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ben’s talking to his mom on the phone behind me. that’s always a funny thing. does she know i’m here? should i leave? (‘don’t leave,’ he whispers, cupping his hand over the receiver.) i chat w/ rob, who was crazy last nite and this morning is occupied w/ his belle&sebastian and the ants crawling all over his bookcase. i wander back in here, sit at the computer. ahh, computer.

last nite was a lot of fun. ben and ross threw another party, this time situtated it in this beautiful walled in courtyard. adjunct to it was another party, one w/ alcohol and which had been well-publicized; but ben and ross had better music and the novelty of an outside, lovely location, not to mention $200 worth of sushi, so they wooed about 200 people over and then kept them. at 2, which was when the thing was slated to end, there were still folks pleading for them to keep playing. it was incredible. all evening long, people approached me and told me how great it was and how much they enjoyed it. becca was wearing the tight three-quarters dress that dips up the front that we bought at mustard seed; she was dancing her heart out and loving it.

shit. the phone conversation has shifted from smalltalk to wartalk (‘i didn’t say do nothing — drop some food on them!’) how about televisions? oh, he just mentioned that: little screens showing international leaders denouncing the taliban. i don’t know if that would work; that might just get people riled up. altho it would be wonderfully ironic if osama was killed by a stray Panasonic set to Fox.

and there are ants everywhere.

focus, focus. yesterday marc and i went into philly. we met jolly, jeff (who goes to skool w/ us and went to high skool w/ joc) and their mutual pennfriend ina, whose first exposure to marc was walking in on him in a compromising position. we went to a mediocre dinner and then split up: marc and i to see bread and tulips, which was charming, and jolly jeff and ina to see some band from iceland in concert.

later, matt rubin and joel, who went to the same concert, proclaimed it the best they’d ever been to — they looked like they’d been shooting up, they were dazed and dazzled. joc seemed less affected but she liked it too. everyone regrouped at the party.

it was quite an active day. to make the post-movie train, marc and i had to run nine blocks. earlier, becca and i lugged all our laundry to the ville, altho we got out of having to lug it all back by smiling pretty at a man who was doing his at the same time and asking for a ride.

forget it, i can’t concentrate. he’s pacing behind me, getting louder and more upset. i should go home: i have to eat, i have work to do. “we’re treading a fine line here b/w war w/ islam and coalition w/ islam.” oh, he’s backed off — he’s apologizing — “i love you too mom” — and, oh man, oh man, “oh, happy birthday. i totally forgot.” jesus. 🙂 (“it was a week ago,” he adds.) anyway.

officially off blogger’s page now, by the way. oh well. my 15 minutes are up.

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i apologize for the melodramatic nature of the past post. i think i just needed to get myself so worked up that i’d go drop in on the bunny and have it out. so i did, and felt better w/in 20 minutes, and spent the subsequent hours w/ him much calmer and more cheerful. thanks for bearing w/ me.

i returned to the barn finally to eat dinner while he went to a wsrn meeting (he’s program director of our radio station.) and hey, as long as i’m plugging swat publications, here’s the link to our paper the phoenix for which i write my philm reviews. this week we put out the philly guide which is pretty funny, if you feel like taking a look.

so becca and i were going to meet ben and the train, hopefully simultaneously, and subsequently ross in the city. but we watched septa come and go and ben did not appear. we foresook the train for the bunny, who eventually showed up. we sat on the platform for a while, the three of us, chatting w/ those who passed by, bickering playfully, and generally enjoying the nite (which is beautiful.) pointless to city, we decided, and we left again: becca to cs hw, ben to photo, me to … well, what do i do w/ my free time? read the sot-weed factor, which ross gets upset to see me w/ b/c technically he’s reading it as well and he’s sure i’ll finish it before he does. it’s really funny. or perhaps listen to the past didn’t go anywhere, the utah philips cd i just got in the mail today, which i purchased from half. i remember listening to it on the way back from falconridge. oh fun.

later, a movie. but which?

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i feel bitter and tired, despite having just had a white-chocolate-chip-dark-chocolate cookie. i’m in the same place i was at this time last week which also usually tickles me. didn’t get to sleep last nite til 4:45 despite needing very much to replenish said supply. of course, then i didn’t wake up til 11:30: phone ringing, becca wondering where i was, stat 2 hw to do (due at 2). i dashed to mccabe.

we worked, we delivered (a minute after 2), we ate. now we’re at kohlberg, the coffee bar, and i’m brooding.

i don’t like making demands on people. i don’t like having to ask for things. and i hate not being able to express myself. i cried last nite in bed, feeling full of the kind of pressure that’s sometimes relieved by crying.

jealous: he could speak, i couldn’t; upset: he was upset, i couldn’t help; passive: not being able to vocalize what i need. this goddamned stupid war-which-isn’t-even-a-war-yet. has it already made him crazy or do i just fear it will? can i see it happening so clearly that in my mind, it already has? how can i just go on w/ my petty life, he said. he’s under pressure too: to do all he can, to effect change. this environment only adds stress as everyone is becoming obsessed; how can he avoid that? i quoted kipling at one point, “if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs,” and he turned over in fury (4:35 a.m.) and went to sleep. he still held one of my arms; i covered my eyes w/ the other, thinking about explosions and whether or not i wanted him to wake up; fifteen minutes later i made myself lie back and sleep. when i woke up (11:35 a.m.), he was gone.

self-fulfilling prophecy? i don’t want to conduct all our conversations at 2 a.m. i want to feel as free to talk as i have this year and as i did over the summer; i don’t want constriction and, what, shyness? i want this to be less dramatic. sir bush, much of this depends on you. please don’t let me down. i heard you speak last nite (oy, lack of a concrete opinion on this subject is stressing me out considerably as well …) — you didn’t declare war, you seemed to make more sense than usual. i was almost proud of you.

how many days is it til october 31? should i be counting down? uch, god.

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my friend yoni who goes to nyu freelances for the washington post, and two of his pictures are on their website right now: it’s numbers 16 and 17 in the gallery. he said he used skills attained in gadna (israeli military training that we all went thru for a week while we were on our skool’s post-graduation four-month program there.) i wasn’t surprised to hear that — after all, he won the award for best male soldier. i, on the other hand, contracted a bacterial infection while there and was put on codeine; my memory of the week is kind of a blur. one evening, we were gathered up late, unexpectedly, for a simulated covert operation. we had to creep around in the bushes and try to get the jump on another group. our leader gave us the order to lie in wait and prepare to pounce, and i promptly fell asleep face down in the brambles. needless to say, i didn’t win any awards.

oh, israel stories. i have plenty. like when we went snorkeling in eilat, and i jumped in, pretending to be as brave as my friends, only to remember, once helpless among the waves, that i hadn’t gone swimming in years. the water was cold, the mask rubbery and constricting — worse, the other pier was leagues away but the current flowed singlemindedly in that direction … i grabbed the rope that you weren’t supposed to touch and clung to it, trying to keep from panicking and putting my feet down on the coral (altho i have to admit, that was not my first concern). as folks passed by me, i waved and smiled like a politician. finally it dawned on some of them that i am a colossal doof and they alerted a lifeguard — Gabe, a co’nellian — to rescue me. i apologized the whole way as he swam, w/ me under his arm like a package marked Return to Sender, back to the pier from which i’d so blithely jumped.

it had always been a fantasy of mine to be rescued from insane circumstances by someone i’d fall in love w/. the summer i was at cty, i was always looking for the opportunity to be plowed down by an arty skateboarder. never happened. this could be it, i thought excitely — but gabe was gay, i was soon informed, so even that was a bust. ah well.

what a tagent. 🙂 anyway. the peace rally this morning went off fine. people spoke and other people listened, withstanding rain and intermittent republican viewpoints. everyone wore a white armband that looked like a bandage. i contemplated getting one myself and decided i didn’t want to til i could figure out exactly what it stood for.

no one particular speech swayed me; i’m still not too sure what i think. ben has made it clear that he’s not a pacifist. i’m pretty sure i’m not — i’m against violence but i don’t think it’s always wrong.

i just saw on blogger’s main page that babblebook has

fallen to the last spot on the Of Note list. i knew this day would come but it saddens me nonetheless. so to the thousands of strangers who have streamed by here in the past few weeks (and i know you have from sitemeter even tho you don’t leave comments) i just wanted to say thanks for looking. it’s been damn cool.

feel free to stop by again when, in a week or so, i’m back to writing to entertain my loyal six-person fanbase.

ani in anticipation:

“‘cuz you’ve been gone exactly two weeks

two weeks and three days

and let’s just say that things look different now

different in so many ways

i used to be a superhero

no one could touch me

not even myself

you are like a phone booth

that i somehow stumbled into

and now look at me

i am just like everbody else

—superhero

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so here i am, back in the fuzzy protective arms of swarthmore pa. before i left this afternoon, my family all gave me advice. “don’t take this so seriously,” my father counseled. his position is that there is going to be a war of sorts — when i arrived home, he was poring over his ancient german atlas w/ a magnifying glass and pointing out where troops’ll be stationed for maximum effect. he’s almost cheerful about it: he thinks we’ll march in, stern-faced and flag-waving and restructure the governments of the countries, “force them to enter the 21st century.”

“take this as seriously as you want,” my grandfather counseled. remember vietnam: students brought down a president (“yeah, but then they got nixon,” my father points out. grandpa ignores him and goes on.) students can change things if they care enuf, if they fight hard. his position is that we’re going to start a strategic, subtle campaign of assasinations. there won’t be much media coverage but we will carefully take out the world terrorist leaders. he opposed the gulf war, and he and my father still argue over whether we should have gotten involved.

“don’t lose your sense of humor,” my mother counseled.

“and don’t forget to be happy,” said my grandmother.

hopefully, i will, i will, i will, and i won’t. respectively.

i went to sleep last nite feeling a little ill. woke up feeling better but declined again, enuf so to leave services, drive home, and go back to bed. headaches and nausea, nothing too serious, and w/ me, always as much psychological as physical. arguing drains me, indecision drains me, and for some reason dry cereal and water (my breakfasts) have begun to make me sick. my father explained my absence at the post-services lunch: “her boyfriend’s a pacifist. he’s a nice russian boy, he’s 20, he doesn’t want to get shot. i don’t blame him; if i were his age, i wouldn’t want war either. she’s worried.” that made me laugh and when i laughed, i felt better and i went downstairs to rejoin the company and defend myself.

i am worried, tho. i’m worried that everyone’s going to be aggressively leftist here and i’m going to be alienated. i don’t have a strong view on the subject yet. guess i need to, huh? hmm …

last nite i watched quiz show, which is about how people lost faith in tv. all these movies, like the insider and all the president’s men, where people lose faith in tobacco companies or the american government and it’s such a tragedy, don’t move me as much as they probably should. i find it amusing in a detached sort of way that people ever had faith in those institutions to begin w/.

it was good to be home, rejuvenating to see my friends. avi — the guy who wrote me the email i posted up here — called me from Michigan and apologized. he’s been really stressed out and took out his ire on me since he couldn’t at his campus as a whole. he might restate his position a little more carefully and email it, in which case i’ll post it. i have no problem w/ discussion, and i told him i definitely sympathize w/ his stress. when he’s done w/ college, he goes straight into the army (he’s in ROTC.) if anyone has cause to be stressed out, he does.

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it’s kind of bizarre — as soon as i’m off campus, i feel my oh-so-impressionable brain changing shape to conform to its new surroundings. i expected to fight w/ my brother adam on the drive down yesterday but we didn’t fight. well, at little, at first, instinctively: college students are too damn anti-patriotic! no they’re not they’re just getting their first exposure to intelligent arguments as to why this country isn’t as great as they thought! stupid stuff.

after that, we found common ground rather quickly in the idea that america should form a global anti-terrorism alliance. he told me about how america bodily reformed japan’s government post-WWII: we left gen. mcarthur in charge of the country, gave them a copy of our constitution, and

japan changed. i’d never realized it happened that way but the country did evolve — who would have expected fifty years ago that it would occupy the place on the international stage now that

it does?

i have to go to shul again now. more later. i’ll be back on campus this evening. happy new year and i hope wherever you are, you don’t have sesame street blaring behind you (my little brother has it on.)

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i also wanted to mention: 1) today = 7 months. not bad, not bad. 2) rosh hashanah begins tonite. for those of you who don’t know, that’s the jewish new year. last year right around this time the second grand-scale palestinian uprising began. i’m beginning to think that september is a damn dangerous month. maybe we should just do away with it altogether.

in the spirit of religion, new beginnings, new moons, and other cleansing things, i just wanted to wish everyone a little bit of calm. it’s a crazy time, i know. but perspective can work wonders. whether you’re a patriot or not, whether you’re mourning or mad at the arabs or at our government, i hope you’ll take a moment or two to breathe. remember that life exists outside of and beyond this issue. that maybe there isn’t only one right answer.

shana tova ou metuka — a good year and a sweet one. everybody.

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a friend of mine from high skool just emailed me this:

“I seriously hope that one day you find the guts to poke your head out of the little sheltered world you’ve been in for so long and look around some.� Aside from the facts you and your friends got wrong about EU influence and the “booming” Asian economy, you’ve also completely failed to grasp the relevance of these attacks to US and to the world at large.� While I must admit that this last bit is probably the least important thing on the grand scale of the world, you managed to minimize and mock� everything that me, and many of my friends have dedicated our lives to. I thought better of you.”

i put it up here not to deride what he’s saying but to honestly ask, is this what people think i am, and have been, doing? b/c it was not my intention at all. if i’m sometimes lighthearted here w/ respect to certain issues, it’s b/c writing is entertaining, at least in part. i never meant to insult anyone who believes something different than i do.

the author of the email is the kind of person who would sacrifice for this country, who is already involved in the military and has planned to be so for years. my brother is not. when i mentioned him before, re: his declaration to enlist, i got angry first b/c i’d be worried about him, but also primarily b/c he’s never expressed any like interest before and is probably just blowing off testosterone. i would never suggest that the u.s. armed forces are all bluster or that their giving their lives for america isn’t admirable and humbling.

but i still say that i hope it isn’t necessary. no, i’m not equating what america would do to what the terrorists did. i’ve heard folks here make that argument and i don’t agree. i also don’t believe that we should bomb the hell out of a country to blow off our national testosterone. i don’t want people’s lives destroyed. not muslims targeted on the streets, not innocent veiled women in afganistan, not more of our best-and-brightest either in the army or in our economic and commercial centers. murder just sparks more murder and w/ the weapons available to everyone today, war is too dangerous an enterprise to flirt w/.

feel free to email me if you disagree but also feel free to say so in the comments (just click on “thoughts?” and add your own.) if you email me, tell me if you don’t want to be quoted — i won’t put your name — on the site. but discussion is almost-always productive.

speaking of which, last nite’s barn discussion was re: threeways. very indepth, very interesting, not really what you’d expect. we had among the four of us only one enthusiast (purely in theory; none of us had attempted it in practice.) but i need more sleep than these amorous/discoursive nights afford me. it’ll be good to get home, even for a day.

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“this whole email is a secret.� i know you’ll tell ben, becca, mark,

ross, jamie, tamar, liz, and ilana, but i would appreciate if that was

it.� NO matt rubin” says becca. she’s hilarious. she entertained ruby and i, who trained into the city to see her and her close friend emily who’s also ruby’s close friend (they grew up in scarsdale together.) the four of us, plus emily’s bunny josh, partied on her roof after wandering around the city through the “there’s no place like penn” festival at which persons dished out free junk food and studiously ignored some jam band on a makeshift stage. the original plan had been to eat someplace decent but we couldn’t agree and just ended up in a small ghetto-y pizza parlor. a tv was on in the front of the place and becca stood with her back to it, determined to be cheerful and wacky regardless. we were all rather cheerful and wacky; that was the charm of the nite.

ruby and i made it back to campus in time to see memento. after, i met up w/ ben and he and i went back to his room, in the process crossing thru rob’s Den of Iniquity. the scene as i saw it was: marc splayed out on the futon, wasted and melancholy; jocelyn, all glammed up in a magenta wig, tight black clothes, platforms, and blue glitter galaxies around her eyes, pulling the letters out of a keyboard and placing them in a bowl; and rob, whose pupils were dilated to the size of teacups, e-baying.

this morning i returned to the barn to a scolding from ross, which i deserved, for departing suddenly and disrupting plans. then (swat)becca and joel and i chilled in the common room, alternately singing “the fox went out on a chilly nite” and talking sex. there has been much of that recently. the title of this last conversation, we decided, would be, “would you go down on jesus?” i’m sorry you missed it. really.

also a less pleasant conversation w/ my brother adam who declared that if america goes to war, he will enlist. he’s picking me up tomorrow on his way home from co’nell for the holidays; i imagine we’ll fight the whole way.

it reminded me of a discussion i had recently w/ ross: “what would you die/kill for?” ourselves, we decided; our friends and family. but a country? i hope it doesn’t come to that. for anyone.

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i expected to do something last nite: first memento was showing on campus, then i was supposed to hang out w/ rob and marc, and then hopefully sleep. but while ross and i trooped off to meet ben at the showing, we were greeted w/ the news that there had been a mistake. no memento, only animal house. from the mass exodus out of the theater, you’d think there’d been a bomb threat. again, only at swat.

ben ross and i went in search of other amusement, ended up in the performance arts building where they gave me an impromptu concert on two steinways, amazingly (to me) able to coordinate their improvisations. their desire to make music finally satiated, we moved on to mccabe library where we argued over which one (1) movie to rent. ben was the only one w/ a card and he refused to get out more than one at a time. amazingly (to me) b/c over the summer i rented either 7 or 5 at a time, depending on which movie store i frequented. we settled on vertigo and took it back to the barn, but as it turned out, ben got depressed talking to his mother about the situation and went home; and rebecca, who had gotten herself depressed following the media, needed to be comforted. so we read two vonnegut stories out loud instead and watched the BBC version of six characters in search of an author, which put me to sleep.

not too exciting a nite. there was supposed to be a party at the lodges but that just got canceled. we’re going into the city, maybe to the fringe festival. maybe morrocan (sp?) food. i’ve been hearing that people need to pump money into this economy of ours. guess we should do our part.

alyssa, ross’s girlfriend who’s abroad for the semester meditating w/ buddhist monks in japan, begs that we sign petitions, mail the president, attend rallies, generally do everything we can to prevent war. i’ve yet to be told about a single rally or be offered a petition to sign. my mother, who i talked to this morning, says no one in the “real world” thinks we shouldn’t retaliate in some way, if only by just bombing taliban headquarters. it’s not as complicated as war vs. peace, she says. she gets scared just walking down k street, where she works in dc — there are armed national guardsmen on every corner. people need to feel safe.

it is complicated. are strategic attacks the answer? can we possibly kill only those directly responsible? will there be no repercussions even for that?

we have to go to ikea to buy a couch. ross and i decided this morning that we should go collect those responsible, bring them back to america in chains and force them to rebuild the trade center. that, we decided, was a more constructive, more human solution. yes, we decided, (mr. president, are you listening?) we should run the world.