(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.