(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?