Monthly Archives: November 2001

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i noticed today how the whites of my fingernails look like crowns and how this one girl in my history class has a perfect 45-degree profile. the bottom line of the angle extends from ear to chin, the top from ear to the tip of her forehead; you can imagine both extrapolated into the air. this gives the impression that her face, tangential to both lines, is looking out from the jaws of an alligator. or, as she’s generally unsmiling, from the inside of a bonnet: she looks like the kind of person who would have been burned as a witch for being judgemental and insufferably disdainful of unenlightened christian customs.

this kind of observation can be very distracting. luckily the topic in history today was interesting, for the most part, altho my bitterness towards the prof sometimes obstructs my concentration. (how do i stop taking everything so personally?)

hung out w/ jolly some, lunched w/ co|motion (“get a new name!” insists ross,) then went to film, where we discussed the three straight hours of “reality” television we had to watch last nite. as i hadn’t seen any tv for months, the huge screen, stereo sound, commericials and general idiocy left me feeling dazed and displaced. as though my brain had been yanked out, used as a whoopie cushion, and given back to me, deflated.

but the discussion was fun. i talk too much. bad habit. bad.

dinner w/ ben and rob was actually decent indian food. i still have the taste in my mouth, which is a pleasant change. certain thoughts keep cycling thru my mind: housing for next year (on campus or off?); publications; copenhagen; the onion; housing for next year (should i be approaching people to block w/?); summer jobs (i need one, and it has to pay); housing (ben says no one knows who i am. should this bother me?) …

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more joy today, brought upon by a combination of sunlight and scholastic serendipities. i got my stat midterm back (passed! which, as i’m pass/fail, is all i needed to do; plus i was relieved to find myself squarely in the middle 50% of the class) and took my polisci exam w/o any serious problem. got back the paper from that class too, the third and last to be returned of the hell-papers i wrote in the week prior to break. out of the blue, i got the best grade of the three on that one, which i composed while half-hysterical. i don’t recall even having a brain by the time i got to that one: i was lost among scattered papers and overturned books; my eyes glowed faintly from three straight days of staring down a monitor.

apparently that’s a recipe for success. go figure.

anyway, i was doubly-giddy, feeding off of philo’s energy (clean almost 2 weeks: the change is remarkable) and the b.’s smiles over lunch. i trailed b. to his room where we argued about religion and the fate of judaism and the holocaust and by the time he mentioned israel i’d had enough. these are all subjects i can’t discuss objectively, much as i perhaps would like to. periodically we interrupted our debate to be nice to each other, to laugh, or in his case to cough violently — he’s still ill — but i still left feeling slightly defensive. enough of my happiness was left to carry me home to eat dinner and read history. ha! american politics likes me even if american history doesn’t. maybe i can salvage that american studies major yet.

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i know i’ve written a lot today and shouldn’t write more, but i just had to share some joy. i bumped into liz h. in parrish and we began one of those aquaintance chats. we’re in co|motion together, we know a number of the same people and like the same things, but for whatever reason we’ve never spent extensive time together. well! today was the day. sorelle appeared and the three of us walked over to where there were nice comfy chairs and tables you can’t put your feet on and had hilarious, occasionally soul-searching conversations. it was one of those priceless moments that make you glad you’re in college after all (and have better things to do than homework.)

other people kept coming by too: another liz from co|motion, a freshman who’s much nicer than the three of us (she said her roommate voted their houseplant to be more evil than she); garret, who has a funny radio show sunday nites and who almost decided to come to denmark w/ me; one of sorelle’s friends who faded into the couch for a while and then left (she says he speaks for 20 minutes a week and you just have to be there when it happens); stefanie who appeared before and after her radio show and who chided us for neither listening nor coming to visit; cadelba, sorelle’s roomie, w/ stefanie, altho she disappeared; and louisa, who waded most confidently into our wavelength. at the end a whole crowd appeared and we dispersed, promising to meet again.

one of the more serious-ish topics was that sorelle and liz both agreed that before they knew me they found me intimidating (??). i was skeptical and they couldn’t explain. apparently i also roll my eyes a lot. [note: naturally i wasn’t the only one put under the microscope; i just feel less comfortable writing the observations we made about the two of them.] we talked about saturday’s Class Matters workshop and co|motion in general and sarcasm and coping mechanisms and being mean and at points i laughed so hard i couldn’t breathe. an excellent way to spend an afternoon.

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i had a rather bizarre dream in which society was a group of giants from which young women had to escape. escape itself involved a long-drawn out and complex process of tricking the giants, confusing them, and finally slipping free. i was sort of one of the women, sort of watching; the problem was that i felt sorry for my giant and we had a good relationship. the consequence was that i was helping him catch me and he was helping me run away.

odd.

i went to sleep at 10 last nite w/ a migraine. it was my second in three weeks, which is unusual for me, but which makes sense considering the emotional turbulence. i guess my body was just exhausted. have you noticed how ridiculous depression seems to you when you’re not depressed? that’s how rational people react to you when you’re driving yourself crazy. even if they’ve been depressed, they simply can’t recall how it felt; they can’t empathize. yet when you are depressed, you can’t imagine being in that healthy, rational, one-with-the-world state of mind, and when they are, neither can they. it’s a paradox: no one healthy can really help anyone depressed. certain approaches work better than others, i guess. the best, in my experience, is just getting the other person to go to sleep, if you can manage that w/o condescension (nothing is worse than hearing “go sleep it off.”) sleep is a great dissembler. when you awake, you have an instant of choice where you can return to your previous state or try something wholly new. it’s an opportunity waking life rarely affords you.

yesterday was my brother’s 21st birthday. jesochrist. he has a fantastic way of dealing w/ depression: he turns it to anger. when we both lived at home, i remember vividly how he’d march upstairs, slam the door, and pace his room, muttering curses i could occasionally make out through my closed door across the hall. sometimes he’d throw things. sometimes he’d spend hours writing Rants, which were scathing, often funny, & extraordinarily long. but when he emerged, in general, he was fine. anger is easier to work off, i think.

here’s hoping this coming week involves neither anger nor depression. i’ll deal w/ everything logically and calmly, and there will be no disappointments too overwhelming. i will keep perspective. not that i can truly remember how shitty i’ve felt off and on the last few weeks (see above,) but i’m reasonably sure it sucked.

happy november, everybody.

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a thought: autumn is an adolescent, carelessly dropping her clothes in bright messy piles. nature, like a true mother, comes sighing in, picks everything up, takes it away, and returns some time later to reoutfit her ungrateful daughter with everything freshly-laundered-green and new.

i’m not really a fan of fall.

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mmm, that post-party dehyrdration headache that has nothing to do w/ alcohol — didn’t touch a drop last nite — that’s more like the residual shock of moving from a place crammed w/ people — if i ever make a movie, it will include a scene from a party in which the music is suddenly muted and you can watch the dancers w/o the distraction of the beat — to a place as solitary as a bedroom. i’d say the formal was a success. scores of kids turned out, everyone playing along, either bearing masks on sticks or having them stringed to their faces, in old prom outfits and in some cases perfectly-coiffed hair. my mom had urged me to get my hair done; if i hadn’t been by myself in the city yesterday, i might have. but there are certain things you can do alone, and thankfully for me watching films is one of those (saw man who wasn’t there before heading back to skool: interesting and in a way incredible; i still need to write my review;) but changes in appearance are better attempted in the presence of others. just in case you need reassurance.

for the first half of the ball — and it felt like a ball, w/ all the girls in their bright flouncy dresses — i danced w/ rob, ben’s roommate, boisterous and sweating energetically in a stunning, dishelved suit. we hadn’t talked in a while so he filled me in on his recent on-the-wagon life in full volume. people assumed we were dates, which was fine, as my date was busy w/ the turntables, wearing one of ross’s tuxes and a yellow ruffled shirt and a mask rebecca had made, covered w/ Smarties.

oh dear, i have to go meet the crew and then the cast; then study for polisci; then meet Co|Motion. well, i’ll finish at some point. suffice it to say, it was a good time and i’m glad i went.

… [2:30 addition:] rehearsal went by quicker than expected. i have some time to breathe before i start memorizing facts about the supreme court.

the crew meeting threw me a little. our producer who hadn’t been to the masquerade asked us all how it was. immediately i said “fun” — no one else spoke. once i leaned back, the other girls chimed rather different opinions. mostly they objected to the techno and the fact that they could count the number of black songs on one hand. one person said, “hiphop’s more relatable than house; everyone can dance to hiphop.” weird for me b/c of course i noted there was a lot of techno (as per SAC instructions) but the lack of rap or r&b didn’t occur to me. i felt the need to defend the party some, quietly, b/c, as always, the people who made it happen are close to me, and b/c i enjoyed it. but i also felt guilty for not processing musical alienation.

makes me conscious of being the white girl.

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i’m at penn, staying in at becca’s b/c she’s out and i’m tired; but instead of sleeping immediately i’m roaming the web; and having come across jackie’s new four thing meme, i thought i’d try it out. i’m omitting parts b/c that’s my perogative. and making it three b/c i like the number three, it’s easier than four, and anyway that’s my perogative too. feel free to adopt and adapt — that’s the point of these things. the cred goes to jackie.

three things you’d eat on the last day of your life:

a cinnabon. w/ my fingers.

cheesecake

ben and jerry’s chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream (not all three at once tho. major sugar overload)

three least favorite cds in your collection:

the paul simon concert in the park cd my brother gave me for my birthday a couple years ago. love s&g, can’t stand p.s. on his own. don’t know. that counts as 2 since it’s a double cd; &

one of the later indigo girls cds i never liked, like nomads, indians.

three movies that made you think:

happiness

breaking the waves

pi

three celebrities you’d have sex with:

jim carrey

ani difranco

edward norton

songs that frequently get stuck in your head:

independence day (ani)

bitter (jill sobule)

silent all these years (tori)

things you’d like to learn:

how to play the guitar

how to get along w/ people when i first meet them

how to write good papers

beverages you drink frequently:

diet coke

chai

water

tv shows from when you were a kid:

get smart

simpsons

inspector gadget

(my addition, in honor of the last couple weeks)four comfort books you reread in times of stress:

haroun and the sea of stories

harry potter

the hours

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shit i’m in a hurry. but quickly:

1) lana made vagina monologues!! oh happiness, oh joy

2) heading off into the city to see angels and an ecstatic tho exhausted becca who says this is the best production ever put on of anything ever (and you know she’s right 78% of the time)

3) why is this my second numbered list in a row? sheisse

4) ben’s sick and he’s djing the party tomorrow nite — which is not so good — but his links page kicks ass: check it out. and he’s not too bad either.

5) it’s a beautiful day

6) had a fun lunch w/ mariah

and, well, yeah. i feel better. i’ve felt better since yesterday afternoon. i’ll bet i can make it a full day of good feeling — hell, maybe two! my mom fedexed me my prom dress and she has now told me i’m special in 50 different ways, thru email, in writing, and over the phone, and see 5) and see 1) and see 6) and see 2) and 7) i’m going to copenhagen (well, w/ any luck) and everything’s going to be fine. no really. it is.

oh! and if anyone’s interested in joining me at the new coens brothers movie, the man who wasn’t there, at the ritz 5 at 214 walnut at 12:30 tomorrow afternoon, i’d welcome the company. or you could just send mental warmth or something; that’d work too.

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1) comments are working again! so you can react now to the fact that:

2) i am a good consumer. i bought two cds today WHOLESALE: one mckeown and one phil ochs. something moved me. there i was at borders — there were so many options — and i needed distraction so immediately and so thoroughly — and i had the money (well, sort of). i went for it. because:

2) after a short period of calm, i broke down again. i went to talk to my history prof about my paper. i went in confident, explaining that i felt like my trouble was a common, valid one: the class as a whole did badly because although the assignment was vague, he wanted something specific. this was exacerbated by my personal problem of having tried to write three papers in three days — a ridiculous and futile enterprise, as i now recognize. he nodded at each of these statements and then explained each away, continuing to nod and smile as i felt my voice grow increasingly sticky in my throat. then with a final flourish he asked, “is this your first history class?”

no, i managed to choke out: i took history last semester. he said a few more things i don’t remember, asking periodically, “you see what i mean?” i nodded and nodded and nodded my way out the door. barely out of the building before i was in tears and not long before i ran into lousia. i threw myself on her and

4) lousia comforted me. she had her own breakdown on monday; she gave me some off the cuff reassurances, enuf to help me compose myself. then we lunched and talked and walked, going over her problems and mine. i just needed to verbalize, to get it out to someone and she was there.

it worked: i feel somewhat better. now i have distillation on, which so far is certainly worth the label price. my mom is fed-exing me my dress for the formal this weekend. tomorrow nite i’m going into ohilly to see becca’s production of angels in america, which she’s been driving herself crazy making happen. hopefully i will sufficiently lulled and distracted. hopefully i’ll even stumble across some sort of long-term cure, so that this bipolar unstability finally stops.