. He and my mother and my youngest sister will be in the Philly area at some indeterminate future time for college visits for the latter; perhaps I'll be able to spend some time with him then.

I've been feeling burned out at school, apathetic about work but still hostile towards the idea that I'll have to leave, very soon. Listening to a lot of Pink Martini after an excellent concert last Tuesday, a twinge of memory just reminding me that the music used to be badly associated but is now simply pleasant. Things I haven't thought about in a long time.

2 March 2008

if you want to stand

The visit to Mair and David was interesting, informative, and generally excellent. I am hopeful about the future.

Kirby the cat regulated my sleep there, inspecting me when I went to bed; waking me at six to go outside; curling up next to me at nine and remaining in the bed even after I left it. So nice, to be spending time with cats.

My car is still broken broken broken--the gaskets I got were necessary but not sufficient, so I have to find another one. It's making me tense, to have spent so much time on this and not to have finished it.

But now I'm catching up on the work I haven't done and nibbling on the cheese I've been eating slowly since the beginning of the semester, and things are pretty good.

29 February 2008

all i ever wanted was just to come in from the cold

Spent two and a half hours reassembling my car with new water pump gaskets. Came home miserable, cold, and filthy with grease; took a shower and stood there until the warmth soaked through the freezing. I'm still mildly filthy with grease.

A perfectly horrible time--certainly up there with my worst experiences. By the end, I was shivering violently and couldn't feel my fingers; I dropped a nut into the guts of the car and walked over to the hardware store, pathetic, without my wallet. The nice guy there took pity on me and let me have the nut I needed free.

25 February 2008

i wish i was

A moderately productive day (disassembled part of my car, called around to find the part, will reassemble tomorrow; then made cookies to balance the masculine and feminine, and also because I need something to eat for breakfast) leaves me feeling useless, lost, fragmented. I scoured my hands but there's still grease in the cracks. They look like animated stone.

As soon as I returned to campus I felt as though I had fallen apart, back to the reality of unfinished and uninteresting and uncomprehended work. Now more than ever I have the distinct feeling that I'm just killing time between now and when I'll become a real person.

My relationship with loneliness is such a strange thing, both appreciative and resentful. When I don't have it I covet it; when I do have it I find it insufficient, or wish for another flavor, never satisfied. I think about the eradication of loneliness even as I know that it's not something I'll have, that the loneliness will always seep through the cracks and return to me, and even that is a little comforting.

24 February 2008

when the time comes to say goodbye

A brief weekend in New York (got there Friday afternoon, back at Swat early Sunday afternoon) to see the Magnetic Fields. The concert was worth it and then some. Stephin Merritt is like a cross between a basset hound and Cole Porter, witty and mopey and fantastic. They were excellent live, funny and awkward by turns. I'm definitely planning to see them again at the first opportunity.

The rest of the weekend was good fun, and involved a ton of walking and a fair amount of delicious food. Transitioning back to Sharples will be a nasty shock.

16 February 2008

sorry to tread on your patience, my dear

As a general rule, after I've met people but before I know them, I have a hard time picking them out of a crowd. I identify them by their hair, which means I'm better at learning girls, since women's hair styles are more distinctive.

Sometimes I wonder if other people have the same problem, and if I'm more memorable because of my unusual coloring, or if I notice coloring and hair because they're what make me distinct.

Sometimes I wonder why I can't get to sleep, even though it is past my bedtime.

Sometimes I look at the light on my hands, from the computer screen, and imagine that I'm looking at a black-and-white line drawing, meticulous and neat.

10 February 2008

the fundamental things apply

Laundry day, so I'm wearing my one long-sleeved dress with knee-socks and boots. ("I love it when you wear dresses," Lauren says. "It's like you're cross-dressing.") The one thing I wasn't counting on, and which the adorable pigtails my hair is in don't help with at all, is the weather, freezing cold and the incredible wind. I walk up the hill, the wind ripping my dress away from my legs to expose bare skin. I feel as though I'm breathing frost.

The destination is worth it, though: dinner with Lauren and Sally, to discuss living together next year. It's very strange to me, to have two good options in front of me (the Peace Corps and living in Philly with friends) and to not be the one deciding between them. It all hinges on my acceptance into or rejection fron the Peace Corps, which at this point I have little control over.

It's also very gratifying, to know that no matter what happens, the future is good.

3 February 2008

a strange one

I can't sleep, of course. My own fault, really, for not getting out of bed until eleven (but it's so luxurious, to lounge indefinitely, glancing cheekily at the clock creeping towards noon before turning over and closing my eyes again).

So I read, for a while, and then give up and return to the computer and the endless Internet. A happy e-mail from my sister; pictures my father took in Tunis; unread RSS feeds. In the space of a moment a headache comes, feeling like someone hooked my temples together with elastic and now they're pulling in towards each other.

ITunes has loved me lately, giving me perfect music (last night, chatting with Mary, the soundtrack from Dr. Zhivago; tonight, Leonard Cohen). Things are pretty good, even when I can't sleep.

27 January 2008

i feel like i'm in a falling elevator

It's before midnight but I'm in bed, hoping against hope that my body will cooperate and go to sleep at a reasonable hour. My room is dark, and the only things that my senses can tell me about are the smell of cloves from the clove-orange hanging in my window and the sound of the pictures on my walls, slowly unsticking themselves.

The dry winter air makes them curl and they come up, a corner at a time, until they're hanging by a thread, until they fall.

My hands are cold (my bed, by the window, is cold), and I warm them on my stomach, ice never seeming to thaw.

A picture loses itself and falls onto the bed. I stick it back up, finding its place in the darkness, and wish I had something other than myself to wrap my arms around.

21 January 2008

not in the tower of song

"I was born with the gift of a golden voice", Leonard Cohen rasps, and I feel still, like the music has reached into my chest and calmed my heart.

I left my first class of the semester with a sense of elation. My favorite professor, people I enjoy being in class with, a great rapport. Hopefully the classes tomorrow will leave me similarly exhilirated.

I've been thinking a lot about self-fulfilling prophecies. I can't figure out if I indulge in them or not.

15 January 2008

came by with a lock of your hair

The problem with sleeping until noon, as I have been and relish doing, is that it means I don't want to go to sleep, ever. And this is a problem because, for me, after a certain point (eleven or midnight), the only thing that I do at night is wait for sleep.

I go into my room at night, having not entered it after getting dressed, and see that it's cluttered. I'll fix it tomorrow, but I never do, because the productive time of day is morning and I spend that time sleeping. In the evening, whether or not I've actually done anything, I feel like I'm finished for the day, that now I can relax.

That said, tonight's not-asleep-yet reading was Craig Thompson's Carnet de Voyage, picked up on a whim at the library this afternoon. I had never heard of him nor seen his work, but I was sucked into the book, a facsimile of a travel journal he kept over the course of a few months and several countries. There's something satisfying for me about reading a book in which there's no plot message that the author's trying to send, but just a recounting of experiences. It made me think about what I should be doing with my journal. Perhaps I'll start trying to draw again.

13 January 2008

on that midnight train to georgia

The cabin where my family stays for the weekend doesn't contain too much, but it does have a surfeit of beds. Five single beds on the freezing second floor, and a double bed and a cot below mean that we had selection when choosing where to sleep. On the first night my sisters and I all slept upstairs, and all had trouble sleeping. On the second night, I opt for the dubious comfort and indubitable warmth of the cot. I drag it so that my head is almost in the fireplace, and watch the fire as it burns down. Used tissues lie on the floor by my bed like dead moths; periodically I get up to throw them into the fire.

The fire burns down to the embers and I am still nowhere near sleep. I am thinking--and how could I avoid it?--about the future. I'm torn between two potential future selves, and I'm letting someone else choose who I will become. A cowardly action, I know, not to decide for myself, but without relinquishing that power I would never be able to give up my security, even for a few years.

The primary choice is between going away (the Peace Corps, two years volunteering in another country and then...living abroad?) and staying home (a year of volunteering in Philadelphia, then starting a life in the U.S.). I think that I can best describe the difference as an active as opposed to a passive sort of caring. In the former, I seek situations in which I can help; in the latter, I help when the situations find me.

There are, as always, other options. I'm trying not to think too hard about them--too many options overwhelm me. I could live in Europe for a few years, learn a new language, work in jobs with no job security or benefits, play the poor student. Maybe make a life there.

I could get an engineering job (interesting ones exist) and actually use the degree I've spent four years and a lot of my parents' money on. I could buy a house in the country and try to earn my living doing....something else.

So many options, but what I'm fixated on now is building a house of my own, for myself, and filling it with beautiful things. I want very badly not to feel that that's wrong or bad; not to feel that it's a waste, that I should be doing something more. I don't want to believe that it's the most selfish thing in the world to buy beautiful things for myself while I could be doing something good for other people. There's a part of me that scolds whenever I dream about my future home, and more than anything I wish that it would go away and fear the day that it does.

10 January 2008

you were right about everything

Sleep begets sleep begets more sleep, half-noticed days bleeding into each other. Many days I do not leave the house, spending half my day blissfully oblivious in sleep (dreams strange but comforting) and the other half on the loveseat or at the dining room table, with my computer or my sewing machine or the cat and a book.

Last night I didn't fall asleep until four. Everyone else in the house was in bed by ten, leaving me alone. It felt strangely like the days, when they are all at work or school, except that I did not have the rarely-used option of leaving the house to console me. There is nothing to do in Arlington at ten P.M. on a Wednesday, and still less to do at midnight, or two A.M.

I look forward to returning to Swat, through the haze of lazy inertia that pervades the house. At the same time, I would not particularly mind staying like this for a long, long time...

4 January 2008

all i ever wanted

Yesterday, into the city. The walk to the train station, feeling the cold on my cheeks like sandpaper. Pulling my hat lower, my scarf higher.

Ansel Adams at the Corcoran, light and dark. So much expressed in elegant monochrome. Standing and staring, full of awe but not completely comprehending it.

Then to the National Gallery, seeing the huge Calder, my favorite piece of art in this city. The Hopper exhibit. Transfixed, enraptured, looking at his colors. Trying to understand how he did it. Looking more, this color or that seemed out of place, like it shouldn't work, but holding all the colors in my mind, they still did.

At the Botanic Garden, strolling through climes, jungle to desert to rainforest all on the same short path.

Walking around the Capitol, turning down a street, abruptly out of the tourist district. Two people walking their dogs off-leash on the lawn of the Library of Congress. A man raking leaves in his yard.

Back around the Capitol, wandering through the grounds, a hawk sitting sedately in an oak tree. Circling, staring up at it; it pays me no mind. There are more important things to consider, like which fat squirrel should be dinner.

The Reflecting Pool in front of the Capitol has frozen over, seagulls standing perplexedly on the ice and tourists taking each other's pictures in front of the building, in front of the Mall, in front of the ridiculous fountain statuary.

Back down the Mall on the other side, naming the buildings as I passed. The sinuous curves of the Indian Museum, the austere blockiness of Air & Space, the almost-regrettable modernity of the Hirshhorn, the closed-for-lack-of-funding Arts & Industries building (my favorite). Ducking into the Castle for hot chocolate before braving the cold again.

1 January 2008

grow up and blow away

Since coming home I have adopted my cats' schedule, sleeping until noon and then loafing around the house, idly working on projects or reading or playing on the computer. Strangely, I'm not stir-crazy yet.

Last night I sat in front of a fire with a cat on my lap, chatted with old friends, watched The Thin Man into the new year. I watched the movie mostly to see the crossword-famous dog, but I was quite taken with it. Powell and Loy have an adorable, playful chemistry that's a joy to watch.

I think that the idea of a New Year's resolution is silly: if there's something I want to change, it makes no sense to wait until an arbitrary date.

This year has been a good one, overall. I made a few changes, created a comfortable and welcoming space in which to live, drew friends closer. I grew into myself, and accepted the idea of maintaining my state of alone/not-alone-ness, even beginning to convince myself that it was my idea.

And now there are two loaves of sourdough rising, a rosemary and a cranberry-walnut, and I believe they need my attention.

25 December 2007

in excelsis deo

Merry Christmas.

23 December 2007

we sing of a maiden that is makeles

Waiting for my grandparents at the Kennedy Center, I break away from the family chitchat and walk out onto the terrace. I walk the perimeter of the building in the warm wind, watching the city I claim but barely know. The ink-black river, the spotlight moon, the cathedral on the hill; the Capitol's spire, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial are all beautifully lit.

The wind rips my hair back from my face and I smile into it, singing.

20 December 2007

no doubt can cross her mind

The beach was fun. Weather was perfect--cool but not cold--and they had just dredged sand back up onto the beach so it was way higher than I've ever seen it. We walked right by the boardwalk because the dunes in front of it were a good foot higher than it was, obscuring our view.

The dredging meant that the beach was covered in fantastic shells, so we picked up sand dollars and whelks galore. Last time I remember dredging was a summer when I was maybe eight; we were there with my mother's family, and every time I looked down I found sand dollars, tiny bleached white ones as big as my fingernails.

Aside from my getting us lost in Sea Colony on a "shortcut", the trip went as hoped. We cooked dinners, made a fire, had baths (such a luxury for us), walked on the beach, lazed, and watched Bond.

And then I grabbed my stuff, picked up my sister, and went home. The day contained an immense amount of driving (left the beach at 9.15 and got home at 6.45, with packing breaks at Swat and Bryn Mawr and a lunch break at my grandparents'). But now I'm home and there's a cat sitting comfortably in my lap and nothing could be better.

9 December 2007

my failed north star

It's 1.30 A.M. and my power's out and I can't sleep. I have until the battery runs out and then I'm really in trouble, although maybe I'll be tired by then.

The power being out has made me think about things I don't want to think about. Richocheting between Mary's and Lauren's room so as not to interfere with their romantic lives, without a safe haven to retreat to, reminds me of what I don't have.

I'm done with one class; I still have a ton of work for another. Once I finish the problem set, two labs, and final project for the latter, I will be free to do...whatever I want.

It's a strange thought. I'm not sure I like it.

4 December 2007

and belongeth neither to me nor

I feel like this. I'm in a train station, watching the trains go by. Sometimes friends will join me; some say that they are glad to be waiting in the station and some say that they hate it, but they all leave gladly on the trains, and I'm still waiting.

By this point I know the train station by heart; I have made it my home. But that doesn't mean that I don't still hope that the next train will be mine.

25 November 2007

hear a sound like broken glass

Tuesday night, dinner and a movie with Chris (the movie, Heima, visually and audially and cinematographically beautiful). After the movie we walked quickly to 30th St. Station--my train was coming all too soon. Walking through the station we checked our watches and found that my train should be leaving at any moment. "I'd run if I were you," he said, so I did, boots slapping against the marble floor of the station. People turned to look at me then looked away--just another girl missing her train. I arrived at the top of the steps to the platform panting and walked on to the train. It departed as soon as I sat down.

Wednesday night, at home, my parents and youngest sister and I played one of our traditional super-silly games of Parcheesi. They always start out normally, develop into silly, petty rivalries ("well, you knocked my piece back last turn...") and degenerate into cheating around halfway through. I had to get up to rescue my laundry; my parting words were a warning not to move any of my pieces. When I returned to the board I found that my pieces were still in the same places...but all of theirs had moved to Home.

Thursday night, Thanksgiving with my dad's family, at our house. The turkey was my charge, and it turned out quite well. With my whole family cooperating agreeably, the work was not arduous.

Friday night, Thanksgiving at my mom's parents' house; we stayed late and watched Legally Blonde: The Musical (actually, to my surprise, quite good and very witty). Driving home from Baltimore, my father and I were the only people in the car who were awake.

Saturday night, dinner at our favorite Chinese place; then my sisters and I went to see Enchanted (again, surprisingly good). We got home at midnight; I finished my laundry and packed.

Now, back at Swat, I process my time at home, uploading pictures to my computer and putting it down in text. Tomorrow classes begin again and home will fade, preserved statically.

15 November 2007

and you were not thinking of me

When my alarm went off this morning it was pouring rain and, sleep-soaked, I turned it off and rolled over. By the time I actually left the dorm it was raining lightly, the campus glowing with the diffuse light of a gentle storm.

I spent all day in Hicks, constantly interacting with people. It's times like this that I remember what introversion is--so often I forget, spending time with friends whom I love and feel comfortable with. Since I left Hicks for dinner I've felt bone-weary, mentally and physically, just totally worn out from being "on" for so long. This sort of tired pulls forward thoughts that I usually (successfully) keep trapped in a back corner of my mind. I found myself staring at a reflection of myself, wondering what is wrong with me.

There's still so much left to do.

13 November 2007

some hallway where love's never been

The best descriptor of me, today, is "sleep-logged." It's as though I've been soaking in sleep and it has found its way into every cell of my body. When I move I carry its weight, and when I stop moving it's that much harder to start again, the inertia of the sleep pressing me down. I feel it in my back, in my head, on my shoulders. It knows when I think about work, and it leans on my mind, forcing out thought. It knows when I think about projects, printmaking, things that make me happier, and it smiles cruelly as it squeezes those thoughts out of my head.

7 November 2007

so long, so long, so long

There's a horrible clenched feeling in the pit of my stomach that returns to me whenever I do something stupid, and remains until I stop obsessing over whatever it was (usually a few days at the least).

Today, walking back from Old Tarble, where I had been carving a print block, I pulled my keys out of my pocket and heard a musical metallic tone. I assumed it was just my keys until I realized that I wasn't wearing a ring and didn't have one in my pocket, despite having clearly remembered putting one on (a favorite, a gold signet ring with no engraved initials) this morning.

I had taken it off so I wouldn't get paint on it and it had fallen out of my pocket when I pulled my keys out. When I retrieved it from the path outside my dorm it had been stepped on, repairable but not by me (since I don't work in gold and the sizing solder at the back had come open).

"Stupid," my brain tells me. "Stupid stupid stupid."

27 October 2007

put your arms around me

Yesterday after Mary had left on the bus I was alone in the city, at loose ends for several hours. The rain was steady, not hard, but it still soaked me as I walked towards cloud-shrouded skyscrapers, away from Old City. The Comcast building looked finished, its construction covered by benevloent mist, and the Liberty towers pierced the sky.

(Apparently last night the freshmen on my hall had some sort of collective meltdown. I hear snippets of their conversation as I make the periodic trips to the kitchen required to prepare my sourdough. So strange, to think--really think--that there are people who have less experience than I do; who know less than I do. It's something that usually registers in my brain but that I don't really know because it's such a hard concept for me to grasp.)

I amused myself in the city, stopping into Reading Terminal Market for dinner; wandering down Walnut towards Rittenhouse Square, stopping into shops full of things I could never (and would never) buy. In the rain and under the darkening sky, I slowly realize that over the past few years I have developed a strong attachment to this city. It's one where I could imagine spending the rest of my life.

(The freshman finally conclude, as I have, that the shock of coming to college has finally hit them; that they are in the process of adjusting to their lives. And I realize that I shouldn't feel more knowledgeable, shouldn't feel superior, because soon enough I will be in the same situation as they are.)

Last night ended with a concert--a fabulous concert. Jens Lekman at the First Unitarian Church. It was packed even from the opening band, and there was an air of excitement. Once he started playing (and he and his band put on a good show, lively and funny and brilliant in the diamond-sparkling sense) the atmosphere shifted. It felt like we were celebrating together, celebrating the unclear and ill-defined but completely understood idea that we would not be like this forever; might not even be like this tomorrow, but tonight, with good music and a crowd of like-minded people, we could enjoy ourselves no matter what was ahead.

And so we did.

21 October 2007

since he has crossed the bay of biscay

So it's like this:

Acadia was fantastic, amazing, fun--it is a credit to how much I like Kit and Mary (and how comfortable I feel with them) that my introversion did not kick in and make me run away during the six days we spent in each other's constant company.

But now I'm back at Swarthmore, already listless and dissatisfied. The mini-vacation of break reminded me that soon, so soon, I'll be done with this. Spending the night at Kit's parents' house (beautiful beautiful) reminded me that there are things I want to be, to become, that I am not.

I am ready to be finished with this place, with this self. I need change.

12 October 2007

please don't let me feel anything i cannot explain

I'm sitting at my computer, listening to a Kronos Quartet recording of Glass string quartets, and the fourth movement of his String Quartet No. 3 comes on, furious and pulsing and intense, and I freeze.

My heart is beating with the music. I can't move, nor do I want to.

I close my eyes and stay very still, vibrating in time with the persistent notes until the music suddenly

stops.

4 October 2007

behind grey walls, somewhere there's a soul

I am angry with a friend, for reasons that are faulted and blameless. Unusual for me, since I am usually very even-tempered.

It puts me in a strange, surly mood--I feel like a three-year-old who hasn't gotten what she wanted. I turn up the Richard Thompson music that's playing and gulp down a book, The Mistress's Daughter, in a few hours, gorging myself on emotional intensity.

It doesn't help--just as gorging myself on cookies doesn't satisfy my desire for sweets. I feel dissatisfied, ill-at-ease. I should be doing work (well, I should always be doing work) but I am unable to bring myself to do it. The to-do list on my whiteboard gets longer and longer and I watch it passively, wondering when it will collapse under its own weight.

2 October 2007

it's one more day on the grey funnel line

I leave the pool a little after nine, hair soaking but clean. It's blood drive day--my second time (and second opportunity, since up until May travel had prevented donation).

I pick up a paper and read it (exercising restraint and not starting the crossword) as I wait. The ploddingness of the process of donating is comforting to me. If the nurses seemed eager or avaricious I would become nervous, but they are apathetic towards me and towards my blood, and I find it strangely comforting. I lie on the table, hair tossed to one side, and close my eyes as the nurse sticks a needle into my arm. I find the tube taped to my arm much stranger than the needle itself. Watching my blood run down my arm in such an orderly manner is a strange thing.

With the blood flow to my arm restricted and in the bright light of Upper Tarble, my skin looks like white marble, and only the red line down my arm convinces me that it isn't.

I close my eyes and wait for the bag to fill.