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.
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.
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
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.
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.
halloween. right. wow. it didn’t really register earlier. so far it’s been a much better day than yesterday or the day before. there’s a gorgeous full moon out — i can’t stop staring at it. i started a poem a few months ago w/ the lines,
if love is a room, it has a glass ceiling
through which the moon, seen from a thousand angles,
inspires a thousand odes.
but i never wrote more than that. at my co|motion meeting over dinner, one of the sarahs suggested we go out and howl at it after. i heartily agreed that we should; somehow we dispersed, tho, and forgot.
still, today’s been all right. i wish fucking comments would start working again (sorry guys.) i’m residually a little on edge: one of the sharples staff (cafeteria folk) in a green mask that looked alarmingly and illogically real scared me so badly i screamed “jesus christ!”
humiliating.
i’m in the library, biding time. maybe i’ll go watch part of a movie. nothing scary — i couldn’t handle horror. something pretty and calm and soothing. or funny. i laughed a lot at dinner and it was really good for me.
happy halloween. someone put a little basket of candy in my mailbox with no card attached. i gave some to ross who ate it without any ill effects so i assume it’s fine and besides reasoned that anyone who hated me enuf to kill me would do it in person (right?) mmm, nonlethal york ….
i also got a sweet note from jolly, my roommate from last year. her mom, an elementary skool teacher who continuously made sure our room decorations matched the appropriate seasons and holidays, outfitted us with bags of treats which we put some of out on the door for people to take at will. we also served to visitors and consequently had polkadots of hardened chocolate on the floor and wrappers everywhere for months. cleanliness was not our first priority.
talked w/ lana last nite. she tried out for the vagina monologues (which, as one of my flatmates has pointed out, should more aptly be called the vulva monologues, but i guess that just doesn’t have the same ring to it.)
i still haven’t read them; i should.
interesting discussion on hesitant firmness as to whether thanksgiving is a secular holiday. i never considered what william said, that technically you’re thanking god. to me it was just a be thankful in general type thing, if for no other reason than b/c you got to get out of skool and eat a lot of good food w/ your family. hmm.
but that’s a month away. we should focus on the now: halloween! anyone have good memories associated w/ halloween? let’s get some positivity on this site, yo.
times of stress. today during stat, i couldn’t even pretend to concentrate. instead i wrote paranoid poetry, both pieces bred of my impression that people dislike me. at times like this, my senses of such things can’t really be trusted.
polisci was a little better. at least we didn’t get our papers back. that would have been more than i could handle. ben chided me over lunch for even attempting to write three papers in three days — my first three of the year, no less — which is what i had to do before break. the responses to the two of them i’ve gotten back were so disheartening that i haven’t recovered yet. i take this shit more personally than i should. still, how are you supposed to continue believing in yourself and your abilities when professors have no words of encouragment and the work keeps piling on?
it makes me think i’m not cut out to be a student. one of the first things they tell us here, during orientation, is that no matter what anyone says or does to us, we’re still worthwhile people. we laughed about it at the time; little did we realize the degree to which that would come in question.
more precisely, the question of whether others see you as worthwhile. what you think of yourself is less relevant. especially if you’re like me and your perceptions of yourself are all tied up w/ the perceptions’ of others.
and if your friends make you feel stupid at the same time that your professors are shaking their heads at you, how are you supposed to retain self-confidence? how can you shrug off both?
ben held me while i watched the sky and tears dripped into my ears — that happens when you’re lying on your back; it was strange feeling them pool there. he told me i have to convince people i’m serious. get through to them. it’s frustrating that i’m even in this position, but i guess the kids i grew up w/ were so sensitive to each other that this wasn’t necessary. i hate confrontation. i hate making other people upset. but i can’t stand this drama either.
in other news, i spent the afternoon film midterming w/ jeff. that went speedily. we have another inclass part tomorrow but hopefully it won’t be too esoteric. interview for our grant this morning. hopefully we made a good impression. jeff and jolly fed me lots of chocolate. now i have to go meet the cast for our first group meeting.
i sometimes wish blogger had titles for entries so that i could write fun things like “misery and apoplexy” or “frazzlement.” frazzlement’s a damn fine word and it’s a particularly apt way to describe what i’m feeling. everything’s been so up and down recently — i get acclimated into one mindset and then another mindset plows into me going 130 mph from the opposite direction and takes me for a ride. then just as mysteriously i’m dropped off and back on the first again. i’ll be surprised if i get done w/ this semester and my hair hasn’t turned newspaper- gray.
where’s my stability, my reserves of calm logic to fall back on? like life keeps prodding me forward into obstacle courses w/o giving me twenty seconds first to tie my shoes. oy, mixed metaphors: see what condition i’m in? meanwhile either i’m imagining it or a lot of people really dislike me, more than used to — but what did i do? — and even a lot of the ones that supposedly like me think i’m stupid. i don’t know. maybe stressful situations just bring out the oversensitive, cagey, extravagantly-saracastic-on-the-surface and wildly-depressed-right-below part of me. (all my friends from home are reading this and snorting, ‘Maybe?’)
phillyben came over to videotape me reading poetry for a multimedia art project he’s working on. over lunch, we had a stat study session involving 2 members of co|motion. both, being w/ PB and being w/ the do-gooders, cheer me up. then once again i’m crushed by how damn inferior i feel to this skool and the people in it. copenhagen shouldn’t seem like a glorious escape — i don’t want to feel like i want to escape — yet, how should i put this? … i do.
right, and: shout outs to my dear friends lana and ben; lana for finding herself (yet another) soulmate and having herself a gay old time; and ben, for finally working his way over to this site. cheers!
to anyone (*cough*swatties*cough*) reading this, please feel free to sign the guestbook. no pressure to be witty clever or poetic. i just like to know who my audience is and it weirds me out a little when people tell me in person and not on the site.
i feel considerably calmer. had a nice dinner w/ becca, went to stat review, remembered i’m taking the goddamn class PASS/FAIL, shared a chai, and went to the concert to hear ross play as many instruments as possible. i realized that folks only look sexy playing either a) guitar or b) saxophone. drummers and pianists look kinda spacey, trumpet players constipated; accordion players, while charming, just look way too wacky. cello and violin type instruments look classy but not sexy, per se — ratio of elegance to sexiness: 10:1.
rebecca wants me to note that she disagrees. all right, duly noted. consider this an argument and feel free to voice your opinion. cello and guitar, equally sexy? adam rogers v. lisa simpson?