I might as well use my requisite procrastination time (reading days) to talk about my weekend. Friday, April 23 was my sister's birthday - as well as Dena's, Shakespeare's, Nabokov's, and probably others I can't remember; happy birthday, Dena! Speaking of Vlad, my sis first read Lolita when she was 12 (I read it at the much more appropriate age of 16), and in the grand tradition of facilitating her moral bankruptcy, I decided to get her Portnoy's Complaint. I actually spent a long time looking at American Pastoral, the Pulitzer Prize-winner, but I had to go with the one about masturbation. Happy 15th, dear!


I took the train home uneventfully, ate family dinner, and watched Lauren open presents. Then I declined a date with Hank to see Into the Woods, in order to try futilely to get something done. On Saturday, I "worked" more and saw J&H in the evening. The actors, pit orchestra, and crew did a wonderful job with the show, and I'm glad I got to see it. I think I like J&H more than Seth does (he played the title characters); certainly a few of the songs are really effective, esp. "Your Work and Nothing More," "Dangerous Game," "Sympathy, Tenderness" (in the murder scene), and "Confrontation." I had seen "Confrontation" performed once before, and it was exciting to see Seth do it.


It's more the plot structure that's problematic/irritating. Nobody should have to wait an hour to see Jekyll transform, listening to endless explication through song. The back-story is not that difficult to grasp: he's in love with Emma, he's driven to restore his mentally ill father, he befriends a prostitute, yes we've got it. A lot more narrative attention should be given to what Jekyll tries to do about these unwanted transformations; we ought to get to see him battling the dark aspects of his psyche, not complaining about how undesirable his situation is (while other people explain to us that he's exhausted/demented).


Also, maybe it's just that I'm stupid or distracted, but there were plot developments that really baffled me. What does Jekyll do to be able to stage that "Confrontation" at all? Shouldn't we be provided with some evidence that he can semi-control himself, before that scene? And why on Earth doesn't the prostitute, Lucy, leave when Jekyll instructs her to? I understand the "Dangerous Game" connection, but I thought she was still in love with Jekyll, too? I wish her song had explained the complexities of the decision, instead of musing irrelevantly on how nice it would be not to be a prostitute. Those things were definitely more bothersome than the hackneyed sentiment or lyrics' simplicity (staples of musicals, anyway); but, independent of all that, it was a pleasure to see RM do so well with the show.

Afterwards, I waited a while as Seth networked. A parent (Elissa's, I think?) told me, "You should watch out for him. He has a reputation for murdering pretty girls."

Finally, I hung out with Seth outside the school until 11:30. On Sunday, I actually worked (which meant I had to skip the March, which is terrible); and I went back to campus on Monday morning. Most of the people on my train, it seemed, were in town for the March. I sat next to an HIV/AIDS activist who had spoken there, and she told me about her experience, while sewing pieces of a brightly colored quilt in her lap. At Penn, I worked for a few hours and then attended the Adultery pizza party/film screening at 7:00. Our movie was actually surprisingly hilarious and awesome. I didn't expect my scene to be funny, but, after Lauren F. tells me to strip, I make an awkward, frightened, hapless face in the direction of the camera.

What actually happened was that the camera operator kept filming me after Lauren's injunction, and I didn't know what to do. After an interminable few seconds, I said, "Should I start?" (but that didn't make it into the movie).

EDIT (11:57 PM): I want to tack this on tonight, because I'm excited. I just found out I was elected Copy Editor of DP for next semester - a voting member of the Editorial Board, and I get a (negligible) salary! I'll be the youngest person on the Board, which might be a little weird, but hopefully they'll continue to think I'm naive/ridiculous in a sort of cute way.

[Part 3; I don't like long posts] The next day, I woke up appallingly early to cover an ambiguously newsworthy event near Old City. I took the subway and located the appropriate elementary school all by myself (and Mapquest). Afterwards, I befriended the photographer so that she would help me home; she ended up imparting wisdom about academic and social life at Penn (she was a graduating senior). Then, I got a bagel and cream cheese from ABP - which never happens, because they stop serving at 10:00 AM - and slept until my cell phone rang. It was Joyce, an RM student (and friend of Seth and LiJia's) who was accepted into Penn Regular Decision. She was on campus for the day, so I immediately threw together a jean skirt outfit and led her around my favorite parts of campus.


She was not impressed with the Student Union (wood paneling and armchairs and working fireplaces!) or my bookstore. There's a secondhand bookstore around 40th, which I suppose ought to be cooler, but I find it kind of shabby and depressing. I suppose I should probably explain about the bookstore: First, it's the store that most Penn humanities professors use to order textbooks, so the back shelves are endlessly interesting in terms of their sheer volume of potential knowledge. Also, it's a relatively small store, so there isn't a great deal of breadth in the fiction section - but the stock choices are all dead-on. I find the Penn Bookstore (a vast Barnes & Noble) really overwhelming; I never find anything there unless I go in with clear intentions, and even then only sometimes. However, I can't go into the independent bookstore without finding three things I want badly. Joyce did like the on-campus bubble tea place and Penn in general, and it was nice to meet her.


At 2:00 PM, I took her to Adultery class, where I worried too much that it wouldn't seem like a Real Class. We did have actual discussions about actual books during the semester. That day, though, we discussed the "epistolary novel" we'd written as a class online. I did my novel postings at about 4:30 AM each time, so that I'd be sleepy enough to be shameless and uninvested in my writing; I think everyone treated the assignment that way. Our prof called the result, "Les Liaisons meets Melrose Place," and then he assigned us a group film project for Wednesday, adapting "the novel" to "the screen" (both terms used in the loosest possible sense). The rest of class was sitting outside, where [a girl] in my group chatted with Jon about how much she was enjoying To the Lighthouse (I was pleased), and then narrated about how she tried to steal Unbearable Lightness from the bookstore and was asked never to return (I was aghast).


Anyway, nothing noteworthy happened on Tuesday, but Wednesday (filming) was a lot of fun. My group filmed the end of the novel, including: a death in childbirth!, boating accident/murder?!, wedding! & wrongful imprisonment!, and love scene (sort of)! Because life hates me, my role involved standing in front of a mirror, wearing a bowler hat, and being instructed to strip. However, the joint birth/death scene was virtuosic; a girl "gave birth" to somebody's pink backpack from under a blue sheet, and her grief-stricken friend adopted the backpack. The boat scene was our other triumph. Jon had provided a toy boat, and Dana wadded some paper inside it and tried to set it on fire, on-camera. That didn't work, so instead her Hand of God reaches into the shot and tips the boat over, with a self-produced exploding sound (oh, also, jail was a bike rack). Our class is planning to meet on Monday for pizza and a screening of these ridiculous things.

On Thursday, I turned in my final paper in Poetry class, bought a birthday present for my sister, and then spent about ten hours at DP. I've been copy-assisting lately, and last night was a particularly good night for it, since Thursday is Beer Night. I walked around the newsroom with my Sam Adams beer, feeling oh-so-slick (I think it was the first time I'd possessed a beer bottle), and Laura (an editor) said, "Oh, that's adorable, it's as big as you are."

I sat down between Laura and Garrett (the other editor) and said, "I've never finished a whole one before." Apparently that was a ridiculous thing to say, because the quote was immediately written up on the News Office quoteboard (grin).

Afterwards, I wandered over to the Editorial Office, where the Ed Page editor, Eliot, was playing with his guitar. To the tune of "Brick," he began to sing, "10 PM, Sharon is copy-assisting...."

I said, "That's just like abortion." Which was immediately written up on the Editorial Office quoteboard.

I decided to quit while I was ahead and actually get something done. At about midnight, though, Garrett came by and asked if I wanted anything from Ben & Jerry's. I already had a bag of Sour Patch Kids, and my half-finished beer. I obviously needed cookies and cream ice cream as well.

"I really like the combination of alcohol and candy or ice cream," I told Danielle (the copy editor).

"You'll fit in great here," she replied.

At 1:00 AM, she and I took a break to go up to the roof of the DP office, ostensibly to look for the Executive Editor. It was such a nice night; we reoriented and found Freshgrocer to our right, and discovered that there were beautiful old houses - a whole network of residential streets, with little courtyards and ivy on the buildings - to our left. I never would have guessed those things existed in the shadow of the hulking, windowless DP. I finally went home at about 1:30 or 2:00. I had finished copy-editing a while before, but I wasn't allowed to leave until I completed my First Beer. I surreptitiously poured some of it in the bathroom sink.

EDIT: Candy for all who read this far (as suggested by Tara)!

[Part 2] So I got home, showered, and immediately changed into something appropriately light and skanky, before rejoining the throng in the courtyard. Another amateur (Penn-affiliated?) band was playing a Beatles song, which struck me as adorable and very strange in context (a common theme during the weekend). I met Jess, Kellen, Ted, and Anne on the steps separating Lower and Upper Quad - and we chatted for a while about the drunken silliness in our midst; on the way to meet them, for example, I saw a boy lean out a window and yell at a group of girls, "Hey, you girls!" in what I can only assume was an abortive seduction technique. We parted ways again, with Jess, Sarah, Joe R., Nat, Mollie + friends, and me assembling to see Kill Bill: Vol. 2 at The Bridge.


I think I enjoyed the movie, but right now my most pressing memory associated with it is of Joe passing Jess and me a hip flask (!!), containing whiskey, across several seats in the theater. Jess and I stared at it for a long moment, hardly believing that an act of such anachronistic shadiness had occurred, before passing it back unsampled. It certainly looked like something from another era; it was what Hemingway would have taken to Kill Bill. After the movie, Nat threw an impromptu party that was actually very successful. The quantity of alcohol, first of all, was admirable; Jess, Kellen, and I missed margarita-time, because we were talking about lit and playing with his digital camera. However, Joe made me some very tolerable tequila sunrises, and later (when I was too drunk to pay attention to what it was called) I had some sour apple-flavored liquor that tasted just like a Jolly Rancher!


Meanwhile, all party guests were branded with UPS stickers that someone had gotten for free online. Ted gave Meredith, Anne, and me amazing massages in succession. And the ambience: The Simpsons was playing on mute most of the time I was at the party, which speaks to someone's care and devotion in taping episodes. Moreover, the following charming, out-of-place (of course) songs played: "Stairway to Heaven," "Strawberry Fields Forever," and "The Freshman." The latter inspired everyone in the room to belt along - and I was nursing one of several tequila sunrises, singing, "For the life of me, I cannot remember / What made us think that we were wise and / We'd never compromise.... We were merely freshmen," and feeling very content and self-conscious (or conscious of my fallibility and the youthfulness of everyone in the room).


On Saturday, I woke at noon, showered, and put on my graduation dress and flip-flops, in preparation for a full day of Fling. During daylight hours, I mostly sat or walked around campus with friends, getting as much visibility out of that beautiful dress as possible. I remember talking with Sarah outside Au Bon Pain, watching the busy exuberance on Locust Walk and listening to distant music from the Quad. At night, I attended a carnival on Wynn Commons and moonbounced in a skirt. There was a giant inflatable slide, too, which I remember experiencing once before, with childhood ecstasy, at a county fair - but the line was always too long for me to recover that lost, pure happiness.


I summarized Fling as follows: equal parts debauchery and regression (two of my favorites). We all consumed frozen chocolate-covered bananas, falafel, cotton candy, and grape-flavored Sprite; I think we were supposed to be drunk at the time. We also sat on the concrete and watched an a cappella group ("She Moves in Mysterious Ways," in honor of Commencement speaker Bono, was dear), the Penn Swing Dance Club (featuring Joe), and Penn Jazz (featuring Kellen and Ted). Late in the evening, Anne, Sarah, and several other people filmed a music video of "Beat It" at a carnival booth, while Jess and I looked on in mortification/admiration. The others partied after that, but apparently I'm too cranky to drink more than once per week, even on special occasions like Fling. I went home instead, and bade a quiet farewell to the last social weekend of the semester. On Sunday, I wore something vaguely sketchy to Team Meeting at DP, but the moment had passed. [Still more to come.]

I compiled a really exhaustive list of song associations the other day and showed Tara, aweing her with my procrastination skillz. I have associations for everything from "Don't Stand So Close to Me" (my sister) to "Don't Know Why" (Jess Mu. and Anne) to "There is a Light That Never Goes Out" (Natalie G./Deb). Even though it's ridiculous that I did this, I'm glad to have it; it reminds me that I did have musical tastes and influences long before I knew Ben K. and Seth. And it encouraged me to listen to such pretty, vaguely ludicrous (for a dorm room) songs as "Stairway to Heaven" and "Night and Day."


Finally, it proved to me that, although I'm not "into music" the way Kellen and Jess Mo. are (they have very scopic, up-to-date knowledge), it is a meaningful part of my life - probably because I personalize practically everything I hear (or read, etc.). I have trouble making myself find new music, though I do, because I get so attached to what I already know.

So please be sweet, my chickadee
And when I kiss ya, just say to me
"It's delightful, it's delicious, it's delectable, it's delirious...."

That, for example, is extremely darling. And, gosh, I am still happy; it's been more than three weeks now. I find I'm counting days as if it's a new, promising relationship, and the start-date/anniversary is March 31. In many ways, it feels like two years ago - the expansive sense of possibility, the wonder at the opportunity to feel this way, the promise of future happiness that The Hours sez is actually happiness. Maybe I am in love with my life? Probably I'll have to lose this rush eventually, like last time; but I am honestly lucky to have felt it twice so far, and once that's not dependent on a boy.


Well, I have a lot to summarize, starting with last Friday: I participated in the first annual Slavic Bazaar undergraduate research conference. I delivered a paper that I wrote during my awful week in March, which is when I did practically all of my important assignments for this semester (grin). It was a silly Comparative Lit paper on God as an amatory rival and dichotomies vs. continuums of love and religion and blah blah blah. It had nothing to do with Slavic concerns, except insofar as it was written for a class called "The Adultery Novel In and Out of Russia" (they were clearly desperate for participants and took me anyway). The night before, I printed out a colloquialized version of the paper and stapled it to index cards, read it over once or twice, spent considerably longer deciding what was appropriate to wear, and settled on overdressed.


I was woken up the following morning at 10:00 by an extremely loud, unpolished version of "Californication," amplified by speakers directly below my window. I assembled my notes and walked out into a thick crowd of tank tops and baseball caps, wearing my suit skirt and sweater and feeling like a killjoy intruder on Fling. On the way to the conference site, I passed my beloved independent bookstore, which keeps a table out front with on-sale books. Impulsively, I bought a hardcover copy of The Corrections (maybe because it was referenced on The Simpsons recently?), marked down from $26 to $9. The cashier praised my choice and flirted with me, which is always a plus at that bookstore. Brandishing my new novel for added courage, I found the room housing my panel ("Love and Seduction in Fiction") and was relieved to discover it was small - just large enough for an oblong table and ten or so people.


I spoke first, and I think my presentation went fine. Afterwards, we had a lovely discussion about misogyny and the perseverence of gender constructions over time, which is exactly what I needed to talk about (I didn't bring it up). I felt satisfied and less vitriolic in the end. Also, an anonymous old man listened to our presentations and panel discussion, and eventually interjected with an inappropriate, longwinded remark about how, back in his day, nobody had premarital sex or committed adultery; he was married at 19 and it worked out great; his kids, however, all but one slept with their future spouses before the wedding, because times have changed. We all commented on how sinister he was in Adultery class on Monday; someone called him "our blind man" after Madame Bovary (I love Adultery class wit). [More is coming, again.]

What I've been doing lately, though: I turned in two papers this week (8 and 10 pages), and I'm halfway through another (10 pages). Once I'm done with that, I'll have only one paper and a final left - for major assignments, anyway. I'm trying to get everything done early so that my drinking this weekend, and my trip home next weekend (to see Seth in Jekyll and Hyde), will be beyond reproach. Also, I have half a story left to read in Goodbye, Columbus, so I'm casting about for something to read next. I've been promising myself that I would print a bunch of Waste Land criticism, because I want to take advantage of Penn resources to make any sense of it at all - but now I'm thinking about Everything is Illuminated instead (because I should have read it by now). Or something else. But I've been enjoying reading so much recently, I want to stick to it.


Relatedly, we read The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Adultery class, and also watched the movie. The latter, at least, has made it clear to me who I should marry: Daniel Day-Lewis, circa 1988. As for the book itself... first of all, it's very difficult for me to get over misogyny in literature, always. Seth and I had an argument about it, and this is all we came up with:

SaffyCat: it's fine to read, but i can come down unambiguously against it, morally :-)
GMSlippy: what's wrong with it?
GMSlippy: morally!
GMSlippy: boo!
SaffyCat: so much misogyny!
GMSlippy: that's no way to read
SaffyCat: i hate that
GMSlippy: you have to play by their rules!
GMSlippy: sayeth your precious VA woolf
SaffyCat: i think universal human decency trumps that
SaffyCat: he crosses the line of my tolerance :-)
GMSlippy: give him a break
GMSlippy: you try living under communism
GMSlippy: it makes you hate EVERYTHING
SaffyCat: i think i'm more annoyed with him because of that
GMSlippy: especially women
SaffyCat: why women?
GMSlippy: well, in eastern europe they already hate women
SaffyCat: but - he's preventing me from getting at his political messages, cuz he keeps distracting me with hating him!
...
GMSlippy: you have to stop thinking like the academy and start thinking whatever i'm thinking at the time!
SaffyCat: you need some social issue to take personally, like i've got :-)
GMSlippy: but i hate that!
GMSlippy: literature is literature and life is life!

That ain't necessarily so, but the spat was getting tired. I hate misogyny so much because I have misogynistic thoughts, and I hate anything that perpetuates and encourages the impulse in me. I certainly dislike my body (it's immodest for women not to) - sometimes I think it's interchangeable with any other female body, and has nothing to do with me. It's an accessory I have and use, like my laptop. I'm lucky to have found two female writers I like as much as any male writers (Woolf and Plath, versus my fave males... maybe Borges and Eliot), because otherwise I think I would be worse.


My other major problem with Unbearable Lightness is that it's difficult to take seriously after being overarchingly unhappy for six months, and then suddenly unburdened (for two weeks, so far!). I understand that there are a multiplicity of lightnesses and heavinesses, and that Kundera means something else, but I can't quite divorce my own experiences from it. I'm also having trouble with the characters - the starkness and unattractiveness of everyone when reduced to their metaphysical speculations. For the ultimate conclusion that we're only equipped to judge human lives by aesthetic principles, I prefer Borges, thanks.

Now, off to make index cards for an undergraduate conference presentation tomorrow!

[My lack of inhibitions lasted about a day; then I felt compelled to protect my homely child (grin).]

I just got home from a half-completed DP article (the paper is teeny tomorrow, and the mayor's spokeswoman lectured me, so my editor said to worry about it later). I had half a bottle of water confiscated at the Quad gate, due to fascist pre-Fling practices. Apart from those two things, though, life is a-ok. For two weeks, I've been hungry, sleepy, lonely, and thoroughly productive - but that ends tomorrow, when I devote myself entirely to becoming Flung Over (as mocked in 34th Street today).


Spring Fling is Penn's annual weekend of orgiastic excess, a concert, and a moonbounce. I'm foregoing the concert (Wyclef, with Reel Big Fish opening) in favor of a group viewing of Kill Bill. After that, though, I intend to do my part to be drunk by Saturday morning. There's such animation and expectancy on Penn's campus - finals are in two weeks, we've all been various degrees of haggard and anti-social lately, but all the pent-up stress and perceived alienation are to be released (in a semi-controlled way) over the next few days. I'll actually get to see my friends for more than an hour or so! And fried Oreos!


On Locust Walk, the artisans are back; I don't know what governs when they're here - maybe it's just for Fling, or Penn Previews (the Class of '08 events going on this month). In any case, there are large kiosks with jewelry and clothing, etc., crowding the Walk. It reminds me of the place in Cambridge, MA, where my father got that terrible hat, far back in the day. There's also a huge rally/charity auction going on on the steps of a frat house, playing hip hop music for a crowd of maybe 60 (I caught the words "pro-choice" from a megaphone, but beyond that I don't know where the money goes) - and someone else with a megaphone and a guitar by the wrestlers' house, singing "There's a crack-house on my porch!" for an assembled crowd (I can't think of any reason why this would be). It was to the tune of "He's got the whole world in His hands," which makes the whole thing irreligious as well as baffling.


And the dogwood trees are in bloom everywhere - on the Walk, but also more concentratedly in my favorite courtyard, by the Vance building. There are balloons on College Green (as there are periodically), and huge colored banners proclaiming "Spring Fling!" Everything is warm and bustling outside. I'm easily convinced to be excited, and I am very excited now. [Part One of a two-part, overlong post!]

Talking to Seth on the phone on Friday, he said we should institute a "don't ask, don't tell" policy about my daily life. He said he was sick of lecturing me (the catalyst was me telling him I'd gotten about six hours of sleep the night before... in one- to two-hour segments). I realized I'd amassed a number of tales of bizarre inefficacy at existing. So here's what I can remember, in chronological order: Three weeks ago, after Jess's girly drink party, I walked home carefully in high heels. I got into my room and placed the shoes in my shoe-drawer - and immediately injured my foot by walking into the mirror. I slept blissfully and drunkenly for many hours, and was annoyed to wake up the next morning (probably at 3 PM) and find one of my toes still hurt; it couldn't bend and was swollen. I taped it to another toe, and that problem seems to have taken care of itself by now. I see how this could be blamed on my drinking, but anyone who knows me could see it happening when I'm sober.


Next, it recently came to light (to my parents, I mean) that I don't know how to open my mailbox. I was very adept at opening my mailbox in Kings Court; it just involved turning a key. Here in the Quad, I've been given the numerical combination twice now, and at this point I'm not sure whether they gave me the wrong code or I just can't figure out some secret about the lock. To be honest, I sort of forgot about the issue back in February. I should mention that there are a number of basic life tasks that I can accomplish by myself, such as taking out the trash, doing laundry, and dressing myself. However, apparently I can't really clean my own room. Yesterday, in the process of doing so, I spilled both laundry detergent and coffee grounds everywhere. "This is why you don't like yourself," I reminded myself, sulkily.


I did clean under my refrigerator, which was the biggest success of the day. I had dropped my retainer, which is what prompted this cleaning in the first place, and not only did I find it under the refrigerator - but also a dollar in change, a packet of soy sauce, a crushed fortune cookie, two containers of makeup, travel hand sanitizer, travel body lotion, and three or four magnets. I was extremely pleased to recover most of these things, although I hadn't known they were missing. Finally, if you've ever tried to reach someone at the DP or requested that the office front door be unlocked, and been hung up on instead, it's almost certainly my fault. I only recently learned how to check my voicemail, and by now I've forgotten; I still don't think I've mastered transferring calls to people who would actually be helpful.

Seth says I'm going to be relying pretty heavily on my Ivy League education, because I'm not qualified to do anything.

In news unrelated to horrific incompetence, I was flirted with by a prospective student on a tour. That's some nerve; he must be seventeen. I wandered away and found a less heavily trafficked route home. Also, last night I went with a bunch of people to an all-you-can-eat sushi place. It was pretty good, and I think I have the appetite to get my money's worth. The boy who sat across from me was fairly wasted on sake (which doesn't taste terrible, but I'll never be a connoisseur) and still managed to put away 40 pieces of sushi for $20. He said he participates in competitions with his friends; I don't know whether this is an incidence of the well-heeled overindulgence of Penn students, or the unremittingly competitive edge to male friendships, or both, or neither, but it made me uneasy.


As a table, we discussed what superpower we would like to have. I stuck with stopping time, which is something I've wanted to do since middle school. The others got cute: "I would like to steal other people's superpowers," "I want gills!" "That's not a superpower - that's an additional organ," "In that case, I want a second liver" (that was Ted), "So your superpower is to be a wino?" (that was me). Joe said (shocked, apparently) that this was his third good meal in a row; I realized I couldn't remember when and what my last three meals were, which should probably be a source of concern.

Nothing earth-shattering, just that yesterday I had all sorts of serendipitous social encounters, and was pleased to be reminded that I've connected with a variety of people here (i.e., not just people in Ted's posited semi-bohemian clique). I saw Jess at Houston Market, and I nursed my smoothie and picked at her bulk candy while we summarized our love lives. She left to take a quiz, and I stole her seat at the booth - and immediately I saw Reem, several tables over. We gestured awkwardly at each other for a little while, and finally I made a decisive move to join her at her booth. There, we had a loud and long conversation about our classes this semester, social developments on my old hall, my apparent ability to do without human intimacy, her knack for causing spontaneous social gaffes in others, etc. Eventually Franky and Bill stopped by, too, and we were catty together.


I left to serve my time at DP, where I finished ahead of deadline; I felt shocked and directionless when I went outside again and there was still daylight. For lack of any other goal, I went to Yue Kee (the best food cart, but with a 20-minute wait) and stood patiently by the steps of a frat house, until Farouk came by on his way to the gym. For reference, Farouk and I met by having a multi-hour-long conversation on the night of the DP banquet. Afterwards, we settled into the pseudo-professional, friendly-to-a-point interaction of two beat reporters, with slightly more closeness than average since we have a shared class to commiserate about. However, yesterday he stopped and talked to me for the duration of my food preparation - not about anything terribly personal (though we do both relate some of our friends' goings-on), but it was still a pleasant surprise.


I should also mention that the DP office yesterday had a "for review" copy of the fourth edition of The Guide to Getting It On - a book of legendary familiarity to some of us (wink). I tried to find the page with the mix-and-match penises to show my editor, but I had to settle on vaginas, and he had already seen those. From the editors' office, there came periodic loud exclamations about the primate sex section and the chapter on sexually gratifying the disabled. Meanwhile, I wrote this, which made me just a little nostalgic for Art and Culture.


EDIT: Oh, P.S., congrats to all the people I know/stalk through xanga who got into college recently. If anyone visits my campus (or actually I'm sure this applies to college visits in general), please do not generalize too much about the student body based on who you run into. I pass about five tour groups every time I go outside, and usually I look disheveled, sleepy, and dirty; I can't muster the conviction to take a shower or show any care for my appearance until after morning classes. Otherwise, nowadays people are dressing up because the weather is nice, and even I am not above wearing a sundress (probably).

I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in
And stops my mind from wandering
Where it will go

Just to note: I began this entry on March 24, so it wasn't that I rediscovered Beatles hits via Seth's blog. I've just been recovering important songs from my early adolescence lately, trying to recall some of the energy and optimism of being twelve or so; I have a lot of the R.E.M. canon, and sooo much Beatles (except now I'm paying more attention to "A Day in the Life," with the grim curiosity of someone who's since been exposed to B&S and worse). "Help From My Friends" is still darling, since I can actively remember thinking that Danielle (my seventh-grade Best Friend) and Harry (my first boyfriend) were how I got by and high. Due in part to the impetus of "Fixing a Hole," I completely cleaned my room on Tuesday night; I wanted my surroundings to reflect and promote mental health (or recreational drug use?), like in the song, instead of being convincing evidence of my depravity. Afterwards, I began to edit a paper -


and then I had a very Woolf-like moment (grin) of transcendence and transformation in the day-to-day. I'm still feeling the reverberations; it was just as it always goes when I cease to be moody, I suppose, but on a larger scale. Once I wrote on my blog that it was like a fever breaking or a switch being flipped; this moment was a massive reversal, electrical current redirected, new synapses firing. Suddenly, the pressure behind my temples receded and the world regained focus and clarity - and I was abruptly in possession of the ability to perceive somewhat reasonably, so a lot of my self-doubt/pity was muted too. It occurred to me that my life (with its petty little afflictions and notorious self-sabotage) was not only manageable and bearable but also potentially desirable: I'm nineteen years old, I'm young and energetically alive, I live in a lovely place where my profs periodically flatter me, I belong to two meaningful communities on campus - and I've been in love and loved back, connected seriously with other people, here and elsewhere. Although I don't have any extraordinary talents, I'm not really inept at living either.


I held onto that excitement for a couple days, fearing any indication of coming malaise. (I still have a hard time distinguishing mania from contentment, so I'm not sure whether this is sustainable.) However, I felt miserable yesterday - because I covered a story for DP that I don't really like or understand, and it was raining, and I felt alone and sick - and this morning I felt fine. Maybe I've finally gotten back to the ordinary highs and lows of adolescent self-absorption. Is it possible, I wonder, to adjust to college life all at once? Is that what happened to me? Lately, even schoolwork is no longer something I have to be tricked into doing, fueled by guilt or desperation; I have three papers to write or revise in the next week, and I've been working steadily, honestly enjoying what I'm learning and doing. I'm shocked in retrospect at how I spent last semester.


So, beyond my existential angst and revelations, what I've been up to lately: Highlighting lit crit for my paper on "Lady Lazarus," as with my earlier paper on "Prufrock," has exposed me to militant feminist poetry readings. I tend to find them bizarre and unattractive and not very intellectually sound; but, then again, I read some terrible quotations by Pound yesterday (originality as "the phallus... charging, head on, the female chaos" and "driving any new great idea into the great passive vulva of London"), and eww, that could easily make me self-conscious and strident. I've also been getting out on weekends, though not usually during the week (Spring Fling is coming, which will be a much-needed break). Last weekend, a bunch of us got sushi on Friday night, ingeniously managing through careful ordering/sharing of meals to make it not expensive.


The following night was the best social experience I've had in ages (thank you, Jess!). It was Jess's birthday recently, and her little sister was in town, so she threw a girly drink party - with such ingredients as amaretto, kahlua, and cointreau! Anne, Kellen (Jess's boyfriend), Ted, Meredith, and I also pooled money for a Birthday VerMonster, which went well with my utopian vision of alcohol that tastes like candy. After a few amaretto sours and Jess's dubious-but-delicious random mixed drink concoction, I was pleasantly drunk for the first time since September. I was abrasive to Ted, accusing him of using hard liquour to prove his machismo, but he quickly became worse, raving about "the Danes" and post-war literary disillusionment. We all discussed sex and pornography shamelessly for several hours.


At my drunkest, I remember sitting in a circle with an enthusiastic freshman boy from the student radio station, Ted & Meredith, Nat, and a girl whose name I didn't catch; she was explaining "third-wave feminism" to Nat, which includes a sort of Postmodern or PC tolerance for all self-identified feminist lifestyles. In particular, she mentioned that female sexuality is no longer necessarily objectifying, that feminists can be "sexy." On this point, she kept gesturing to my outfit (a pink tank top and jean skirt), which made me drunkenly ill at ease. In the end, several people piled onto Jess's bed and napped, and I, half-asleep, participated in an incoherent conversation with Ted.