today I feel like the flame on a candle near the end of its wick: small, but warm and glowing all the same.
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30.11.02]
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hello.
in case you were wondering, I am thankful for
you.
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28.11.02]
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strange, isn't it, how we dress up for our doctors? I'm always careful to pick underwear that are nice and , cute but not sexy, and that at least match my shirt, if not my socks. I don't know why, exactly; I like playing with clothes, but I've never been hugely invested in their relationship with my appearance. besides, I usually have to take off most or all of what I'm wearing in exchange for those ragdoll hospital gowns -- maybe I want to be able to look at my pile of empty clothing (always folded neatly so that it looks like it's waiting, not discarded) and know that it means our separation is only temporary.
or maybe it's because anaesthetic lets you feel your body the way other people do. explored your lips and your cheeks after a novocainey dentist visit and been startled at how strange and soft they feel when only the nerves in your fingertips work? it's not just the clothes, really; I would never go to the doctor without knowing that I'm clean and kempt and that I smell good, in that perfume-is-gross-but-I-still-like-fruity-shampoo kind of way. I suppose I feel like I have something to prove, that even if I'm not perfectly healthy, I'm still a whole person, and sometimes (as much as I hate to admit to vanity) even a pretty one.
those are some messed up priorities, right there. but I guess, in the absence of genie wishes and fairy godparents, you take your comfort where you can find it. right?
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27.11.02]
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in class on monday, I asked
daisy fried: what do you do with your poetry when it was so obviously written by a nineteen-year-old girl? and she told me that a nineteen-year-old girl is a good thing to be.
I'm not nineteen anymore, but I've been feeling very girly for the past few days, and not in the flippy-hair, lip-glossy kind of way. more like the why can't I stop the world from falling apart, and why am I even thinking about trying when I can barely keep my own life in one piece? kind of way. there is too much to do, too much to
feel, and somehow there aren't enough syllables in
overwhelmed to adequately describe the state that I keep finding myself in.
but it's okay, it's okay, right? because a nineteen-year-old-girl, or a twenty-one-year-old-girl, or even a baby-baby girl, is a good thing to be. if a poet says so, it must be true.
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21.11.02]
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so. you know how on washing machines there is always a little sign warning you not to overload the machine? right. I've been known to ignore that instruction, since doing laundry is expensive and quarters are a rare commodity. you may have done the same thing from time to time; so what if you have to pack the clothes down a little? it's not like you're trying to wash a bunch of rocks.
there is such a thing as prudent disregard for warnings, though. it's not an especially good idea, for instance, to pack the washing machine so tight that you have to roll your shirts into little balls to make them fit. if you do that, it probably won't matter how fast the spin cycle goes; your clothes will still be sopping wet afterwards and some of them may have a bit of detergent stuck to them. (or pieces of a harry potter ticket stub, if you happened to have left such a thing in one of your pockets.) they'll be so wet, in fact, that three dryer cycles won't be enough, and after you've run out of quarters you'll still be stuck with a basket full of damp, albeit warm, clothing.
after that you'll have no choice but to lug them all back upstairs to your room so they can dry out there. an overfull laundry load, you'll discover, actually has more square-footage of surface area than the clean parts of your room do. after you've made your bed, you'll have to carefully lay out your shirts next to one another without too much overlap. (no matter what you do, though, they will look like they're feeling each other up. it'll be a big shirt orgy on your bed.) and even after you've taken your bath towels off their rack, spread them on the floor to be covered with underwear and socks, and hung all your dripping-wet pants on the towel racks, your basket will still be half-full with clothes that need to be stretched out to dry.
so now you have to vacuum your rug, which under normal circumstances you would never cover with freshly-clean clothing. but a short search around the hall will fail to reveal the the whereabouts of the resident vacuum cleaner -- why would anyone keep such an ugly, fire-hazardous thing in her room? who knows -- so you'll have to go downstairs to borrow one from the second floor. it turns out that thirty-year-old vacuum cleaners are very heavy and do not really like being dragged up the stairs, so you'll have to hoist it over your head and carry it around the corners that way.
for some reason this vacuum cleaner seems to have been designed with zookeepers in mind, and pushing it across the rug is not unlike trying to herd a reluctant rhinoscerous up a hill. it might make you wish you had been a little more vigilant about those bench pressing routines. but at least it will do a decent job at cleaning the rug.
after you've finished cleaning and spreading out the rest of your wet clothes -- your room will smell and feel something like a sauna at this point, by the way, so you should probably open the window a little bit even if it is only forty-something degrees outside -- you'll probably be a little worn out. wet clothes are heavy, and dinosaur-era vacuum cleaners are heavier. but since your entire bed and most of your floor is now buried under a blanket of damp, soap-smelling fabric, you'll have to curl up in the corner next to your desk. if you're lucky you'll have a faithful stuffed animal to use as a pillow, but as you doze off you'll still be stuck thinking about how maybe you should have paid attention to the little sign and left some of your dirty clothes for the next load.
just, you know, a word to the wise, or at least those who are working on wisdom. me, I'm thick as a brick.
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16.11.02]
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some small notes:
1. I updated the
archives. the list is a little funny looking now that I have weekly, daily, and monthly archives, but what can you do?
2. so now that that's finished, I have a small project for some of you more dedicated readers (okay, that's a really embarrassing thing to write). I have to make a chapbook for my poetry workshop at the end of this semester -- I am not yet fully convinced that this is a good idea, but again, what can you do? (besides fail I guess) -- and one of my classmates suggested that I include a few excerpts or entries or something from wj. I haven't decided if this is a good idea (this isn't poetry, here, but maybe that's part of the point)... but I'm interested in hearing what you think. and especially, what you think could or should belong in a little book, separate from this website. so leave me comments, send me email, whatever.
3. this is for the swatties. I just want to say that if you're a swattie and you read this but you don't know me in real life, a) that's totally okay, and neither of us should bother feeling weird about it, and b) I would love it if you said hi to me sometime. that way I get to say hi back!
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15.11.02]
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oh, , I'm exhausted. but this time it's purely physical; I'm feeling fine and happy, just a little low on energy.
and I am at least partly to blame for this, as usual, not least of all because I took saturday off. usually there's rugby, and that takes up most of the day, but I can get in a little reading before and after the match and then late at night when I'm too sore to do much besides lie on the bed with my head and arms hanging over the edge. this past saturday morning, though, was consumed by (as you may have read or heard elsewhere)
the physics gre, and as soon as that was over we declared a the rest of the afternoon a proper holiday, complete with malibu and vodka and bowling and not a shred of schoolwork.
being drunk in the middle of the afternoon was strangely disconcerting, even though I've watched my rugby teammates do it every week for the past seven seasons. there was so much sunlight! not to mention car-filled parking lots outside shopping plazas, teenagers playing soccer in west philly, families crossing the street together. this is what normal people do on saturday afternoons: they run errands, they play games, they go on outings. they do not get drunk. but oh, I was . it took me three tries to find a pair of bowling shoes that I thought would get along with my feet, even though I eventually settled on the same I had asked for in the first place.
there's something strange about bowling alleys and the way they seem to be stuck thirty years in the past. where else is it perfectly normal to combine gaggles of children and grandparents all sitting in molded plastic chairs, carpeting that looks like it was stolen from the set of the brady bunch, mechanical vending machines full of cigarettes and chewing tobacco, and ashtrays on every table from the snack bar to the pro shop? even without the cacophony of rolling balls and crashing pins, you know as soon as you walk into a bowling alley. nothing else manages to smell like cigarette smoke and juice boxes and greasy pizza and disinfectant all at the same time.
the first two balls I threw straight into the gutter, but over the course of two games I managed three spares and one strike, so I'm not sure that the alcohol did much to hurt my technique. if nothing else I was more willing than ever to bend my knees, count my steps, and telepatically will the ball to slide into a collision course with the center pin. it seemed to work, sometimes, and after every throw I crouched at the top of the lane, watching the grease on the wood and waiting until the fate of the pins was sealed. bowling lanes seem longer than they should when you're anticipating that ending clatter, but they must seem frighteningly short from the other side, as the ball grows bigger and faster with each turn.
(I accidentally won the second game.)
and that was saturday. since then I've been working and working, but there's always more work than time, isn't there? at least the rain has made it pleasant to stay inside with the windows open, and when I'm awake in the middle of the night with no one to talk to, there's the whisper of slow-rolling trains and dripping wet leaves.
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12.11.02]
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I thought I had maybe, finally, gotten the hang of this, but I still just don't know how to deal with people who are nice to me. casual friendliness is fine, of course; I'm not wholly dysfunctional. sometimes, though, these moments happen and the world says
people care about you, twerp and I don't know what to do. I catch my breath for a second because it must be a trick, or an illusion, or a joke, and I'm waiting for the punchline. I feel myself trembling inside my skin -- I don't deserve this, and what if someone finds out? eventually I just start crying. it's enough to make us all crazy.
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8.11.02]
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maybe I should have figured this out sooner than three years into my career as an astro major, but I didn't, and that's why there's such a thing as better late than never, right? anyway: I really like playing with telescopes. I don't mean that I like looking through telescopes (or ), though of course that's true as well and I don't know what kind of astronomer I'd be if it weren't.
I like the small physical things you do to make a telescope work, kind of the way I enjoy brushing my teeth and folding my laundry. I like loosening the lens covers, leveling the telescope, fitting all the cables together, and unspooling the extension cords. I like knowing which way is north and where to look when I need to match the stars in the database to the stars in the sky. I like tightening screws with my glove-clad fingers while I hold a red flashlight in my mouth. I like standing behind the telescope while it's slewing, watching over the top of the tube so I can guess when it's pointed in the right place. I like the whirring noises the gears make, and I like hearing the keypad beep under my fingers. I like the way astronomy, so big and
awesome in both its scope and its implications, fits into these small mechanical processes.
also, I just like playing with toys. maybe that's the real point, and the rest is simply justification. but these little things make me happy.
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5.11.02]
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it smells beautiful outside today, like cold air and sun-warmed grass. the ground is speckled with paper-dry leaves, but the grass is somehow still succulent under its shell of frost.
in here it smells mostly like overheated air and mechanized electricity, but it's not unpleasant. the along the top of my window have colored the sunlight so that my bed is covered in pools of green and pink, so if my room smelled anything but artificial the incongruity might be too much, anyway.
a small swarm of tiny golden ants has discovered the leftover water in my mug, and they're creeping around the inside edge. for some reason they're not interested in the empty tic-tac box lying on my desk, or the cup of empty orange peel next to it. these things are angled perfectly in counterpoint with their perpendicular shadows, like they're waiting for a still-life artist to come paint their portrait, but it was all an accident.
I'm scatterbrained today. how are you?
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3.11.02]
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