saturday, april 21

•••    today, in the middle of nowhere (at least to this citygirl), which is also known as lehigh university, we played rugby. the humidity had to be somewhere around ninety percent; all of us were glowing with sweat even before we started warming up. my knees and ankles weren't happy. I could feel them getting hot and swollen and stiff, and while this is something I'm used to, it has a tendency to turn me from an athlete into an invalid. invalids can't play rugby.

so our intrepid trainer put extra tape around my heels to stabilize my ankles, encased my legs in white cotton compression stockings to keep the inflammation from getting out of control, and bandage-wrapped my thighs to keep the stockings from tearing off. with all that and my usual ankle braces and regulation rugby socks, I had about five layers of stuff between my skin and the air, and less than an inch of skin exposed below my shorts. "it's the bionic woman!" said my captain when I ran onto the pitch; and I did feel as if my legs weren't quite my own, fahioned as they were out of fabric and adhesives, clicking slightly every time my sublexing patella slid across the femoral joint. I stood in the circle with my team before kickoff and wondered what right I had to call myself an athlete if I couldn't even run around the field without getting dressed up in tape first.

but then we played, and I forgot that I hurt, and I remembered that I am not just an athlete but a rugger, and we won, so I was happy. only one real game left this season. time moves too quickly.
8:25 PM +

•••    jesus was in my dream this morning. he was surprisingly apathetic about the whole religion thing -- "whatever works," he said, when I asked him what he thought of buddhism. he was wearing blue robes and he had curly, shoulder-length brown hair, but somehow he didn't look like jesus. he looked like someone who should be sitting on a streetcorner playing the guitar and collecting coins from passersby.

he sat on my roommate's bed and poked at my friend's feet. I could see from her face that whatever he was doing really hurt, but I could also tell that he was being incredibly gentle. and it had to be done, really, because the health center doctors hadn't been able to figure out why her feet hurt. I held on to her other foot so she wouldn't fall off the bed, and we talked about movies to distract ourselves.

it didn't occur to me until just now that he was healing her. and I don't think I even want to touch the rest of the dream.
8:27 AM +

•••    I should be in bed -- faraway rugby game tomorrow. but there is work. even on a friday, this week. sigh!

still. my roommate brought me lyechee and peach jelly cups from chinatown, and I've been practically purring all night. I'm such a sucker for asian snacky food. one of my astro professors split his piece of seaweed with me during colloquium this afternoon, so I've been spoiled today.

also, I can't make my resume fit on one page. that makes me feel slightly ridiculous.
1:28 AM +

friday, april 20

•••    so I have this introductory astronomy textbook that my professor gave me to use as a reference while I edit papers for students in astro one. (this isn't their text, but basic astronomy is basic astronomy, right?) it's one of those glossy, colorful, mostly mathless affairs; although it says it's designed for college students, the way it's formatted reminds me of my eighth grade science books.

in the beginning, on page xiii, there's a section called "how to succeed in your astronomy course." in the paragraph on budgeting your time, it says: "a general rule of thumb for college classes is that you should expect to study 2 to 3 hours per week outside class for each unit of credit. for example, based on this rule of thumb, a student taking fifteen credit hours should expect to spend 30 to 45 hours each week studying outside of class."

swarthmore has a wackyass credit system, which counts normal courses as one credit, some seminars as two credits, non-student-run performance as half-credits, and everything else -- including labs -- as no credit. however, I think I can safely say that I'm taking about the equivalent of seventeen credit hours this semester. according to my calculator, that means I should be spending between 34 and 51 hours studying every week.

am I stupid, or is that totally crazy? fifty hours a week is seven hours a day! if I spent that much time working, I would either have to stop doing everything that I actually love, like playing rugby and teaching fourth grade and doing astronomy research, or I would sleep for less than an hour every night. I just finished a week from hell -- by my calculations there have been about 136 hours since I woke up sunday morning, and I've been asleep for a grand total of ten hours since then. and it sucks. and I go to a school that is supposed to be impossible, or at least is supposed to feel impossible from time to time.

so. am I wrong in thinking it is completely ridiculous to expect a normal college student to spend fifty hours a week doing schoolwork outside of classtime? or in thinking that anyone who expects that much of an academic commitment out of students is missing the point of college entirely? maybe I am the one missing the point.
9:54 PM +

•••    happy 420! I'm not going to class stoned, but I will definitely be entertained by all the people who do...and the people who don't know me will probably think I'm high, too, because I'm just like that. whee!
9:02 AM +

thursday, april 19

•••    tonight after my post-rugby shower, I stood dripping and combed my hair out straight. I never do that; the usual routine is to either tie my hair up without brushing it, or to wait until it's half-dry before I brush it and braid it. either way, it always resolves itself into curls and kinks and fuzz, lying like a sleeping wild animal across my back, with its haunches at my shoulders and its nose at my hips. with it wet and dark and straight, and the tips brushing my skin halfway down my legs, I felt like a different person, the kind of person with dark hair and mysterious eyes and a secret agenda. not me, the girl with hair the color of decade-old pennies and eyes that are tinged red with threats of blindness every morning and no agenda, only secrets. and then I snipped all the ends off, with the outside of the scissor blades nudging along the backs of my thighs, hard and startlingly cold after the vapor-warmth of lingering shower steam. the cut bits fell in little clumps, landing noiselessly at my feet the way dislodged cherry blossoms have been carpeting the sidewalks all week, adding up to something in spite of their featherweight smallness.

now my hair is dry, still straight and smooth, like an animal that has been not only tamed but also declawed. the ends are still too long to be truly even, but now they bristle like paintbrush tips against my palm, and they catch the light instead of splitting off into dull oblivion. and they lie in a funny new place an inch and a half above the old spot, and no one will notice because to them my hair is just long, not a length, but I still feel like a different person.

after I cut my hair with scissors I also cut my finger with teeth, accidentally, and I bled first onto the floor and then into the sink. it frightens me how blood looks more alive and precious than flesh, and how it emanates brilliance and vitality even as it leaves me dizzy with its absence.
10:51 PM +

•••    people who enter dream sleep quickly may be more likely to become depressed than people with normal sleep patterns. huh. (that is not a causal relationship, by the way, it just means that whatever kind of brain chemistry may make people more susceptible to depression also means they enter rem sleep earlier than normal. although normal seems to be becoming more and more a relative term...)
6:30 AM +

wednesday, april 18

•••    I slept for three hours and I would have slept straight through until tomorrow had someone not knocked on our door. it's a good thing he did, too, because I have work and work and work to do tonight. I am also feeling sort of nondescriptly ill, which I had thought was the result of sleeping only on my desk and on the floor of the science library (yes my bed felt very good), but maybe not. we'll see; maybe I just haven't caught up with things yet. I'm up to seven hours of sleep since sunday morning, but that still leaves an awfully long way to go, doesn't it? headache, still. but at least being awake is no longer painful.

there's a magnolia tree on campus that's somehow different from all the other magnolias. it doesn't seem to have whole flowers, just individual floppy white petals that hang from the tree like a half-removed cardigan, in that funny deliberately-unintentional way. it looks as if someone took a bucket of secondhand petals and dumped it over the top of the bare tree to see which ones would stick. and indeed the ground surrounding it is littered with more petals, which are dilapidated and spotted brown about the edges, looking slightly limp and forlorn but still somehow beautiful. every time I walk past it, I think they look like shells left behind from a bunch of baby angels who hatched one night under the full moon and flew away before any mere mortals could catch a glimpse.
10:39 PM +

•••    when I looked up and saw snowflakes falling like rain outside my window, I thought I had finally cracked, but apparently it is real.

twelve more hours and then I can take a nap.
6:19 AM +

•••    this week is really testing my love for astronomy, because oh, how much would I love to not be a physics major right now?
3:29 AM +

tuesday, april 17

•••    I want to write but I shouldn't/can't because physics! and agh, I am so, too much, something! how can I have worked so much and still have so much left to do, how can I have done more than I can stand but not enough at the same time, what are these crazy people thinking?

so many stupid tourgroups, highschoolers on the cusp of graduation and adulthood, their parents peering with too much attention at everyone, at the way we run up and down the stairs or how many books we're carrying or whether we appreciate our surroundings as much as they do, are we serious students or overworked or is this just all a sham and where does that thirty-four thousand dollars go anyway?

and there is art everywhere; sculptures all around the chairs and reading lamps and pillars of the main library, white plaster body parts and blank-faced self-portraits of people I know or maybe I don't know but I recognize them anyway because in two years there is occasion to pass by most of the fourteen hundred people at least once, like ghosts that became accidentally solid but forgot how to look human; twisted metal something maybe a swordfighting beetle? outside on the flagstone with a sign warning that it is not a gymnasium and we are not to climb on it; photography on accordian-folded panels outside the music library, black and white mostly of people and their objects naked or maybe just crooked, and one I knew belonged to him even before I saw the name, because some artists are like that. but in the science library no art, just equations and the sunset-painted trees outside and students sockfooting between the computers and the printer, where there are piles of pages and words that only three people in the world can pronounce and even the other science geeks are mystified by because we spin ourselves up into cocoons of our own disciplines so that we can say to each other I know how this works and somewhere there is art in this but we don't really know how to admit it.

did you know I've slept for two hours in the last two days and I am taking a physics exam tonight, but first I need to go learn the chamber piece I was supposed to have started rehearsing nine days ago and maybe somewhere in there my head will stop hurting and everything will fall together like rainwater into a puddle, reflecting back the sky from which it was born.
7:50 PM +

•••    wow. have you seen how beautiful fiona has gotten?
12:10 PM +

•••    I don't know why I bother putting on my pajamas when I know I'm not going to end up sleeping. these are my favorite pajamas, and they are becoming disturbingly full of holes in inconvenient places. I'm trying not to read too much into that; sometimes fabric is just fabric and has nothing to do with the rest of life.

still, my life could use some patches and careful stitching.
8:26 AM +

•••    hi, it's me. I am fine (except for being awake, but what are you going to do?) and in spite of the way that last post sounded, I am neither depressed nor unhappy. I promise.

I am sick of physics, so now I'm trying to write a poem about democracy. june jordan is teaching our workshop this week, and she sent this assignment for us, secondhand through email:

could they write A Democracy Poem:

What Democracy looks like or where would you find it and how would it feel
and
why
would anyone want Democracy?

It should, therefore, be relatively short, and definitely accessible to the
most people
imaginable.

...which is already more poetic than anything I could say about democracy, even with my eschewed capital letters and my emersonesque strung-together words. so I am having trouble. I want to write about frogs. frogs seem to be infiltrating my life lately; in religion we talked about zen poetry and of course it came up that frog sits on the edge of a pond; plop-sound!, and then later there was the story about the wide-mouthed frog who suddenly has occasion to make his mouth less wide, which one of my friends told me I think because she knew how much it would make me laugh. so it seems only right that I should write about frogs, except that I don't know how to make them democratic. froggie went a voting...?
2:53 AM +

monday, april 16

•••    I don't know why I'm crying: for the dead baby twins; the pile of physics in my backpack; the way the professor looks at me with utter confusion when I say it takes me an hour to do every one of these problems; from the once-again-shock that comes with realizing that real live people who are right here -- so close that I can touch them and watch the way their skin dimples when they smile -- these real live people honestly care about me even though I am only me; because it feels so pretzel-twisted-peculiar to acknowledge that this actually does shock me; or because right here is so infuriatingly transient. for all of this, or none of this, or because I can't decide whether I love college or hate it for what it's done to me, or because sometimes I just cry? because god, I feel like such a girl, watching the world in stripes that fall between my half-spread fingers, and not knowing what to do with it. because?

you can never really tell people thank you after they've saved you, and sometimes I'm not sure it's really enough to simply hope that your face is enough to make up for your silence. sometimes the difference between lonely and alone is as big as the difference between elephants and moon rocks. I am not lonely, today, but I'm crying in spite of myself. and I'm glad I'm here, even if I can't quite hold on to it or anything else as tightly as I might wish.
6:55 PM +

•••    somewhere in the ninety minutes of sleep I got last night, I managed to have a dream about the laws in tennessee. I'm not kidding. I dreamed I was in some sort of government building, going through old filing cabinets that held records of all the laws that had ever been passed in tennessee. I found one that said all parents had to give their children "cruel and unusual names." one baby had been named chrysler building smith. I even remember the number on the law: cev73a. that, of course, is not how laws are numbered, but children are also not named after skyscrapers, generally.

also, it's bad when you wake up on a monday and feel physically ill as the realization of how much work you have to do slaps you in the face. (in my case, I think it slapped me and then gave me a couple kicks to the stomach for good measure.) I really don't know what to do; I worked pretty much all day yesterday without making a significant dent, and now it's the workweek and I have ten-to-ten obligations that have to be met. do I stop sleeping? do I just not do some of it? do I give up and fail this partial diffeq exam that's due wednesday? do I slack off on the work that I'm actually getting paid to do? how the hell is this supposed to work?

apparently, the human brain loves surprises. I would love to be surprised by my physics professor postponing our exam. please? agh.
9:13 AM +

•••    ... and then, five hours after I started the excavation of my catch-all upper-left desk drawer, I finally found my w2 form.
1:13 AM +

sunday, april 15

•••    it's easter, right? so why is one of my catholic friends asking me if I did any bunny-like screwing to celebrate the holiday while one of my muslim friends tells me I'm ignorant for not believing in creation?

in any case, ignorance is only bad if it hurts people. I think. I could be wrong. if I end up being somehow punished for my atheism (by someone or something other than human beings, that is), I think I will have been justified in not subscribing to theistic beliefs in the first place. unless, of course, my punishment is that I don't get to participate in the afterlife (hi stenny), in which case I suppose I get what I deserve, which is fine with me.

whatever. headache.
11:35 PM +

•••    the rain is colder than the air, and the drops are big but far apart, so that everything outside smells like steaming asphalt and everyone inside is decorated with polka-dotted wetness. when it rains like this I feel it in the space between my shoulders, the way I imagine a trout feels the hook from a sport fisherman's line: hurting from pain without a purpose, without even a reason save for the cruelty of randomness; knowing that eventually the barb will disappear and the pain will dissipate, mostly, but not without leaving just a bit more permanent damage to add to the rest of life's little battle wounds. no one is fishing for me, though, and I can't blame this on my own greed or anyone else's trickery, except maybe the universe's, for letting me be born into a time that would keep me alive without curing me. on the other hand, isn't that just what it means to be human? I'm no more special than any of you.
6:50 PM +

•••    on friday I went to lunch with the astronomy contingent (that's me, the two other recently-declared astrophysics majors, the boy who is even more of an academic masochist than me and is doing an astro minor with his philosophy major, and our two professors, both of whom I adore -- how can you not adore people who agree to give up their lunch hour every friday in accordance with your astronomy-inspired whims?). it had just stopped raining, finally, and with the sun shining and the weekend almost within reach I was beginning to be happy, finally. as we walked all together from the science center to the snack bar, we talked about college admissions and the growing flocks of prefrosh that have been spotted across campus lately. I made a snarky comment about the state of higher education, and how annoyingly for-profit it was. one of the professors turned around and teasingly chided me, saying "you're just cynical, rabi!" and without even thinking about it, I said "no I'm not!" in mock indignation that was really only a hair's breadth away from real indignation, because I'm not cynical. when on earth did that happen, anyway?
5:23 PM +

•••    happy easter! or, for those of you who are christians by heritage only (like me), happy spring-full-of-sugar-and-chocolate-day! and happy sunday to the rest of you. I hope it's as warm and pretty as mine.

I'm celebrating by doing laundry, because my easter bunny sent me a plastic egg full of quarters, which is easily the best present I've gotten from an imaginary holiday character since 1992, when santa claus gave everyone bicycles for christmas.
9:55 AM +

•••    I hate it when I fall asleep before eleven. it makes it hard to get work done. on the other hand, maybe my body is trying to tell me something?

the birds outside woke me up. why are there birds singing before the sun rises? I need to sleep more.
5:46 AM +