sometimes i do talk to myself, in answer to your question. i think, recently, i've started to occasionally exclaim "oh yeah" aloud to myself. not the "oh yeah" of realization, the "oh yeah" of happiness.

i wore all black today, with an orange shirt. and karen hatwell said "you're looking very october today." i felt the impulse to be deadpan and inscrutably biting in the manner of someone wearing all black: "it is october. it's rocktober." "you shouldn't wear a skirt with flowers when there are no flowers outside." "black is appropriate for the winter [she said] yes, because the snow is black." her startled reaction was i in truth hope not one of serious offense, but it brought me mild Schaudenfreude. i don't know why i told you about that. [not just because I wanted to show off that word; i composed this whole paragraph and then came back and added that. -ed]

not to be chronological about it: the mail brought happiness in the form of two rolls of expertly developed photographs with the sophisticated white borders, the two frank black albums, and the forthcoming apples in stereo. yoga was brilliant. i love that. seminar was an interesting experience. nobody mentioned my paper at all, except for janine, who brought it up a couple times to ask me to talk about some of my points, so i guess she liked it. the lack of formal attention to seminar papers stands in contrast to the protocol of the pomoreltho semin as described by joel and alyssa, and is confusing to me. i felt like i was nearly the only person talking for the last hour, prompting discussion topics and then answering my own questions. nevertheless, it was a good discussion of i think a fascinating subject, which i'm excited to see soon. good seminar break too, from sam, including homemade japanese cucumber salad.

my best friend ester and i listened to [the masterwork of arrangement and other things that is] little earthquakes played scrabble in the afternoon, and she got 476 points, which is very impressive. i got 352, which isn't too bad either. after that we ate better-than-average sharples barbeque in danawell (these 'well ras know how to flip 'em.) and i haunted lang, for which my finger was the worse.

quoth me [my paper began: "quoth Marcel Duchamp:"]: "in the great accounting of friends that accompanies my decision of who to invite to have dinner with me and my mom, it has come to my attention that three of my four closest friends on campus are male. this is strange to me." indeed - although i got confused and made the reservation for five rather than six.

not because of that, i paid a good visit to alyssa's invitingly monkish room. we listened to glenn gould, she read me cummings and neruda, she wouldn't tell me what her poem is about, we looked at claire's blitz photos, we talked about, oh, something, i'm sure. like almost always in our history, we are very stable. i think she's really cool.

[smoke from the hallway two floors down is invading my room, and i don't like it. i've closed the door.] i wanted to tell you about what happened in my american contemporary composers class not this monday (when in-house writers tom and jerry came to talk about bali and opera) but last monday. we had two guests: louis prado, who is youngly, upbeat, articulate, puerto rican by birth, and david finko, who sits in markéd contrast to that. he's who i wanted to talk about. he's in his seventies, and moved here from russia in the seventies. he says: "i'm not interested in music" any more. when jim(bo?) praised a gorgeous violin passage in my favorite of his works, he says: "that's not beautiful, that's depressing." he is adamant on the point of a dichotomy between an american intellectual style of composition and a russian emotional one, which really isn't embodied in his oeuvre the way he thinks it is. he studied for some five years at the academy of naval engineering in leningrad, and he says that he learned less about composition from his studies in music theory than from classes like "ship engine propulsion" and "theory of naval design." question and answer period. "first question should be: what do i take - prozac or what?" will he write more? "maybe if someone commissions me a concerto for machine gun and gas turbine."

"how's your hurricane, motherfucker?" popped an idiosyncratically and futilely pissed-off skelly en passant. i think i need to start calling her hannah, because i'm starting to understand "you didn't even think of me as someone with a name." i was thinking that's a dylan lyric, but of course it's the beatles. (beyond reproach i explained to ester today.) she likes dylan, did i mention that? it's been challenged that she is an obsession of mine, but i would counter, not an obsession. something like, but other. i guess i won't go into that. this much is clear: i like her, and i hope.

so yes i had a little awkward time at breakfast, lent her the first two band albums and repaid her $10, we smiled rather than speaking. this after a really pleasant sunday night, this sunday we watched the olde club show together, and in between sets had a stroll through the crum in the near-full moonlight. that can't help but be enjoyable. i had a great talk with john vanderslice too - he spent his summer cleaning neve-knobs as well. less dopey. more rocking. i bought his new album, hannah bought his last. can she be my girlfriend soon? [well that's the obligatory report. begrudging.]

long this entry is and my french work i have done not nor feel like doing, but read ester's screenplay will i and to coldcut listen and tomorrow of excitement will there undoubtedly be some, as in all days is there. oh yes - i have a lunch date. with my new friend and linkee.

i don't wanna be bitter
i don't wanna turn cruel
i don't wanna grow old before i have to