(drink up baby, look at the stars)

on the way down to staunton, i played every version of Between the Bars i have on my ipod. I had one from To: Elliott, From: Portland by a girl named Amelia, and Chris Garneau's version and then the Original from Either/Or and the string quartet version by Vitamin. It's a good lineup, the takes are subtly different so that it's not like listening to the same track on repeat, but they're all saying more or less the same thing (...).

While we were waiting for the play to begin today the cast was standing on the balcony playing folksy covers. You may be expecting this by now, but it was a surprise to me at the time when Poins/The Earl of Douglas launched into a rendition of Between the Bars. It wasn't perfect, but it's the thought that counts, and something about seeing people dressed in Elizabethan garb playing minstrel-y instruments made it special.

Since i've been home i downloaded metric's acoustic take. I'll be on the lookout for others as well.

drink up one more time
and I'll make you mine.
keep you apart
deep in my heart.
separate from the rest
where I like you the best
and keep the things you forgot

(weep wow...)

Here's the route google suggests from Union Jack's to my house.



Here's the route I took.

(live)

i'm a bit amused that the bulk of my ads are for sleep related products. i'm somewhat fixated on sleep in life, but i wasn't specifically aware of blogging on the subject. i'm also interested to know that i've gotten 80 page impressions since i started with the ads. that strikes me as a fairly small number, but more than i would have expected. in particular, i know of three people who read this with any regularity. maybe there are others hanging out unbeknownst to me.

meanwhile, i'm watching the cavs, and i have the terrible impression that alex's sports pessimism is rubbing off on me. it's too easy for them, and it's eerie. i know they're supposed to roll in this series, but i almost trusted the cavs better as underdogs getting by on pure lebron magic. and just as i'm getting around to typing this the cavs are blowing their huge lead. i'm still confident they'll pull this one out tonight, so i guess i haven't gone all the way over to the pessimist dark side.

(false advertising)

i just noticed that i can have ads on my site. not that i want to sell out or think that enough people read this that it's worth anything to me. in fact, i pretty specifically don't want ads on my site.

there more to it though (which ultimately culminates with my decision to enable ads). for one, i think that ads actually tend to inform a site's content. you write about haruki murakami and get links to buy his books. and then there's the unintentionally fitting ones, like links to rehabs clinics and crisis centers beside elliott smith lyrics on songmeanings. finally, i'm curious what they'll come up with. i've written about all kinds of fairly irrelevant and esoteric topics (see: drowning cats, mike draper), so who knows what inspiration i may derive from adsenses machinations. i'll find out in the next 48 hours, at which point i may or may not end the experiment.

(clever title)

i found this article on a statistics blog i follow. it's a discussion of various authors and the merits of their titles, interesting to me because i've always assessed myself as an adept titler and a mediocre writer. there's an implicit critique there, like titles:work::style:substance. not that i'm so down on myself about it. i just like that someone else noticed.

(arpeggios!)

i will make no attempt to disguise my excitement.

i'm in chicago with several of my coworkers for exam seminars. exciting because we're out of the office, lame because it's still pretty much work, even through the weekend.

we're on the train into the city, and somehow daft punk comes up and i casually mention interstella5555 and mac's casually all 'i've been watching that constantly recently'. long story short, as soon as we get to the hotel we order the dvd off amazon, scheduled to arrive at our hotel saturday. plans to buy beer and get everyone in our room to watch it. ridiculous and awesome.

now, after pizza, we're falling asleep listening to one more time and aerodynamic. i'm indescribably satisfied.

goodnight.

(www.piouspets.com)

"I may or may not have gone on a binge with your fruit snacks"
-Thomas

(there is a grape in the drinking fountain)

there was mold on both of the bagels left in my cube this morning, tying them together with bridge of fungus. i was talking to don barksdale and cutting the moldy bits apart and then he wished me luck and went away. i finished the temp tee, and it was delicious despite inauspicious (moldy) beginnings.

you always say that these posts make no sense. just wanted to let you know that sometimes 'you' is you too.

in a more lucid turn, i wanted to talk about what stick shift means to driving. the main difference, to me, is that driving automatic is a game of continuity, steady pressures, gradual change. a good driver never makes a sudden move, like slamming on a pedal or swerving the wheel. on the other hand, inside of the car are these discrete gears and it's impossible to be anything but sudden. with automatic transmission, the car does it's own thing with smoothing the transitions and you don't even notice the barely averted violence in every clutch and release. driving standard, all the jumps are at your fingertips. it feels good to mix the smoothness of the engine and the car down the road with the chop and stutter of the gears, and there's something magical in the moment where the clutch starts to disengage and the engine begins to take the burden of the wheels. if you've never done it before i can show you how.

tomorrow there will be no moldy bagel, since i threw the other twin away. i'll have soy milk and another grapefruit, which is certainly enough.

(my phone is sweet)

"You can want to be like Allen Iverson, but I don't think people should try to be like Allen Iverson. I think people should be better than Allen Iverson."

I never ran into you again after we were at costco, but i suppose you had mad adventures.

i came home and put the stuff away and then went and told bonnie (my neighbor) that my phone had come through. I also went because i wanted to see eamonn (my baby neighbor) and because dave and i decided to invite them over (jim too! but he wasn't there) for dinner next thursday. they're coming.

not many exciting things happened last night. i only read national geographic (the parts about arctic exploration) and talked to my mom.

(god in french is dieu)

I was thinking that's it's a funny act to watch someone read. specifically if they're browsing wikipedia pages. because you can't tell what they're thinking, only where they go, and there are the (relatively) long pauses while they just read and think. it's interesting because it's such a different experience for the reader himself, because he's in it. driving and unaware of the act.

i'm facebook messaging back and forth with mme. suskin, my high school french teacher. she's sweet, and i hadn't heard from her in a while. it's also fun to play in french, and i'm certainly conscious of being much more fluent than i was in high school. it's very a satisfying exercise, because it's also an implicit compliment of her teaching, which was excellent. she'll also be in france when i am, which could make for some interesting times. i may or may not go to new york again sooner to hang out. she even offered her canapé.

(quotes)

"People may not be buried there, and so those who fall gravely ill must be taken to another part of Norway, where they can be buried if they die."

"When I was 14, I was given the task of drowning kittens by my girlfriend's mother. I filled the large laundry sink with room temperature water and held the eight kittens under. The strange thing is that as each one died and floated to the bottom, it turned and rested 'snuggled' to the previous. I put them in a garbage bag and was carrying it out when the bag moved and I heard a meow. I opened the bag and found one kitten had survived so I drowned it again."

i wish i didn't have to be awake at work tomorrow.

(deep thoughts)

ben roethlisberger = phil mickelson = hugh grant

this week i've come to hate the sound of a tv that i'm not watching. this is mostly the case of people wearing their work clothes and not sweating in the gym, using bad form on the weights and watching judge joe brown with the volume up. that and sarah watching a three hour backlog of real housewives of orange county (also with the volume up) while i'm trying to sleep, and then commenting on how trashy it is when i walk by.

( )

possible titles for this post

(l'alcool est mon ennemi. fuir son ennemi c'est lâche)
(top ten disembodied voices)
(the pirate ride metaphor)
(mike mccright and the georgia doi)
(less soothing, but in a good way)
(poisonous berries)
(everyone's heart beat's electrical)
(in her morning banana)

(dig it up, bury it somewhere else, pay someone to guard it)

When I was in the shower today, I was thinking about this book I'm reading, 'The Nuclear Age' by Tim O'Brien, and how it would make a good movie. Cinematic and all. He's talking about the mountains above the town where the action takes place, which made me think of Dante's peak, which Thomas and I watched a couple weeks ago. I remembered the scene where Pierce Brosnan et al. are on a boat crossing a lake that's turned acidic from the volcano and the boat is corroding away and I thought that if anyone wanted to make a serious attempt to boat on an acid lake they'd get a gold plated boat, which reminded me of the time, junior year of high school, when I wanted to make aqua regia to dissolve gold and it never happened because no one had any good leaf handy, which reminded me of the part in gravity's rainbow where the guy gets a bottle of aqua regia poured over his head. somewhere in here I carefully washed both ears.

I was out today with Joey and Thomas eating Haagen-Dazs and the value of gold came up, prompting me to give the preceding explanation. Welcome to my mind.

(32s and hoes?)

One weird development in my life is a tendency to leave things at the grocery store checkout. At least four times since I've moved here, I've arrived at home only to realize that I had less food than I'd paid for. I don't have a satisfactory explanation for the phenomenon, except perhaps that I'm supremely relaxed while I'm shopping. Once I arrived home with eight cans of someone else's tuna and a bunch of bananas. I hope they didn't mind too much, and they enjoyed my eggs.

I've never told you about Snider's, the grocery store down the way. It's my new favorite - closer than Giant and Safeway and without the cheesy signage &c. It's got a good deli, a wide selection of European foods and things like La Yogurt Sabor Latino, which are delicious. Also, unlike aforementioned chains, Snider's sells alcohol. It's rare to find something so appealing and convenient in the absence of high price and/or smugness.

The reason I thought of all of this is I just got back from Snider's in the rain and I was afraid that I'd left a couple of the bottles of malt liquor that I'd picked up for Mac's party tonight. Thankfully I hadn't, but it was luck more than diligence that made it so. Also, I don't know if it's a quirk of Maryland law or just a regional preference, but the malt liquor at Snider's is all in 32 ounce bottles. Michelob and Budweiser are still in 40s, but Olde English and Schlitz is 32s. So if you happen to run into me and I'm eight ounces less drunk than you'd expect, there's the culprit.

EDIT: check it out: SNIDER'S

(There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy)

One conclusion I've drawn from watching The Twilight Zone is that people in 1960 were less observant, critical thinkers than you and I are. That or it's a plot device. I've also concluded that The Twilight Zone is an awesome show.

In unrelated news, can anyone explain why the Celtics can't win? I don't mind so much. It's just a litte disconcerting.

(VEE Liveblog)

This feels like watching all six star wars movies in a row, except with corporate finance. These are the moments in life that I choose to record. Also, it feels totally wrong to write six star wars movies, but watching the trilogy in one sitting doesn't have the same level of commitment to unreasonability.

923: Utility of internet falls below utility of starting to work. I'm about to begin Module 18 (of 24). I suspect that this is the point in the course where it gets a little ballsy. I'll explain. After five modules, the author disclaims that those were an introduction, and it's about to get a little hairier. After module fourteen, the author says something to the extent of "now that we've got the basics out of the way, bring on the 'nads." Several chapters later, I'm still waiting for them to drop. Up to now the modules have been 4-8 pages long, and this one's in the 20-30 range, so i'm thinking this might be the one.

935: I realize I've wasted 12 minutes talking figuratively about testes (which makes me think of boggle [thanks alex]). I get started.

1022: I've finished module 18. still no sign of balls, but I did realize I'd inadvertantly skipped module 17, so I'll be going back for that one next. I'm feeling gross and unshowered, but hygiene will have to wait.

1040: Well, that was fast. Feels as good as fast-forwarding through the second half of phantom menace. I'm going to shower, put some pants on, eat something, then take on the last quarter of this course.

1125: I'm clean, fed, and wearing my new red shorts. Game on.

1229: Module 19 was the least fun module to date. Hopefully I learned something. I'm now through most of the three-odd hours of four tet on my computer. The next modules are about option pricing, which is a fairly testicular subject, though one I'm somewhat familiar with. We'll see how it goes.

1339: That didn't actually take an hour, i was playing final fantasy 9 for about half of that (needed handwriting rest after 19!). I was going to make some observations about my noise-cancelling headphones, but that's a stiff enough digression to wait for another post. now, oreos and module 21.

1408: In this episode, we have an N (14) part homework assignment. Am unamused.

1427: Not too inspired about these last three. At least it's only three left. I'm done with Four Tet, So I'll have to find something else. I'll be back.

...

1545: Back and ready to rock. I'm working the kinks out of a new playlist, which is an fair trade for having to sit for as long as I have been.

1620: Since I did 18 before 17, I was considering doing 24 before 23 to keep things fresh, but then I looked and it turns out that 24 has no homework*. Bookshakalaka. So I'm rounding the corner, ready to to take on module 23, which, to my eye, is replete with cajoñes. I'm feeling nasty enough to be up to the challenge.

1733: Donzo. I'll probably look over a practice exam later, maybe even module 24 if i'm feeling charitable. Until then I'll be scratching my legs, generally pleased with myself.

*Is that like fast forwarding through the end of return of the jedi? could be i've taken this too far.

(there, I said it.)

I'm addicted to morphine.

(secrets/traps)

all the things that are occupying me, that i would normally type about here, are dead giveaways to things i'm specifically remaining silent about to the people most likely to be reading this.

i've been leaving notes sandwiched in my phone so i don't forget things in the morning on the way to work. they're scribbled on the backs of old receipts that i've dragged out of the trash by my bed. there is apparently an endless supply of receipts in that trash can.

i've been listening to shampoo suicide. i like it now because i'm just coming to terms with using shampoo, which is a little death, alright in that way. just interesting that shampoo can be significant and broken social scene sees it too. and how my hair shines! but how it is also sad. very emotional song, that.

(when we get together it's always hot magic)

hello (detox).

i've been busy (freudian typo: busty?). it feels good. the best thing recently has been taking walks, alone and accompanied in the neighborhood behind my house. i don't know who lives there, but they seem unfriendly. they open their door a crack and peer out, chain pulled taut. they're afraid of people outside. they're afraid of me.

at night, the curtains are drawn, as in curfew (etymology typo: couvre-feu). they could me empty, for all the evidence of life. in sandusky, i feel like i'm the observer, looking into gently lit parlors; watching people watch tv, work at their computer. here the brightest lights are the streetlamps over me, and it feels like i'm on display.

the main thing is just taking circles, letting my mind spread out like ice cream melting on a plate. it's relaxing, and it makes me feel like i am home.

this week will be relaxing, as opposed to any other week recently. i don't think i'll go out at night, opting instead to sleep and catch up on other things. maybe be a little healthy. until friday, when all hell breaks loose again until after the election. in this time, i'll sleep three different places, be in five different states, work a few days, see a concert, celebrate birthdays and holidays. even though i won't be thinking about it, my hair will continue to grow, and my gall bladder will continue to produce bile, among other things.

i finished the water next to my bed, so it is empty. i keep reaching for the cup, but then it's too light, and i know (remember) there's no water left.

new subject. dave nelson shaved all his body hair for his halloween costume, michael phelps. it was a good party, a good use of the house. dan bardo came. i took a walk with sameer. i have no complaint. this morning sameer and i went to ihop. nick and jose (the vagina) left. we played griffey. we might play blitz next time.

i'm done. goodnight

(P268)

[Macalister's boy took one of the fish and cut a square out of its side to bait his hook with. The mutilated body (it was alive still) was thrown back into the sea.]

(i want a patch of blue sky to follow me)

i brought back the apples in stereo's rainfall this weekend for my hannah playlist. it rained intensely for most of the day saturday, and it was great for sleeping in the afternoon. it was a funny remidner of the rain and fog in france, which i've revisited rereading the stories i wrote during that time. france has seemed closer talking to katja about the sparkling eiffel tower casting weird shadows in her kitchen and telling people how to dial 011 33 then the number.

it rained again today, so i listened to rainfall on the way home from work. i had a french flavored day today too. i went to the opnet shareholders meeting, since it was nearby (in bethesda) and the founders, two brothers, were whispering to each other furtively in french. after the meeting and presentation, i caught alain (the one with the flashy striped jacket) at the front of the room criticizing the pastries with his mother (meh, pas terrible. degeulasse, quoi!) and i told them they should be nicer to the bakers. realizing they'd been caught, they pulled me into their conversation, in which my actionnaire/actuaire joke fell flat. i guess corniness translates all too well. at one point, one of the other major stakeholders brushed by, saying 'quit speaking in french!' so angry. it was funny, maybe just because he had a moustache. maybe he thought we were talking shit about him. maybe he was the one who baked the sub-par pastries.

(all i'm saying for now)

here's what's happening

-stain stick is rentable vs. irish accent. aisling honls out. so does liz.

-the ipod swiveler points one way better than the other. currently, it's pointing the other. it happens.

-androgyny discussed. björk and natalie portman lead candidates.

-aisling's deep thoughts include time out on the porch. a detour from the path of life. that and turney says he just doesn't know how to wear jeans and squash is to raquetball as chess is to checkers. he's actually kinda wonderful. and living in haddonfield. it happens.

joanna newsom. liz squeaks. i have her read like anything. i like the walnut whales version better. it happens. (you know your place).

the blow bridges gaps. it may or may not be the key.

(pictures)

Look at these people getting married! Actually it's them cutting the cake. I went to two weddings. This is Preethum and Gopi. Preethum is bald.



look at this duck! It's in Naperville. Jane and Joe got married last weekend. Kim and I were on the river walk with Nathan and Gretchen and I told Gretchen to scare a duck so I could take a picture of its blue feathers.



Look at the baby! It's Jaxin (Like Michael). We ate lunch together and I taught her how to rip napkins.

(this is not a music blog)

But everyone needs this song.

Aerodynamic (Daft Punk Remix)

In other news, I am unendingly amused by photoshop disasters. What has been seen cannot be unseen.

Ima go listen to that song about 5 more times and go to sleep.

(one of these days i'll get a haircut)

there was not as much talk of goals this semester as last, so maybe it shouldn't surprise me that i look back at this semester and see much less drive on my part. maybe it should surprise me that things are still getting done. it could just be that my obstacles weren't as obnoxious or obvious. getting a visa is much less writing that a thesis, but the embassy and front desk staff at albert 1er were much more tricky than my committee. i was tired as anything after my interview at geico, but not like after the marathon. so maybe that makes this semester less intense. the other side of the hill, or something. and maybe i'll think of it differently later (and when it comes down to it maybe it's the other side of the valley. a steady, uphill climb out of winter opposing the harrowing [hand tense on the breaks] ride down in).

really i'm only half way there, at least in any official capacity. i got honors without incident on friday, but only a message from geico hr saying we had things to discuss. it seems positive, like every other indicator i've gotten from them, but nothing i can count on. i don't suppose companies are in the habit of leaving offers on voicemails. rejections too, for that matter.

(turnip into my shelf)

i think it's colder inside that outside. we got the HVAC ripped out and don't get any sun in here. it's nice when it's too warm outside, but right now i'm sitting with a couple of sweatshirts on. there's a nice cool spring breeze on the porch but it's like winter in here. the air isn't moving, like it's frozen.

i took a nice nap this afternoon with sara and we made plans to travel during reading days. söndering. i called anna, and she said we could come crash. from there, who knows. depends on what work we have and where people are.

at night i was out in the street and it was really quiet, cars rolling by on college ave. the lights from the houses was warm and dim. i found a possum, crushed open on the road. when i approached a baby was crawling towards the curb under a parked car. another was nuzzling under its mother, lifting a lifeless paw with its head.

(concert circle sandwich)

i was at first unitarian on march 26 for xiu xiu, and again last friday, april 25 for eisley. they could hardly have been more different shows, but that's not the real story, because there was a month of other concerts in between. they were each at a different venue, starting with cowboy bar in mechanicsburg, chameleon, starlight ballroom and the troc.

an intense month of concerts matched an intense month in life, which probably helped keep things sane, in the end. like driving in high school.

the other thing i was thinking is that first unitarian is a pretty ideal church. it's a great catchall for things that need a place that don't have one. it hosts homeless meals and a children's center during the day and small time concerts at night. cheap tickets, intimate setting, no bouncers. unless the crowd is obnoxious it's pretty much a guaranteed good show. it's funny, i don't think i've ever ran into any unitarians there.

(shot in sequence)

i guess i'm tired.

(neurasthenia and other tropical diseases)

saturday: as i was falling asleep, i heard the whistling from amsterdam coming from someone's speakers in some other house.

sunday: i have no memory of this day. it's like the shattered planks of the airship after the floating continent. it's going along until there's just jagged splinters and a green-haired girl hanging on.

monday: oxfam poster meeting session devolved into anagramming. 'cream her beef' results. it turns out memphis really can't make free throws. too bad they couldn't have chosen the michigan state game to choke.

tuesday: stager smells like fish, which turns into a day long conversation topic. katie leach complains about in class work. i'm listening to human after all on my ipod. the blend of diversion and novelty.

wednesday: i have two glasses of water on my desk. they were empty, and i filled them. they will be empty again.

(ready for too much after all)

The most important part about moving my bed was clearing out the dust bunnies from underneath. Other than that it was just a sock and program from the philly art museum. By bed is under the windows like your bed is now. That's the idea i got, along with having different colored covers and beach towels for bath towels.

I'm listening to hot chip and daft punk. that's to replace, though not entirely, air and ac newman. i'm doing something both wednesday and thursday nights, though i have options for both, so i'm not sure what. it's either ewf or concert in both cases. concert's more exciting but reading is more relaxing. for this month, at least, concert will almost always come out on top.

I'm excited about this room because it feels like I can move out of it now. It has broken from its mold. I'm disoriented turning around in my chair. I'm no good with anything that's too constant, I suppose.

(plus plus)

i was listening to the air song over and over. it's raining outside. you called during class. i've been busy. i've been happy. that's what happens when it's spring. maybe something to do with forgetting. getting pushed under by the weather.

i haven't stopped being thirsty in a long time. i wonder if it's something broken from drinking too much water back in the day. maybe i eat too much salt. or else i just like the feeling of being filled with water all the time. i think of people not drinking and it just feels dry.

that's the thing abotu this third section. it's got to be here, but i'm really just done. i'm already thinking of what's doing next. je songe à veiller un peu, travailler. cormir tard, me lever satisfait. avoir fini. c'est un bon rêve. la liberté.

(i won't rest until i forget about it)

lebron recently became the first black man on the cover of vogue. cue controversy.



i don't really feel like commenting. just putting this out there.

(best thing i've heard in a while)

the biggest danger to giraffes in captivity is lightning

(they will never understand how washed up you feel on the land)

dooooo doooooo doooooo dooooooo do do doooooooooo
doooooo dooooo doooooo doooooooooooooo
dooooo doooooo doooooo dooooooo do do doooooooooo
doooooo dooooo doooooo doooooooooooooo

(meeting the architect)

it happens that i'm taking a nap, like i sometimes do, in my bed in my clothes at noon. another thing that happens with surprising regularity, I wake up in the sun, very sleepy. when i come back inside, a man with a thin chain and a green shirt is doing work on the house. he's cleared out my room and is messing with some plumbing by the back door. he says the landlord says it's cool and that, furthermore, it's a 72,000 dollar property and as rich people, we can talk about that. he's working on retiling the main room, but then he comes to me and says our pump's busted. i'm still so very tired. i tell him i'll let the landlord know or he can ask himself. he keeps talking to me about the pipe, but i've go to go to class. i hope it's still sunny out.

(an urge to put things in parentheses)

i was just remembering arguing with a docent at musée marmottan about whether or not a monet was hung upside down. it was a funny conversation. he was affable and expressed himself well. he brushed off my suggestion and tried to explain how it really wasn't upside down, but i imagine him going back later and looking at it and turning his head sideways and not being so sure. i wonder what a physicist would say, if they would measure the angles and say that due to gravity the vines must have been hanging one way or another. maybe something with optics, how it must be or not be a reflection in some water.

a little over a year later my sister took me to jamba juice. maybe that's a story for another time. i can only hold so much at once.

(eventually there is nothing else to do but sleep)

my favorite food is spinach, onions, balsamic vinegar.

i'm getting reäcquainted with the hypnagogic life, thoughts of fiery boobs flashing neon across my brain while alan levine is trying to explain functions of random variables, integration by parts and u substitution. by the end of class there's nothing there for him to erase. when i get home i dream that i'm very sleepy and fumble at the doorknob before collapsing at the base of the door. the hard wood feels nice and steady at my temple, and there are exciting things in the mail. i'll just wait until thomas comes to help me. three slices of toast and then another 80 minutes of alan levine. it works out better this time around, and my meeting with lisa is longer and more languid than usual, though at the end she surprises me by warning me to get to have a lot done by our next meeting. i have no plans for the next four days and maybe i should.

(typical roommate interaction)

i emerge from the bathroom in my underwear, wave my hands and incant 'mlungisi siyabonga bhegiwe dlamini!' thomas, on his way from the kitchen with a bowl of cereal, recoils, grumbling mouth full 'whatever..'

(she wanted you to spell out her name in giant letters on the quad in the blood of your ex-girlfriend)

today has been inördinately productive. i woke up at 8 to move my car for street cleaning and went running too. it's warm enough to make me angry about climate change, but mostly only when i'm running through clouds of exhaust. i talked to alan levine and van gosse and got down to work on my thesis. i've written about a page so far today, with more to come. i took breaks to eat, do dishes and look at things on the internet. now i'm taking a break to write this, but really it's to go to class in five minutes.

i haven't formally mentioned it, but i have two goals for this semester too. last time it was the marathon and the visa, and i got both done (like glenn ross says, by hook or by crook). This semester it's writing my thesis and getting a job. i'm half on both horses right now. i'm not worried too much about either, but a little, anyways. they're big enough tasks that i can't count on them accomplishing themselves.

next week i'm writing about the stranger, so i'll probably have to reread it this week. that's pretty pleasant as far as academic reading goes. is why i'm studying it, i suppose. to class!

(that wasn't such a good version of that, but, anyways, here's another song)

in december, my sister and i tracked down the wall from the cover of figure 8 near the corner of fountain and sunset in LA. here's what we came up with.

(firm hand, gentle heart)

"stop rubbing poop in my wounds," is what Thomas would say when Sara or I would do a hostile takeover on one of his contracts (especially after he'd gotten some bad news from the wall street journal). We were playing Technopoly. We've been doing that a lot recently. it's a funny game, about managing the cutting edge of computer technology. funny because it's from 1991, so there are supercomputers with half a gig of ram. the best contract is a black budget project called 'ashtoreth'. To my knowledge, it's made up for the game. it's a good concept though - a secret defense project code named after an ancient goddess. i wonder what it could be about?

also: gentle hand, firm heart?

(finger on the pulse)

i forget the first time that it happened, but last semester in analysis, when i was most bored and ready to fall asleep, i found myself tracing an EKG in my notes. it would proceed for a few beats, then break up and flatline.

i asked around and went through some tests. there's nothing wrong with my heart. but sometimes when i'm running i get relaxed almost to the point of sleeping. sometimes i notice a heaviness left side of my chest. it hurts but i dont want to stop so i go faster.

now, when i'm sitting very still, i can still feel it beating soundly beneath my ribs

(inauspicious)

i haven't posted here for a while, but i have been writing this

then again, if you're reading this than you've most likely already read that. anyways, i'm back.

(is it true what they say about the son of god?)

there were some cheeses left over from the the french dept. holiday potluck, so when it came time to come home, not wanting to waste good cheese, i threw them in my suitcase. as fortune would have it, i promptly forgot about them, and they sat in a plastic bag in my room throughout break, getting smellier (which, as cheeses go, isn't necessarily a bad thing). that is, until now...

as far as stockings go, my mother plays santa for my sister, my dad and me, so i took it upon myself to pull some stuff together for hers. it wasn't at all difficult to assemble small, inexpensive gifts for the stocking, as evidenced by her christmas list:

Hi guys, Here are some things I'd like for Christmas.
1. Clinique blush "new clover" is the color
2. Some sewing thread in a variety of colors, particularly I often use beige, tan, grey, black, navy and white, but I love all colors and use many different ones depending on the color of my purses (see coupon below)
3. A stitch ripper (see coupon below)
4. Any cool, unusual, larger buttons or beads, say from the Goodwill or an antique shop, that I can use for decorating the purses and for closing them. Whatever you do, don't spend a lot on them. I usually pay less than $1.50 even for the prettiest large beads or buttons
5. All-wool sweaters on sale at the Goodwill that I can cut up and make into a purse, Goodwills often have things on sale Tues, Wed and Thurs
That's all folks! OXOX

she wanted a cake server as well, so i put that in too. i asked my dad to pick up a bag of hershey's kisses with almonds, threw in an orange — done.

tonight, after much waiting for the parents to go to bed, i go get my mother's stocking and find that only mine is gone for filling, apparently she hadn't figured on her and dad's being filled as well. so i come back upstairs to fill hers and think of what to tell my dad. it mostly comes down to it not being a huge deal and teasing my mother about santa forgetting, but still, some kind of showing would be nice. that's when i remember the cheese.

i stuff it to the bottom of his stocking, throw in an orange — done.

(notice!)

just a little commentary from the management...

i refer to this as my secret blog, but more accurately it's a no secret blog. that is, your secrets aren't safe here. the lack of discretion becomes problematic as more and more people know this url (which i otherwise don't mind). for example, i mention what my mom got my dad for christmas, which is alright as long as i don't link him here to show him the lebron/kobe pic and he doesn't subsequently read the rest of the entries. so yeah, you've been put on notice, stephen colbert style.

i guess all it means is i have to be aware of you might be reading, though i (at least in part) reserve the right not to (or something).

(don't meth with iowa)

I went too bed at 9 last night and woke up at 2. i quickly fell asleep again and woke up at 5. at that point i wasn't really very tired anymore, so i pulled out my computer and was wandering the internets when I found this gem:Mike Draper on NPR

It's the kind of thing that you'll mostly appreciate if you know the drape, and won't if you don't. suffice it to say that i do, thus did. if you don't, here's some free advertising for his store slash site www.thesmashsite.com If you're too lazy to check it out, there are t-shirts like 'rock out with your caucus out' and my personal favorite 'make awkward sexual advances, not war'.

(awesome happenings -or- sick as a dolphin)

Yesterday was easily the easiest dentist appointment of my life. The only curious thing was when the dentist asked me whether my wisdom tooth had ever bothered me. It never has, but suddenly started to last night. They must have disturbed the gum behind my tooth. At dinner last night i chewed through most of the offending gum, but it's still sore. Somewhere in there I realized that that's not an interesting story. Personally I just like the prescient question "Has that wisdom tooth ever given you any trouble?"

My mother and I were at the local liquor store buying Jaeger and Red Bull for Jaeger bombs. We ran into Sharon Wilson, who is the mother of Halle Wilson (of 5th grade fame) and cuts my mother's hair. She said she had only recently started drinking when Halle bought her a drink during a visit to Ohio State. Yesterday, she was buying cheap vodka to mix with orange pop.

I felt better than I have recently while working out this morning. I started slow on the bike then moved up to running. I read the first half of Daisy Miller on the bike. To cool off after I played basketball for a while outside. I was thinking that I would have oatmeal for breakfast, but somewhere in there I started making oatmeal cookies instead. I got to the part where I add baking soda and couldn't find any. Then i remembered the great thanksgiving fire of 2007, which my mother had extinguished with ... baking soda. apparently it hadn't been replaced. I ended up going next door (still sweaty, in my running clothes) to ask the neighbors that I don't know that well if i could have some. They were having their water heater replaced. I got that taken care of without further incident and provided amusement for the neighbors (my favorite! fun & profit!) Back home, i continued my doublebatch without incident until the oats. Unfortunately, I didn't notice until too late that my mother was keeping a strange health food mixture in the oat container. So we have sunflower seeds in the cookies too.

In the afternoon I went out to Oberlin and hung out with Sean. His sister Juliet is getting married, and Sean told me how his new favorite thing is weddings, by which he means getting drunk for free and dancing. In any case, it was a good opportunity for me to use the "all the world's men mourn" line.

(pictures and answers)

My dad took me to the game last night. We had awesome seats (like you can see), and the cavs pulled out a win. In particular, LeBron had an awesome putback dunk right in front of us. At the end, I was jumping up and down and my phone fell down the in the bleachers. I ended up getting it back, but i missed a couple key opportunities to taunt ruthie's lakers fan of a mexican boyfriend.
This is my grandfather and I in front of my aunt and uncle's christmas tree. My aunt wasn't sure whether the hat was meant to be ironic (it was).

(one hand story)

i just got home, and for the first time that i could remember, the lights were on at reception. two norwegian boys were knitting caps at the desk. one was already wearing a hat; i figured he'd made that one as well. the rest on the hotel was dark as usual. the only discernible activity was the sound of my father watching steven soderbergh's version of solaris in 107. i brought a half empty box of pizza from the kitchen fridge to 112, and was watching the snow fall outside when helena stopped by. she asked me when i'd gotten in and i offered her a slice of pizza. it was mushroom and asparagus. we started watching the snow fall together. It had been falling consistently for a couple of days. except under the overhang covering the valet lane where i parked my white pickup, even the well plowed plots of asphalt were covered in a couple of inches. soon the sun went down and we couldn't see anything at all. we finished the pizza and walked a couple turns around the atrium. when we got tired, we cleared an area of carpet of furniture and set out a thick blanket featuring the logo of the canadian football team we used to sponsor. my father came out a little later with his hair uncombed. he brought his own blanket and settled in a ways away. when i woke up in the morning the norwegians were gone, but one of them left a hat. i took it with me when i went out.

(As the sun passed its zenith, mother and I set out in the golden accord)

Shopping extravaganza

First we went to the UPS store. I helped carry the boxes in and heckled the clerks there since they were both wearing turtlenecks (if you put on a backpack it'll be like a really weak midget's trying to bring you down).

Then we went to Perkins and made plans to a) see my uncle b) dine with the wongs and c) i forget. i also don't know what days all this visiting and dining is going down. sometime

Then we went to Meijer. This mostly involved me naysaying all my mom's choices (Whole wheat lasagna? Gross o'clock!). Also beer in a grocery store. For that, it's good to be home.

Then a chase around Sandusky trying to find clever novelty shot glasses for gifts. we pass on the following themes: cedar point, 'let's get drunk and screw', sandusky, cleveland indians, and nascar. We end up getting tall Ohio state glasses. I'll ask dad to pick up some Jaeger to go with for the party.*

Meanwhile, I went on a shoeventure at Dick's. I got a pair for $40 cause they were mispriced. yay for corporate incompetence resulting in me saving money.

We ended up at best buy, where, after much discussion, we settled on a GPS unit for my dad. Don't tell him, but it's because he gets lost more easily now.

All in all, we were gone for four hours.

*Ruthie called while we were at the mall to remind us to get red bull as well.

(indescriminate gladhanding)

This is the part where i detail my activities for the first of nine days with which i have nothing particular to do.

With ten hours of transport, six of sleep, and twenty odd other since my last shower, this morning was pretty gross (I declined to take once yesterday upon the discovery that my mother had used all the hot water at my grandfather's house). Also cold, since no one normally lives upstairs (the vents are off!) and I'm above the garage to boot. Also cold because my blankets had fallen off (burrito homesickness!). I woke up at seven, saw my shadow, and went back for two more hours of sleep. the cold got to me by 9:30, and that was that.

(After all this complaining [drama!]), the first things i did was have a long hot shower. I also brushed my teeth twice with my sister's industrial strength toothpaste (which is, until further notice, my industrial strength toothpaste).

I then set about wandering the house in search of my mother (we have plans to go shopping [best buy, shoes]). I found her wrapping presents on the ping-pong table in the basement.* She sent me running around to get things for her, and then I started going through my toy shelves trying to sort things. Most of it is worthless to anyone but me, so it's a matter of keep or chuck. I chucked some of the most obviously useless things (pinewood derby cars, broken piece of big wheel no longer in our posession) then went upstairs.

I ate a grilled cheese on the last two pieces of bread in the house and found the family christmas card. I posted it here and then copyedited it (semicolons dad? srsly? -or- no comma before a coördinating conjunction followed by a dependent clause!).

Then I showed it to my dad, who was trying to make the wireless work on his laptop. I started writing this post, my dad solved his problem (fcn-F2, apparently) and went downstairs to make a sandwich, probably counting on aforementioned slices of bread.


*my mother wrapping christmas presents o nthe ping-pong table always reminds me of junior year of the song alamede, junior year of high school and my grandmother dying.

(family xmas card)

On the left, we have a picture of a sleigh overflowing with presents and a pine tree and the text "Peace on earth, goodwill to all"

Also included in the card is a 1/3 sheet with the following blurb:

Pictured, Ruthie and Jake enjoy a waterfront café in Lucerne, Switzerland this spring. We were visiting Jake as he finished his junior year abroad in Paris; he and Jim had just run the Paris marathon.

Jake is now back at Franklin and Marshall for his senior year, majoring in French and Math. He will soon depart on a short trip to Algeria to study Albert Camus' roots, which relates to his honors thesis.

Ruthie is still in Orange County, CA, just south of LA. She enjoys her job as a business consultant, and especially her location. Business travel sometimes brings her to the Midwest for visits. We'll be visiting out there for the New Year's holiday.

Kit's new talent is hand-made purses, either knit or made from recycled wool sweaters. Very creative, and popular - she has been selling them in boutiques near Leland, Michigan, where we have our vacation cottage.

Jim is still running; he and Jake ran the Philadelphia marathon in November. His practice is busy, and he continues to participate as a preceptor for medical students from the University of Toledo on their community rotation.

We get up to Leland about once a month for long weekends, more in the summer. It's a place of great relaxation, where we enjoy kayaking, golf, hiking, tennis, and maybe snow shoeing this winter. We have made some wonderful new friends. We do enjoy hosting visitors if that might fit into your plans for 2008!

let's make sure my mother never sees this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7137997.stm

(something about staying up until 330 playing romance of the three kingdoms)

Last night it was Solaris.

(finished)

there is a spider in the puzzle box along with all the pieces; i'd forgotten how much puzzles relax and focus me. (please excuse the semicolon use)

i'm done with the lady with the butterflies in the middle. i'm working on all the yellow parts. this puzzle is easier than i thought it would be, but it might get harder. or maybe i'm just in the right frame of mind. maybe i just have time. it's not hot (like last time i did a puzzle).

tomorrow, i'm finished with class. the exams will happen. i'll sit for them, and then i'll leave. that part's simple. this thing with being done with classes is the bigger deal.

remember how i said that all i had to worry about now was getting a visa? it's still there, waiting to get taken care of. and it will.

sara's worried about her housing situation for next year, which is legit, but funny when i consider that i'm not particularly worried about my housing situation for next year. i guess it's so much less defined that there's no way to even grip on about it. there's nothing at stake yet. maybe there never will be.

when in doubt, hit enter twice.

i'm disappointed in the futile (punching in zero gravity) nature of this post (and it had a point too! [somewhere]). i'm done. i'm going to puzzle slash sleep.

(france is not [quite] a third world country)

I wish that i had transcripts of my conversations with the reception at Hôtel Albert 1 in Algiers.

I just got off the phone again with them and, while it was more or less business as usual, i was particularly amused. Once again, i made the mistake of calling on a wednesday morning, which through some cultural and geographical magic, amounts to friday afternoon there*. the person on the line tells me everyone's gone home, I say I've been waiting weeks (and is there seriously no one who can use a fax machine?), she asks me when my reservation is, I say January, she says "oh, you have plenty of time. don't worry." I remind her that I have to get a visa which takes time or a trip to the capital at which point she starts supplicating and promising that everything will work out, just please can I call again on Saturday. I ask what time, she says anytime between 10 and 4**. So i guess i'll be up and on the phone sometime between 4 and 10 am Saturday. With any luck i'll have my confirmation then.

And then I need the actual visa. I called the embassy, and after getting transferred to nowhere the first time and a directory service the second time, the phone got handed directly from the receptionist (same voice all three times) to the decision maker. I asked about how best to submit my visa request, specifically if I could do it in one or a few days. He said, with an air of secrecy, that he couldn't tell me. I verbally raised an eyebrow, and he repeated himself. Upon further questioning, he explained that the consul had to approve and sign everything, so that could take an indeterminate amount of time (from his tone I gather that the consul is a capricious monarch, not a salaried official) and then the paperwork comes down to him, which takes varying amounts of time depending on how busy things are. we discuss other concerns, like the type of visa I'm seeking. He asks me twice if I'm visiting anyone. Just before the end of the conversation, he casually drops that visa processing usually takes a week to 10 days, and it's a slow period now, so maybe less.

adventure!


*It does make sense if you consider that the weekend is thursday and friday there and the six hour time change makes it 4pm instead of 10am.

**awesome business hours for a hotel, no?

(longer coming than one might expect)

Ce monde, tel qu'il est fait, n'est pas supportable. J'ai donc besoin de la lune, ou de bonheur, ou de l'immortalité, de quelque chose qui soit dément peut-être, mais qui ne soit pas de ce monde.

The world, such as it is, is unendurable. That's why I need the moon, or happiness, or immortality, something strange and twisted, perhaps, but something not of this world.(110)

longer to do that two line translation (thrown by the punctuation of all things).
longer since i posted.

the thoughts i've had in the meantime are sludging at the bottom of my brain like so many slimy fallen leaves. maybe when i scrape off the inside of my head they will have left marks and if so, maybe the floor of my head is concrete.

on saturday, when i got in from shredding leaves, i found my mother and sister putting up christmas decorations with festive music playing in the background. i almost laughed at how sudden and complete the change was (i instantly thought about writing about it here). there was no in between time of wishing for winter break or cold weather or pulling things out of the attic, just one moment pushing leaves through the shredder and then next full out christmas. it's a comment on being shortsighted. when i said i was only worried about running a marathon (check!) and getting a visa (...) i wasn't trying to exclude thinking about anything else, but i guess i have been shortsighted. i like to think break gave me a bit longer scope.

i could keep writing, but i'm giving up my computer so thomas can do toefl training while his computer's out. maybe that means i'll get something done. i see reading in my future. as opposed to math homework. at least it's not final fantasy (into which i happened to sink four or so hours today). so there

(tomorrow is exciting. tonight is sleep)

i left my headphones in the car so i had the valet take me to the garage after dinner. they were in the cupholder. i was walking back, and i had the urge to run to the hotel to get it done faster. but then i remembered tomorrow. i stopped, then felt frustrated and relieved. frustrated that i had to take the long way to the hotel, relieved that i was having trouble not taking off. i might be ready.

the sense of isolation here on the floor sums up nicely in the climate control. though it's below 40 outside, this monster of the building has temperature issues worked out so that we have the air conditioning on up here. it feels nice.

at the barnes foundation there was one painting i particularly liked. a little matisse with a lemon, a spoon and a glass of water on a platter. i sketched it roughly in my notebook (despite being asked not to by the rules). later we passed a series of larger matisse's, and one of them had the lemon/spoon/water platter in the corner. i was tickled.

there was also a courbet nude and my mother was surprised that it showed vagina. tonight i showed her l'origine du monde. she thought it was interesting. i showed my dad and he rolled his eyes.

i gave my mom thomas and sara's numbers. there are lots of people!

connaître son épreuve

from this room i can see the ben franklin bridge over the delaware. the PSFS building looms (philadelphia science fiction society? philadelphia savings fund society.)

this is the first time i've been alone with my parents since. a long time. probably summer 2006. after 4th of july and before granny and poppa came to live with us. before i went to france.

the cavs won. nicholas cage won (dad was watching national treasure). i have the race course map open in the background. i ran into eranda and pavel at the convention. i might try and run with them for a while.

the 15th floor (box) is interesting because it's a vantage point but removed. the room is split in half, my parents on one side and me on the other. it feels overweight in their direction, like i'm not enough mind and body to hold this side down. i didn't feel like that in the caribbean in a double bed on the bow end of the starboard side. that reminds me, i should look through my old notebooks when i go home next week. this is the first time i'm looking forward to going home in a while.

the deeper of the cuts on my hand closed up and started hurting today. i think that means it's getting better, rather than worse. does looking in an open cut count as introspection? (no)

this unbalance in the room could be offset if my aunt and uncle come tomorrow. i think they will. and we're going to the barnes foundation and something romana for dinner. supposèdly it's a good italian restaurant. i'll have to exercise restraint not to eat wrong for the race. i think i can do that. i think i will do that.

speaking of thinking and willing and doing: post, read (fowles), sleep.

this could easily involve 11 different airports

Hey Uncle Charlie,

I'm going to go ahead and apologize in advance for what's going to be a ridiculous e-mail no matter how i slice it. I've been trying to work out winter break travel plans and it's going to be a complicated string of flights. I'm looking to fly home after exams, then out to California after Christmas, then to Algiers (?!) after new years, then back to school. I'll be doing some of this travel in conjunction with my parents, but I'm working out flights independently because the round trips are off anyways.

Here's (tentatively) what I'm trying to do:
12/15 (SAT) HBG-CLE
i could potentially make a friday evening flight, but in that case i can't count on getting to the airport before 6. the other wrinkle is i might have a ride to the philly airport on sunday. i'm not sure of that though, so i figure we go with saturday and harrisburg for right now and we can mess with things later if we have to.

12/26 (WED) CLE-SNA
the only condition is that i arrive at a time that ruthie can pick me up, i.e. after 5. if that's not going to work out i can arrange alternate transportation. also, if push comes to shove, i could go to LAX, it's just less convenient. lastly, this date is flexible insofar as if it's a lot cheaper i could go out thursday or friday with my parents.

1/2 (WED) SNA-ALG
this is the big question mark. there are a million itineraries possible, and i'm definitely willing to be flexible about going out of LAX (or burbank?) if it'll help. there are no direct flights from the US to Algeria, so i'll probably go through CDG or FRA. i'm flexible with dates as well.

1/13 (SUN) ALG-EWR?
i lied. this is the big question mark, since it depends in part on plans i haven't made yet. on the other hand, having a good idea of what's possible will help me settle plans. i'll likely be being picked up by a friend who i'll stay with until i go back to school. I'm flexible with travel dates here too, but as far as this and the last flight go, i'd prefer to be in Algiers about 10 days whichever happens, with a preference towards a longer stay.

i'd really appreciate any suggestions you might have with any of these flights. I'm sorry to foist such a knotty itinerary on you, but any help you can be will be greatly appreciated.

rambling and a thing

here's to some more agitation. i have a couple specific things to be doing now, but i've been thwarted enough to sit around in it. i'm trying to put together my travels for the winter, but i'm not firm on how it's all going down and the people who know things (i.e. my parents) are off the radar. i'm also behind on my correspondence (on one hand, who isn't?) and have a bit of work. i might make the work wait, now that i think of it. not the best idea but it'll work.

here's a thing:
for a while after i went running i had a heat surplus. i was sitting on my bed in the cold in my shorts and shirt and pumping heat into the air around me. the boundary of my heat was outside of me. i was entirely enveloped. now it's reversed and i'm poking holes in the space i've made warm. my fingers are sticking through and my toes and parts of my arms. this is one way that running is good. it doesn't feel good to be cold like this.

this was supposed to be the first of two posts

i never said anything about the farm. it was a funny situation, coming at the peak of my indifference towards what will happen next year. the story takes place just after i posted the ten minute post.

when i got out to my car in the morning after sleeping a lot, the year's first frost was on the windshield. kids were arriving at wharton as i drove by. i waited for a while while a bunch of them crossed the street in front of my car. by the time i got out to ephrata, the frost was only in the shadows of trees and buildings. no one was outside at the farm, so i walked over to the fence and watched the black horse eat grass. i called david and he said he was eating breakfast. he told me to come in. the horse came over and i rubbed the side of its head and neck. the horse turned and faced me the other way, so i petted the other side. i found the whispering satisfactory. maybe they had something there.

david was finishing a bowl of raisin bran and he went to get dressed to go outside. gavillan was asking him about going to a friend's house or a birthing or something and maggie and oliver took me into the other room. we asked each other questions and they showed me things. they had me climb onto the top bunk of the bed in their playrooom with them. maggie opened a secret cupboard and brought out a book and asked me to read from it. after i was done she pulled another book out and asked me to read that too. at the end, oliver asked me to read the story backward. i started, but then i asked if i should read it page by page or word by word. they replied "word for word" together, so i did.

while we were cutting kale, david was telling me about his work. he eventually asked me what i wanted to know, what i wanted to learn. i knew what he meant, that it was an uncomplicated question, but i still took a moment to work through it. i told him it was a bigger question than he knew he'd asked. i said that i didn't know about so much else, that i was just there because it felt good. apparently it was the right answer cause he warmed right up to it. i told him the fascination with farming was as much with farmers, who are, in my experience, an interesting class of peaceful people. it came to my attention later that the other thing about farming is that it's transparent. the benefits are right there. a good education is useful, but you can't taste it the same way.

i shared a cookie with david as we worked through lunch. we picked kale, two types of radicchio, baby boc choi, escarole and green leaf lettuce. more than 1000 heads in all. i took a head of baby boc choi home for dinner.

after the truck left, peggy invited me in for a bowl of ice cream. everyone but david sat and ate. david came in and we were talking. he said i could work for him all the time. i said i'd let him know, especially about next summer. i'm busy for the next few weeks but i hope i'll at least be out there again before winter break. there's more to talk about, if nothing else.

amsterdam isn't what it used to be

this was supposed to be the second of two posts

splitting the arrow:
last night sara and i went to final fantasy. owen played a bunch of stuff from his cds and a couple tracks that weren't. he played peach plum pear and made fun of the opener (cadence weapon) for doing a joy division cover. he was hilarious. polite. a better musician and singer than his cds give him credit for.

having seen this picture of him on the r5 site when i bought tickets, i was telling sara on the way out of panera that i was hoping he'd dress like robin hood for the show. that or wear a headband. he did neither, but at one point he tucked his bow down the back of his shirt to play a line on the keyboard. after he was done, he drew it like an arrow from a quiver. the imagery was all there.

between sets, sara called her parents to wish them a happy anniversary. her mom said she should come home for the night. it's about the same distance to her house as back to school. we had to get back to paint the kitchen floor at crispus attucks for oxfam, so it didn't seem practical. somehow we ended up talking about going to her house, then up to connecticut today to see michelle/sameer and then home sunday. i knew i was too tired for it at the time, but we still explored. that and we were both supposed to drive people to the shelter and back. and get supplies. and lead the event. and when it comes down to it, i'm irresponsible, but not stubbornly so.

at the meeting place this morning, sara and i both showed up with our cars, but no one else did. in the night, fire alarms went off in south ben, displacing half the people who were supposed to work with us. i thought it was funny that an unsteady living situation made people less compassionate the the plight of the homeless. or something. it wasn't a huge job anyways; it was done in a couple hours. we're going back tomorrow (maybe with a crew?) to put on a second coat and touch up.

we cleaned the brushes off in my bathtub, which was already stained from other paint. i'll clean it eventually. i got inspired, while i was in the bathroom, to clean out thomas's sink. to my knowledge, it had never been cleaned, and the combination of a deep basin and weak water pressure made for some pretty nasty build up. all the scum and crust came off with a sponge and some comet, and now it's blue again. it's pretty.

today was thomas's orchestra show. they played copland and dvorak. thomas was complaining about neither piece having a good trombone part. he likes the dvorak better though. we were joking about how well he played his rests, but it turns out he was holding in coughs for the last three movements, so not so inaccurate.

i just picked some potato crust off the side of my computer. i'm going to sleep.

ten minutes post

i'm leaving for the farm in ten minutes. here's talking about what i would be talking about, instead of just saying it.

last night i had two dreams, which is what i get for going to bed early. the first was at lake ridge. i met mr. fouts between the music mod and the business office (the old places, not where they are now) and we walked across the playground (instinct says quad?) toward the kindergarten classrooms. the crc. we ran across sara and corinne and jj walking from brown hall to the lower school. the youngers had backpacks. i guess they went to school there. we waved (on s'est fait un geste). when we got to the crc i left mr. fouts and walked into the library, which was suddenly old. i can't place where i got the images, but it was dark and stone and wrought iron. in disrepair rather than majestic and historic. i went from place to place yelling. i walked to a clouded mirror and yelled at my reflection. the sign by the mirror indicated that blind people saw ghosts in the reflection there. i yelled at people coming down the stairs. i woke up (around 2).

in the second dream, laura chun and someone else (kristen? kim?) were riding down a river with me on a raft which then became a hard hull normal speedboat. we stopped at a riverside cabin and were poking around. there was a dog. i took a banana. i got paranoid and looked around outside. a coast guard boat was coming around the bend to arrest us for trespassing. i pushed the boat off and dove into the water. i woke up (around 445).

there was a third. maybe a fourth too. one at sara's house. it was a big manor house and her cats were oversized too. i wandered in the rooms. on second thought, it was also more like a church. or at least like my dream churches. i don't remember it so well.

the last had a tower with a big elevator, even a train to ascend. it was like the cn tower in that the point was just to be tall. it was over water and divers went off the top and ripped into the water. an amateur tried and missed the mark, apparently wounding her/himself. he/she seemed to worse for wear, though and came up the tower again. but at the top, s/he just comforted her mother for having died. s/he flew off the tower again, this time for real, apparently. there was trouble getting down. i ended up at a train depot, then a secret café in the belly of the tower. at some point i woke up. it was 650. i turned off my alarm and got up.

i didn't say everything. but that's how it goes.

(S''=x smells like y)

the dispatch is done (supposèdly) and it's better than the last one.

i worked on the from the editors with tim. my contributions were the structure. i talked about the time mikey asked if he could have something to drink and how, when he opened my fridge he was all "dude, all you have is Ortega chunky." i talked about the same day when mikey said "cooking oil is thicker than water" when he was tired of the idea of duty to family. it's not the blood after all. lastly, i talked about when mikio's grandmother's cat swallowed a sewing needle and died.

today i was thinking about how hard i'm having to fight the impulse to be indifferent right now. it might be a permanent thing, but at least for now what i need to do now is sleep. i'll gère that soon enough. then i might need a break. i think thanksgiving will be relaxing (in ways it wasn't freshman year, for example [which is funny since i didn't have a break at all last year and it wasn't so bad. then again, france is a funny place like that]). then i dont know.

this is what i'm taking about: (∀x)Sxx

(correspondances)

two reasons to post this: indirect discourse -and- keeping of drafts (they're paper, after all).

Hello Uncle Rick,

I was happy to get you letter and article—Thanks for sending! It was interesting to compare my impressions with the author's. Her's were somewhat better researched and sometimes a questions of budget (I didn't spend much time in the art galleries—I spent more time drinking wine with friends on the banks of the river, like the packs of restless youth she describes!)

School has been good this semester. I'm taking, in math, analysis and topology, along with symbolic logic (which counts as philosophy). My other class is an independent study of the work of Albert Camus in the French dept. My courses have been challenging, but I keep surprising myself by getting good grades. Not complaining!

In a couple of weeks my parents are coming down so my dad and I can run the Philadelphia marathon. I'm not as ready as i could be but I think I'll be alright. I tried to go for a longer run (~20mi.) today but I got bored after the first 6 miles, so I ran one very fast (~6min)) and another 5-6mi. as cool down, then i stopped. It's hard to pace oneseld sometimes. Hopefully I'm more patient on raceday.

In other news:
—I'm starting a new internship/job at a local farm. I start this thursday; I think we're harvesting leaf lettuce.
—I'm dating a new girl: Sara. She's nice; We have fun.
—With my independent study I'm traveling to Algeria over winter break. Camus lived there and a lot of his work takes place there, so i thought it would be a good idea to check it out.

I think that's about it, other than the really self-indulgent things I could say (What music I'm listening to, my recent obsession with pizza and reese's peanut butter cups....)

so, I wish you well.
++

———

On that other sheet of paper I put a bunch of stuff about me, but that's not all there is to say. I spend a good amount (by which i mean maybe more than you think) of time thinking about you. A couple of times I've brought up your page on the BOP website. It says your name, age, sex, race and January 4, 2016.

That's far enough away that it almost seems mean to mention it. eight years and a couple odd months. At the same time, it's something definite. Less abstract than something further down the road, for example. But if I was talking about getting restless and bored in the first five miles of a 20 mile run, I can't imagine your position. As far as that goes, I'm sorry if i'm being cumbersome (or something). I've been practicing saying what I'm thinking recently, and here's where I land.

Anyways, Camus writes a lot about imprisonment and exile—how they overlap and are the same—and while you're pretty firmly (unambiguously, that is) imprisoned right now, there's still this society (octopus, if you will) of people who care about you and to whome you forever belong. So when you come back we'll be ready. You can do what you want but you don't have to do anything alone. I'm not saying you'll have specific trouble—you're an extremely competent and useful person—rather, it wouldnt be imposing on me (us) if you need anything. It's clear that, law or no, your imprisonment is unfair. The enemy has never been you.


The other thing that's some up this semester for Camus is the indifference of the world (esp. the natural world). Camus thinks it's beautiful (He calls out the absurd [Myth of Sisyphus]), but Sartre hates it. He says that the fact that trees don't care makes him nauseous. He sees their roots brutally gripping into the ground.

I think trees are rather godlike. They can't care but they can be caring—by which I mean a tree is incapable of experiencing emotion but if you let it it will take care of you. Trees are indifferent to evil—perfectly unflinching in the face of injustice—which makes sense since there is evil in the world. Trees don't restrict our freedom in any way except for the fact that they exist. Trees are hard to deny, ridiculous to say no to. They aren't asking any questions. They world may be cruel, and the people here may not make things much better, but I was born here, and I'd feel exiled anywhere else.

still not asleep

(28-29)

Un degré plus bas et voici l'étrangeté : s'apercevoir que le monde est « épais », entrevoir à quel point une pierre est étrangère, nous est irréductible, avec quel intensité la nature, un paysage peut nous nier. Au fond de toute beauté gît quelque chose d'inhumain et ces collines, la douceur du ciel, ces dessins d'arbres, voici qu'à la minute même, ils perdent le sens illusoire dont nous les revêtions, désormais plus lointains qu'un paradis perdu. L'hostilité primitive du monde, à travers les millénaires, remonte vers nous. Pour une seconde, nous ne le comprenons plus puisque pendant des siècles nous n'avons compris en lui que les figures et les dessins que préalablement nous y mettions, puisque désormais les forces nous manquent pour user cet artifice. Le monde nous échappe puisqu'il redevient lui-même. Ces décors masqués par l'habitude redeviennent ce qu'ils sont. Ils s'éloignent de nous. De même qu'il est des jours où sous le visage familier d'une femme, on retrouve comme une étrangère celle qu'on avait aimée il y a des mois ou des années, peut-être allons-nous désirer même ce qui nous rend soudain si seuls. Mais le temps n'est pas encore venu. Une seule chose : cette épaisseur et cette étrangeté du monde, c'est l'absurde.



Go one step further and discover this oddity: to glimpse the world as "dense", to understand a stone as something foreign and irreductible to us, to grasp the intensity with which nature, a landscape can negate us. The inhuman lies at the core of all beauty, and as soon as we see these hills, the softness of the sky, the patterns on the trees, as such, the illusory meaning in which we've clothed them falls away, leaving them more remote than a paradise lost. the primordial hostility of the world rears up at at from across the millenia. For a moment, we fail to understand, since, for centuries, we've only understood the world in terms of drafts and diagrams that we had ourselves imposed. we find our trickery impotent. In its true form, the world escapes us. The scenery, hidden in the folds of our conventions and routine, reveals itself for that which it's always been. This background is distant and cold to us. All the same, on certain days we can fail to recognize a familiar face, even one that we've loved for months or years, so it's possible that we'll even come to desire the very thing that makes us alone. but that time hasn't yet come. This so called density, the foreignness of the world: that's the absurd.

that which flows and that which stays. it made the choice to form a standing wave.

there comes a point where out of body experiences aren't just a fanciful choice on my part. all i'm saying is you might do it too.

sara stayed here last night after ice cream and monty python's meaning of life. we didn't sleep much, and when i did i dreamed in french.

the morning was bad, but it could have been worse. in analysis, for the second time this semester, i found myself drawing a flatlining ekg instead of taking notes. with a minute left in class, it was pointed out that there was a glaring flaw in the proof being presented. ten minutes was taken to correct it. i was late to my meeting to talk about la peste.

but then, so was she. she said she was off her game. i didnt say that i was too. i'd finished the book. i could speak to it. i went home and ate some cereal and slept. run for your life came on to finish my nap. it's every song by the beatles in a row sped up eight times. it's a little over an hour long. nothing was bad after that. come to think of it, nothing was bad after analysis.

all day it was raining. each time i came outside it was raining harder. it felt good. i was listening to twelve fold chain on the way to topology and kristen was in front of me walking to the museum. she saw me when she turned her head to look both ways before crossing the street.

all day i was having trouble deciding which language to express myself in. it must have been partially gearing up for my meeting and dreaming in french and not having slept. mostly the space between my head and the world. this would become more marked later.

in topology, we talked about index and content. i just liked seeing content written on the board so many times.

like i say, it was raining harder when i got out of class. i listened to twelve fold chain again. i went to sara's to pick up an eye pencil to complete my thomas costume. we downloaded and watched the office. i left a little after five.

thomas and i got into costume and went to the math party. i wore thomas' undershirt and my favorite shirt of his. i took a popsicle box from the freezer as a prop and made a necklace out of paper clips. i cut a cross out of a notecard and drew jesus to make it a crucifix. i hooked it on the paper clip chain and tucked the whole business between my shirts. i drew extra body hair with the eye pencil, starting with sprouting neck hair and enhanced arms and thickened eyebrows. it's been a while since i've dressed up and it came off pretty well. thomas wore my '60 isn't usually this sexy' shirt and borrowed my red notebook, which i finished this week. the gold of his costume was how he acted like me. at kathan's party he'd do the flapping hands thing and got really excited when people i like walked in and said awkward things. it was nice to watch my work get done without having to do it. it was also a way of being separated from myself.

i was given occasion to be smug at the math party when profs nimersheim and ressler were talking about a route they like to bike out east of lancaster. it's a 14 mile course through fields and farms, and they were telling me about how nice it is. i told them that i knew that route. i do it on foot, though. i agreed that it's nice, at least.

it was raining even harder when i went from kathan's party to the arts house party. i tried calling rachel and my sister but they weren't there. i listened to twelve fold chain and found the people i knew at the party. i didn't stay long, though.

here's something

http://www.phinnweb.org/links/literature/borges/aleph.html

still not the thing

i'm agitated again, which makes it hard to work. to do anything, mostly.

today i woke up tired and ran tired. there wasn't very much blood making it up to my brain, so i didn't try and think too much. my heart didn't hurt very much. maybe it's getting back in shape. there are delays in scheduling in the medical profession but not in my life, so unless i die i'll probably get better before anyone can do anything about it. this is one way of being impatient.

i've been reading the zumdahl calculus book and surprising myself at how much of it i understand. it's true that i have forgotten almost everything i learned when i took the course, but it's also the case that i understand a lot of the important stuff, stuff that was too subtle for me, and in the end nonessential, the first time around. it's an interesting point of view shift to think of calculus as compact, having distinct boundaries that can be held in two hands.

tim sent out the dispatch submissions the other day and i just got down to reading them now. the main problem is that there aren't enough submissions. i know we can drum some more up, but it means that we'll probably have to print stuff that either isn't edited enough or isn't really worth printing. i'm saying only two of the articles we got have potential. one of them is potentially brilliant, though, so i'm excited about that. i sent a terse e-mail to tim saying i'd work on it.

finger on the pulse

there's a big idea in here somewhere.

the day wasn't so different than what i said, just substitute sara for black pyramid. it worked out better that way timing wise. i came and left for my run through the back door, so i it was only when i was leaving to go walk with sara that i found my package from amazon in the vestibule.

it was:
-algeria travel guide
-the night starts here (stars)
-population (the most serene republic)

i dont think i particularly need to specify why those are exciting.

but like i say. everything goes according to plan. i'm sleeping - more later (that big thing i said...yeah)

last night: inconsistent tenses

-rain (which, in the case of thomas, refers to the korean popstar)
-seven pounds of raw meat in the freezer (5 beef, 2 chicken. we'll have to get on that)
-splayed on the couch feeling good in a body, enough so that i didnt mind watching two and a half men (to be fair, it may well be the best thing on. i still can't really get my head around thomas watching it daily)
-shopping for the lock-in with rob, jacqui, dierdre and thomas. more rain, cramped back seat and aldi. we stop at the other room on the way home to drop the stuff off for tomorrow (today). urbi, katja and blake are watching blue velvet. i make fun of urbi for having burst in on my midterm today to tell me about her ipod. big hugs (blue lights!) all around.
-thomas and i doubt that we'll get anyone to play monopoly with us so we start a game. our calls pan out and rob, dierdre and mitch come over. we restart in the kitchen. the game and its trades are ridiculous, but satisfying, at least until the endgame when everyone is making desperate trades and it drags out. i go out by hitting two railroads and three house boardwalk on the same turn and go for a walk.
-i have missed calls from sara and katja. sara is asleep and says we'll talk tomorrow. urbi answers katja's phone and tells me to come over.
-blake and urbi and katja are painting each other in urbi's room. i let katja paint me and i draw her, but (mine at least) turns out not to be very serious. i say it feels weird, cause i usually only draw people who i'm in love with.
-on the way home i run into jacqui on the way to phi psi (next door). it makes a bookend evening for us (what with the shopping and all). katie leach is there too, and for some reason she's excited to talk to me (??). i show her my new shoes and say how i accidentally showed up to analysis today even though there was no class. when i get back inside the monopoly was still going on. i instantly don't feel bad at all for having done something else than sit and watch.
-just after midnight, the game gets called (where'd you get the pink 50s grandma?). i read la peste and sleep.

———

today is busy. i'm trying to run, go to market, stop by the black pyramid tent, go to movie and dinner with emily's family and end up at the lockin. i'm also kinda trying to see sara, but math (time, that is) isnt really with me there.

everything else, i forget.

something in french

how 'bout a two for one. that is, productivity and a playlist.

the playlist first:
1: seeing other people — belle & sebastian — if you're feeling sinister
2: the twist — metric — grow up and blow away
3: my moon my man — feist — the reminder
4: walking with a ghost — tegan and sara — so jealous
5: borderline — sufjan stevens — (rarities)
6: blankest year — nada surf — the weight is a gift
7: the sky opened wide like the tide — the blow — poor aim love songs
8: you're so hollywood — flickerstick — welcoming home the astronauts
9: lazy [zend avesta mix] — noir désir — one trip one noise
10: amsterdam — peter, bjorn and john — writer's block
11: a line allows progress, a circle does not—bright eyes—every day and every night
(link!)

i'm not saying it's done, but it's not in bad shape. the middle section (5-9) runs pretty nicely, but i might mess with the beginning. it's a little fluffy.

the productivity is specifically in reference to my two tasks for the semester, which is to say i went for a run.

i ended up getting lost in the topology midterm. in particular, i kept going from page to page and doing everything systematically and was the first done, but when i checked the time on the way home it was ten minutes after the normal end of class. it'd be nice if all the classes seemed to go that fast. i think i did fine but we'll see.

nothing particular is happening later, but i'm not too worried. i'm pretty adept at wasting time, and there are things to be done in the first place.

Dieu lui-même ne peut maintenant nous séparer

i am very conscious of my body, and it feels terribly good.

i forgot that my class was cancelled today. i went anyways, so i ended up having an hour and a half free. bonus time, stolen time. i went to the park and sat underneath the tree and read la peste. it was perfect, in that i got to exactly where i wanted to be in the reading and got inspired in a different way too. i was listening to bright eyes.

i ended up pitching trees as a metaphor for god. i like it, especially in that thomas doesnt think trees can love, but he likes god. trees capture the indifference of god insofar as there is evil in the world. and anyways, infinitude implies unconsciousness. god cares the way trees do: not by caring, but by being caring.

and how could god have a self anything like the way people do. a finite number of finite, in particular épuisable, people on the globe don't have any way to break down anything infinite. and so the blind atheist concludes that god is nothing, that this tree doesn't have a brain or heart, and thus cannot love.

and it's true that you can't walk up to a tree trunk and say "do you love me?" and it's also true that it does.

———

in other news, i'm doing good in school. the biggest things i have to worry about are getting a visa and running 26 miles. if i can do those, then i'll be in good shape. which is a funny thing to say seeing as i have the hardest midterm in 20 minutes. i'm saying it'll go well, now that i've calmed myself down.

maybe i'll post my playlist later, and maybe i'll go do something productive instead. that's all the choices i'm giving myself (for now).