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(this post is dedicated to my friend ari who said he doesn’t get a sense from my entries of how i feel):

i am coming to realize that i really don’t enjoy arguing. that would sound banal except that it’s a shift. growing up, i argued w/ my family — rather than chat around the dinner table, we had intellectual debates. i argued w/ friends, altho poor liz used to beg me to stop. maybe this is karma since now i want it to stop and it won’t. this is argument overload. this is ego against ego, competition, bickering, quibbling, aggressiveness, defensiveness, exhaustion, apologies, irritation and snapping twenty-four hours a day. or at least that’s my perception. … already i feel defensive because look! i’ve presented a viewpoint; now i expect it to come under attack. sheesh.

yesterday, talking to rebecca’s mom post-dinner (a disabled car forced her to stay an extra night,) she asked what my plans were for next year. i outlined options and pros and cons and she commented, “it really sounds like you want to get to copenhagen.” since that hadn’t been the conscious point of my shpiel, it surprised me a little to hear her say it. truthfully

i waver. on one hand, i’m scared of change, i worry too much, i get depressed w/o sunlight and when i’m too long by myself. on the other — this being the side i’m trying to stress when considering next semester — i’ll be in europe in a beautiful little city that’ll be at least somewhat familiar, i’ll be taking interesting classes, i’ll meet people (?), and i’ll be doing all the things i’m too scared to do, which will feel like an accomplishment. even if that sense of accomplishment won’t be enuf to comfort me exactly during the dark cold lonely hours i spend curled up in a corner.

but the bottom line is i’m going (unless the foreign study office finds unearths some startling information from my past that dissuades them.) maybe by the time i’m done i’ll be confident enuf that i won’t mind if an ugly picture of me gets put in 100 mailboxes for comic purposes. yeah, that’s a good goal.

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i should be working on my documentary research for one of three group projects i have due this week. luckily such things require less individual shit to shoulder than having papers or midterms, so having these in bulk doesn’t seem to be as stressful.

last nite, rebecca’s mom took rebecca, the two other barnies, stefanie and me to an italian place for dinner. choosing locales is always more frustrating than it needs to be. my only preference is always “please not chinese” altho often that’s what ends up happening. in this case my wish was honored. stef, becca, and i shared vegan pizza (i love how waiters no longer react when you say, “i’d like the 79, only no ham and no cheese”) and the table discussed how views of sex and sexuality are different now than they used to be.

stef ross and i returned to the barn to hypothesize about bob dylan — i boldly put out the opinion that straight men and straight women like dylan b/c they find him sexy in a very heterosexual way, and that accounts for what i perceive to be his smaller popularity in queer circles; ross and stef were skeptical — and rehash old love stories. then we went to elizabeth’s Simpsons premiere party, crowded primarily with staunch supporters who laughed at every joke. elizabeth and i sat next to each other, agreeing quietly that the show is about half as good as it was at its peak. still, it’s almost the only tv worth watching.

gradually the thirty or so folks there (ross called them “nonthreatening”) dispersed, leaving the co|mo girls to finish the leftover food and meet. afterwards, sorelle, stef and i convened in the hallway, joined by elizabeth’s roommates w/ whom i’ve never had substantial interaction, to discuss body image, weight, Weight Watchers, and our parents’ relationships to each other and to us. one specific question: why do people we’re not close to feel the right to comment to us on how we look? … open informative and caring but my headache got stronger around 11 and i had to excuse myself to go back home, knock back some NyQuil, and call it a weekend.

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i have “gutten murning zonnenshtein” (“good morning sunshine” in german) in my head. of course i only know the chorus. it’s like that day i was walking around w/ ross and would periodically shout out “kate!” i was stuck on that particular part of the ben folds five song. kind of frustrating but fun as it drove ross nuts.

i slept nine hours last nite after returning from monsters inc., which was not as cute as toy story but cuter than kittens on calendars. the little girl, who may have been asian even (revolutionary!,) kept calling the monster “kitty” which cracked me up. ben and i joked about how we never get a chance to do normal non-swat things together; just going to a movie seems like an event.

… that would give me a grand total of TWO events for the day, then, b/c the Class Matters facilator, who looked like the older, sweater-wearing guy from being john malkovich, kept calling the workshop “a learning event.” that aside, the experience was less fluffy than it sounds, in large part b/c it was enriched by the presence of one of the most respected professors on campus. impressively, she voiced her frustrations, experiences, and opinions openly despite the presence of ten or so of her [potential]students in the room. she gave the day a gravity it might not otherwise have had and set the standard for all of us. if she could lay herself out there, who were we to be timid?

perhaps because people were given courage by the professor, who i just couldn’t bring myself to call by her first name, people spoke out on a lot of very touchy issues and we got to discuss many of them as a group. not too much resolution, of course, but it felt good to be sitting in a large circle of swatties and strangers (two aged hippies: one flinty, self-confident, bright but smug/ the other fragile, frequently falling into tears, barefoot and new-agey; four passionate, leftist twenty-somethings w/ similar haircuts from pendle hill, a service community near here; and an older man from philly) and hearing everyone discuss different kinds of shame and guilt, how to cope w/ anger, and stories from their lives.

we ended early which many of us appreciated and co|motioners hopped off to dinner. i think it was worth it, altho i can understand why a couple folks i’ve talked to who attended it last year found it unproductive.

now i have to start today, also packed, but featuring a Simpsons premiere and party in the evening.

oh and i’m sorry comments are on the blink again. i’ll have to find another service; this is getting ridiculous.

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lots of interesting unusual exposures today. first congressman john lewis came to speak to us. i really enjoyed it on a visceral level: he’s got wonderful presence and a wonderful voice; he told stories that he’d clearly told a thousand times — i mean, they’re history; i mean, i actually learned about them last semester — and he told them well.

afterwards someone who was not as enthralled by a longshot had some legitimate complaints. she didn’t like that he was so political (i.e.: safe,) that he focused entirely on the history of the movement and his involvement w/ dr. king. still, i was invigorated. for me, it was enuf.

then i went to rehearsal where another one of the cast members cried. this is such an intense play. i mean, i think khadijah and i handled it well, and she’s not the first, but still: i get taken aback when i see how easily the actors are personally/emotionally affected by the material. (we also had an upfront conversation about how non-black i am. she said it was okay, partially b/c jews initially came from africa. that last part was of course silly and meant as a joke. still, i felt obscurely a couple degrees closer to comfort. altho i’ve been much more comfortable progressively as a whole. anyway.)

then i went to the class matters workshop. (it’s about how class … matters.) almost all of co|motion came, which was fun. not so fun, alternatively: during the first exercise, we had to go meet people we didn’t know and explain why we were taking the workshop. i began telling one girl, pretty frankly, that as i’d gone to an all-white mostly-middle-class skool, swarthmore is as diverse a community as i’ve ever really been in. instantly she said, “i’m horrified.” i guess i could have been thankful that she was being frank but i found it just unpleasant: like i’d made myself vulnerable and she’d responded by spitting on me.

most of the people, however, seemed nice. other quirks surfaced as we played the principal game (before which elizabeth told me i had a skeptical expression on my face so i made a conscious effort to look openminded and optomistic.) the game itself was interesting, if not too subtle. each participant was randomly assigned a cup of poker chips, each worth a certain number of points, and a badge, either triangle, circle, or star shaped. we had to make deals w/ each other — you couldn’t make even trades — and the goal was to get as many points as possible.

actually i think i’ll discuss the outcomes and repercussions tomorrow. tomorrow the program goes from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. it will be intense, i imagine. but hands-on stuff always makes time pass more quickly.

afterwards co|mo came back to the barn. we hung out in my room, where a fun dynamic reigned for awhile and sometimes i was overcome by flashbacks to unsuccessful sleepover parties of years past. in general i think we had a good time; i was just very sensitive to mood shifts and people being uncomfortable. i tend to get hostessy at such events, which is why i sometimes avoided hostessing them in skool. it makes me stress too much and then not enjoy myself. but we bonded, no fights broke out, and no one cried, so by standards of years past, it was remarkable.

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hit my funnybone. damn chair. just spent the afternoon w/ sorelle who is luckily as big a dork as i am: her reaction to my worrying about housing for next year was “plan this far in advance? awesome! let’s go print out the possibilities and go over them right now!” no fooling; it was incredible.

at the very least it’s comforting to have solid options.

last nite i watched crumb w/ catharine. initially she was more disturbed than i was. before long, tho, i caught up. it is a very disturbing movie. well-made of course. but disturbing: the main character, who is, believe it or not, more normal than both of his brothers, is a gangly, bug-eyed combination of steve buscemi and woody allen. he sketches compulsively; in fact, he’s famous for his zap comics and whatnot; only most of what comes out of him are pornographic cartoons where huge, muscled, overbearing women (emotionally) abuse and are (sexually) abused by small men. there’s more to them than what appears certainly; still, hearing him confess laughingly to being hostile to women and the exposure to all the images exhausted me. also it made me feel lumbering and large.

this evening i’m dining w/ jolly and seeing marc’s interpretation of safe sex. should be interesting. everyone involved has worked their asses off. well, we’ll see.

ben called me lady macbeth. twisted, man. twisted.

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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.