Rant and Ramble

the great part about finishing a midterm in forty of the allotted ninety minutes is that you have plenty of time to sit and stare into space, waiting for the answer.

the one you know you know, but that you can't find.

the one little word that's lurking back there somewhere and just needs time to find its way out of the murky swamps of your cotton-packed brain to the relative clarity of actual conscious thought.

a word such as "epicycle," for instance.
and it only took fifteen minutes or so.

according to the nice lady at the doctor's office, if i had meningitis i'd be dead by now.

the results from the blood test and throat culture should be in by wednesday, with most likely candidates being mononucleosis and pharyngitis.

so, uh, anyone who's been within breathing range of me in the past few days might want to pay attention to any occurance of sore throat, fever, earache, swollen glands, fatigue or muscle aches. apparently the uncontrollable shaking and the stomach cramps don't count.

i'm going back to bed.

discovery #1: chocolate does not help a sore throat.
discovery #2: the word "throat" looks very strange.

speculation #1: perhaps i'm delirious again....

i'm slightly worried by the fact that, no matter how slowly i breathe, my heartrate is over 100 beats per minute.

my list of states-i've-been-to just increased by massachusets.

my list of concerts-i've-seen just increased by garbage and lisa loeb.

my list of cool-people-i've-met just increased by rabi.

unfortunately, my list of bizzare-illnesses-i've-suffered has increased by horribly cramped stomach, hyper-sensitive skin, throbbing headache, earache and general-body-ache, uncontrollable shivering and a fever of undisclosed amount.

my list of projects-i've-completed hasn't budged.

it takes a beautiful thing to make free coffee seem superfluous.

in the first moment, the world is made of silk.

a cadence of dancing bubbles that slide against my skin, the cool touch of the water, my shadow sweeping along the bottom, heedless of the gritty surface which must tear it to bits.

within the first four laps i can feel the fatigue building in my shoulders and triceps, and the sense that i am being held up by some gentle entity fades. now, my movement is my own.

another ten or twenty laps, and i find the rhythm of the water. from here, i can swim forever. the aching in my muscles stabilizes and won't increase, the gulp of air between strokes is the perfect amount to bridge the time before i take another. never, once i find this place, have i had to stop for any reason other than because i chose to.

i watch the clock, and i don't count the laps. at eleven forty-five, i surprise the wall by extending my hand rather than swirling away with a flex of calves and thighs against breifly anchored feet. hauling myself out of the water, gravity gleefully restakes its claim. my grace slips down my arms to drip off pruney fingers and puddle around my feet. later, the crimsondyed towel will brusquely disenchant the rest, and as i dry i am returned to the gawky, landbound creature that accidentally stepped on her design project an hour before it was due.

the sky is warm today, and i wish the sunlight could reach around our strangelyplaced dorm furniture to replace the flourescent buzzlight that makes my hands look pale.

dinner last night at the thai restaraunt had us commenting again on the fact that americans never would have thought to put those flavors together. ginger and chili and lime swirling with bits of peanut over cabbage and carrots on one plate, and something with subtle bits of coconut and onion to go with a honey and peanut sauce on another... both entirely delicious, and somehow seeming to reveal so much about culture and humanity. the rice was blazing white in a little bowl, curry and tofu and vegetables mingling and exchanging ideas. a tiny votive cast its tiny flickershadows against the dark coral walls, while towering fushia flowers surveyed the meal out of elegant vases.

his head bent over the menu, little concentration expression, and i wonder to myself how a mere three months can possibly hold so much.

"well, you know what they say about stars with high luminosity..." (wink wink, nudge nudge)

it's not that i felt out of control of my life, so much as i just didn't feel like an active participant.

talking to a friend yesterday, i jokingly told her that my life consisted of my design homework and my boyfriend. after the conversation, i realized that it was, essentially, true.

the design homework isn't without it's own sense of satisfaction, and certainly my relationship is as fulfilling as i think it can be - in fact, if it weren't for that, i might well be miserable. i think only my soaring happiness and utter contentment has kept me from despair.

i realized that i don't do anything. yes, i run from class to class and occasionally to paint call, but i'm not truly giving anything of myself. i don't commit myself to my design projects, and i don't paint on my own anymore. my writing has consisted of only this page and a few scattered email poems to counterbalance papers on thermonuclear destruction and 19th century astrologists. i don't read if it isn't required for class; or at least, not like i used to. it's been a while since i devoured a book for the sheer pleasure of it, the absolute inability to put it down.

there are four newly filled pages in my journal that brought me to this realization, and then a short, neat list of what i plan to do about it.

i choose to take my life back before i lose it.
i choose to write more.
i choose to find something something to do here that uses my time and talents well.
i choose to swim at least twice a week.
i choose to begin an earnest search for a summer job.

so there.

the cold front broke over us with a series of thunderstorms, great pounding reverberations that echoed between trademark blue skyscrapers and made the windows rattle like my soul. today the sky is brooding and a crisp breeze belies the aching heat of last week. i flipflop in my birkenstocks to seven-eleven to buy indulgent dill pickles and coffee, reluctant to go to the cafeteria by myself. realize that i prefer not to be alone, that despite the times when i retreat into my own little darknesses of pen and paper and silence and loud music, i generally enjoy just the presence of someone else. i think i am a bit afraid of being alone, lurking fear from those nights i laid awake wondering if he'd come crashing through my window to show me his scars.

i'm not working on my project today; instead, devoting the grey sky and counting crows again to reading everything i should have read already, surprisingly good books most of them for being schoolassigned. little yellow humanities which echoes my thoughts and depressing as usual apocalypse novel but quite well written, and the chaucer and to catch up on astronomy a few chapters.

enough with the rambling? but it feels so good.

::clap clap clap::

"they have pre-wrapped sausages, but they don't have pre-wrapped bacon. well, can you blame them?" - barenaked ladies

apparently, pre-wrapped sausages will be out of their price range in three hundred and fifty-seven years.

things that are gross:

1. the congealed crap in the corners of the bowl that was used to microwave mushrooms and cheese into a gross-looking but in fact quite delicious mushroom cheese conglomoration three hours ago.
2. the article on brittany spears that someone felt obligated to put up in the bathroom.
3. the stuff i found under my bed yesterday while on a mad-but-shortlived spring cleaning spree.
4. large bugs.
5. a dozen dozen.

sorry about that last one, but i'm a dork and i couldn't think of anything else.

and somehow, suddenly, it's past five and i've done nothing today that would be considered, in capitalist american terms, productive.

i, however, feel entirely sated and content and pleasantly weary. the wind is whispering of rain, adam duritz is wailing about blue buildings and something in a shade of grey, i've got two loads of clean clothes, clean sheets, and clean towels smiling at me from the laundry basket, and the teapot is starting to hum.
life is good.

i don't want to put clothes on.
ever have one of those days?

the blindshadow stripes are on her side of the room now, and fall across her bed in the morning.

kinda makes me sad.

big, fat drops to match the bass of the thunder and offset by sharp slices of lightning, dalmationspotting the sidewalk and skittering pedestrians along the eaves.

the ice cream store was tragically closed, so we meandered over to our favorite mexican restaraunt instead. stepping inside, wet and steaming, the air conditioner was a sweetsoft blow between the eyes. split a drink with two bendystraws, fully aware of our syrupsweetness as we gazed droolingly into each other's eyes. we walked back slowly, swinging our arms.

"am i going to see you tonight?"
he hesitates.
"you can say no," i offer, hoping he won't, knowing he will.

taking off my socks when i get home, i discover that my right ankle is bleeding from where my favorite shoes grew fangs overnight.

i feel silent in a way that no amount of music has been able to change, regardless of how loud i try to sing along.

and horray for comments, from uigui.net, via a lovely little blog called it's not an octopus (which it isn't. it's a lovely little blog).

so, thanks to both parties, and especially to the non-octopian site for giving me a sidebar as well.

bactine smells like rebellion.

we arrive at art history ten minutes late, try to unobtrusively find a seat at the back. the professor is enthusiastically demonstrating albertian perspective with a yardstick and chalk, and i murmur that we should have just stayed in bed. twenty minutes later, the drawn-out yelp of the fire drill garners an angry, just-this-side-of-vulgar gesture from the professor, and muted cheers from the class.

outside, the heat hits us like the back of a hand.

it feels tropical outside. dark and warm and humid, makes me think of watching lightening storms in singapore and fire-lit mexican buffets.

an over-zealous headache had me slinking out of paint call a few hours early, planning to stumble home and sleep. i felt better once i was outside, deep gulping breaths beneath brilliant streetlighted trees, decided that i would work on my design project some more once i got home.

now that i'm back inside, my headache seems to have remembered that it had a job to do, and all the little people in my head are studiously excavating the backs of my eyes.

evilglue fumes don't much help, either.

today's odd sensation: filing the dried evilglue off my fingers with sandpaper.

i am definitely sitting in my underwear, reading cosmo and eating strawberries, waiting for my gold-painted nails to dry.

i do so love being a girl sometimes.

i'm afraid to take my contacts out because my fingers are coated in evilglue. they look all chemicalburnt and they've turned grey and i can't feel my thumbs.

the warning says, "in case of eye contact, do not use acetone or fingernail polish remover."

i'll be sure to remember that.

and i am indignantly not a dirty hippy.
i am a very well-groomed hippy, thank you.

"i think i just glued myself to my project."

"well, that'll make it easier to take into class, right?"

i've decided that the best way to get that glowing-pink just-been-laid complexion (aside from the obvious, of course) is a good set of pushups.

not quite as satisfying as the obvious, but much quicker.

it's been a long while since i went a day without eating.

but i remember.
there was a time when the universe couldn't be distilled enough.

when even my writing abandoned me, when my emotions flew tidal circles without my consent, and i was numbly horrified by the world and my place in it.

i was in love. the first, headlong love that felt like stepping blindly into a vacuum. our lives had spiraled into each other, a desperate tangling despite wildly different roots. he was three years older; he lived three hours away.

i never cut myself.
not with anything sharp.
i tried to scrape control out of my flesh with my bare hands, fingernails rending little curlicues of skin and eventually, occasionally finding blood to mix in the hot shower water. little jagged lines that followed the curve of my hipbone, where they would be hidden even in the tootight racing suits.

swimming until my muscles screamed, until i limped all the next day.

and sitting quietly through lunch and the traditional stop at subway for interminable sandwiches, easing around dinner with the excuse of an upset stomach, laying in bed knowing that i'd done something. knowing that, this time, it was my choice and my actions and the gnawing in my stomach was of no one's doing but my own.

all of my poetry was melodrama.

i only stopped when the challenge began to lie in avoiding these things, rather than doing them. the test of will was reversed, and i ate because i didn't want to, my skin healed soft and scarless because i wanted it torn.
later, with time and larger choices, with a few slaps to the psyche and one terrifying burst of irrevocable rage, the desire to remove my skin was sublimated into a desire to remove my hair. not trim it, not cut it, but erase it. all of it, and everything i decided it stood for.
i still stood in the mirror holding a razor, but hair doesn't bleed.

there are days still that i wonder if i could do it.

and all of it, always, was backed, propelled, by the thought that i had no right.
no right to ache, no right to complain, no right, in the face of all the pain of those i loved, to hurt myself on purpose. it was guilt and shame and anger, helplessness and distance and thwarted desire, more shadows and slices of emotion than i've ever had the words to name.

there was a later boyfriend who dryly smirked and informed me that yes, he did know how long it takes chewedshort nails to rip through flesh. i think he was trying to sympathize.


i'm not saying i understand. i know i haven't been there... but in a way, all those shuteyed towns are the same, and i hope you find your road out.

and, my new favorite website.

mmmm...

yes. condoms should definitely come with fortunes on them.

"you will succeed in everything you put your hands to."

"if love is not enough, then what keeps the moon white, what keeps the ocean glistening?" -peter mulvey

the sky cracks its eye open, grey pupil dilating behind flutterlash clouds. the silence feels complete; i suppose i've gotten used to the hum of the city. i think the comforter is on the floor, but i'm warm enough without it. in fact, the intermittant breath of the fan is sweet against my skin.

i know that in a few hours, maybe a few minutes, we will have to get up and get dressed, wander down to the shop for paint call. i know that soon, the world will reassert itself, the yawning sky will brighten and throw itself through the blinds to wake us, that we will spend hours with a fluctuating but constant space between us. i know that soon, the weekend will begin in earnest and that i will lie alone in the coming nights, while he squints at a computer in a lonely office far away.

sleep is the strongest drug i know.

"and the answer is, yes, my pants would definitely get soggy."

happy birthday, elise.

amy, i applaud you.

and is the sound of scissors ripping through hair not one of the most exhilarating ever? it's just so full of selfempowerment and holyshit. i'm so proud. (grin)

for a science fair project some time in middle school, i tried to invent wind-sheild wipers for glasses.

i took an old pair of glasses, the pink and aqua ones, and affixed to them a pair of clip-on sunglasses with the lenses snapped out. to these, i attached tiny wipers made ineffectually of strips of rubber found somewhere in our basement.

at this point, i was at somewhat of a loss. i tried to rig a motor from some tiny wind-up toy, but decided it would be too heavy and cumbersome. plus, i wasn't sure what the rain would do to it, and that seemed to defy the whole point. the next idea was a pulley of sorts, which i abandoned for lack of patience, mostly.

shortly thereafter, i abandoned the whole idea and put our pet rat through a maze, i think.
maybe that was the year i did odyssey of the mind instead.

at any rate, i was wishing for that particular invention while squinting through my rainsmeared glasses today, trying not to run into anyone on my way back from lunch.

on the way back from the art store the other day, i walked past a blaring neon sign that screamed EROTIC EMPORIUM, somehow more vuglar in the daylight than it is at night. standing in front of the sign was a neatly dressed white businessman, suit, tie and breifcase, who stared at me openly as i walked past and muttered disconcertingly under his breath.

at the end of the block is the salvation army, where i decided to take a detour. downstairs, the men's and children's department is musty and humid and the bare electric bulbs cast strange shadows. i was the only one down there for a while, perusing the rows of misironed collared shirts and bright children's jerseys.

racuous male laughter and loud footsteps made me look up. my small-town mind registered their race, their clothing and the area, and immediately threw them into the first available stereotype. i eyed the emergency exit and gripped my purse.

out of the corner of my eye, i watched them wander towards me, browsing in the kid's section. the biggest of the four pulled something off the rack.

"yo, i'd be fuckin' killer in this. i'd rip up the fuckin' neighborhood!"

i turned a little more so i could see. as his friends roared with laughter, he held against his chest bright pink flannel pajamas. with feet.

everybody seems to have a webpage now...
(which, by the way, i think is great.)

aaahh...

brilliance is always humbling to watch. she amazes me every time.

okay, and now for a post of some significant length:

the turning of the seasons creates in a me a whole new awareness of nature. i've written about this before, i know, but i just felt it so much today. the 32mph winds did uncharacteristicly little to detract from the warmth in the air, and i felt utterly suffused with life. most of the trees are soft pastel explosions against a beautifully clouded sky.

my new favorite is slightly misshapen, an oblong rather than rotund clustering of color above branches that seem to reach out like a cat stretching. it has leaves and flowers both, palest pink against soft green. every time we walk past, i slow down and stare at it. my friends smile indulgently and i protest that just because i see it everyday doesn't make it any less beautiful.

in this city, i sometimes feel far removed from the rhythms of the greater world, the sigh of the ocean and skies filled with so many stars...

it's just a matter of making sure to see what beauty there is, hold it close.

maybe it'll rain tonight. it's hard to tell through the car radios and cigarette smoke, but i think it smells like rain.

funny, but that doesn't look like 600 square inches of illustration board.

it does, however, look rather like 1000 cubic inches of really fucking annoying work.

i am filled with the overwhelming urge to watch rainbow-brite.

fortunately (i suppose) i don't think they have it at the library.

back to my interlocking cells, then. (my, but that sounds strange...)

and ooh ooh a cool word of the day.

"you make god sound like something with an exoskeleton."

hmm. it turns out that your whole palm can cramp. all it takes is a few days' use of a utility knife on uncooperative surfaces.

this, however, i don't recommend.
no good way to stretch your palm.

god definitely exists.
somewhere between cheerios and chocolate.

i've got him pinned down. you should come see.

how to prove the phrase, you must experience pain before you can appreciate joy:

set aside several hours. then, select a cold, hard surface. sit yourself as comfortably as you can, making sure your hands are free. focus all your attention on a delicate and exacting task. make sure the lighting is poor but inconsistent and that the ambient temperature of the room is slightly too warm. after maintaining this position for the alotted time, stand up.

strrrrreeeeetch.

see what i mean?

last night, a little before two, i went to bed. before i fell asleep, i decided i would get up at seven. i didn't set an alarm, i just wanted to get up at seven.

at seven-oh-six, i rolled over and looked at my alarm clock, sitting silent and meditative beside my bed. i decided to sleep for another hour.

at eight-oh-nine, i cracked open my eyes and stared, puzzled, at the clock for several minutes. i was very much expecting to have slept until eleven.

being able to control my sleeping patterns like that is certainly not a skill i've ever possessed before. s'pose it'd be pretty useful though, so we'll see if it keeps up.

i'm sort of like halfway done.
huzzah.

it's actually becoming really interesting. diagonal lines are fun.

diagonal lines are fun? it must be bedtime...

to those of you who know what i'm talking about:

okay, i know five cubed is 125, but we aren't actually making one hundred and twenty-five of these little interlocking cell things, right? math doesn't win, right? tell me math doesn't win.

please...

mood drastically improved by a long shower, a long walk, acquisition of aforementioned required materials, some writing and the impulsive purchase of a cute t-shirt and black dress.

i feel all heavy and irritable.

things that don't help:
1. my wet clothes heaped on the dryer. i didn't move them over because someone else's clothes were in still in the dryer when my load was finished. someone else came and took out those clothes and piled them, with mine, on top of the dryer so that they could put their load in.
2. my design work. mostly, the fact that i have no idea what i'm doing and i don't have the materials i need. for either of the projects.
3. everything else.

(sorry, no more idiotic lists, i swear.)
(og nej, min fugl, g�r ikke bekymre. jeg er bare sulten.)

dishes from three days ago: washed.
ivy plant: watered.
bed: made.
overflowing garbage: emptied.

paper about the end of the world according to ancient germanic tribes: written.
paper prospectus about my environment's effect on my writing: written.
286 pages about the end of the world according to eugene burdick and harvey wheeler: read.
one page about the end of the world according to stewart alsop: read.
ten pages about the end of the world according to herbert gold: read.
twenty pages about the environment and man's place in it, according to suzi gablik: read.
paper relating aforementioned twenty pages to my educational experience: written.
one page about kepler's law, newton's version of kepler's law, escape velocity and planetary orbits: complete.
28 pages about, well, the universe: read.

now i can start my homework.

and, i want one of these paintings.

it snowed again.

it was definitely seventy degrees two days ago.

it was vaguely cool on the way to art history, and afterwards just cold enough that he gave me his jacket. we ate breakfast (well, okay, lunch) and then climbed the stairs to leave the dining hall. i stopped short on the landing.

snow.

big, fat, tumbling flakes that smeared up my glasses and tangled in my hair. walking beneath a tree, resplendent in full bloom, i couldn't tell if the delicate white shapes were snowflakes or flowers.

i'm a design student.
i'm a design student at an engineering school, though i'm sure that's not an excuse.

sometimes it's hard to remember that there's a difference between an artist and a designer. that we're being taught to be designers and they have no interest in our artistry beyond that it furthers our design work. i think one of the most important things we learn is to separate those two. because i don't think art can be taught and i don't think creativity can be forced. but we are learning a creativity that has nothing to do with inspiration or expression.

we are learning to take the light that is the creative pulse, and put against it a magnifying glass made of expectations and deadlines and regulations, and focus everything on one poor ant of a project.

i've always seen art as a feline thing, subject to its own laws and its own judgement.

sometimes, these classes feel like taking a leopard, putting it in a harness and hitching it to a plough.

and while i'm sure a leopard could pull a plough pretty damned well, i'm not sure that it would still be a leopard if it did.

and thanks to zenia for her link to the century project. it's worth looking at.

the room looks vaguely like something out of brazil, all exposed heating ducts and rough white walls. the professor is definitiely not innocuous in any way, shape or form. the assignment is daunting to say the least. my brain hurts.

but i did laundry yesterday.

there's a feeling peculiar to clean towels. clean sheets have something of the same effect, but towels are a texture unto themselves. it's a pure, deep softness made sweeter by the rough edges of each little twisted, loopy strand. the slight crunch of philadelphia water paired with a glaring lack of fabric softener, giving way to the simple comfort of something soft against wet skin. almost inherently warm. reminiscent of five-year-old clamberings out of a tub long since gone lukewarm, pruney toes burrowing into the bathroom rug and a total envelopment in detergent-scented darkness.
mmm...

yesterday we walked sweltering down to utrecht, making an emergency stop at wawa for cold, caffienated beverages.

today, each of us was (were?) somewhat skeptical about the 40-degree forcast. especially with the sun screaming in through the windows, and the fact that, despite somebody waking around eight and turning the air conditioner on, the room was still disctinctly overwarm.

walking back from astrophysics, however, the wind ripped down the corridors between buildings, and in the shade we shivered and hugged our elbows.

in other news, my very second non-person-i-know-in-real-life sidebar! yay!

balsa wood doesn't glue.

and my hands are shaking. little fault lines running down my veins, turning my hands to strange landscapes where the sidewalk splits cleanly into two disjointed pieces, and i hit all the wrong keys as i try to type.

(oh, and about that blonde thing...
well, she describes it pretty accurately in the middle of this.)

design III.
three-dimensional design.

design from hell.

the professor seemed innocuous enough. balding and paunchy and wearing thick glasses, he speaks with a kind of rapid passion that made me think that maybe, maybe this time the professor would contribute to my learning.

which i'm sure he'll do.

what i know he'll contribute to are my levels of stress, insanity and blood pressure.

it's not so much that i can't do what he's asking in the time he's asking us to do it in, it's just that if i do, i'll never have time to do anything else. as far as i can tell, that includes eat, sleep or physics homework.


lots of chocolate.
lots and lots of chocolate.

horray for astrophysics.
i spent an extra twenty minutes with the professor after class, discussing orbital perturbation and the death of tycho brahe.

he blinked when i responded to his query about my major, then again when i replied "freshman" to his next question. we chatted breifly about the physics major who lives upstairs and the difference between an artistic and scientific mind. he reminds me of the "inconceivable" character in the princess bride (and no, i don't remember the name of his character, which i understand is unforgivable).

should be a fun class.

"if the blues are dead, they have at least been nicely embalmed." - eddie dean
i highly reccomend this magazine.

my hands are a strange chemical soft, battered by three successive (and largely unsuccessful) waves of ammonium hydroxide and hydrogen peroxide and various other multisyllabic substances. i cringe to think of the condition of my scalp. the majority of my hair, evidently, has little or no desire to be any type of blonde, much less champagne.

the third (final?) of those aforementioned chemical attacks is currently setting, as it will for the next 35 minutes.

if i'm not bald by morning, i will by god be a blonde.

"champagne blonde," no less.

blonde.

hell yeah.