around me, my brother and his roommate are dismantling their apartment. the walls look like once someone covered them with glue, took them to a heap of trash and rolled them through until every inch was covered. it’s impressive. up closer some of the random pieces of paper, ticket stubs, pictures, postcards, doodles, bibs and parking tickets are funny. my decorative impulses and my brother’s are similar, both inspired by packrat nostalgia and easy access to scotch tape.

the rest of my family has caravanned on. logically i know that different units have moved in different directions, but it seems to me, after watching everyone move in a body of 16 for 4 days, that the body will just continue on as one to the next celebration. two exist on the horizon, a cousin’s barmitzvah in new jersey and soon after that my little brother’s graduation from high skool. i’m going to the second, tho not before i stop over at swat for that graduation. considering how many times eager tears sprung to my eyes on sunday, just from watching the processional of cornell’s 15000 in black gowns enter the stadium and receive the benediction of the college prez, i’m a little nervous about this next.

a cousin required my space in the family car so i’m staying with adam for another day, going home with him and all his crap tomorrow. that means another night on the couch. it’s okay, it’s a comfy couch. before i took up residence there, i stayed with the adults in a bed’n’breakfast 40 minutes away. lil bro judah stayed at adam’s apartment with us last nite too, which meant we did everything from beer pong to, uh, beer pong, as a sibling unit. everyone now, come on: “awwwwwwwwwww.”

the annoying part of the weekend was everyone turning to me and saying, “you next!” people! a year is a helluva long time. i refuse to look that far ahead and everyone else should follow my good example.

the best part of the weekend was the excesses of free food. since i’m immorally and inconsistently eating fish again, i could partake of glorious, glorious sushi. free range fun loving alaska salmon and otherwise.

the recent spate of graduations is making me grimly certain of the fact that i have no interest in graduating myself, and still less in actually being an adult. i’m not sure what to do with this self-awareness except duck into grad skool and hide. assuming one takes me. the closer i get to actually scared, the lower my standards for the grad skool mfa program itself will drop.

i’m not graduating myself this year. but (penn-alum)becca just did. my older brother will this weekend. ben will next weekend. my little brother will the weekend after that. like lemmings, except, contrary to the education i received from duck tales, apparently lemmings don’t actually rush en masse over cliffs. no matter; it makes for good metaphor.

me: … so what am i going to do with the rest of my life?

him: work at hooters?

another ghost rises out of the internet, having gotten connected to this “perversely detailed” account of my life. my mother lets me know that my father glanced this way and was once again shocked at how candid i am. i thought the first shock would have been sufficient. that would explain, tho, when i told him my bartending story from last month he said he already knew.

i guess i get carried away sometimes. i lose sight of what should be censored. can someone wave their hands over their heads, make some universal gesture for TMI, when i go overboard, please? it’s almost been 2 years already; i wish i knew.

so many movies. it’s like an addiction. ones of note:

purple rose of cairo: i forget how much i love this until i run into again. stars mia farrow as a housewife during the depression who escapes drudgery, monotony and her boorish unappreciative husband in the movie theater, and jeff daniels (where has he gone? what is he doing? the man can act) as tom, the star of a typical hollywood flick who steps off the screen because he’s so captivated by the sweet, sad woman who he has seen sitting through four shows.

tom has no idea how to handle real life; the characters in the film he walked out of don’t know how to handle his absence or a life without a script; farrow’s character doesn’t know how to handle being admired and adored for the first time. jeff daniels in another role, the actor who created tom and who is held responsible for his character’s defection, tries to talk sense into his creation and ostensibly falls in love with farrow as well.

it’s a woody allen movie sans woody allen — the best kind. also tongue in cheek, smart, and meta. ranks among my favorite Movies About Movies with adaptation and barton fink.

spiderman: finally caught this on hbo. my little brother wailed and whined, pointing out deviations from the comic, until i bound and gagged him and was free to enjoy the thing on its own terms. perhaps because of its base in the comic, the movie felt wedged squarely between the years 1958 and 1959. just like my big fat greek whatever. it irks me to have to accept movies of archiac sensibilities as taking place in the present day. at least the special effects are up to date. willem defoe seems to be having the time of his life, as do kirsten dunst’s breasts. sometimes wet, sometimes clung to, always perky. you know it’s a warning sign when an actress is upstaged by her own body parts (and she was so good in interview with the vampire …).

little tobey escapes that particular problem, though his body is so drastically different as to be distracting. but he’s good. he’s really carving out a niche for himself as the adorable outsider, a little like ed norton. just so long as he goes the ed norton good movie route and doesn’t get caught up in reese witherspoon vortex that begins with fame and ends with mindless blockbusters, crowd-pleasers, and a celebrity marriage.

still, spiderman celebrity status as the #1 earner seems a mystery. i’m not sure what makes it quite so special.

matrix: reloaded: my theory is that the architect talks so fast so that the average movie-goer will not be able to understand what he’s saying and so will not be able to detect that beneath that thickly worded veneer, he really isn’t making any sense. to a degree the whole film conforms to that idea: the plot is convoluted and contradictory with several frustrating guns-on-the-wall. i suppose some of those could be dealt with in the next installment; then again, they might not be. it doesn’t matter. five minutes in, i was grinning. my jaw dropped during the fight scenes, although each one goes on for longer than it needs to and i got tired of seeing every car flip over in slow motion. two hours in, i was still eager to see what would happen next.

that’s the point, isn’t it? it’s entertaining. everyone looks good. long-winded expository speeches aside, it moves at a pretty good clip and it’s exciting. the people who are disappointed with it most have gone in expecting more but it was all i needed it to be.

it does seem like the star wars of our generation. that’s all right by me. they feel roughly comparable, quality-wise and in terms of representing an era.

walking down the sunlit bethesda street this afternoon with my dearfriend jamie back from spain, a woman’s voice lassoes me: “do you download music from the internet?” jamie and i turn around. the woman’s name is also jamila. don’t look at the camera, she tells us, and then she invites us to opine on the subject of post-Napster and AudioGalaxy piracy. no one has ever found a bloom at a loss for words, even on a subject s/he hasn’t given excessive thought to. i voice support for downloading as a great way to gain exposure to various artists. i bought a lot more cds after i realized through downloading that i liked someone.

i don’t manage to be funny, but i don’t say “like” either.

great, thanks, says jamila. you guys can watch yourselves on fox news at 10 on wednesday.

and so can you. watch us, i mean. i just wish we’d gotten paid. i spent a decent chunk of money today, only at the last minute forgoing adding a movie ticket to the receipts from shopping and lunch. i may need better self-control; at least i no longer need killer sunglasses.

ahh, home. so vastly different from college.

FOOD. my little brother, who’s been holding down the fort for a week and a half by himself while my parents treated themselves to a vacation in central america, lives entirely off of meat and coke. the fridge is full of plastic containers: half hold one rancid piece of lamb each, the other half are empty and smell. last night, lacking the energy to go shopping, i make do with popcorn, carrots, and leftover tam tams from the family visit to australia last summer.

COMPUTER. in order to make this computer open up internet explorer, i had to close kazaa. What!, exclaims my little brother who wanders in to check his downloads. Kazaa was only using 95% of the memory! he bends over the glass table, resting his head on his fists and sighing.

TELEVISION. it exists! i arrive yesterday after two hours wedged between my bean bag chair and the backseat window, move immediately to the couch and scroll channels until midnight. i pause only to scrounge dinner (see FOOD).

FRIENDS. far away. we talk over the phone, each trying to convince the other to make the 20-minute trek.

BED. huge, comfortable, and empty. the walls around me a photo-collage i made of freshman year. it’s eerie to look at everyone — people i don’t talk to, people i wish i talked to more, people who i’m still friends with but who look so much older now — looking at me. in the same way, am i what they expected?

WEATHER. mediocre. what the hell is up with all this rain? did god not get the memo that it’s may?

the honors exam actually went as straightforwardly as i could imagine. i wouldn’t go so far as to call it easy. it certainly, at least, was the test i studied for. there’s something heartening in that. and now it’s over.

i leave saturday. all around me people are leaving already. why? love, amusement, free food, green trees: man, we’ve got it made.

so. intensely. tired. i didn’t sleep last night. not Only a little, or Yeah i had to wake up early, or even I was up late studying (i was, but not that late). it was What’s the object of all this darkness around me? they haven’t gone and buried me alive …

i had two thoughts as i lay there for hours, not moving for fear that if i remained for a moment longer in the same position my body would finally drift off: 1) why did i do all that research about mfa grad skool programs as a break from studying for my honors exam? and 2) why did i eat all that sugar?

i’d been waiting for a while to hear from the english department about whether or not they were going to give me (or stef, who also applied) $2500 to write poetry this summer. alas, they did not elect to give me (or stef) $2500 to write poetry this summer. i suppose i should have known: english departments have never liked me that much. individual teachers, sure. english majors, absolutely. but departments give me the cold shoulder.

to cushion the expected blow, before i heard i sent poetry off to six different places. fly, little poems! fly! i average about .3 submissions to out-of-college publications a year and that’s sorely below the necessary number. at .3 a year, it would take me forever to accumulate the 42 requisite rejections that liz says precede that long awaited moment of wonder.

i did, however, only a matter of hours after sending the email, hear from the first place i sent stuff to. fixion magazine accepted “our visit,” the t.s. eliot poem. well! that’ll be the first time i’ve had something in print in an out-of-college medium since merlyn’s pen took “i used to be a gymnast.” hopefully this bodes well for my future of not being a pathetic failure.

instead of taking internet quizzes, for a change, i went out today. to the fair and glorious city where i met fair and glorious becca, and we brunched in honor of thank-god-we’re-not-mothers day. i carried an umbrella around as a charm against rain and sure enough the sun stayed out.

good art today too, for a change: i finished the delightful pride and prejudice and fran lebowitz’s social studies, one of the most highly readable books i’ve come across in a while. speaking of which, becca and i wandered through a pretentious bookstore, the kind that sells used volumes at usual prices.

what’s this, said becca, picking up a sliver of a book, more of a pamphlet really, called something like “the guide to kissing,” published 1938 and targeted to men (or at least those who kiss girls). we giggled over its advice for a bit then looked for a price. the chubby man behind the counter volunteered his opinion on the subject: “for you, $3.75.” when i didn’t seem to find this a bargain, he seemed crushed.

instead i lingered over a far more useful document, the diaries of anais nin; but i was put off, on that score as well, by price. if anyone is thinking of a present for me, think in that direction.

but to pick up on the good art thread, becca and i then treated ourselves to the good thief, a sultry, well-made, heavily-accented, yet-another-heist movie. but throughout i kept admiring it for its skillful use of cinematic elements: car chases, witty dialogue, expensive clothes, the french riveria, explosions; a clever cop, a smarter, sympathetic criminal (who has hit rock bottom), and a very thin barely-legal girl; sex, drugs, and rock and roll. altogether enjoyable.