I went to New York over the weekend and then college visiting. My moods have been wildly variable; on that note, I was not trying to be pretentious with the literature posts, just trying to convey the mini-manic episodes that schoolwork has set off recently. On the train to NYC, I experienced such a reaction to a Belle and Sebastian song (Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie) and played it roughly fifteen times in succession. Apparently the title was lifted from graffiti the band saw somewhere - and also, a Google search would indicate, is a kind of Scottish pasty. So, the cultural food of the middle-class adolescent.... I dig, and identify.

And you love like nobody around you
How you love, and a halo surrounds you

There's something comforting about feeling the same individual, self-important longing as every other gawky thirteen-year-old. Also, I appreciate how compassionate Belle and Sebastian are, even as they point out the pathetic and ridiculous; they're sweet. Anyway, we reached New York, and I felt some initial trepidation about being there. Most of my memories of the city were lousy and concerned boys. I managed not to break up with anyone this trip, at least, which freed up energy for watching Times Square - like a great concentrated shock of capitalism, exploded outward. Maybe I was finally in the right state of mind for it (on edge, sensing everything in extremes), but I felt an incredible communion with humanity among the bright blur of tall buildings and garish advertising and city strangeness.


What I saw, specifically, were couples everywhere - under the hulking skyscrapers, and I pushed around in my head a conception of the dwarfing scope of human love and human architecture, and lost all sense of scale and proportion, overcome by the pressure of some common creative force (it's the oldest idea in the world, but still privately affecting). I felt dizzy; I couldn't sleep (I still can't sleep well). It's the sort of emotional experience they tried to inject us with in eighth grade, with that pamphlet full of poetry and historical context. I loved the sensation, but I know it's suspect: over-generalized, a cheap cliche probably. I'm a sucker for artistic manipulation, I know. Also while in New York, I saw two Broadway shows, and one, Rent, was super appealing and excellent. I'm working on memorizing the lyrics to "La Vie Boheme," for mindless fun.

To apathy, to entropy, to empathy, ecstasy...

Whee, a fun sentiment, cliche or not (grin). I went to Penn next, still overloaded; the campus was a lovely relief. I explained to Tara: it's unusually self-contained for an urban campus, much more like a traditional liberal arts college campus, and situated (they say) in a crummy neighborhood. The surrounding blocks, however, serve as a buffer and look remarkably like my home city, Bethesda, down to the enormous Barnes & Noble and nearby Cosi and Ben & Jerry's. The kids themselves made me somewhat anxious at first, as they appeared rather, um, homogeneous - but that impression diminished as I actually talked to people. I'm confident I'll find my share of bright, interesting kids (especially hanging around chorus and drama productions), and I recognize I look "homogeneous" too, as do most of the weirdoes I know. The thought of college is still intermittently overwhelming.... It was nice to return home and apply for a summer job and buy sneakers.

Because you already know I'm a dork:

The world by all means should have shared it, could Mr. Bankes have said why that woman pleased him so; why the sight of her reading a fairy tale to her boy had upon him precisely the same effect as the solution of a scientific problem, so that he rested in contemplation of it, and felt, as he felt when he had proved something absolute about the digestive system of plants, that barbarity was tamed, the reign of chaos subdued.

I don't dogear books often, or compulsively (honestly, I don't even read very often, because I get distracted by people or sleep; when my social life is dull, I'm a prolific reader - which explains middle school, and my determined absorption of "classics") - but lately I'm pretty sure it's about alleviating my guilt, forcing intellectual pleasure to combat torpor and ennui. This passage (from To The Lighthouse) impressed me with its interconnectedness of elation: that there really is the same simple joy (I feel sometimes) in making neat, sensible work of a differential equation or in stealing a kiss before the school play. Something honest and human and orderly, against the backdrop of a cold universe - worthy of rapture and meditation (Woolf would say, since that's basically what the whole book is), or at least intelligent reflection.


It's hard not to think a lot about Hemingway vs. Woolf - both synonymous with modernism, both suicides (the most compelling and memorable thing for me). I wonder if he was depressed; I know she was. I wonder if she thought about the "reign of chaos" in terms of depression; I know I did. I wonder what it must be like to see the full scope of human beauty and write what amounts to a reason to live (loveliness everywhere, individual courage and grace that hovers in the air and in memory, outlasting life) - and to take your life anyway. She makes me so nervous, because her works are so free of despair, and I wonder if I can agree with her that the truth is in the fiction.


Lately, I've had random bliss and worry and many discrete events that aren't stories. I woke up at 4:30 this morning and lay awake, concerned about the future. Mostly, though, I feel dreamlike with luck: someplace wants me next year, I seem to know the nicest people in the world, I have leisure time and generally warm weather. Dena wrote on her blog that she can't feel preoccupied with college because the world is so troubled. I feel the opposite: that the world is strange and far away, and my little life is up-close and at times so wonderful that it carries me away from serious thought.