oh man. oh man oh man oh man, little kohlberg iMac, i could kiss you, i could. oh happiness. oh eternal, blue-sky-supportive-friends-loving-family-warm-bunny-bubbly-college-type joy. i fixed it. yesterday this blog was fucked, today it’s fine. i fixed it. oh yum.
last nite we had a dinner party at the barn. we’ve averaging one a week, which is fine tho a little stressful — or maybe i feel the stress more when i don’t really have a friend at the table. last nite’s guests consisted of becca’s friend from high skool and her friend, a friend of ross’s from the class above ours, and a friend of joel’s who’s new here. technically the boy has junior status b/c he spent the last 2 years at deep springs. we’re not allowed to mention that, tho. he irked me, just something about him; becca too. there was something odd in his manner when he related to the females in the room. first joel defended the guy, then after some consideration said that he didn’t mean to have been insensitive to our emotions and reactions. we’re allowed our opinions and he respects that; only, he asks us, please keep an open mind.
becca and i sequestered ourselves and watched chinatown — jack nicholson always calms me down.
ross and i spent three hours talking. ben materialized at 3 a.m., slightly drunk and adorable. now becca and i are on campus and we’re supposed to be doing stat work. i am at peace. if only america can stay the same, i’ll be happy. the odds are way slimmer than i am, but i will continue to hope.
all the ex-hippies will come tripping out of the woodwork w/ flowers in their hair. they should be running the country now. what’s wrong w/ them? don’t they remember their rhetoric? love, man, not war. love. and lots of pot.
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okay, something’s fucked up w/ the template — sorry, guys — i can’t seem to fix it, so bear w/ me for a little bit til i can
i have been alerted that my links for nori and justin were off so here they are again: nori and justin. sometimes i type too fast.
i have to meet ross in a second to go shopping. yesterday at some point i kicked off my shoes and walked into our blue bathroom in the barn, humming to some music ross had playing, and i was suddenly filled w/ feeling — as tho someone had hooked up an iv — of how happy i was to be oncampus and simultaneously off of it, to be w/ my friends, to be safe. it was rather jumbled and fleeting but enuf to make me leave and spontaneously hug rebecca. i do that often so it didn’t surprise her too much. she hugged back. later in the evening she asked me anxiously if she has long legs and if she’s an evil person for writing a story in which kids, even while coping w/ tragedy, have selfish thoughts pop into their heads like, “is this going to ruin the year?” yes and no, i answered respectively. she seemed relieved after my explanations and thanked me. we all fulfill different functions for each other.
last nite it was joel who made me feel stupid. i sat at the table, quietly furious, until i left for campus. i kept biting back retaliatory remarks; in the end i was glad i did. house harmony, house harmony.
being w/ people is an intricate thing. at any moment, i am — or run the risk of being — a bad girlfriend/student/barnmate/person/friend. what can i do? last nite i dreamt that i was back in high skool conducting an affair w/ a spanish teacher who looked more scandinavian than meditteranean. i literally came up to his bicep. it was absolutely ridiculous. in the dream, we were at a party and dancing and he kept reassuring me everything was okay.
i need fabio to tell me everything’s okay? maybe i’m losing it.
there’s a poem rattling around in my head, something about jesus and oil paintings, or about marc, or about toys — i can’t really tell yet. i haven’t written a poem in over a month. wow. to a degree, the whole writing process is akin to getting my period. it occurs to me at some point that an interval has passed and that’s usually the signal that the cycle’s about to start again. of course, i write poems w/ much greater frequency but it still seems very organic and while it’s occurring, very distracting. i can’t concentrate on much else w/o flashing back to either.
was that too weird? did i just turn off 76% of my readership? do i have a readership, or will i, once blogger takes me off the main page?
when i went home this afternoon i made a collage of some photographs that i hadn’t put up on my walls. it’s adorable. i don’t know why i did it. ross was making carrot cake; i think i felt a need to be functional.
when people say they’re scared of me, or act like it, what do they mean? sometimes i feel like the least intimidating person on the planet.
dude, i was totally kidding about nostradamus but here’s a prophecy after all. (via meuchapa.blogspot.com)
of all the headlines i’ve seen so far, my favorite is this: “the bastards!” from yesterday’s village voice. (link via peter.)
in film & media this afternoon, my prof did the best possible thing. she turned the 3-hour lesson — which was supposed to focus on citizen kane, only last nite’s showing was canceled — into an in-depth examination of the footage and the coverage. we incorporated things we’d learned so far and actually used it as a tool to learn more. the tone was just right: respectful, reasonable and intellectual. she didn’t try to get us to feel anything, tho it was all right if people did, which i found a relief.
classfolk pointed out that the media, following george II’s and powell’s leads, are trying to incite us to rage. be angry! they cry. want to strike back! let emotions blind you then lead you stumbling after us.
i’m not angry, i pointed out to the girl next to me, who replied that she was (she’s from new york). even so, retaliation is the last thing on her mind.
one of the most fascinating repercussions i’ve seen has been in the blogging world. people are writing and sharing their personal impressions/reactions as this drama unfolds.
that’s nearly unprecedented. it’s like a book is being written in serial form and you can read it page by page as it develops, get different perspectives (nori was in austria when she heard; tinman was in manhattan,) see how everyone makes sense of it in their own way. someday these will all be primary source documents. the future will want to know what we were thinking.
rebecca’s mom was on cbs news this morning — i saw her interviewed briefly in a clip our film prof showed us. today’s coverage has become much more polished and accordingly colder; i’m less interested in watching news at all. as ross says, what more can they tell us? they can just show off their kitchy computerized graphics and replay the footage one more time.
meanwhile, in matters not related to this, becca called me Brechtian b/c i interrupt life’s scenes sometimes to call attention to certain choices people make or specific words they say. having not read brecht, i can’t have much of a reaction. my impression was that he was a cold guy; she says no. *shrug* ross and i squabbled over bananas this morning. who knew they would be such a controversial issue. marc is back from the hospital — he had a cyst removed. i guess that’s about it, news-wise.
this [link deleted] made me shudder. ben came up behind me a minute ago while i was reading thru posts at adequacy.org and i had misted over. i’ve gone back and forth all day. when i first saw the video footage, i nearly cried; at other points, i’ve made caustic comments or tried to be funny, as has justin. i listened to bush’s uninspiring, uninspired preachiness. i listened to npr alternate b/w straightforward reports and sorta melodramatic somber string music. i discussed w/ my barnmates the future of america: will, as joel believes, george II’s videogame inclinations get the better of the little of his good judgement there is and he starts bombing countries the way frustrated teenagers break windows? he thinks this is the beginning of the end of america’s position of superiority in the world. rebecca concurs: the eu is getting stronger, america’s been in decline (ross chimes in: asian economies are booming) — we’re going to swing our arms too wildly, desperate to strike an invisible/mutable foe, and we’re going to lose our balance and fall. hard.
my barnies are pessimists. i have a good feeling about america, maybe just because i’m in it. maybe we won’t be an isolated First in the world — so what? it’ll be good for us. i don’t think we’ll meet so drastic a fate. most of the people i’ve heard speak so far have been too rational. everyone is cautioning against immediately blaming the arabs; advising restraint; etc. so far we don’t sound like a country that’s going to get so wrapped up in our own objectless fury that we shoot ourselves off the map.
ross drew pink “tears” down my cheek that won’t scrub off. they’ve faded some but people keep asking me what they are. ben just hugged me again and told me to do something else. i have plenty of history reading; it’s just hard to concentrate. a guy is circling asking for a spare copy of moby dick. only at swat.
life continues tomorrow. slowly and painfully for some, less so for others. yet to be determined how for me, but rest assured, you will be kept informed.
this just in: arafat shocked. makes me think of that famous claude raines scene from casablanca.
so apparently the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who claimed responsibility for the attacks at 10:30, have now backed away from that. their leader has expressed condolences. the above article has details — and it made me want to vomit, especially the part where the woman said she’s looking forward to the next similar action in israel:
“Demonstrators distributed candy in a traditional gesture of celebration. Several Palestinian gunmen shot in the air, while other marchers carried Palestinian flags. Nawal Abdel Fatah, 48, wearing a long, black dress, threw sweets in the air, saying she was happy because “America is the head of the snake, America always stands by Israel in its war against us.”
Her daughter Maysoon, 22, said she hoped the next attack would be launched against Tel Aviv.”
please, please, no.
‘Queen Elizabeth II sent a message of condolence expressing her “disbelief and total shock.”‘ according to this article from cnn.com. doesn’t that make you feel better?
my god.
everyone in europe is expressing condolences. israel is pulling out everyone from their embassies around the world. i wonder if they know something we don’t or if they’re just being safe.
the skyline will look entirely different now. what year did the british burn down the white house? 18-something, right? we rebuilt it. i wonder whether we’ll do the same or whether, out of morbid stubbornness or plain nostalgia, we leave the rubble. or, better, erect a monument?
did nostradamus say anything about this? that’s what i want to know.
my mother called me early this morning while becca and i were listening to the radio. we were still laughing about it b/c it seemed so freakish and unbelievable. i told her to take grandpa and grandma and go to rockville. my dad’s safe in albuquerque. it’s like independence day, becca and i squealed to each other. george II got on the radio to stammer about how this “would not stand.” we rolled our eyes and said, shut UP. that man is a moron.
we brought a walkman to class, for which we were late, and b/w that class and the next someone told me that the towers had actually collapsed. i didn’t believe him at first but another person confirmed it. in my next class, polisci, my prof came in wearing a makeshift black armband, looken shaken and near-epileptic. he said we were free to go (only about 10 of us were there anyway) but if we wanted to stay and talk about it, we could. i lingered a few minutes, then walked out in search of a computer. i ran into alison in kohlberg and the two of us went to LPAC, where someone had hooked up a huge screen and people were scattered throughout the theater. we watched peter jennings ramble on about wars and terrorism while behind him, on the monitor, the twin towers exploded and fell, smoke rose in thick rings around the neighboring buildings, and people scattered, holding shirts over their noses, over and over again on a loop.
eventually we went to lunch. everyone was just as shaken there. who doesn’t have family in either ny or dc? almost all of philly has been closed down as well: the train service into the city, the principal train station in the city. oh, and disney land has just been closed. i guess america’s covering all its bases. as long as the liberty bell and disney land are safe, we’re okay.
how much longer will this go on? will they rebuild the twin towers? will they reopen the airports? i’m sorry, i know i’m just reitering the same questions everyone’s asking. but christ. people are calling this the worst terrorist attack and most serious threat to america since pearl harbor. and then we knew who our enemies were AND had a strong, reassuring president.
i think i’m going to go home and hook up the tv. and call my mom again.
i hope everyone’s safe.
dude, i’m supposed to be reading e-reserves. for those of you unfamiliar w/ the notion, e-reserves are an unnatural phenomenon which occurs when professors decide that legibility makes reading too easy and scan printed material online. the assumption, i gather, is that everything here should be challenging; otherwise we students will tire and transfer to princeton ( target=”new” title=”eating clubs, for god’s sake”>Why?). but having billions of polisci pages to read is worse than knowing you have to read them on a computer screen, on adobe acrobat no less, squinting as you pull down w/ that doofy little hand. yuck.
i was thinking today about how passive-agressive i can be. i say incendiary things to people, hoping they’ll start a fight so that i can then say what i really want to. i could start the fight myself, dammit — why don’t i? haven’t quite figured that part out. besides, the majority of the time, the person whom i’m trying to instigate into instigating a confrontation usually doesn’t get it and my ire shrugs, yawns, and wanders in another direction.
also today, i discovered that the same nite i dreamt liz asked me to come over b/c she was upset and i told her i’d be right over (only naturally i couldn’t be), she actually was upset. talk about psychic links.
dinner tonite was funny and fun. i luv my barnies. and lana, who called, and ben, who called but didn’t leave his cellphone number (not ben-the-bunny; other ben, ben my oldest guyfriend. oh hell, here’s a picture: ) and i luv ben I, the bunny — i took a beyond-words picture of him and it’s now hanging up on my computer in my room. every time i look at it, i smile like a fool. i am a fool.
according to chris’s page, i am most like a handful of webloggers i’ve never heard of. if anyone wants to check them out and get back to me, i’d be interested as always in another opinion. i’ll do it myself too later today when i have more time.
as always, getting to the city yesterday relaxed me. in part it’s just boarding a train, i think: there’s something very soothing about that action. it reminds you that escape is easy, available, and quick. meeting newly-dyed becca whose sortapurple hair has apparently caused quite a stir on penn’s rather conservatively dressed campus. we laughed at the differences b/w her skool and mine: where i go, you’d have to stick your head up your ass and walk around like that to get any reaction from people at all.
we went to pod, another of steven starr’s asian fusian places in the area. the atmosphere is a trip, all bathroom white and 2001-like, with neon lights flashing in various corners and bizarre music that fades in and out of coherence. waitstaff (white shirts, blue pants) ask if it’s your first time and explain the rituals as if you’ve crossed a border, and busboys (white shirts, orange pants) come by every few minutes, replace your plate and silverware, and wipe your table. becca and i lived it up, ordering (to share) an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert. the waiter didn’t think that would be enuf and gave us a salad too. it was all good, but put us back $30 each, so it’s not something we were sure we’d do again. at least not w/o a parent.
now i have to meet marc for lunch. tonite stefanie’s coming for dinner after african dance. i finished master and margarita which i heartily recommend. i wonder if i’ll have time for anymore (much more) frivolous reading this semester … so far i’ve been keeping myself in a state of denial and that can’t last