i used to be so good at being alone. i used to relish it. back in high school, when i was used to not having particularly close or intimate relationships with anyone, except i guess my family, who were always around if i needed somebody. have i just grown helplessly codependent living my insular little campus life, where friendly companionship (or the ready possibility of companionship) is a near constant? i don't remember it being like this - is it just presently, with my mounting nebulous foreboding about after-college, that solitude coaxes out my generally happily latent-because-formless anxieties of a theoretical approaching cosmic-loneliness?

or/and is it being largely unbuffered in an alien outside world, this one seemingly rife with rules and opportunities for screwing up, and an overwhelming disconcerting air of victorian surveillance and discipline (so much more evident in this country than at home, albeit magnified here in this dormitory - the computer cluster i'm typing from, for instance, has posted notices not only forbidding non-ucl students to use the computers, but also warning that anyone found printing multiple copies or non-academic material will have his account suspended.)

the first couple hours of my flight were wretched - uncomfortable, irrationally disconsolate, vaguely nauseous. i felt like i needed to get something out of me, but i couldn't almost summon tears, i went to the bathroom at one point to see if i could make myself throw up, because i at least feel better after that; eventually, i was able to sleep, once they'd dimmed the cabin lights and taken away the meals (i didn't even touch mine.) and things got better.

i'm sorry; you don't want to hear this. my first day in london, which started at half-past eight this morning, has been generally quite nice. after the unexpected third degree i got from the customs officer this morning (he wanted to know, among other things, how i had managed to get 'so much time' off from school, and whether rae was my girlfriend, or just a friend) everything has been cheery. we had a pleasant jetlag-forestalling walk this afternoon; i took a little nap, then joined rae and her classmates on a field-trip to the tate modern - we met under the big bright yellow sun, under the big bright yellow (Romantically serene?) (post-apocalyptic?) sun that turns everything monochrome (it made my sweater match my scarf, and mostly neutralized the blue smudges on my hand from the pen than exploded inflight; i spent a while trying to figure out what color the convener's sweater was, and i could convince myself of pretty much any.), and had a chat about art, society, exhibition practice, and the weather. all my subjects, but i didn't contribute very much to the conversation, as i was happy to listen to what other folks had to say. as we finished a troupe of contact improv-ers showed up, so you could tell it was my kind of scene. we spelled out "MSP" (for modernity, space and place) in body-letters on the mirrored ceiling, and took a spin through the brancusi show (it took me a while to figure out how to look at it; then i remembered - materiality; also the shapeshifting as you circle the wide round plinths), then went to a lovely pub with an enjoyably intellectually enthusiastic and well-travelled ukrainian expat and anglophile for some mulled wine punch and crisps, and talk about cities, cafs, and facial hair.

even my jet lag has been a non-issue; i'm suitably exhausted now to get up at 8 for a day of housebuilding. as long as i can manage not to worry about money (as i'm determined not to), and rein in my usually better-behaved bathetic streak, we'll make a go of this vacation yet.

i can't understand why you refuse my one request
just to press against my weaponry and then lay bare your chest