FROM MCCABE (the swarthmore library): isn’t that tremendously exciting? i don’t know about you but i’m quivering w/ antici– [say it! say it!] –pation.
maybe that was too sarcastic. i’m tired. it’s hard to think straight: i’ve been inhaling soft scrub fumes all day. i woke up this morning at 7:15, alone, in a blue room that didn’t feel like mine, alone, looking at a corner that seemed IKEA-perfect: neutral-colored desk, see-thru wastebasket, grey computer inoffensive enuf to look like a catalogue decoy. alone. my mother had fallen asleep next to me and i knew she was planning on leaving earlyearly morning, but i expected to wake up when she did to say goodbye. i didn’t, and there are few things more depressing than being one person in a bed when you had hours before been one of two.
i just sat there for a while. i wrote. eventually i pulled out the book i was reading, got a bowl of dry cereal from the kitchen and curled up w/ my husband chair. that satisfied me for a while except that the book i was reading didn’t agree w/ me. it’s supposedly a scathing indictment of academia and political correctness; a satire; a sharp, perceptive character study. i just found it exhausting. worse, the author’s writing style reshaped my thoughts for the next couple hours — that always happens — and drove me mad. but the barnies awoke and we met, talked, planned. becca and i scrubbed.
right now the rest of them are grocery shopping. i was not so enthused. the prospect of abadoning myself
to the internet seemed much more appealing. i’ll rejoin them later. i wish i were happier. that’ll come later too, i guess, perhaps w/ the bunny, who has yet to hop onto the scene. or perhaps not. but somehow i doubt i’ll be terminally sad here. the smell of disinfectant and paint will fade. so will (perhaps concurrently) my memories of summer.