I walk through the rain in my long sleek/silly hooded leather coat. I wear warmer socks today after learning my lesson yesterday. It has been cold and rainy... not for forever, but enough so to make the days seem especially horrible and too long/short. So after days of hating everything everything everything, I took myself to edo's and ate oysters and braised fennel, and when the handsome waiter asked me how it was, I said ya gotta love aphrodisiacs.
Amanda has flown to Amsterdam! Or maybe it is Brussels... and her email does not work (she says) and the comments don't work (what's new), so Hello Amanda! Elizabeth is still missing in action and I can think of no good way to get a hold of her and just her, because her email has someone else's name on it, and her telephone lives in a place that I think maybe she doesn't live in right now. So this is the best I can think of, and even it is not good because it is not private.
Once, I wrote a long true story about what it is like to have your fortune told in a refugee camp by a woman named Ibtisan, which means smile. But it got lost in the electronic transmission, and some day you should remind me to tell it to you again, this time so you can hear it. But there is a part I think of, a part of my fortune that I don't suppose I'll get into too much trouble for sharing with you... because I share my thoughts with you and this is what I'm thinking of.
She looked at me and looked at the coffee grounds and looked over my shoulder, smiling, and said: You are loved by many people, but your heart is full of heavy things and the world is not the way you want it to be.
I happily attend class, I happily attend to you. I worry about my girl friends two hours to the north and two hours to the south of me. I wear overalls and read and write (oh my gosh) poetry. I look at Andrew Bourne's gigantic three volume Oxford edition of The Anatomy of Melancholy, and listen to him talk about his Depeche Mode cover band. We decided to start a band called Outro. He will play the drums and I will do whatever the fuck I want. "So, what do you do?" "Whatever the fuck I want."
Here is part of a poem I read today:
Girl, I say, it is dangerous to be a woman of two countries. You've got your hands in the dark of two empty pockets. Even though you walk and whistle like you aren't afraid you know which pocket the enemy lives in and you remember how to fight so you better keep right on walking. And you remember who killed who. For this you want amnesty, and there's that knocking on the door in the middle of the night.
Mama, gotta brand new thing -- don't say no, let me go.
I was so going to do so much work today, I had such a big long list. But everything went wrong from the minute I got up this morning, and even though I came home cheery, or at least more resolute that the world wasn't so bad because I had seen Kyong and her baby, I got viciously distracted by boy after boy who came to my house. And so all I did, all we did, was play cards and play with toy cars and eat hot peppers and run around screaming and turn music up real loud and dance to it until the night was not cold anymore.
I promise, I promise I will write fiction and read anthropology and even do IMC stuff tomorrow. And I will answer your email. I promise. Do you hear me?
I hate statistics. No... no, I hate being forced to do tedious work. Do you know anything about regression lines and standard normal distributions? Maybe you oughta contact me with useful information as soon as possible. If I can get through this, then I will be done with school forever in a little less than two months. I try to keep reminding myself of that.
Hey. Where will you be on November 9th? Will you be here with me? Out on the streets of Richmond, telling war to go fuck itself? I hope so. You can sleep at my house. I've been talked into talking, but I agreed only if I get to read poems instead of speaking all firey about politics. Don't worry... I'll still be firey.
I came home, excited to write. But dear friends showed up and I did not. I think... I think I must declare Mondays Tuesdays Wednesdays Thursdays, and maybe even Fridays, No Muna days. Days when I will be studying and working and writing and maybe participating in unavoidable / preplanned social activities. I know my friends love to surprise me. And you know that I love you. But leave me alone for a little while, and I promise, I'll give you something good.
The plan is to graduate. The plan is to study and succeed and graduate in December. The plan after that is:
winter 2003 = europe where amanda is spring 2003 = egypt where my sister is, studying arabic summer 2003 = across the usa and up to alaska, with vancouver inbetween where walker is fall 2004 = turkey where evrim is, studying everything spring 2004 = ecuador where jonathan is (by bicycle! from alaska!) summer 2004 = cuba where I is, studying spanish
Tonight, though, my writing class tried to convince me to attend graduate school. I was saying something about the piece we're critiquing, I was saying so much that I thought I was boring everyone. My professor sighed and stopped me, and I thought oh no this is it, but he said You're good, you're really very good, and the class nodded and agreed yes she's really good. Which made me feel good and embarrased and crushed. I don't know what to do with nice things said about me.
I don't think I want to go to graduate school to be a writer. I think I may need to be a writer, though... and I'm not positive how to do that.
I fear that having a journal like this encourages in me a tendency to be self-centered, self-absorbed. I try not to read the news, but today I read this.
The situation in the occupied territories has recently become catastrophic. Massive Israeli military incursions, curfews and economic closures following Palestinian suicide bombings have devastated the feeble Palestinian economy and brought normal life to a standstill. The U.N. estimates that about half the population is now living below the $2-a-day poverty line. There are fears of widespread malnutrition.
At least a third of all adults are jobless -- much higher by some estimates -- and those who have jobs are frequently unable to get to work. Schools are frequently closed, hospitals and medicines often unreachable. Hundreds of thousands of people are confined to their houses around the clock, except for a few hours when Israeli authorities let them out to go shopping, by the curfews which have now been in place for three months in most West Bank cities.
The situation has taken an especially severe toll on Palestinian young people, who make up half of the three million Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Part of that toll is literal: Of the 1,888 Palestinians who have been killed since the start of the Al-Aqsa intifada two years ago, 306 were under the age of 18.
I run around in a tight black jacket and a bright red scarf, skipping accidentally -- it feels like -- everything. Instead, I sit and read and think about the stories in my read and the stories everywhere else. One of my favorite places today is the honors computer lab, housed in the old emergency room facilities of the now defunct Capitol Medical building that summons up fond memories of broken bones once treated here. I like it because it is warm -- and outside it is not -- and full of people acquiring and creating knowledge. I get to rifle through the recycling bin to find paper on which to print other people's stories, which means I get to look at all the things people copy and produce. Today among the meeting minutes for a latin club and long lists of beautiful norm_area numbers, I found copies of the handwritten resignation a girl wrote to all her Sigma sisters, somewhat heart-felt and crossed out and rewritten in swirly circles at many points, and copies of polaroids of a boy with a mess of spikey hair wearing only an open black leather jacket and tighty whiteys, posing for the camera in front of Joy Division and Portishead posters. Below the photos, someone has written Party Anytime, Boys or Girls.
So I got to be sick all weekend, but people took good care of me, and then a boy I used to have a ton of fun with in high school shows up and we walk around town for two hours, and then he drives away in his bmw.
The pattern became: work and mellow and games during the day, physical fun late at night, home to work electronically until the early morning, then sleep. But I slept through a class this morning after an evening of sad sad rock n roll, so I think I must switch. I think I must start waking up early to go row machines at the school gym while listening to loud music on quiet headphones.
Today, Beezus killed a bird and its body rests outside my door. Whenever she forgets how much she likes it and accidentally comes inside, she soon gets upset and starts yowling to be let out again, so she can again sit by it and every once and a while paw at it, regretful that it is dead and cannot play anymore.
Last night while I was trying to fix this site and trying to answer email, she jumped onto my chest and stared into my eyes, and glowered and hypnotized me. Other animals. Other things.
After the one class I caught today, I stood outside in my too-big-for-me hat from the Amercian University of Beirut, stuffed my hands into my pockets, and talked about how chimpanzees can understand english though they cannot make its sounds, and how whales can talk to each other from thousands of miles away, and how birds have distinct calls/alarms of certain things and if you're a good tracker you can tell where that snake is too because the bird just told you. We wondered, my friend and I, if the chimpanzees would talk to us if we didn't keep them confined. We were doubtful.
I think I have to figure out things about the archives for this page. I know I will never have comments unless Amanda gives them to me because enetation just will not recognize me as a user.
I sniffle all day, but stride around too, and hug my friends sincere and lasting I-will-miss-you-so-much goodbye hugs. While they all drive away, I learn about statistics and more about the fascinating life of my confessional statistics profesor. This week's lesson: how to avoid the draft by going to graduate school / how to analyze graduate program application and acceptance statistics with important world events of the time (aka "lurking variables) in mind.
I go to writing class and am yet again overjoyed by the fact that I get to spend hours talking about imaginary things with people I barely know (though I regret missing out on folks talking about the landless movement of south america). Does any of this make sense? I dunnno... I'm tipsy on the tequila and beer I drank with the classmate who is ten years older than me, with three kids to prove it. We talked about, sillily, the definition of art in a crowded bar while stand-up comedians did their stand-up routines. That, I thought, was art. Or rather an instance of something beautiful and coincedental in this world. I smiled. How wonderful.
I blow my nose and eat crabcakes and cornbread Amanda left for me since she was leaving. I love Amanda! Hey! I love you!
A long week... a long weekend. I want to catch it all, if only for posterity. Let's work backwards... since that's how so many things seem to work lately.
Today. Monday. I cut class and hang out with mostly Andrew Bourne. We watch La Dolce Vita, though regrettably I fell asleep at the beginning when they are at the whore's flooded house, and then even more regrettably woke up during the irritating blonde-american-movie-star-in-a-famous-fountain scene. I ride my bike and enjoy the idea of not cooking, of only eating delicious, ready-to-go foods like fruit and cheese and olives.
Yesterday. Sunday. Jonathan and I drive back from Portsmouth after hanging out with Elizabeth and her hubby. I get to see her new place and make friends with her dog, Shakespeare, and hear stories about Elizabeth carrying him home in her arms and slung over her shoulder. He is a big dog. He is not a small dog. Elizabeth and I make a wonderful dinner full of spinach and sugar snaps and alfredo sauce. Yeah!
Saturday. The day before that. We wake up early, very early in the morning. We wake up in Norfolk and drive to Virginia Beach, and I strap a surf board to my ankle and swim past the waves. I do a good job -- I mean, I don't ever actually surf, I can't even sit on the board (those things toss and turn like fish, live fish, for fuck's sake) -- not only do I not get crushed to death by waves or other surfers, but I actually finally end up riding a couple on my belly into shore. Awesome. I'm a surfer.
Friday. Friday night. We drive down to Norfolk and cuss at the traffic and pick up our boy friends and finally find the beach, fading fast in the sun. The three boys all have surf boards and I'm given a bright pink boogie board. My instructions: "Strap that to your wrist and swim." It's choppy and dark and I'm blind -- did I mention I'm blind? that I have to, of course, take my precious glasses off to swim? that everything is unrecognizable by sight? and I'm in the ocean like this? -- but I smile and am all excited and I swim and swim and swim and swim.
Even earlier that week. Wednesday and Thursday. Toni Morrison comes to town and I get to see her speak in large gynasiums and she is, wow, beautiful. All during the week I was in such a foul, foul mood and the only thing that could alleviate it was Toni Morrison with her all being a writer who cares about things and a Noble Laureate and all. I realized then that that was all I needed to be happy -- Noble Laureates and fine food and fantastic music. That's all. I realized later, just today, that the reason I was in such a seemingly inexplicable persistent bad mood was because I hate school.... But to not dwell on that bad thought.... I must, when I am old, grow my hair very long and be as beautiful as she is with everything she knows. I wish I wish I wish.
Is that it? I think that is it. Suddenly, I don't care that much anymore. It was all wonderful at the time, but that was then. Now I sit up alone while everyone else sleeps and listen accidently to the Donnie Darko soundtrack that makes me content and calm and assured that the world really is as scary as I think it is.
And, hey, where's Walker Allen? I send him emails, but he never answers. Maybe he does not like me anymore. Maybe he doesn't get my emails. Maybe maybe.
