anne is raving about ikissyou, a website that circulated thru brynmawr last year while swatties were pissing themselves laughing over that allyourbase thing (remember that?) apparently “he was huge! he was on dave leno!” sez anne. i’m near-giddy. too much stress and repressing strong emotions, i guess.

trying to pick classes for next semester: topics in american cinema’s a must, but unfortunately it means i can’t take 20th russian history; either intro ed (pre req for the much-desired SOAN 039B: Conforming to NonConformity: How to Be a Leftist at Swat) or race ethnicity and public policy for african-americans; discourse analysis; women society politics. tentatively.

seeing Donnie Darko tonite. before that, must write yet another synopsis/outline, this one for film class (interaction between audience and performer in bergman’s Persona). yeah. no depressing stuff; i’m just not feeling it right now.

… also, meant to mention: anne and i had decided to think up a Project, some kind of activity-alternative to the mad clubbing and bacchinalean excesses that consume our waking hours (read: going home and spending far too much time online). she had an idea today to make an underground guide to copenhagen. you could take the pictures, she said. (my heart jumped through my shirt like an yapping dog; i hurriedly tucked it back in.) we could write blurbs, make it all zine-like. krissy also expressed interest. while the mp3 anne’d found of ikissyou set to techno music blared in the background, we nodded solemnly. sunday we start. ooh! *squeal, clap hands* project.

i spent eight hours straight in one chair, in front of one computer, typing one paper. while i was so absorbed an entire working day absorbed other people in other places. jamie and lana prepare for an ani evening at 9:30. the blocks come out at swat. (i search for my name even though i know it’s not there, and more logically try to determine where on the surrealist donkey that is housing to pin my tail.) my mother gets increasingly angry about the middle east and encourages my brother and me to rally. my laundry card fixes itself. a representative of the swat history department writes to notify me, in what could have been my third morale-crushing email in three days, that as no one in the history department remembers talking to me about my proposed special major, they can’t validate it.

the power of will: the email did not upset me. i responded to it and ended up having a pleasant interaction with the woman who sent it. as she clarified, i shouldn’t worry about this now; it’s not an emergency. it’s not that i don’t have a major, it’s that i don’t have a major … exactly. not rejected, not accepted. okay. if there’s one certainty i can be certain of, it’s that there are no certainties you can be certain of. of that i’m certain. certainly.

Dude: And you know Smokey has emotional problems!

Walter: You mean–beyond pacifism?

love that movie (thanks, tinka).

i should not be posting. i should be writing. criminal justice: my question: in a classless society, where do the criminals come from?

prompted by that quote, i ended up reading the entire clueless script, then grabbing a book of h. c. a. fairy tales and, forsaking my next class, settling in selena’s for coco-caramel flavored hot chocolate and fantasy time. when i emerged, i felt steadier. i chided myself for indulging in drama (sorry to all of you who email forced to share my anguish. i’m not good at copin with curveballs, takin the bitter with the sweet, findin the silver lining, when-god-closes-a-door-he-opens-a-windowing, etc. at least not immediately.) after dk pol, together w/ krissy anne and andrea, i retrieved two sets of pictures: krissy got four: and we all stood by the fountain and oohed and ahhed, and explained and reminisced.

since then i’ve been productive, both in terms of work and not letting self-pity creep back in. sorelle, my dear overworked proxy who insists she isn’t (overworked, that is), urges optomism. others send reassurance. everyone puts up with me. i marvel at it. and i’m thankful.

now that i have to list dorms, where are the rest of you living?

i’m trying to keep hold on myself. positives: israel is pulling out of the west bank. lana’s reading my poetry at her slam. everyone’s lovelife seems to be going okay. what i’m trying to submerge: papers. cty. housing falling through with a crash and the smoke rising upwards into the shape of a question mark. feeling powerless, faraway. papers. cty. housing. papers …

I felt impotent and out of control, which I really hate. I needed to find sanctuary in a place where I could gather my thoughts and regain my strength.

… i’m going shopping.

well, now i feel evil and wicked and bad. or at least bad. cty got back to me at long last with what amount to a deferral: nothing solid yet, will continue to keep me in mind — up through the beginning of the summer even. but i should definitely. seek. other. options. *sound of ester tearing out clumps of hair and bemoaning her lack of preparedness for this outcome*

*hair falls on floor. ester looks at it wretchedly*

… recalls that dis student-cum-hairdresser missed appointment this afternoon, leaving me wandering forlorn for 40 minutes outside an apartment complex. suspicious danes kept wrinkling their eyebrows at me, then pulling their curtains shut.

this memory does not help.

sheesh. what on earth can i do for july and august besides wear sandals, sit in hot tubs, attend folk concerts, read, watch seven movies a week, and visit friends in exciting places with exciting jobs (viz., philly and nyc)? –> and incidentally (paranoia borne of depression, perhaps, but:) am i getting dull? i feel like a blind circus performer. i can’t gauge my audience. three entries w/o comments and i start to sweat.

i am evil and wicked and bad. i woke up this morning (after a bizarre-beyond-words dream in which my family traveled around like the patridge- in a big ol’ bus, and my seat at the table was a toilet, and other crazinesses besides) to review what reading i had to do over breakfast. there to my surpise i found on my syllabus that my jews in europe outline for my jews in europe paper was due today. needless to say, as i spent yesterday reading — finishing, in fact; oh yes — satanic verses, i did nothing of the sort and opened and closed my mouth for a while as though that might help.

didn’t end up seeing fat girl as it turned out last nite. a talk with lana convinced me that in my already vulnerable state, heavy film would be the mental equivalent of a crowbar to a fractured leg. anne was in recovery from a binge so it was just krissy and i, and she readily agreed that we could find an alternative. scouring the Nat Film guide, however, we could only find light frothy films at theaters we’d never heard of and didn’t know how to get to. downstairs the film group was showing traffic but doors remained solidly, stolidly closed against our pleas for entrance. just as we put on coats and made to go out and find SOMETHING, we noticed the slimmest of cracks in one of them. we dashed to it, forcing our way in, and caught the last act, which i am ashamed to admit before now i’d never seen. following that we went down to the bar and talked.

so as it turned out it was a good evening. has anyone else read verses? it’s the kind of book that it helps/would feel good to discuss with someone; unfortunately i have yet to happen upon someone who has experienced it. if no one steps up, i’ll have to mail it to ever-the-fallback ari a la death kit. don’t worry ari, it’s roughly 32 times better.

i have spent the day in the corner, paper block on lap which wasn’t heavy enuf to keep me from standing at intervals, going to the kitchen and fetching one piece of foodstuff or another. it’s not like i have much but my initiative wasn’t strong enuf to propel me out of doors to the produce stands, the pivot points of all commercial activity in this city on sundays. how can copenhagen even talk of halting immigration or sending newfolks back home? where on earth would they buy fruits to sweeten their own day of rest?

cheerfully: kris will be here in an hour and a half. we’ll pool our boredom and then rise out of it, saved by fat girl. i always brood on sunday. there’s nothing else to do. on sundays, i predict, i will be happy to be back in nonsectarian america. at least/not more than on, who can say?

a siren on the way back from silence … we’re shooting startled me. i think it’s the first i’ve heard in this city. funny how quickly you become accustomed to surroundings: the quiet seems natural and a siren strange. people outnumber police easily 20 to 1 here. no one seems to feel unsafe. illogically i still do but i recognize that it’s illogical. not that that ever stops me.

but today, an unequivocably pleasant day: i spent six hours in roskilde, a pleasant town 42 kroner outside of copenhagen where katie’s host-family lives. kris, who looked remarkably animated for her several hours sleep, and i met at the station and trained in together. katie met us and we three strutted through as though we owned the place, finding tucked-away sandwich shops and alleys that led to squares of squabbling roosters. naturally we didn’t stop laughing until we settled down, in katie’s freezing cold basement, to watch romeo and juliet. also sentimental, also retro. we got to relive being 13, only with a little more of a knowing edge (i kept wanting to rearrange romeo’s hair. 6 years ago, i was spellbound.) we ventured out again afterwards, to the very tip of the pier in the harbor, steadying each other against the wind and watching fishing boats and birds play with the water.

mel’s comment this evening (“ester, you’re not a hippie”) was innocuous enuf; of course i didn’t take offense, replying lightly that i’ve gone thru phases; but a desire sprouted from it and for the first time since i’ve been in copenhagen i pulled my birks out of the blackness of the backness of the closet and slipped them on. they fit like glass. i almost feel like dancing.

housing problems may be solved. i received a confirmation email from eliz, challenging, Am i up to it? good question: am i? joining the almighty triplet? cautiously, i extend one pretty glassed foot, stepping towards what i can only hope will be a Worthwhile future … wish me (and them! it’s not over yet) luck.