Ahem.

I had a nap. Before that, at about noon, she left. She helped me with the mountain of dishes, and made us tea and oatmeal, wearing my parrot sweater, and we played casino, and she left.

I woke up yesterday, and had a vision of how the day would play out: a vision of domesticity; cleaning, shopping, cooking, and entertaining. There were a few snags - Ester was too incapacipated by illness to be of much help, not that i needed it with the cooking, but with moral support even; Joel, we realized sometime mid-afternoon, had disappeared to Washington DC that morning for a peace rally without bothering to inform us; most of the people I called to invite didn't check their messages until too late – but it went off as well as could have been anticipated. There was less time pressure than usual, which was nice. I waited until around 2:30 to blade to Genuardi's, where I spent ninety-odd bucks on groceries and dinner ingreedients and ketchup and a potato masher, and then realized I had forgotten the real purpose of the trip and went back in for some salmon steaks and chilean bass filets. Skating home with several score pounds of groceries on my back, carrying shopping bags full of salad greens and birkenstocks was not easy, but I made it back less than an hour after I had left. The guest list gradually revealed itself: Jocelyn, Jonah and Sarah, Dan Shargel (he showed up unannounced after we left one of our many messages on his machine. And Ester and myself. At least five of the six of us were sick one way or another. The menu was in my opinion one of the best we've ever had, not least because it was all non-vegan (Rebecca having escaped to Florida for the weekend): mixed field greens with feta cheese, walnuts, toasted pita bits, and a citrus vinnaigrette, excellent excellent mashed potatoes with basil and chêvre (I left out the half and half, put in more cheese, and boiled the garlic with the spuds), and the fish (I pan-seared the sea bass, which is much fun) prepared in a soy-based ginger-lime marinade (housewarming gift from mom) and garnished with grape tomatoes (I thought of putting those in to displace some of the marinade.) No cheesecake. Lemon water though. The guests raved adequately. I was happy. Ester dashed off to a movie with Jocelyn, and Dan and I shortly did the same, leaving a monster pile of dishes undone. We saw "Shrek" in Kirby, along with what seemed like half the campus. I didn't laugh as much as they did, but it is genuinely entertaining and well-made. Too bad Lithgow didn't get to do more, he was great. Why is the ogre Scottish? Note: rock music doesn't work well in medieval fairy tales, especialy animated ones.

After that we stopped by some triples on Parrish fourth; Elaina B. convinced me to hit the parties with her, but after a minute inside Phi Psi I really couldn't take any more. Bad music, boring people, everything that's wrong with the party scene. I hadn't really been to a mainstream campus party yet, so it was disheartening. Unsuccessful at finding other people to visit, I headed homeward, thinking to stop by the "Infinite Glam Rock" party in 1N briefly before getting some much needed rest. Of course, after Dan Sproul came up to use my bathroom, I was inspired to put on my sparkly red shirt and the wicked shoes. Christie placed a white boa around my neck, and it was all over. Whatever music they were playing certainly wasn't glam, so Daniel and I rectified that the best we could with my copy of ChangesBowie. That was enough to get us dancing. Somewhat awkwardly at first (Bowie's early stuff isn't really that conducive to dancing), but with persistence and quasi-drunken lackadaisicality. Daniel was resplendent in make-up, metallic shirt, shiny ribbon around the neck, bleach blond hair. Most others were less glammy; particularly Ben Schweigert in plaid flannel (he interrupted Bowie a few times to shout along to Guns and Roses with his buddies). Liza was wearing a fuzzy blue sweatshirt and an orientalish skirt, she invited me to be part of an improv piece for her choreo class; Kathy Walley had a lacey black dress, she invited me to the Yale house in two Thursdays for my birthday. We four were the core group of dancers; carving out a space in the middle of the dining room, passing the boa back and forth. After a few spirited cuts from Iggy Pop, I was feeling the need to escape from the alcohol and smoke and noise, so I invited Dan and Liza up the fire escape, with essential innocuity.

We sat in my room talking about houses and music and people and living. After an hour or so Daniel cut out, and with a surprising lack of awkwardness Liza and I passed another couple hours talking, mostly about dance, and Poland, and Alaska, and our parents. I offer her my hand. Improvisation. "We're such dancers," she mutters.

The soundtrack: St. Germain, Brian Blade Fellowship (exit Sproul), Sigur Rós, Rei Momo, Kid A (cue dancers), Bill Evans ("shouldn't we turn that peppy piano music off"), a few scant hours of silence, Stars of the Lid, more silence, Whitechocolatespaceegg, Lucinda Williams.

I'm such an idiot. I was on the verge of recovering from this malignance, and then I go and stay up all night and have a drink and share germs.

Things that have happened in the last thirty hours:
SAC study break. Talking to Drew in studio A. "The Style War" volume one, which I couldn't figure out how to tape. Hopefully next week. Joel called and requested the Fucking Champs, and two girls asked Magnetic Fields songs, I could only find one. Chang stepped in through the window and remarked on a Serge Gainsbourg/Jane Birkin album and an album by The Ex, both of which I played for him. Good stuff from the playlist: the Moldy Peaches, the Causey Way, Sigur; leftovers: The Frumpies, Stars, The Apes (well they were kind of weird but we're seeing them in ICELAND.) Saw Ruby and Essie in Kohlberg and went to sit in on a round of debate that Ruby was judging. Silly Princeton and H-Ford boys debating legalizing truancy. "This will be the death of our educational system!" I read a round of Robert Browning poems to Ester on her bed ("The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's Church" is awesome); Renee came in as I was saying something about a turret. "did you say turd?" "hey, these are browning turds." Ben and Rob are here now, and Renee and Jess are supposedly coming up to watch High Fidelity.

the salty lips of the socialite sisters with their continental fingers that have never known working blisters… oh i know they've got their problems. i wish i was one of them

At five oh two this morning I walking on campus to hand my just completed paper, which fit exactly within the eight page upper length limit of the assignment. The title was "The Pequod Encounters: Questioning the Universality Theme in Moby-Dick." Not my best title. Not my best paper, but it was finished.

When I went to campus at 11:00 to check e-mail and waste an hour of French drill in the language lab, my paper was two single-spaced pages long plus a page of unincorporated quotes and sentence fragments.

When I went to sleep last night at 3:45 and again when I woke up this morning at 8:00 the paper was about three paragraphs long, and Microsoft word was on all night, the little apple light gently breathing and glowing.

When I went to campus last night at 8:00 and walked back home and then walked back to campus immediately afterwards the paper did not exist except as a series of vaguely related but thesis-less ideas.

When I walked from Sharples to the Barn alongside Sarah Fritsch after lunch yesterday I had just begun to sniffle. She was iller than I, and we agreed that exercise is the way to go.

When I took a nap at 6:30 last evening I felt a little better, but the pockets of my corduroy jacket were still full of kleenex when I walked to campus.

When I was writing my paper this morning, and now again, the screen made my eyes itch and my black ribbed t-shirt grew linty with kleenex crumble.

When I woke up from another nap at 7:30 today, I felt somewhat better again, at least my fluids had congealed a bit, and I put on UB40 and pulsated into the kitchen.

When Ben decides he wants to go to the IC party at Olde Club later tonight, I will feel a conflict of interest and good taste, and I will probably go and come back feeling worse and better.

just thought i should stick in a link to minister.without.portfolio, a blog that Ester and I discovered and laughed until our hearts stopped. he responded very quickly to my question about Iceland. not that anyone reading this hasn't already linked to him through Ester.

I'm listening to wsrn, the coolest thing since spinner. Christine Smallwood just said my name on the air twice, before playing a John Vanderslice song "for a very nice person who's listening named Ross." Then she played the Beat Happening at the wrong RPM. Good old srn. I guess both she and Rae are going to be friendly to me, or at least smile. That's nice.

I also got a few references in this morning's Phoenix, even though they didn't run my review. My name only appeared on the wsrn schedule (illustrated by Ms. Heather Doyle, who also gave me a Peter Schmidt finger puppet today), but Ben and I got an "official," if anonymous shout-out in Jonah's column on how to do parties right, and "the outdoor party in the Fragrance garden" was mentioned a few times in an article about some sketchy police interactions on campus Saturday night. Maybe I'll make it a goal to be mentioned in the Phoenix every week. Heck, I'll probably end up writing every week.

I still haven't gotten anywhere on the 5-8 page paper I have to write by five tomorrow (25 hours from now), although I just read the introductory essay to the novel. I have a vague idea of what to write about, but I'm not really sure how well it will work. Maybe I'll interrupt Ben and get him to help me brainstorm. The annoying thing is that I have engagements from 8 to 12 tonight (SAC's "how to throw a party" studybreak and my radio show[!]), which is prime paper-writing time. I'm planning to make the best of it by writing a letter to Alyssa during the show, but what I may end up doing is taking a long nap for the next few hours and then just staying up late late late writing. It will not be fun, but it will be okay. Then it will really be the weekend.

I got to French a few minutes late today after finishing this morning's post, and I was afraid at first that I missed the dictation part of the exam. Whichever of our professors wrote it used that nasty trick of including stuff on the test that we haven't learned yet, but it was fine other than that. I went to Sharples for the third time today (pretty soon I won't be able to keep count any more), and had some of my favorite potato dish - lattice cut, waffle cut, or cottage fries. My roommates are cute, they're fasting and wearing dark colors and watching a movie about suburbia. So Becca of Penn is reading this too. Anyone else lurking out there? Cheers.

bleached out and aired, ikea-d and swept bare

I was going to go into panic mode and make this whole blog private, since I don't know how to make individual entries private, because I wasn't sure whether my Apples in Stereo review would appear in the Phoenix, and of course I just had to include "courtesy of reminced.blogspot.com" at the bottom of the article. But I just got an article from Ms. HappyWasabi, saying that although she thought the piece was "absolutely great," she didn't get it in time. I got it in about twenty minutes past deadline, due to computer screwiness. Oh well, she'll run it next week. And I'm safe from the eyes of the world for at least a little while. What was the moral of "Harriet the Spy"? Can someone remind me, I forgot. If the point of the book is that you shouldn't write negative things about others, I don't agree. If the point is just that you shouldn't get caught, that's more like it.

Last night I went to the lesson run by the "Salsa group," which turned out to be one fellow walking us mechanically through a sexless "1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7" basic for literally ten or fifteen minutes, breaking it down, and then attempting it with music, which had no affect on his lack of consistent tempo. I couldn't take it any more so I went to Kirby for film society. The "meeting" beforehand consisted of tossing around some ideas for films (Christine wants to see Wong Kar-Wai's eight-hour epic, I suggested Sturges, Ichikawa and "Don't Look Back.") The movie we watched was this bizarre British thing called "How to Get Ahead in Advertising," with the wanker from "L.A. Story." It started out as a typical workplace comedy, and then quickly got extremely surreal and message-driven. It was pretty awful, actually, although it had that late-eighties charm. Christine called it preachy, and Gabe thought there were at least a few good lines.

From there to Paces, which I had forgetten is now a dance club Wednesdays: "The Hump." There weren't many people there, but Blair beckoned me over, and we discussed the breakthrough in her social schedule that I had apparently harbinged, and then joined Jocelyn, Laura Clark, and Hilarie on the platform set up for a dance floor. Madonna, Outkast, and then (my picks) Mos Def and Ozomatli. Hilarie actually made me pay for a dirty sundae (well, I had forgotten to pay the other night, so I guess that's fair), although she didn't know how much to charge. Paces is wonderful. I came home to all my sleeping, atoning flatmates. I might as well join them. To anyone out there who needs it: I'm sorry.

She was drumming in African today. I'm not sure about this, but I feel safe using pronouns for now.

Reasons to:
* I like her poetry
* She's a great dancer
* I think I could

Reasons not to:
* I'm not really attracted to her
* I see her all the time
* I could do better

These are partial lists. Ester approves of the first reason, Rebecca suggested the last one.

Honestly, I don't think about this all the time.

somebody's Heiney is crowding my icebox. somebody's cold one is giving me chills.

Ester and I sat in Tarble between 12:20 and 1:15 and talked not about things but about people. And ideas, maybe. Jolly was there as well for long enough to flip through a roll of photos I just got back, taken when the apartment was clean. Ester feels uncomfortable with the way I've been discussing this issue of [girls] because she sees it as comparable to a phase that she went through last year of succumbing to those proclivities towards hedonism that are only to be expected. The stereotypical and perfectly understandable desire of college students to act irresponsibly, which in her view is tragically cheap and decadent. In a sense it is, and this is one of the places I'm struggling: were I to hook up with someone that, essentially, I wouldn't even respect enough to be friendly with under other circumstances, I would feel terribly guilty during and after. That isn't going to happen; I would feel much too awkward. That's a critical part of this whole discussion: I naturally only allow myself to be involved with people with whom I can interact as a friend, ie. people who fit the personality profile discussed below. Ester commented that my relationship with Alyssa last year seemed more like a friendship than anything else, and that was certainly true with Meredith too - that's sort of why we broke up. Also, both relationships started with series of events that could equally easily have led to friendships, but for some reason took another course. The question, then, is am I capable of a physical involvement with someone that a) doesn't grow out of a fledgling friendship, b) operates in an emotional framework that is substantially different from that of my friendships, or c) doesn't have the underlying intention of long-term continuity that is implicit in a friendship. Then, is this a question to which I ought to determine the answer, and is this semester a good time to pursue that answer? If so, since I have ruled out interactions with people that I don't find at least marginally appealing personally as well as physically, and any interaction with someone I find personall interesting is liable to lead to a friendship, or at least the desire for a friendship on my part, it will probably have to have someone to maintain a platonic friendship regardless of physical intimacy. Does that make sense? My first consideration in all of this, I should stress, is to avoid situations that will unneccessarily complicate my relationship with Alyssa. Since I see this as personal exploration essentially unconnected to that relationship, and I trust Alyssa to respect that, this shouldn't be a major problem. Obviously, there is a risk that something will come up to throw a spanner in the works, but that is a possibilty under any circumstances. Once again, all of this theoretical discussion and analysis of the issue is quite distinct from anything that might actually happen. If we learned anything last year about the cruciality elimination of desire and the dangers of the buddy concept, we should know that this is not at all the way to approach assuming we actually want something to happen. That said, again, we're having fun talking about it. The other thing we talked about was whether Ester is being mean to Rebecca and why. I think the answers are respectively no, and for several reasons, which we discussed: Ester feels guilty about not doign enough work around the place, Rebecca talks about herself all the time (as well as people and ideas and even things), particularly about her frustration and insistence on being the mother figure, which Ester responds to by rebelling in typical teenage daughter fashion.

it's harder to be friends than lovers and you shouldn't try to mix the two 'cause if you do it and you're still unhappy then you know that the problem is you

Truths:
1. Alyssa is wonderful.
2. I am not unhappy.
3. Whatever will happen will happen.

I've been up past two every night for about a week now, well after some nights, and waking up before ten, well before some days. Mynchon was a little trying just because I was so tired, more because I was so tired when I finished the book last night. I want/have to go back and reread the last fifty pages or so more carefully, but like everything else (Tennyson, Catherine Williams, Bulgakov, etc.) it will just have to wait for a while. I am going to allow myself plenty of sleep tonight (although I'll either go to salsa or film society, or maybe both, so I won't be back too early.) Maybe I'll nap now, before African.

The only Smog song I know which Alyssa put on a tape for me, which Drew played on WSRN last night as part of a whole side of the album since he had too much work to play individual songs:
cold blooded old times, cold blooded old times, cold blooded o-old ti-i-imes

I am tired and hungry, and yearning to breathe free. Once again Ester and I left the barn c. 9:00 in time to arrive at our 9:05 on time. Each day, one of the two of us has had to shake the other out of semi-sleep, and inevitably some day we'll both be off guard. Class is good, especially since we don't have a paper due Friday. I'm starting to get a clearer picture of the events, and it seems like the rest of the semester will just be revisiting them again and again in different forms. What should I do tonight? some options:

Watch "How to get ahead in advertising" with Gabe
Swing class w/ PJ
Rock band with jwu1
Sleep
Outline my M-D essay
Write a letter
Write reviews for WSRN
Clean my room
Eat at Paces

everything that keeps us together is falling apart. I got this thing that I consider my only art of fucking people over

But it took about four hours and the combined help of "computer consultant" Mark Hanis, the slightly more knowledgeable Rebecca NN, and whiz-kid Cox to hook up my laptop so as to transfer files to a McCabe computer capable of connecting to the internet. My computer spontaneously ceased its willingness to connect as I was trying to e-mail my Apples review to Suzanne yesterday afternoon, and it wasn't until 12:30 or so that I was actually able to send it. I think the deadline was midnight, and I haven't heard from her yet, so I don't know if it will make it in, but you at least can read the completed text. Scroll down to about Wednesday the 19th.

let me tell you 'bout the end of the beginning, or of the end, depending where you land

"this is going to be too easy," I thought to myself after tango last night...

when you're not with the one you love, love the one you're with

Okay, I've been living for a week under the false impression that I have two papers due this Friday. After getting funny looks from Ester, Erin, and then Blair when I said something about the paper for Murder, I finally checked the syllabus, and it isn't due for another two weeks. Still Melville, but that won't be too bad. I went over to talk to Blair in McCabe after writing my last post, and ended up inviting her over to the barn to read. She just left. If I'm going to acknowledge that my Apples review is courtesy of this site, I might make that post from yesterday private for a little while.

the problem with rules is they alienate the criminals

I just got my two-page "focus paper" on Melville back from Peter Schmidt, who called my paragraphs "quick on their feet" and my comparison to John Barth "very valid." This makes me feel better about the longer paper I have to write for him by Friday. I have to read the book now, to prepare for that. I only have about fifty pages left. It is such a great book, I'm definitely going to be re-reading it for the rest of my life.

More about yesterday: we woke up with a start (in Ester's words) and got to class on time. I read George Eliot's "Brother and Sister" over lunch, which is a wonderful poem and made me think about Martha. I might send a copy of it to her. It's odd because it seems very purely sweet and nostalgic, but there are subtle intimations of how the inequality of the relationship has upset the writer which I find quite disturbing. The funny thing about that class (VicPoets) is that we only discuss maybe a tenth of what we read for the week, and the discussion is tailored to what people want to talk about, so everyone can participate in at least part of the discussion, depending on which poems they read. I held forth for a while on the Eliot, and a few other things I had read. It's a very friendly class. Good for auditing.

Afterwards I worked on another of our ridiculous French assignments (playing with an awful painting program to create a picture to describe), and went to African, which was one of the better classes we've had yet. I called my mom, had some of Joel's delicious pesto risotto and tofu-tomato dish, and went to a hilarious, marginally productive SAC meeting. It feels like a waste of time to go to those meetings when I have so much work to do, but they are a lot of fun (now that Gabe and Dave are the directors), and it is important work. I stopped by Paces afterwards, which was quiet enough that I could actually do some work. Elena is the short-order cook on Mondays, so I got some help from her on the syntax homework while she was making Andréses and bruschette and burning herself with the french-fry grease. I wrote an essay for syntax (time-consuming but fun) and the massive update below, and left the library at one minute to closing. Rebecca and I cleaned the kitchen to Grandaddy, saw a mouse, and read on my loveseat to AmAnSet until nearly three.

The other part of the Fall break plans (the first weekend; we leave for ICELAND on Tuesday) are shaping up as well. Rob seems enthusiastic about the Wanakena idea, so at the very least he and the four barnies (sans bunnies) will go, and Ben may decide to come as well, which would mean an added vehicle. Were the ICELAND thing not to pan out (but it will), I have been invited to go sailing with Rob and to Vienna to visit Nori, and I could always go to NY or DC or Paris or here, or even home.

stop being so selfish. put it in your pelvis.

Another upshot of the party the other night, or more accurately the Sigur Ros concert, is that I'M GOING TO ICELAND! Joel and Matt convinced me that I must see this band, and Iceland Air is offering a package deal of round trip airfare, four nights in a hotel, and full admission to the Iceland Airwaves Music Festival for $559 per person (assuming double occupancy.) When we first realized this, I was a little dubious, but I soon realized that it was imminently possible. I called home today to see what the 'rents say, and Mom sez "well, I have to talk to your father, but basically, yes." Matt Rubin has been flying off the handle ever since he decided to go - especially at Paces last night, when all the servers were drunk (especially manageress Jolly, who kissed the girls and made them drink champagne), the place was packed, and the service was impossible. I sat with Ester, Matt, Marc, Elena, Jessie, Rob, Nate, and some others, didn't get any of the food I ordered, but was able to procrastinate for a while before going home. More tomorrow, maybe.

they sang songs for inspiration, they sang songs for relaxation, they sang songs to get their minds off of theis fucked up situation.

This is going to be one of those weeks that, if not actually painful in experience, will be painful to contemplate. That is, I have two papers due on Friday, a substantial amount of reading to do before I can start them (effectively, I won't start them until Wednesday), not to mention a French exam and a short essay for Syntax and a newspaper article and hopefully a dinner party. It will be fine, I just reserve the right to fret about it until Friday.

(I just overheard someone say she is the RA on Hallowell third, a "normal, stable hall.")

It got off to a good start when I stayed up late last night again (what happened to the first two weeks, when I was in bed by one every night), having another discussion about sex with my flatmates. Actually it was more interesting than that. Rebecca expounded on the "reality" female condom and read from the manual on its usage ("reality is lubricated", "if you feel uncomfortable using reality, use your hand"), and she and Ester and I figured out all the people that we are connected to via "spit networks" - at first they could only connect themselves through Alyssa (and me): Rebecca, Sean, Erin/Eve, Nori (assumed), Alyssa, John, Nicole, Pitar, Rachel, Chris, Ester. But then they found a much shorter way, through Suzanne. I have to go through a lot of people because my only other edge besides Alyssa is Jocelyn, and she seems to be a dead end (on this campus anyway.) The more relevant discussion was whether or not I should bring girls home for illicit purposes. The family consensus was yes (Rebecca has already decided that she wants to bring boys home). Ester suggested that I avoid people who look like Alyssa, and I posited my hypothesis, which I have been formulating for quite some time now, namely that the only girls who fall into a certain character type are always roughly Alyssa-shaped and Alyssa-colored. That is, Meredith-shaped and Meredith-colored. Rebecca diagnosed this physical profile as my "type," and I disagree inasmuch as it's not the only type that I'm attracted to (although it may or may not be the only type attracted to me), but concur because it seems that my personality "type" almost always corresponds to this specific physical type. I have defined personality type I'm referring to by three broad general characteristics: smart, funny, and unselfconscious. I should clarify these terms a bit, because I'm not using them in the ordinary way. By smart I mean somewhat intellectual, with a substantially developed taste in literature and probably music and film as well; someone with whom I can talk about books and who at least won't mind me ranting about music. By funny I mean with a capacity for a silliness which doesn't interrupt a genuinely weighty character: someone who can't but be taken seriously when she wants to be serious, but who also has a pronounced goofy side. By unselfconscious I don't mean in terms of appearance, but in terms of how freely and openly they interact; someone to whom I can talk without feeling any sort of tension on either side. This is definitely related to the funniness aspect. Part of this also has to do with having a consistent and genuine character. Most people (I should hope) have at least a handful of people with whom they feel completely at east and unselfconscious, and nobody does with everyone; I'm basically just talking in regards to myself. That is, with whom do I feel comfortable and good discussing intellectual matters, being goofy, and interacting on an everyday level. I find it unlikely that I would have a serious relationship with someone that I couldn't at least do those three things with, and I don't think those are unreasonable prerequisites.

Meredith and Alyssa (and, to go way back, Nicole Macagna, although she's a redhead, so I don't know what that means) have all of these qualities, and I can't really imagine having a serious relationship with someone who didn't at least approach them. That may seem restrictive, but it seems like there should be plenty of intelligent and good-humored and able to interact assuredly and engagingly, and at least some of them must be blond or thin or tall. (n.b. I'm not saying that I find blond or tall or thin girls more attractive, it would just be too bad if I was doomed never to date one.) To test the hypothesis, Ester (who also fits the description - other exemplary cases include Renee, Ali, and Mariah) and I went through the sophomore Cygnet. Sure enough, almost every single person we found who fit the character profile also fit the physical profile. The only possible exceptions were Sarah, who is red-haired and small, and Stefanie, who is blond and tall. Also Rebecca (who's tall), but I feel like she doesn't quite fit the personality type. All of this is not to say that I don't think there aren't plenty of smart, funny, engaging girls in our class, but surprisingly few of them combine those qualities in the ways I described above.

I don't think I really want to get together with someone in my class anyway. The going candidate (Ester's pick, with which I concur) is a senior.

To make this more confusing, and/or to stave off confusion, I just want to stress that I'm not actively looking for someone to fool around with. Or if I am, (okay, I am) it certainly should not interfere in any way with my relationship with Alyssa. [Ester thinks I shouldn't be writing about this here. Where else, man? It seems that Alyssa is not reading this from Japan, although she will almost certainly read it at some point. But that's beside the point: I'm not trying to hide this from Alyssa. To be honest, I can't imagine that she would be nonplussed. Most people, including her, would think that all of this discussion about other girls indicates that I'm somehow unsatisfied with the relationship. Of course I am unsatisfied with one aspect of it: our current situation as victims of geography. And sure there are other things which make it less than ideal. But as far as the important stuff, what I really care about, that's all there in our relationship. I love our relationship, and I love Alyssa, and as I was lying in bed thinking about this last night I kept thinking about all the things I love about her: her perpetually bemused approach to studying religion, the hand motions and voice and giggle she adopts when she's making a point really enthusiastically, her honesty, her face, and so on. The more I think about the more I feel sure that it is not a conflict of interest for me to be involved with other women, at least in A's absence. She may not feel the same way, although she professed to in theoretical terms, but I think she will accept and understand why I feel that way. I'm planning to write her this weekend, or maybe before, and I'll tell her all this stuff.]

What brought this on? First of all, there are two separate, if related, areas of inquiry: my theoretical explorations of type, and the fling question (whether and if so with whom and how). The prior comes and goes. The latter was precipitated by the party Saturday, when there were lots of people happily coupling and I was basking in the glow of mass affection and dancing with lots of individually affectionate people as well, and spring was in the air. The reminder of this stuff as well as the suggestion of its possibility brought me out of my desexualized phase, and, coupled with the scientific motives of testing my hypothesis, seemed to point to an attitude of active pursuit. The "October break rule" is in effect (if you're not in a relationship by then you won't be until the spring), so I have approximately three weeks. I will keep [you] posted.

"So Ross, you're kind of the man, huh?" John Fort said to me last night, after Ben and I stood up on a wall and shook our booties at the crowds during "La Guitaristic House Organisation." "The DJ is the shit!" shouted a group of people I didn't know hanging around towards the end of the evening, as I was attempting to wrap the party up. "The best string of music I've heard at a Swat party," remarked Chang this afternoon at the library. "Remember, Swat doesn't have good parties" said Priti in the Olde Club e-mail (she also said the Sigur Ros are on a major label.) "This music gives meaning to life" said Joel when he came back from the Sigur Ros concert, pulled me aside, and ranted for many minutes about how incredible the experience had been, unable to form complete sentences. "You missed heaven." Maybe, but last night was as close to heaven as I've been in a long time.

The day started off right. I lay awake in bed listening to the tired sounds of the Stars of the Lid. The minimalist swelling chords were interrupted by a ring from the kitchen. Alyssa called from Kyoto, approximately 9:30pm her time. It was so good to talk to her, especially after missing so many of her calls. Maybe my letter won't arrive, because I didn't write the full address. I'll send her another one with the party posters and a clipping of my Phoenix review once it comes out. I want to make her another mixtape too. She had taken precepts the previous night, which included vowing not to "misuse sexual energy." She didn't shave her head though. Someone called for Rebecca a little later, so I woke her up, but the other four people in the house were still asleep when I left for the wsrn training meeting (Drew and Priti monotonally explaining that they didn't know how to work the phone patch-in.) Eventually they woke up, and we ordered sushi, and made plans and lunch and read and discussed the fate of the revolution. I tried to get some Moby reading done but didn't accomplish much. Listened to Lloyd Cole's "The Negatives," which Ester liked once I told her that Jill Sobule was on it. I'm not sure where the rest of the day went.

At about 6:45, after some confusion about where he had disappeared to, Rob Cox showed up with his expiatemobile to take us to Genuardi's. He and Ben both seemed quite tense, as demonstrated when the former drove off without Rebecca and me because he was worried that Genuardi's was about to close, or when the later ran around the car to check on our six monster trays of sushi after I had assured him that they were okay. We went to Target, which, although they do carry semblances of Chinese rice-paper lanterns, makes it impossible to find them. We did find a nice string of blue bulbs, 120-minute cassettes for taping radio show, and some lightbulbs which turned out to be the wrong size for my light, as well as an animated moose. We didn't buy that last one, but we have designs on it for the next party ("DNCPRTY003: Animated Moose"). Watch out Swat.

I collected all the extension cords, rope-lights, paper lanterns, and lemons I could find and took them to clothier, where the speakers had been left unattended. Rattech operatives showed up shortly to set up the rest of the gear on the flat area of the walkway alongside Tarble, speakers on the wall facing the IC. They also brought an immense green extension cord, which allowed me to use a socket in the IC (the space is not well designed for outdoor electricity) to hang a lantern from the tree in the corner. Ben showed up with a turntable and a punchbowl, and, as I was stringing the blue lights above the benches below the subwoofer, so did three bouncy freshman PAs. They were confused about what to do, but I set them to work duct-taping power strips to the inside wall of the cloisters, so as to hang another lantern in one of the arches. People started showing up and asking for sushi, and I told one of them (Alex Brennan) that he could get it himself, so he went to the barn and returned with Rebecca, Ester, and five of the six trays (one of winds up as dinner tonight). I popped in some Mint Royale, Dimitri from Paris, Plaid, Walter Wenderley, Fatboy Slim, and Grandmaster Flash. Then Chang, who was hanging out and smoking with a group on the sidelines, requested "Policy of Truth" (I thought he said "Posse"). It wasn't an immediate response, but within a half-hour, the party did indeed become lively, to an unexpected, unprecedented degree.

At first it was just the PAs dancing (and Pert Joanne, who can shake her hips like nobody's business), but as word of the sushi spread and the Paces party started to overcrowd, people began pouring in: ex-Danawell residents, conventional freshman girls, my tango and swing partners, googly-eyed freaks, athlete types, J-popsters with glowsticks, Lodge Four, basement kids, Bryn, Kate, Heather, Rabi, Nick, Marc, Jolly, Jennifer, Jessie, Jessica, John, Jedd. People I knew, people I didn't know, people who mooched alcohol from Paces, people coming after the broken-up Olde Club concert, or the transcendental Sigur Ros concert, people who requested J-house, jungle, swing, the Bloodhound Gang, the New Deal, Madonna, people who know how to dance, and I mean get seriously down. Way way way more people than the sixty-people limit that I honestly expected to be reasonably within, and I was anxious the whole time about the arboretum. I danced with Alison, Rebecca R., Jessie, Bryn, Claudia, Alana, Lela, Eric Martin, and Liza, who is fascinating. She was at tango and the poetry slam. Her poetry, dancing, and demeanor bespeak a sort of wondrous childlike spirit. Also, she's an awesome dancer.

Ben took care of the food (sushi every half-hour, and gummies, mang gong, wasabi peas, rice crackers, lemon water) and the mailing list, and DJed almost as much as I do. His forte is remixes of his dance-music pantheon (Bjork, Beck, the Beasties, Moby, Madonna), and he had some great techno stuff that I haven't figured all out yet. His best transition was laying the chill-out Rhodes intro of "Where it's At" over the frantic speed-dance wind-down of "Feeling so Real." Mine was slipping the funky guitar intro to "Kiss" repeatedly over a Soul Coughing remix, which matched it perfectly for speed and key. Some early standouts: a P5 song from "Sound of Music", the Carribean Sunshine remix of "Freaking You", the schizo mix of "Just Can't Get Enough", Ben's "Alarm Call" mix.

The apex of the evening, when the courtyard was packed beyond recognition with dancers jumping up and down and going more and more crazy with each song I played, went something like this: "Better off Alone", "Sci-Fi Wasabi", "Circles (Propellorheads Remix)", "Kiss", "Wannabe", "The Bad Touch (Eiffel 65 Remix)" (Joanne's request), "The Light" (for Claude), track three from disc two of "The Roots Come Alive," "911 is a Joke," some other hip-hop thing Ben played, "Material Girl," "Music," "Cassius 99 (Remix)," "U Don't Know Me", "Rockafeller Skank", that silly Clinton song with "oohy-ooh," "Honey (remix)", "Heroes", "Like Humans Do", "El Platanal de Bartolo," then I think "Feeling So Real," "Where It's At," "Here I Am (Come and Take Me)," "Cold Sweat," and the final run of "Eurodisco (LRD mix)" "Around the World", "Another One Bites the Dust", "How About the Boys", "Ideoteque." (love me for my consistency of punctuation.) After that, despite pleas that I continue, I slipped in "Y Los Cubanos Postizos" and began cleaning up.

Rebecca and Ester waited obediantly on a bench while we cleaned up and gathered our gear and we took it Ben's room, where we sat for a while with Alé and Gerrit, the latter high and thus even more amusing than usual (he identified Ben's poster of Marx, Engels, and Lenin as "the Three Holy Stones, or no, the Dwarves of Jesus.") Then the four of us (minus Bester) sat in my room for a while, listening to Aphex and Godspeed and Gerrit talking about subs. Then I slept. It was about 4:30am.

I took some Japanese characters off of Ben's door "depechi modu da-ta-da..." and made a poster and then met Ben at SRN to initial my show time (11-12 Thursday nights - great time slot). I asked Priti for some CDs to review, and she loaded me up with Loscil, Lambchop, Sisterhood of Convoluted Thinkers, Stars of the Lid, a Teenbeat comp, and Lloyd Cole (which I noticed and asked about, she said I could take it as long as it wasn't on a major label.) Then I ran to the train station, where I met Joel and Alana, and Jonah and Sarah. Chloe stood at the station making eyes at me from several yards away, and then sat across from us on the train. We convinced Jonah and Sarah to join us at Kingdom, where we met up with Milena. The meal was the same as always, and great and cheap; my fortune said "you will be fortunate in the opportunities presented to you." Milena and I walked over to the laundry and grocery on 10th, where I bought $30 worth of rice crackers and Kosugai gummies. And then to The Troc, where Quetzal had taken the stage. They're an eight-piece "bastardized" latin band from LA fronted by a brother and sister team. He pushed the album, she stuck out her tongue and stomp-danced. They were fun, but they didn't get the crowd moving until the crowd showed up.

Milena (who was on the guest list) and I said hello to Bobby Berman, who has been to three Ozomatli concerts and Adrienne LaPierre. And then they came on. Through the audience first, marching band-style, samba whistles and bass drums and chants. The group (which no longer includes Chali 2na and Cut Chemist) is nine members, and they are ridiculously tight. All of their numbers have multiple sections, with intricate arrangements, shifting rhythms, switching instruments and styles. They only played maybe half the stuff from the first album, and they went for over two hours, so there must have been a lot of unrecorded or unreleased stuff. They made some political speeches, after one of which I was almost positive they were going to play "Coming War." It turned out to be "Cumbia de los Muertos" instead; I wonder if they thought "War" was too appropriate to play. One of their multi-percussionists sat down at the tabla, and the guitarists started to lay on the texture, and I knew it was going to hit, and when it did the whole room started bouncing up and down ("Superbowl Sundae.") There was an interesting range of people there, college kids, latinos of all ages, hippies, hip-hoppers, and an obnoxious thirtysomething couple in front of us, she in a denim jumpsuit with american flag beads on a safety pin, who Milena said must have taken ballroom dancing and salsa classes. Concerts like that are great, so much energy and groove, but I sort of feel bad paying for them in venues that have hosted the Flaming Lips and the Magnetic Fields, rather than in big outdoor festivals during the summertime.

We missed the 11, so we walked down 11th and east and south, and Milena told me about the city. We passed La Bohème, where Al and I went on our first mesa. Back in Market East, Elaine appeared, made up and hair styled and chic, having just come from a Latin dance club. It sounds like her life is quite stressful though, living in a home for disturbed kids and commuting an hour and a half to North Philly to teach at a charter school. Hopefully we can see each other somewhat regularly though. The ABC house is right down the street from here. It was Kent's birthday, and Sarah Ed, Jessie Coleman, Rebecca, Chang, Amalle, and Mariah were hanging out and drinking and smoking and talking post-modernism. Chang and I talked Faust and Dälek and Public Enemy and experimental jazz. He knows more about all of them than I do, but he invited me to come listen to his records.

we get history, biology and maths
we want poetry and music and some laughs
and I don't think it's an awful lot to ask

I love Jocelyn. She grabbed me after French and insisted on taking me to lunch at Sharples, with Liz and Alison and Sach. The food is no good, no good at all. I had a salad and some halfway decent rice, but I couldn't stomach any of the main offerings. I brought up the question of where to have my party now that the fragrance garden wasn't going to pan out, and she suggested the fragrance garden. Sure enough, I called up the Arboretum, and convinced them (without much difficulty at all) that we wouldn't destroy their grass. Claire Sawyers said "well, it's not really up to me to give you permission, I just gave that guideline [60 people max] to Paula," and Paula Dale said "oh, well it isn't really my policy; as long as it's okay with Claire I don't mind." So we are golden. The stuff is coming together. Hello and Okay.

I keep missing Alyssa's phone calls. She says in the messages that she'll call back later but then doesn't until the next night. Well, I hope she gets my letter and responds soon. Good that she's good.

Joel and I are milking this music-writing thing for all it's worth. We talked to the Apples for quite a while after the show, and the guy from the opening band gave us free copys of his album. Joel e-mailed the Shins and called Sub Pop, and we are going to meet them before the concert next weekend (!!!) My Apples review, if I finish it, may go in the Phoenix.

I stood up and left in the middle of my syntax class this morning. I was stopped before I reached the door by the professor, who wanted to give me some handouts and return a homework and say that I could talk to her in her office if I wanted. It could have been embarrasing, or should have perhaps, but I didn't mind so much. I went and stood next to a video camera in front of Parrish porch and tied a white ribbon around Dan Consiglio's arm. The sun appropriately ducked behind cloud cover, casting a sombre atmosphere on the proceedings, which then progressed to threatening drizzle and then full-out droplets. One of the speakers alluded to the crowd standing in the rain as an example of enduring hardship for the sake of conviction. I wrote a long post about what was said and my reactions to it, but it got erased. Durn computer. In general, I thought that the speakers were well-spoken and expressed a considerable range of approaches to the question of how to respond to and understand the situation (the unfortunateness, as someone referred to it). There was to some extent a lack of focus and avoidance of concrete discussion which I found frustrating, beginning with the three scheduled professorial speeches, which set the tone for the gathering. Thompson Bradley, ex-Russian prof, gave an impassioned critique of the language used by the media, and then launched into what he introduced as "what we can do right now" to respond constructively to the attacks, which turned out to be using this as an opportunity to reconfigure the way nations interact militarily and economically, and the way our so-called "democracy" functions. Of course, nobody mentioned that even if we did have a democracy more based on the input of the populace, our deliberate response would be no less angered and violent. Nobody really attempted to deal with the sentiments that are held by the majority of Americans outside of this campus until late in the rally, when Will Ortman stood up with a flag in his pocket to defend America's honor in the face of condemnations of imperialism and globalization that had been flying all afternoon. After that campus arch-conservative Dave Thomas expressed some even more unpopular opinions, and was mocked and booed. I was somewhat disheartened by this, not that it came as a surprise, but I would have expected more respect for differing points of view, especially since these were not all radical by any means. Some of the more poignant statements made earlier were those of community members, including a '74 graduate who exhorted us to realize the impact that college students have had and can have on situations like this, and a woman, awed and heartened by the presence of so many "beautiful people," who encouraged us to go into high schools and middle schools to engage kids in Socratic dialogue about the attacks. One student recounted a personal experience with anti-American sentiment in the West Bank, and another gave a well-intentioned but fumbling, rambling argument that we take the opportunity to ameliorate the effects of brutal Taliban oppresion.

Rain and Republicans brought the rally to a fractured close, and Ben and Ester and I went off to do practical things. Ben disappeared before I found out that we can't have hello and okay in the fragrance garden, which, incidentally, really sucks. I don't know where to have it now. Wharton Courtyard, Worth Courtyard, Kohlberg Courtyard, Magill Walk, all have their sticking points. Ester and I visited Jenny Yim and her pooch, and I was asked to DJ a fundraiser for a triple-degree-burned quadrepeligic (to make a long story longer), and then I invented a turkey wrap at Essie Maes, garnished with Asian-salad dressing. I came back here (oh, I'm writing from the Barn! We have DSL at the Barn! I can send e-mail and surf the intranet from the Barn!) and talked to Joel for a while and talked to Ester for a while and played rock and roll music with Rubes and Blechs. Matt is so excited about this! So am I, don't get me wrong. He has a new guitar song that completely rocks, on which I want to play a distorted flute. We also worked on a fragment from last week that grew from arpegiatted picking to vibraphone third patterns to funk bass to bliss, and a little on our eponymous groove, from "this is your captain speaking." This is going to be damn good. It's the next step.

After a while I went to a poetry slam at Paces. Talking to Stephanie later, who calls herself "an elitist; I never go to slams, only to readings," I realized that I am an elitist; I never go to poetry readings. Last time I went to a slam I ended up with a girlfriend, but I didn't quite succumb to the temptation to read. This time I read, abetted by a "Japanese poetry slam" format wherein we were given two lines from which to create six-line poems. I only wrote with one of the lines: "I refuse to tell you," and I changed its tense and wrote only four lines. People came up with some good stuff, including a lovely bit by Jedd about watermelons, and Ben's "I refuse to tell you that a sin dancing with a shrew is ant/agonistic. My affliction: heterosexuality." Mine was as follows:

I refused to tell you what I thought when
we saw "A Moon for the Misbegotten."
You asked my opinion on the plot and
characterization. I'd forgetten.

I neglected to preface it with "What sense it has is informed by the rhyme" or "It's about O'Neill" or "I've never actually seen it" or anything except "I wrote the other one," and despite an effort to articulate it came out rather quickly, and consequently it didn't get quite the response I had hoped, although a bunch of people laughed. I think most people didn't understand it. Many people read interesting things (Allen Friedman's Spam e-mail poem, Alex Edelson's trio of articulate pieces touching on vampirism and love) and many people read things about the unfortunateness. The culmination was a "performance art piece" by freshman lunatic Johnathon Schneider. Untitled "A Message from our Sponsors," it was an advertisement for a gas powered toothbrushed which ended up with him on the floor in spasms.

Rather than going home I went visiting. First Annie, who was writing about Van Der Weyden, and told me that her roommate had videos of the robot from the Apples concert. Then Lodge One, where I hung out for an hour or so as we discussed, chiefly, clothing and nudity. Those gals are so endearing. They do the lodge thing well. As I was leaving I ran into Matt and his companion Elena Cuffari, and so I went with them to Rob's room. We listened to B&S and had a nice chat, Rubin looking spiffy in my corduroy jacket. I hadn't really met Elena before this; I like her. She's what you would expect of Matt, in a funny way. She wants to be a ling major (she's in my syntax class. So is Jeff Wu, as it turns out.) Back here Alana was visiting, but because Joel was writing about 1001 Crucifixions, she was talking to the others of us (although she was wearing his shirt.) She and I agree a lot about love. Kollontai and all that.

The Apples in Stereo are a band just crying out to be made into a Saturday morning cartoon. Though they are vaunted by the indie rock press, their onstage personae owes more to the clean-cut, happy-go-lucky world of Hanna-Barbera than the smoldering thrift-shopping superciliousness of indiedom. Their records bear playful titles like "Tone Soul Evolution" and "Fun Trick Noisemaker" and bespeak a sixties revivalist impulse that hearkens more to the simple pleasures of the Beach Boys and Paul Revere and the Raiders than the proto-postpunk of the Velvet Underground. At their performance at the Theatre of Living Arts tonight, four of the five band members sported what looked to be vintage adidas, but they also wore conservative button downs, or in the case of the Schneiders (drummer Hilary and ringleader Robert), simple maroon pocket tees.

When we called ahead to find out about ticket availability, the operative at the TLA box office mocked us for even considering that it might be wise to purchase tickets in advance: who wants to see a bunch of no-name 60's rock revivalists on a Wednesday night. Indeed, when we strolled out onto the venue's concrete floor at about half-past-eight, the crowd was sparse indeed. But varied: the audience ranged from clusters of indie kids in light-weight jackets and black skirts (one even had a skinny tie) to a middle-aged Indian fellow with thick glasses and a Tone Soul Evolution T-shirt who waddled up to the front of the stage to a dancing cardboard robot. And by the time Robert Schneider had finished fiddling with his "sixty-five distortion pedals," the rest of the band had finished debating the best spot on the floor to stick the setlist, and the Apples kicked into a little instrumental snippet by way of introduction, the crowd was thick enough for Schneider to remark ingenuously: "oh, you guys rule. Thanks so much for coming to see us."

Robert (let's dispense with the formality) beams and says "thanks so much, you guys" as though he were a kid brother finally allowed to tag along with big brother and friends, or a schoolyard nerd being let off easy by the neighborhood bully. Beginning to bald and slightly paunchy, with his neatly clipped bright red beard, he is at once childlike and fatherly. Actually, he is a father: that was obvious when he picked up his water bottle after the first tune and mumbled something about a "drinky-poo." When we talked to him after the show, he apologized that he couldn't stay long enough for a more formal interview because he had to get back home to his eight-month old. (He did stick around long enough to show us a picture of Max, and he promised to kiss him goodnight for us.) Hilary looks similarly parental (she reminded me of my high school health teacher.) She wears a perpetual grin, and her Ringo-ish drumming doesn't get more complex than the sixteenth-note hi-hat groove on the tune "Go."

That song is the opening track on their most recent, most accomplished album, "Discovery of a World Inside the Moone" (SpinArt 2000.) Also their worst title, but what do you want? They played five songs from that album Wednesday, mixed in with older tunes from "Tone Soul" and a hefty dose of material that was unfamiliar to me. "Discovery" is a perfect encapsulation of their sound as captured on record: chunky strummed guitars with block chord riffs, winsome melodies textured with shimmery moogs and hammonds, punctuated with harps and tambourines, cheerful horns and chiming harpsichords. Idyllic lyrics about rainbows, streams, golden afternoons, bird singing in trees, and of course submarines. The Beatlesque-ness is inescapable, as is the cartoon-like quality I mentioned earlier.

In live performance, the sound is a little different. Gone is the psychedelic experimentalism of their brilliant mini-album "Her Wallpaper Reverie." Gone is the plaintive balladry of tunes like "The Afternoon" from "Discovery." The cartoonishness is still there, but it's less Alvin and the Chipmunks and more Josie and the Pussycats. Less George Martin orchestral excess and more stripped-down pop nuggets. Less twee and more noise. A lot more noise: I was wearing earplugs, but the amps were cranked up so loud that I could hardly tell. When I experimented with removing the plugs, it was hard to distinguish between chords. Most of the band members had earplugs as well - keyboardist Chris McDuffie, whose contributions were all but drowned out, had bright orange ones - but it was clear that they weren't some bunch of staid tetragenarians. They were there to rock.

And rock they did. Perhaps most of all when their hour-and-a-half-plus set finished and they came back on for an encore. Robert flashed us a peace sign and muttered "shucks," and the band burst into a thrashing version of the Beach Boys classic "Heroes and Villains." Not so coincidentally, perhaps, the Apples recorded that song for the Saturday morning cartoon series the Powerpuff Girls. (As guitarist Eric Allen told us afterwards, the show's producer just happened to be a fan of their music, so he called them up, and the band ended up gaining significantly in notoreity.) After thanking the opening acts, the venue, and the cardboard robot from space that was in the crowd, the ever-paternal Robert stood on stage and regarded his fans adoringly. "I love you guys," he said. Just think how embarrased Max must feel.

I went to Sharples today for the first time this year. Asian bar. Salad with cucumbers and brussel sprouts and ranch dressing. Kiwi Strawberry Orange juice. Bananas. Fragmented interchanges. Sitting outside by myself. All the stuff.

And they had the evil CD vendors on the patio, monging At the Drive-In and used Sparklehorse alongside the new Ben Folds and Macy Gray, for exactly the right or wrong amount of money (too much to be cheap, not too much to be outrageously expensive, just enough to sucker in ambivalent college kids.) I've never bought anything from them before, but

today I bought two CDs, without even meaning to. I sent a check and a fan letter to Merrick asking them if they want to play Swarthmore. Then I couldn't resist snapping up New Slow Riot For Zero Kanada on the patio. I may well end up buying the recent Apples in Stereo ep at the concert tonight, too. To say nothing of a T-shirt. I really have to go eat something, because I'm leaving straight from African.

we know we're not apes but we could make sweet seedless grapes

"we'll totally bake you cookies, and we'll be barefoot, and I'll try to be pregnant by then, but I'm not sure..."
-Elizabeth H…, outside McCabe last night, accepting my invitation for her and Brigid to join us in some barnstyle domesticity.

war, children, it's just a shot away, it's just a shot away

I otter be reading some of the 300+ pages of tiny-type trial transcripts that I have left for history (I've already read a good 200 or so), but here I am instead. After a tour of Professeur Moskos' rinôçérôse-studded office during French class and a few stumblings steps forward on our grammar in Syntax, (and turning in my wsrn ap [shins, fairways, avalanches, jim white, tortoise, camper van, bis, infesticons, heatmiser, merrick], stopping to suggest that a girl not name her emo show "cheer up emo kid"), (and meeting, in mccabe, Susanna, in pink and pink candy stripes, slouches alluringly and complains about reading Nancy Drew for art history; she and Justin from french class and Joel and Marc and Rachel and most of the rest of campus seem to be taking the same ARTH1 syllabus as I did last year) (and considering Sharples but taking Annie's instead) I've been reading all day. Mostly Moby, which as Christine noted was extremely materialistic this week, but also some of those infernal transcripts. It's not that they're uninteresting (except when the witnesses start to repeat themselves), but it's so long and pretty much impossible to skim, since the language is stripped down to its bare bones, sentences becoming even more extended and carrying more information than mine. Nice to have Tuesday afternoon free to read, though, and, I realized this afternoon, what better way to spend an afternoon than to read Melville, or Pynchon for that matter. Becca made Indianish for dinner, which the two of us shared alone (the real jews having gone home for the holiday.)

I dreamed this morning (people usually say they dreamed last night, but really you only remember what you had just dreamed) of Alyssa; the setting was houses on my street, she was coming to visit me, so I walked from my house to one a few doors down (the airport) to pick her up. Except that that was actually her house, and I ended up taking her and her parents to dinner with me and a cast of several, including Bobby and perhaps Ruth Peck, at a version of the restaurant Pod that emerged out of a Sheeler-ship-scape turned street scape of white surfaces and vanishing points. Bob and I had an appetizer of whale-meat, prepared with gunsmoke. Jeanne Gardner also made an appearance of sorts.

I'm quite proud of an accomplishment I made yesterday: ending a sickness. I slept too few hours after being dragged into a menáge à trois conversation with the flatmates (one for, three against) and woke up somewhat worse for wear. I sniffled through Murder, teared in French, and sneezed through the first two hours of Victorian (discussing selections from selections from In Memoriam; Nat said "I'm trying not to make phallic motions with my arm. but it seems to be doing it of its own accord") at which point Joel prescribed a Dingmanstyle "Desperately Seeking C" juice from the Kohlberg coffee bar, and I lay down under the laughing cherry (thankfully now freed from its pen) rather than returning to discuss Idylls. I didn't sleep then, but I went home and slept soon after (in the meantime drafting a "hello and okay" proposal with Galynker-san), in my lovely big green futon flatbed, now returned to its rightful place in the corner. I drank a lot of brittawata, popped some pills and galumphed to African, my face ruddy and runny. That class is I think as b.b.king once called the blues a cure for what ails you. Something about working up a good intense sweat when you're sick either makes you more achy or more usually i think helps to clear you out. Lots of drummers, lots of leg stretching and a "big burly man's, wrestler's dance." My dinner was four hefty slices of cheese pizza, which I haven't had in a while, at the meeting for {the brink}, a new magazine spearheaded by Suzanne and a cohort of exHall1sties (And, Mic, Jav). A good turnout, and some good ideas, although the format hasn't quite crystallized yet. Alison confessed that she thinks herself to write about, with which I sympathize. I don't know what aspect of my life people would really be interested in reading about at two to three thousand words. But the point is, I think, it's not interesting to me because I live it. So I haven't come up with a good idea yet (thoughts? throwing parties; nudity traditions; this. i dunno, what do you think?) Next to swing, where I danced with some friendly freshman. Everyone's friendly at dance classes, even if they're painfully shy. I asked Mary, who I saw getting down at my party, she tall and low-voiced and awkward on her feet but with the right feeling. And Olga, a lindying senior whose face I know from the alumni mag, asked me. There were fewer at tango tonight, and few of those who had been there two weeks ago; demure Julie of a warmly striped sweater, and the more natural Liza, quips "this is such a proper dance." Blair kvetches about history reading too, but she's 100pp more into it than I, so we four (with Becca and Joanne) knee-tango and contact a little and then vamoose.

I'm going to do it now.

your father made fetuses with flesh-licking ladies while you and your mother were asleep in the trailer park, thunderous sparks from the dark of the stadiums, the music and medicine you needed for comforting, so make all your fat, fleshy fingers to moving and pluck all your silly strings and bend all your notes for me, soft silly music is meaningful, magical, the movements were beautiful all in your ovaries

I have essentially sequestered myself in my apartment all weekend. Friday night's highlight was a two-piano jam (my second trip to Lang this year) with Ben starting from Gershwin and ranging through classical, blues, ragtime, salsa, Missy Elliott, and dissonanty minimalist sections. Then I played a solo piano rendition of "Little Plastic Castle" for Ester and Ben played "Lean on Me" and "Chameleon." We debated about what videos to rent from McCabe, ended up with Vertigo which we didn't watch but instead read Vonnegut anti-war stories to each other and then Becca and Ester watched a version of "Six Characters" which put me to sleep as well.


Yesterday Nate took me to the bizarre funhouse that is Ikea to purchase a blue CD shelf which I then assembled and filled. Ester ran off with Matt and quashed our tentative plans to go into the city (for the second night in a row), but we had a series of visitors: Michelle made a delicious lemon grass soup and black-bean "dofu" with Joel, Sam came by and grooved to Atlas Soul, Adam Rogers, a bit tipsy, bombarded in with a pair of light-blue-shirted sidekicks (Pat Dostle and I performed an impromptu "hungawe" in the apt across the hall), Annie and Milena joined Rebecca and myself for Boggle (porous, breathe, deriders.) Today was also low-key; I ate cream of wheat, then read all morning until I came to campus to do French work and history e-reserves. The computers are screwy around here.

today was "lendredi."

"what a winning combination
love and youth and dedication
[something something] procrastination
let's be rock and roll's salvation"

(IFA lyrics I thought of on the plane from San-Fran)

"One war to a customer."
-Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

I got up at 9:45 today and fed myself and finished my list of all the classes I would like to take before I graduate from this college. I'll put the list up here sometime. It is not very helpful in selecting a major, because the courses are all over the map. The most are probably in Linguistics, Art History, and English. I want to take a class in Cities at Bryn Mawr. Anyway, when I got back after class, the piece of paper with my list had been filled with records of quotes and Ester's distinctive doodles executed with the same gold gel pen. Ester's doodling consists of words and phrases (in this case a few long ones) selected from the conversation interspersed with multiplying butterflies. Examining the margins of her notebooks gives a unique glimpse into what the conversation she was having was about. There was a quote from Joel about smoking pot during the coming war years, and one from Ester about my music being like a v-chip. I don't understand that one.

A brown and white striped shirt, and black shoes. Yesterday was a bit stressful. After class I went to the credit union and sat outside next to Audrey Pernell, who was explaining to a young man that it was not important that his signatures on several checks weren't identical. He turned out to be John Fort, a transfer student from Deep Springs college who was at one point romantically involved with Morgan. I introduced myself to him, and he brightened and invented a handshake and admitted that he was not yet an adult and agreed that we should eat dinner. I ran into Bryn in McCabe and invited her to dinner, and printed out recipes from epicurious for carrot cake and enchilada sauces, then I went shopping. I bought close to $100 worth of groceries at the co-op, which surprised me because last I time I only spent forty and I was expecting to spend much more. But I didn't buy non-cream-non-cheese or non-butter or non-milk or tomatilloes or chilis because they didn't have any, so after putting the cake in the oven I strapped on my rollerblades and went to Genuardis, and then to Martindales. I got lost on the way back, skating around the subarban streets with the phrase "je ne suis pas fatigué" repeating itself in my head. When Bénédicte first said that I thought she was saying "je ne suis pathetiqué."

Because of all of this, it was almost five when I started cooking dinner in earnest, while the guests were invited for either six or six-thirty. I made guacamole and prepared the tortillas and chopped vegetables and prepared a sauce. Ester helped a little, but Joel and Rebecca didn't come home until about six. The filling consisted of sauteed spinach, tomato, onion, corn, black beans, and garlic. The sauce was sort of odd; it was non-dairy based, with a lot of non-cheese, and then peppers and chili paste, making it quite spicy. I had a lot of fun cooking, but because I got such a late start I wasn't finished until after seven, which means I missed out on a lot of conversation and the beginning of dinner (since I also had to prepare the frosting for the cake.) Matt Rubin left before I was able to join the group, and John and Bryn gave me some help in the kitchen. The enchiladas were quite tasty, as was the reheated leftover chili and the carrot cake. That's mostly what I have to say about the dinner. The conversation seemed fairly non-descript to me, if not a touch awkward at times. Things improved after dinner, when Annie and Milena and Joel and I retired to my room and talked about music and school. Then it got kind of weird.

At this point I had been shopping and cooking and preparing for dinner all afternoon. The kitchen was a mess, and I asked the others to help me with it, but Rebecca and Ester had gone off to watch a video in Ester's room, and Joel was on the phone for a while. Basically Joel and I cleaned up until Becca and Ester finished their movie, and then they came into the kitchen and stood and talked to us while we continued to clean. They were both somewhat upset about the way that John had been acting during the dinner, and Joel was somewhat upset that he hadn't gone over well (Joel was the only one of us who knew John beforehand.) I was confused, because I had missed out on most of the conversation while John was there. He seemed like a friendly upbeat guy to me, if a little awkward at times and a bit dominating of the dinner table discussion. There was a weirdness in the air.

I sat in Ester's room and talked for a long time, about the future of our country, and the logistics of bombing the Super Bowl, and where I should study abroad, and Dred Scott, and Laura Nyro, and computers. These are the good parts. I read through some old entries in Ben's journal the other day; around March and February of last year. What I write up here is so straightforward and matter-of-fact, it's interesting to me how abstract some other people's journal styles are. I don't feel that this entry is capturing how I felt very well, even though I had some very distinctive feelings. The medium is oppressive. My eyes are tired.

Today I ran into Jocelyn outside McCabe and she reminded me that I had to write a paper. I wrote it. I liked it too, about a humorous little passage from Moby on Linnaeus with some vulgar Latin. Then Inflight Announcement played for the first time. Joel on guitar and then cello, Matt on guitar, me on keyboard, with some of the preprogrammed drum beats. It all sounds okay, but nothing has really coalesced. We don't have songs so much as chord progressions, and they devolve into Godspeed! style atmospherics, which may be par for the course with electric guitar, cello, synthesized vibraphone sounds and synthesized marching snare drum parts. I don't have a sense yet. Keyboards in rock are wack. It takes time. This weekend is unappetizing. I'll find out what to do with it later. Maybe I should read now. Sorry.

I'll stir-fry you in my wok

It's a cool and rainy day, and I love it. Days like this are enveloping, they mute life and condone a subdued aspect. It makes it feel like autumn and that is beautiful. I'm wearing shoes and a shirt. Someone I don't know was here.

monochrome in the nineteen-nineties. you go disco and i'll go funkadelic man it's the way to go boy

I listened to "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts" this morning. What a song. I still am not quite sure. Martha called last night and we talked for a while. I'm in the language lab.

Meet me in the morning. 56th and Barbershop.

I just had an audition for "The House of Yes," directed by Tiffany Lennon. It would be great to get in; I really like the play (at least the parts we read to try out) and Tiffany is awesome. I felt pretty good about the audition. What I always say is that I don't really have a sense of how good I am as an actor; I just know that I like being in plays, so I'll audition and read from the script and hope to get in, and it's much easier from that point. Whatever technique I gleaned from many years of acting instruction is either gone or ingrained.

After auditioning I ran into Mara Gustafson, whose I foot I stepped on a few days ago. I enquired after the foot, and she surprised me by enquiring after Alyssa. I was quite taken aback, actually, because I don't really think of smiling and being friendly and talking to me as part of her repertoire. Funny how my connection with Alyssa alters the way people like her and Christine Smallwood act towards me, even if only in one instance.

I've been thinking (this is about the attacks again) about what it means that we're experiencing all of this from a college campus. On one hand, the events of the outside world have had no concrete effect on us (apart from those on campus who have lost loved ones), and our sanctity as a community has not been violated in any way. However, there is an earnest and pervading attention to the events that grows in magnitude as we interact with one another; the sense that most everyone is thinking about the same issues is inescapable. And although we have little contact with the harsh realities of the incidents, our level of participation in a society is such that two, three, or four times a day we meet in organized groups where some mention of the attacks is almost inevitable. Furthermore, there is a wide range of intellectual and emotional responses which we are in direct communication with, as each professor either muses on the events with specific regard to his discipline (the film and media studies class had a three-hour discussion of the television coverage; our African dance teacher led us through a series of slow, introspective movements as he sermonized on the need to be thankful for the present moment as we dance for hope and solidarity) or throws open a forum for discussion in more general terms. It takes a significant news story to shake up the campus, but when it does the ripples flow freely and reverberate off one another. While the reaction of the campus community in some ways seems artificial, there is something very touchingly organic about it as well.
I don't know what the situation were be like if this occured when I was at home, say, over the summer. I would probably have had the opportunity to discuss it with friends, and of course with my family, but I wouldn't have the kind of continuous exposure that I get, even without watching television or listening to much radio, from being on this campus. My mom said she spent yesterday afternoon discussing it with students, mostly on an individual basis. I don't know about my dad: surely he is involved somehow in whatever sort of community gatherings are taking place, but he doesn't have a workplace or anything like that where there is a real and present community.
I am astonished too at how much this has overwhelmed my thoughts; even though I at first was willing to strike it from my mind so easily. It took a while to know how to begin to comprehend this. I'm beginning to agree that things indeed will not be the same. Ester asked how long will it be before people feel alright making jokes. Funnily, our first reactions were humorous: comparing this to a Hollywood blockbuster, or making fun of Bush. A difference between this and the movies, for me, is that there was no introductory development of the characters or the human interest stories: instead we are plunged right into the catastrophe. What a way to start a movie; just begin with the disaster and work from there. As Aijung's shirt says: Story begins with explosion.

well you can laugh at this sentimental story
but in time you'll have to make amends
the sudden chill as lovers doubt their immortality
as the clouds cover the sky, the evening ends.

Peter Schmidt delicately asked us to comment on whether any aspects of yesterday's events resonated with anything from the book, Moby-Dick, that we are reading for the class. This was the first time I had heard of a professor attempting to conflate the topic of a class with the topic on everyone's minds (although Tom Whitman did suggest that his music theory students perform music for one another as a means towards expression and solace.) I was somewhat skeptical about not so much the taste of this approach but rather the possibilities for discussion, but it quickly became apparent that there are in fact quite a number of relevant parallels. To begin with, the eerie relevance of a comic device Ishmael uses to suggest the insignificance of his story: a supposed newspaper headline "Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States" "Whaling Voyage by One Ishmael" "Bloody Battle in Afghanistan." We developed an astonishingly accurate allegorical reading of the novel such that the terrorists=Moby; America=Ahab (and the WTC his leg); (or Bush=Ahab and America=the Pequod.) This is appropriate especially in terms blindly and fanatically seeking vengeance against the unknown, inscrutable enemy for a slight that represents a weakness in what is usually thought of as a bastion of strength. I was rather shocked by some of the sentiments expressed by classmates who were personally feeling intense anger, particularly Perry, who said "I feel somehow profane saying this, but . . . I just want to beat the shit out of somebody" (not to mention that it actually is profane.) Personally, I had not yet been a part of a more formal discussion of the attacks, so this was a particularly interesting opportunity to hear some of the sentiments I had been feeling expressed more eloquently, but it was also a meaningful and useful exercise in trying to understand the events, and a vivid demonstration of just how relevant literature can be.

The rest of the class was similarly thought-provoking. I had heard that Schmidt was a poor discussion leader, but on the contrary I thought this was among the better discussions I've had in Swarthmore classes. There is an overwhelming amount of intellect and intelligence in that group of students, and rather than letting it become a stifling and unpleasant atmosphere of bloated egotry, Schmidt's has a warm and encouraging style that makes discussion productive, stimulating, and enjoyable. I didn't speak a whole lot, partly because other people said many of the points I wanted to make, and partly because I was somewhat hesitant to disrupt the flow of the discussion with often disparate comments. I'll try to be better about that in the future. I just posted to our listserve discussion group about some of the points I didn't get a chance to make in class.

After the class Ben and I laid down in the shade outside Willets for a while, and SuWu handed him a party invitation ("we hate everybody, but you we only dislike.") I want to figure out ways to approach all those people that "I want to get to know better." There's a long list, but the part of "cool upperclassmen for whom I may or may not be cool enough" includes her, and the residents of 2S: Rae, a beguiling dresser, who's in M&P; Jessica, always cheerful (to me at least) from whom I borrowed a history book last night; and Renee, who insists that we shouldn't take her rebuffs personally. I'm just beginning to feel some distance from campus in general, in that there aren't many people apart from my flatmates that I feel I would call on when I need someone to talk to, and just that we're removed from a lot of goings-on. There are definitely benefits as well. Ester popped by and brought up Nostradamus: "The third big war will begin when the big city is burning." Oh my. Well, the rest of the prophecy doesn't fit very well.

U keep on giving me the hold up. U know I wish U'd make Ur mind up.

Radio silence. I wrote a letter to Alyssa last night, a pink and paltry missive, in response to her box and clothing and tape and letter and spoon. It was colored, as many thoughts have been, by the lingering sense of uncertainty that has plagued these twenty-four hours. I bought envelopes for it at the bookstore (and finally brought in my film to be developed, two sets of four by six matte prints) and now I'll go and find out what the postage is to Japan. NPR reported yesterday morning, at around 9:30, that the USPS is thinking about raising the price of postage again. Darn e-mail. I wonder how much the phone companies are profitting from the tragedies. Bush is raving about God and war. It is a beautiful day outside.

brothers with their AKs and their 9ms
need to learn how to correctly shoot 'em
save those rounds for revolution

The thing that stands out most to me is how new this all seems to be to people. Given the adage that violence in the news and entertainment media have dulled us all to the true horror of it, and the similarity of this attack to other recent incidents such as the first world trade center bombing, I did not expect this extreme level of public shock and disturbance. People are acting (perhaps justifiably) as if this is something absolutely unexpected and unprecendented, for which they were completely unprepared. The uniqueness of this event seems to be in the combination of several factors which on their own might not have created such a dramatic response: the fact that multiple attacks occured at once; the high level of coordination and calculation that must have gone into it; the fact that this occurred on American soil; and the fact that we have no clear idea who did this or why. The word that people are using to describe all this is "magnitude," but I think it's more about this confluence of elements. Personally, the bandying about of these sorts of scenarios in both news and entertainment have, I think, made this seem like less of a total upheaval to me. It all seems somehow inevitable, and the way it is playing out feels very calmly predictable in all of its chaos and confusion.

My first response, essentially, was to shut myself off; go back home and do my reading. It took a while for the significance of these events to sink in (not that it has yet; of course it hasn't for anyone.) I find radio coverage of such things trying. Everyone is listening earnestly in hopes for more news, or a better way to understand what is happening, and the newscasters can't do much more than reiterate the same sentiments over again. I tend to avoid television news coverage in general. I'm confused about how best to be, as my mom put it "part of the process." In a way, coming home and turning off the radio was the right thing to do: I did need to get my reading done, and did it, and have just written a message to the Melville class discussion list about it. And whenever I did turn on the radio all that I heard was reports of closings and cancellings: transportation networks, commercial buildings, baseball games, schools, a screening of Citizen Kane that I was planning to see tonight; and I thought: why do the events of this morning, no matter how disturbing, need to be allowed to disrupt our lives in these irrelevant ways? Why not watch a movie tonight? I'm still not entirely clear how many of these closings were due to worries about further violence and how many are just expressions of grief and mourning.

Before I went back to the barn for lunch and the afternoon, I had had few interactions regarding the attacks; just a jokey interchange with Ester, Ben, and Jonah at McCabe, none of whom seemed particularly upset. Joel was talking to his grandfather, who worked at the World Trade Center since the day it was open (no longer works there), and who described the crash as the most horrible thing he had ever seen. Then the two of us played a sprawling, disjunct guitar/accordian/cello rendition of Billy Bragg's Pearl Harbor saga "Everywhere," in response to "today's Pearl Harbor." Rebecca came home with a bag of groceries and a radio in her ear, and Ester not much later; the two of them had been keeping abreast of developments far more than I. I listened to NPR for a while longer and began to realize some of the implications which were less obvious when the discussion was more about our moronic leader and the Hollywood-esque drama of the events. I called home, more instinctively than anything, where my mom was focused on the possible repercussions as the American public internalizes these events. The inevitable heightened intolerance of Middle-Eastern and other ethnic Americans; a reevaluation of our place in the world and the meanings of peace; a heedless acceleration of military spending at the expense of what is truly important; the lurking significance of the selective service card I submitted not twelve months ago. Family talks at the dinner table expanded on these themes; Joel's prediction is that this signifies the beginning of "the downfall of the US as a major power." I'm not sure about that, but it does seem in many ways indicative of the trends that have been occuring, and I have much less doubt now that this is indeed a day that will join the annals as a major turning point. Ben and Ester have written touching and insightful entries on their experience of the tragedy. I am sobered.

I saw a man build a shelter in his garden today
And we stood there idly chatting
He said: "No, no I don't think war will come"
Yet still he carried on digging.

It starts. I visited the White House in my dream last night, and took repast at a nearby tourist cafe where our hapless waiter was none other than George W. Bush. He was unable to get my order correct (admittedly it was a confusing one: some sort of mushroom flatbread or pizza which inexplicably came with a sandwich; I wanted a reuben, but without mushrooms and with turkey), and I took it out on him rather meanly. I felt bad though, to be so abusive of George.

When I woke up I had "Know Your Onion!" pulsing through my synapses, so I fumbled to slip in "Oh, Inverted World!" and advance to track four, before I put on my glasses. Before the track finished though, Rebecca came in and commanded me to turn the tuner to NPR, where I was greeted once again by the Porky Pig-esque speech patterns of Mr. Bush, whose only coherent sentence this time was "Terrorist attacks against our country will not stand." As if it were a summer sci-fi blockbuster or an April fools joke, the newscasters had announced only minutes before that two planes had crashed into the twin towers of the world trade center. As we listened, transfixed, and squabbled over uneaten banana halves, reports came in of a fire in the White House and a bombing of the Pentagon (as a correspondent in the Pentagon bantered on: "Well, I didn't notice anything when I came in a few minutes ago, but now I think, yes, there is a public address announcement being made, and we are I think being asked, yes, to evacuate the building...") The news passed without remark through a quiz and a lesson on les adjectifs, but by the time of 11:20 syntax a murmur passed through the room before the start of class, and the introductory discussion of generative grammar included the several syntactically ambiguous ways to diagram the sentence: "The students told the teacher about the crash in NY." On the way from Kohlberg to McCabe (by this time the story had evolved into a Travolta-thriller worthy saga of seven hijacked 747s, several of which have yet to reach their targets) I passed through a thronged Parrish parlors where a TV set flashed live images of destruction, and a crowd outside the McCabe doors frantically muttering about the NSA. As many of my e-mails touched on the news as constituted responses to this weeks Moby-Dick reading.

It's endearing how this campus responds to events of national import such as those of today, or the post-election shenanigans of last year. There is a sense of intense concern and valiant effort to remain abreast of affairs and determinedly sympathize with the victims, and yet these issues don't affect the school itself in any concrete way. The bubble remains unbroken, even when the outside world makes enough noise to have us pressed up against the glass peering out in semblance of solidarity. Because everyone else is on edge to hear the latest breaking news, I don't have to; I know it will come out in distilled form in a matter of hours or days, and I can synthesize it more harmoniously. Besides, I was one of the first to hear the news, thanks to Rebecca's alarm-radio. For all you readers out there, I'll keep you posted. Or you could just visit CNN or something.

lucked out, found my favorite records lying in wait at the Birmingham mall.
the songs that I heard, the occasional book were the only fun I ever took.

Here's me in McCabe again, having finished my French homework again (this time a crossword puzzle that we had to print out and a "self-grading" quiz with lots of words we haven't even learned yet. Jennifer and I gave our dialogue this morning in drill, after I did my homework for today (I guess it's a bad habit, doing the work right before class, but it seems to work well enough since I have an hour gap between classes), after I met with Michael Watt "Fascinating" Cothren (he says he used to live in the garage apartment at the barn) and after Murder, where we were all given cotton balls as tactile aids (Ester suggested that he should have gagged us with them.) Once again, I find most of my classes are dominated by women (murder, victorian, african, syntax to some extent). Not that I'm complaining, but it makes me wonder a bit. My lunch was an excellent slapdash open-face sandwich of scraps of tomato, tuna, and three different cheese, topped with some leftover peanut-soy pasta sauce, and melted in the nuker. There was plenty of time to savor this and make it to Victorian on time, although Joel and I were actually a few minutes late, walking in in the middle of a Loreena McKennit setting of "The Lady of Shalott." I was fairly hyped for a good three hour discussion on Tennyson, but we actually only got to a handful of the poems, and the shorter ones too; those we read aloud in class, and discussed the narrative structure before delving into further analysis, which certainly felt like a waste of class time and belittlement of the expectation that we read the poems in advance. Nat Anderson reads slowly and laughs nervously, and finds sexual interpretations wherever she can, and reminds equally of Sue Salzman (especially in her chalkboard hand) and a more sprightly version of Ruth Peck (whom I shamefully neglected to visit all summer.) I like her though, her half-lens glasses perched on her nose and her stylish little tousled pepper hair, and she said she was delighted that I asked to audit the class. Me too, although hopefully the discussions will become more focused and productive as we go.

Joel and I had a chat with Corey Mark after class about the music scene at swat; Inflight Announcement should be the next big up-and-coming, but we haven't even met to discuss rehearsing yet. Rubin is still in New York to see Michael Jackson at MSG, as we found out when we stopped by his lodging. I managed to read a bit more of Moby (all of last night for me consisted of reading Moby, documents for Murder, and Tennyson, with breaks for reheated pasta, fruit and cheese, and cake and ice cream) before Afrique, but mostly to quibble about shopping lists, devour craisins and wasabi peas (bad idea before dance class) and look at Esters new roll of film. I have to remember to get my first week photos developed. Maybe I'll even find a way to put some up here. African was kick-ass, as it has always been (it will presumably at some point be temporarily less so) although I haven't spent much time here talking about it. The class is large, mostly bright-eyed girls in their "lapas" (batiked skirts) and a few bemused boys (men never seem to look at home in dance classes, as comfortable as they may be.) The best part of class is probably across-the-floor, when the ass-shaking grows more and more vigorous and the Rate of Pelvic Thrusts (RPT) begins to climb.) The men always have to go in the last two or three rows, which is frustrating at times, but has the distinct advantage that we have a captive audience (the steely, intense google-eyes of Kate Conover; the ever-imminent giggle of Claudia Sell; the bashful grin of Betsy Jenkins) that isn't afraid to cat-call and cheer as we swivel our rumps around in their general direction, and that, as we approach the end of the room, we pass in between two files of glistening women dense with the jungly musk of female sweat and snatches of fruited body-washes and perfumes, heightened today by the thick humidity which created a series of gentle rainshowers. The drummers fluctuate between funk and disharmony, but we pay our respects nonetheless, and everyone leaves the class with a smile.

What could be better than that primordial workout session followed by a brief jaunt in "the world's greatest shower" and a delicious meal of stir-fry and rice prepared by chef Joel, and enjoyed with the company of our guest Stefanie Fox? There was an oddly tense moment when I was helping Joel in the kitchen; he seemed on edge and then swore a few times. He laughed it off ("I swear casually,") and explained that he didn't want to fuck up the meal, but this has happened before; his directions to me when I help him cook always feel a little brusque and condescending; maybe something about cooking puts him ill at ease.

After that a ridiculously long, but enjoyable (always, with Goofball Gabe and Dizzy Dave) SAC meeting, and the last half of swing (remember never to go for the lessons, just the free dance sessions) where I danced with some more uneasy freshman, and then here. I'm sitting next to Renee Witlen, who affirms that she does not think we're dorks (as Ester contends), and apologizes for not being more neighborly. It's all right; she's working hard on a scholarship application. Becca wants to go, so I shall.

I took her out. It was a Friday night. I wore cologne to get the feeling right

I fixed the reblogger function on the site. Now I can receive comments again (but all the old comments are lost, including some that I never got the chance to read...) (so rerespond to the last two entries if you want to)

how could anyone deny the benefits of lying with your friend?

About not having access to the internet at the barn (which will hopefully be remedied within two weeks or so, thanks to Joel's continuing efforts to get through the skulls of the covad operatives), I don't mind so much the lack of instant e-mail (since I come to campus often enough, and it's an excuse to when I don't) or the inaccessability of e-reserve readings (I just finished my first chunk of them for the Murder class, one fairly dry and another interesting enough, about Lowell mill gals in the '50s), but rather the resulting infrequency and thus length of these blogger posts. Last night's was made from the Willets dorm lounge computers, a new addition this year, with Ester alternately distracting me and haranguing me to wrap up the entry (and read her journal for an amusing account of our amusing encounter with the amusing Rogg Rogg as this was going on.) I still sort of feel that I was unable to capture the true grandiloquence of the party under in that rushed atmosphere, but I'll press onward in my chronologism.

Yesterday (what a way to start all my entries) I slept in a bit, just until noon. Jennifer Ku, a transfer student whom I encountered first in Lodge Two during orientation week and then in my French drill section, called during breakfast, and I invited her over. We had a fairly non-specific assignment to create a dialogue, so we discussed les orage de printemps and fetêr mon anniversaire, branching out into constructions we had not yet learned with the help of Ester's middle school French. Jennifer looked through my collection and picked out Modest Mouse and Billy Bragg to accompany our work; I had started the day off with Sublime's "40 oz. to Freedom," and continued it with the Boards of Canada after she left, to accompany Tennyson and yogurt.

Alyssa called (back, after our brief discussion in the middle of Friday's dinner which consisted of figuring out when she could call back) and we talked for the first time in a while. It seems that she's having as good a time as I am, although the activities in her daily routine (slow and fast walking meditation, lectures in the Buddha hall, etc.) couldn't be more different from mine. I love her approach to learning about cultures and religion in general and Buddhism in particular; more good-natured amusement at the novelty of it all than what some might deem more appropriate reverence, but ardent interest nonetheless. She told me a funny dream about a performance I would put on when she comes back to swat (the afroed director of a sort of conflation of the Muppet Show and an orchestra performance), and that she had sent a package, and that she loves me. And she does, and I love her too, but it's a funny love that sometimes is hard to notice (at least in my case) because it isn't set in opposition to anything. Our relationship is so free of tension and pathos that I forget how it could be otherwise, and thus how lucky we two are. As Ester might say, it's very functional. Functionality belies feeling, but our balance of the two seems to be both sustainable and fulfilling. Ester asked me yesterday whether I was looking for someone to fool around with while she's away, or would consider it. It's not that I wouldn't consider it, or that I would worry about Alyssa's reaction (she has effectively said it wouldn't bother her, and I believe that), because I do think that if the opportunity came up I would be willing to become involved, at least to a certain extent, with someone else, but my eventual response (which surprised me a little) was that no, I am not looking, and I don't have even the slightest desire too. I think that speaks to how satisfying my relationship with Alyssa is; it's neither more nor less than what I want it to be, albeit that it's obviously nicer when she's around. On a related note, too, I have of late been, as in many (particularly particularly busy) periods of my life, in a fairly desexualized mindset, which is at once convenient, becuse it does tend to take up time, and somewhat unfortunate, because sexuality, to me at least, is largely about fun.

I didn't leave the house until after Rebecca and Joel's delicious dinner of gnocchi and farfalle with vegan/non-vegan cream/mushroom/pea sauce, and then just to write that monster post and chit-chat with Peter and Ale, among others, in Willets lounge. Joel's theory is that the administration is trying to "gentrify" Willets, and certainly many of the cool freshman I have met live there (Annie, Dante, Milena.) Of course, stinky carpets and Brandon Carver remain as reminders of what came before. Ester and I took a mini-tour of Worth courtyard, dropping in on Rob (his white-board read debauchery, and his pinneapple shirt and stock of vodka belied the fact that he had neglected to invite anyone to his intended soireé) and Lodges 1 (a gaggle of girls being entertained by Marc sandwiched in a sofa; clearly they didn't need us) and 4 (the company all dolled up, having just returned from Danielle's birthday at Penang, Allison defiantly and oddly splayed across a couch like some lipsticked Matisse subject against a bed of dizzyingly patterned fabrics; they had been to the "pretty good" frisbee party the night before rather than my "ok" one [ester], dominated by "freshman ravers") and then returned barnward to intercept Ben in his metallic skirt attempting to escape.

We three and Joel debated the effect of Diet Coke on a happy body, the questionable appropriateness of the name "love seat" to our new piece of furniture, and the relative number of "conventionally pretty" people in this year's batch of frosh versus 99's, partook of the sublimely warm cheeses I had left out the night before, and then began "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control," soon joined by Sarah and Jonah, who had seen it before. The film is an excellent documentary by Errol Morris ("The Thin Blue Line") which focuses on the work and ideas of a robot scientist, a lion tamer, a topiary sculptor, and a naked mole rat specialist, interspersing interviews with footage from cheesy sci-fi flicks, animated cartoons, and circus performances. The juxtaposition of images, narration, and music very effectively creates and sustains a mood that encompasses the inherent eeriness of the circus, the humor and the grandeur of animals as seen through an anthropomorphic lens, and both the hopeful and frightening aspects of the future of technology. While the subtext for all of this is a group of individuals who are hopelessly extreme in their choice of career and even their mannerisms, Morris creates a unity among them that speaks to recognizable and innately human tendencies.

After finally completing "The Lady of Shallot," I slept on the sofa that was once my bed. Woke up ten hours later and plunged back into Tennyson: excellent "Ulysses" and "Locksley Hall," which I remember from AP; the fragmentary songs from "The Princess," which include a line we used as a vocal exercise in a theatre class once ("the moan of doves in immemorial elms, and the murmur of innumerable bees"), and the epic "Maude," which is captivating for its multiplicity of approaches, in form and style, to the telling of a fairly simple tale (my favorite parts were some of the simple descriptions of his interactions with Maude, which appear unexpectedly out of his melodramatic waxing of his own feelings; "I kissed her slender hand/she took the kiss sedately/Maude is not seventeen/but she is tall and stately.") I popped in "When I Was Born for the Seventh Time" (a great morning album, starting from the snaky accordian waking up on the left side), and then "Discovery," the newer Daft Punk album which, I've decided is much more listenable than "Homework" although the individual songs can't compare to the highlights of the earlier album. Where "Discovery," in the words of some Spin reviewer "toes the line between clever and stupid," "Homework" comes across, depending on your attitude, as either extremely innovative or extremely inane. I played "One More Time" at the party (by request), and I'm not sure how well a lot of the rest of the album would work at one of those parties, but I want to try "Harder, Better, Stronger, Faster," probably my favorite track, which is sort of a capsule history of techno dance music from early electro-pop to the vocoder infusion of the late nineties. The vocodorized keyboard/voice stuff at the end is positively awesome in its goofiness. Part of the problem/kitsch appeal of this album is the lyrics, which are just hopelessly bad ("I want you more than anything in my life") besides which vocals don't really belong in techno unless they're just shouts to get up and dance, but here they fit in so perfectly with the tone of the music, and you just have to grit your teeth and smile.

I moved from breakfast (maple-walnut muffins topped with Jarlsberg, and grapefruit juice; not a particularly workable combination) straight into lunch (reheated farfalle and cream sauce augmented with leftover tuna) without skipping a beat, and later, when Rebecca awoke, went with her to campus to try to squeeze into "Shut Eye." After a tense moment when Felicia paused after reading the names of nearly everyone else in the room off of the waiting list, she finally read Rebecca's name, and we were ushered in to front row seats (albeit on the floor.) The production was incredibly fun, as well as ambiguously meaningful and thought-provoking in that boundaryless experimental theatre way that I'm most familiar with from Shipping Dock shows. This one, which was described as an exploration of the concepts surrounding sleep, primarily evokes hospital wards and corporate boardrooms, with occasional forays into the home of a newlywed couple, a supermarket, and beds of all description. The company demonstrated considerable talent in dance, gymnastics, ladder climbing, singing, accordion and saxophone as well as acting, while one of the most enjoyable aspects of the show was the sound design (best captured in a brilliant interweaving of EKG bleeps with cell-phone melodies.) The climax was a G&S-styled patter song performed by the whole cast in the "Sleep Lab," at the end of which one of the actors jumped up brandishing a plastic scimitar and the scene devolved into confusion.