um, interesting (and you have to admire a clever title). two people got married last year in maryland. this year, as it turned out that one of the individuals involved is a woman — or rather, that both individuals are women, but especially the one that was taken for a man — the state has revoked their license. who knew the state could do that? and why don’t they do it more often?

the twist is that the individual taken for a man actually was a man once before she transitioned.

it’s certainly one of the most trans-positive articles i’ve read. it refers to georgie with female pronouns throughout, though possibly just because she’s had a surgicial operation which makes her new gender “legitimate.” still, it’s respectful, and it seems to take the side of the couple.

i just got back from worth, the health center, where i spent 27 in one room. yesterday my fever hit a high of 103.6 and my lovely friend felicia got me over there. first time i’d ever spent time in anything like a hospital, but it wasn’t bad at all. people visited nearly constantly; when i was alone, i slept, ate, or read. thousands of doses of nyQuil and voila: temperature back to normal. ester can go back home where she belongs.

this morning ben and i exchanged our non-chocolate v-day presents, marking my 1st romantic recognition of this hallmark holiday (last year i cried in a bar in western denmark. love, yes; romance, not so much). so happy v-day to everyone — hope it’s sweet.

fever’s down for the first time since i had to come home, midday yesterday, and collapse into bed. various friends fussed over me the way friends should when you can barely move, and for ten hours i could barely move. ben convinced me in the evening to take my temperature (“i don’t need to, i don’t think i have a — oh.”) and it 100.8. i can’t remember the last time i had a fever. today tho i felt better — i can move around, and eat, and withstand light — my temperature reached 101.9. that’s a fucking radio station, man, not a body temperature. maybe it’s just down now cuz i took a shower but i do feel more energized.

so much nyquil. so many vitamin c drops. so much negotiating and renegotiating plans with teachers, doctors, mother, friends, love. if i feel horrific tomorrow at noon my wonderful mother may whisk up to fetch me home to recoop there; if i’m better i’ll wait it out here. everything as it comes.

awesome. no Adaptation for best picture but no About Schmidt either. and check out the original screenplay nods (yes, i know you have to scroll down the page. writers don’t get any respect.)

i seem to be sick now in several new and different ways, which at least is a nice change. stupid winter.

slowly, i think, Why am i thinking slowly? then i remember, i’m taking sedatives.

here’s my stab at a love poem for this week’s session:

go marching two by two, hurrah

in tenth grade I marched, manacled

in construction paper, to the Chinese embassy,

stood in the swelling snow and shouted Free Tibet!

until my feet turned numb because I liked a boy

and that was his Cause. we played witchcraft

together & for his birthday, I bought him handcuffs

tied in purple ribbon. he never caught on.

this saturday I�ll go marching, manacled

in pessimism, to the United Nations,

stand whether in swelling snow or simply

as part of the amoebic Left & shout

Leave Iraq Alone! because our cowboy president

is pied pipering our boys in blue to slaughter, but

principally because the boy I love has asked me to.

Evil keeps a running tally, continues to present

unique spins on itself � equally inexhaustible,

if not as creative, the Left continues to fight.

poor redundant love will keep us marching

despite our despair. while Evil produces subjects

and the Left counters with rhyme, love

will give us reason to chant. who cares if feet freeze,

if the Chinese embassy stares blankly back,

if the UN is UN-helpful — TV has tutored me

to expect as much. you continue to delight me.

for the sake of this falling, I will march, I will scream

Make Love Not War! & mean it.

i’ve been subsisting on bread and soup, supplemented by crackers and liberal doses of promethazine. why am i still ill? i thought this damn thing was supposed to clear up over the summer. oh well. excitingly, the oscar nominations come out tomorrow. so far this february hasn’t been bad at all.

sick (again! what is this?) illness unfortunately hit last night in the city at the hotel where elizandstef and benandi had gone to celebrate our various anniversaries. we managed to get in a good solid meal at a mediterranean restaurant and a few hours of cable tv watching/bashing beforehand. still, i don’t understand this flashback to the summer and i wish most seriously it would stop.

speaking of seriously, ben and i had an intense conversation over dinner about whether or not to attend the peace march in new york this saturday. it doesn’t jive with this year’s devout apoliticism; it gets in the way of my timely completion of my very first seminar paper; it has the potential to be disorganized, alienating, or just plain cold. alternatively it could be uplifting, important, or memorable. frankly i don’t know if i have the optomism for mass marches, but if worse comes to worse i can observe.

in less than 24 hrs i need to have written a love poem. [good] love poems are very hard to write.

how strange everything has turned out today. i have all the time and energy i need to recooperate, only no recooperation seems to be necessary. ben asks me where i see myself in five years and i’m knocked so off-balance i can only answer, “angry. in LA.” a moment of clairvoyance or just wishful thinking? brig, when i relate this story, adds, “you’ll be 25.” i hadn’t even considered that element.

i look over my screenplay and am so dismayed at how much revision is required that i immediately close the window and play 10 games of freecell of which i lose several. brig reminds me, it’s freecell, ester — not life. i’ve always had problems keeping the two straight.

i try calling my mother every half hour but her government agency only registers a busy signal. i stare at the phone, perplexed. how can the government not have call waiting?

i walk into the bathroom and wash my hands. when i look over to my towel hook, i notice that the dishrag that i stole from parrish hall and have never washed — and have been using as a towel — has fallen to the tile. i start laughing and find it difficult to stop. i reach down, pick it up, gently replace it on its hook, and return to my room.

sick. slept most of the day, skipped (well, called off) rehearsal, even left my poetry class early. a couple enthusiastic responses to my love song (see below) coupled with a remark that it was “eliot-like” and “eliot-esque” and a complaint that there wasn’t enough rhyme. some members of the class had no idea that eliot was in any way connected to Cats — they looked appropriately chagrined.

tomorrow is for recooperating. until evening, i have nothing else to do. i’m trying to figure out whether it’s worth it to go to the anti-war protest on the 15th in ny. pointless jumping-up-and-down and arm-waving, or a part of an escalating international response which is sure to catch the government’s attention at some point? war feels inevitable, as does the suspicion that we will all look back on this as a crucial turning point — the u.s. giving up their moral authority, the rest of the world losing patience, the threat (potentiality?) of terrorism against the u.s. focusing and solidifying in retaliation. but that doesn’t mean that even if all of us go and scream at the top of our voices, it will stop anything.

too bleak a note to end on. it’s february! a year ago i was despondent in denmark, although that would change; now i’m happy here. stef’n’eliz and ben’n’i have booked one night’s retreat in celebration of anniversaries: their 1 yr last week, mine and ben’s 2 year on the 17th. a pool, a hottub, cable, a door that locks, time uninterrupted by responsibilities — what more could you ask for, really?

scary scary seminar soon. over breakfast this morning ben sat in my chair and calmed me down, walking me through what ifs (if i’m not a _____, what am i? if i could do _____ all again, would i make the same choices?) just say one thing [at seminar — last week my tally was 0 comments after 3 hours.] actually, he amended, say 4 things. 4 is a lot more than 0, i said. but he insisted. 4. i can count that high.

aside from today’s mid-morning crisis, i’ve been feeling unusually mature and responsible. with my week sectioned for me — half for AIH, half for seminar — i get to organize my time into efficient blocks. i’ve been getting things done. that wouldn’t be quite worth turning cartwheels, this being only the third week of the semester, except for me, it’s significant. the addition to my arm helps, tho it’s turning fuzzy around the edges as its adhesiveness retains remnants of whatever i wear or sleep on. so far i’m accomplishing things, and managing without too much drama.

speaking of which, altho i didn’t think i could i ended up able to watch 3/4 of joe millionaire last night even — and he tossed melissa m.! REJOICE. now it’s down to zora v. sarah, tall slender lovely brunette zora v. tall slender lovely blonde (evil) sarah. cinderella v. the step-sister. virtue v. vice. body image problems v. willing to be felt up on national tv. joe, i don’t know about you, but i know which one my money’s on.

because i’m excited about it, and while wonderful godlike danny helps fix my page, here’s the poem i wrote for poetry this week:

t.s. eliot: a love song

T.S. Eliot (what did his friends call him?)

wrote his wryest, chiseled his most compelling

character, span best, scanned best, while at Harvard,

age 19. (I was 19 recently enough to remember:

it�s a self-serious age.) Without tax forms to file

or a wife to commit [to], under the umbrella

of intellectualism, happily schismed from the more

complex racial and cultural prisms that make up life beyond

that gilded cage, T.S. Eliot (how did his fellow snobs know him?)

penned Prufrock, a love song, and

my favorite poem.

what was he like, aged 19? had he yet embraced

the Catholic faith to such a frowny-faced degree

that he�d chase his chaste and pious wife out of the country,

across the sea, to an asylum (she�d decay in pine for him, in

the coffin set cruelly above the ground) �

and seek comfort in the arms of Ezra Pound?

T.S. Eliot (what did the other anti-semites call him?)

glares up at me, Elizabethan, unamused,

from the Norton book whose pages, much perused,

offer up the sage and solemn Prufrock

I can�t resist:

like a patient etherized upon a table, I am kissed

by a doctor whose other ministrations I abhor. sometimes, T.S. Eliot,

(what were you called by the other lonely,

crazy rich?) I want more (and I don�t know which

is worse: seeming to endorse you by confessing I adore

some of your adolescent brilliance � or,

leaving all the fanfare and the accolades for critics who,

like mermaids, sing them, each to each, relishing

the high notes I can�t reach) I wonder

if you�d like me either. most likely not.

(I�m the age you were, but far less surly;

I giggle more, I�m vaguely girly;

and though I�ll admit that you were wiser,

I�m not a Nazi sympathizer.)

still, I�m sure we could agree

we�ve hit the nadir with Fox TV;

indeed, we could sneer at this whole ersatz culture

in a succession of tea-timed chats; and if we felt hot,

we could venture out � me in sunglasses, you in spats �

buy ourselves tickets and laugh through Cats.