I had a weird dream last night about greg having to use this Love-O-Matic thing to test how much he loved me. It wound up on the second one from the top, which read "Love her,but it's over." And I was standing right there! So when I asked him why that happened, he explained that it was because I'm giong to school next year, and....you know.....these things sort of end, right there. But then I woke up as i was trying to convince him that that doesn't have to be the case. And then meghan and i had a discussion--which practically involved yelling because we were in the cafeteria and it was so darned loud--about going off to college while keeping your relationship. She said she would never do that, and I'm planning on doing that. I guess I can see where she'd be coming from, that it would limit you in some fashion, prevent you from exploring all your new possibilities and all those hot guys at college. But I don't feel like I'd be limited at all. What am I limited from? Pointless weekend hookups? The dating game? I'm not limited from making new friends, of both genders, or from exploring who I am, or having an awesome time at college. Plus, I'm going to college with something incredibly special, that not many people get to have at this age, someone who really loves me. Throwing aside a relationship merely because you're moving on to college is like saying that gee, this was nice, but i'm pretty sure there's something better out there, so...so long! I'm not saying that greg and i are going to last 'forever' and all of that mush, but I have no doubt that we can handle being apart. The thought of being without him for good, for losing something so important to me, is a far worse thought than not seeing him for a few weeks here and there.

Oh yeah, and as for being limited from the hot guys, c'mon, I check out all the hot guys now and I haven't even left yet. Looking at other guys doesn't make me feel guilty, and I'm sure there'll be plenty of guys to look at at fairfield, but I'm not going to feel deprived just because I can't jump every sexy kid i see in the hallway. I've got a very sexy guy to jump whenever I'm at home!

In conclusion, I'm contemplating skipping both monday and this friday. hmm. unfortunately I don't know when the voices book is going to get done.....hrmmmm......

Well I had this lengthy post about prom before, but the stupid blogger decided to kill it before it got posted. i'm not going to try to repeat it; 'twas a work worthy of alexander pope's witty essays, and will be heartily missed. Or maybe i'm exaggerating. anyway prom was a great night, and i cant wait till i get my pictures back. of course, i should drop the camera off if i want the pictures, right?

I'm so ready to get the hell out of here. Every day, every class is a misery now, just counting the minutes till the bell rings. I got another letter from Fairfield inviting me to pick a first year seminar or cluster course for myself. they don't address letters to me as "dear michelle", but invariably as "dear university scholar, please accept our congratulations on recieveing this honor. we cant wait for you to get here and make us look good!" well, that's paraphrased. anyway, the cluster courses do not sound interesting--they're "interdisciplinary learning experiences" that "draw on a myriad of issues and ideas". Read: HILL class all over again. No way. The seminar I'm going to pick is called "The Creative Mind". It discusses the lives and works of artists in all different genres; poetry, prose, drama, film and photography. they take field trips to new york and new haven for art openings and plays, and the culmination of the course is your own creative project. This sounds awesome! I'm going to mail it out tomorrow; there's only nineteen students in each seminar, and i WANT this one. I want it bad. Luckily, the University Scholar deal means that me and the twelve other kids get first pick of all the classes we want, so i'm pretty sure i'll be in.

I listened to greg's cd again in the car on the way home from work last night. At the end he says that I should listen to it whenever i need a smile, and after yesterday (i wanted to die) i needed one, so i popped in the cd and Bam--smile. I must have listened to that thing thirty times by now, and it still picks me up every single time. I love greg!

According to a little book that I was just perusing in the guidance office, called the inside look at colleges, fairfield university really is a "party school" if you want it to be. The beach is only a couple of miles away, so in good weather there's a party there somewhere. Even though it doesn't have the Greek system, it does have the Lantern Point beach houses for upperclassmen--so guess who hosts the beach parties! I'm not worried that I'll somehow get subverted into the culture of "study all week and drink all weekend." However, I don't want to wind up with a roommate whose highest aspiration is hooking up with a senior and getting high every weekend. Bleh. If they have a straightedge box on the roommate form, I'm checking it. I also think they have a dorm that's substance free, so I'd really rather live there. I also must remember to bring my bike down with me this fall, because some of the dorms can be a twenty minute walk from the cafeteria. Ha! I'll bike. It's got a lot of hills, but none that are too steep.

They have StagBucks instead of StarBucks. lol. Now I'm off to read stuff for incomnig freshies on their website!

Ah, the HILL trip. Should I bother to explain? Not really…I was there, I have my journal for future reference, along with the recollections of others. I have no real desire to relive it all step by step. I have to write a paper on the whole experience by next week. Today we had the dreaded conversation about group dynamics. Apparently we’re one of the best classes Mr T has ever had on the trip in the sense that there were no major problems, no catfights, no attempts to solicit illegal substances. However, we are also extremely clique-y, as observed in the lines that were drawn out there. It wasn’t like we didn’t know everyone, or that we were’nt comfortable talking to everyone; that was fine. But when we got out there, it was three groups: the four boys, the four girls (Taryn, Hilary, Nicole and Jennie) and then us, me, Heather, Rae, Sara, Ashley, and Kim. By the end of the trip there were only two groups: us and them.
That is probably something that I will remember for a long while, this truth that there will always be separations, and that I will not always be the person that everyone wants to associate with. I was glad to return because here I feel much more free than in that little group of fourteen. We were all so compressed that the lines were instantly visible, anywhere. Back here, we’re spread out, it’s not so obvious, and I actually feel like people desire my company. Aside from my friends, of course, who were amazing on this trip. The majority of fun that I had was the time spent in their company, not time gazing at the Grand Canyon or even Sedona, which I absolutely loved. People are what matter in life, the people who care about you. Not the opinions of people whom you will never see again after a month or so. Not the charming vistas that you may never lay eyes on again. There will always be sunsets and forests and mountains, but time spent with people who love you is precious. Hey, a tie-in to King Lear! He only learned at the end that the love of his daughter was more precious than worldly power as a king. He was content to live with her in prison, forsaking all his position and esteem. Unfortunately, she was murdered, and then he died of heartbreak, but that has no relation to my story.
Ummm….so yeah. HILL class never became what it was made out to be, but I guess that’s ok. At least I get an easy A- for a class with no work, no tests, a bunch of people I’m friends with and a basic lunchhour. It’s almost over soon anyway. I’m so glad to be back, especially now that I have Greg and Meghan again! Oooh and prom’s coming too. Excitement! And then graduation, and FREEDOM!!!

The HILL trip's a week from tomorrow!!! Yay! I think my mom was a little concerned because there's fourteen of us and only two chaperones. But really, how much trouble are going to get into in, like, Phoenix? Go to some back alley porn store and try to pick up a prostitute? Sure. Of course, Mr T did warn us about watching porn on TV, and mentioned the availability of certain movies *cough cough*. Amusingly, he directed his comments to the boys. I really wish I could bring my laptop; I know i could journal so much better if i were typing. Somehow I doubt that there'll be any cybercafes in the hotels like there were in france. Of course, only Rae was dedicated enough to pay money to use the computers lol. Still, I wish I'd journaled more over there. I wrote some brief notes on little pieces of paper, several of which I've lost--on turned up in my makeup box, of all places; it was about going to Toledo, and how they called it the "living museum", and how I'd spent the bus ride thinking about Manuel. I also have a random memory of getting off the bus in Toledo when we got to the forge to watch them make the swords, and Merideth was telling me all about her plan to come back to Spain in the summer and stay with Christian. Yeeeaaah. That would really happen. She always said that she wrote to him and he wrote back, but somehow I don't think she did.

I just read an article at nytimes.com on how building your dream home in the woodlands of the Northeast can bring a really high risk of getting Lyme disease, which sucks. Apparently, small cleared plots of woodland have three times as many infected ticks; one three-acre plot has 600 ticks per acre, and 75% of them were infected with Lyme disease. Well there goes my dream of building myself a really comfy lodge up north someday. I think I'll just build it in the Pacific Northwest instead. They'ev got mountains and woods over there, and apparently the mice that carry Lyme disease are less populous in that part of the nation.

In other news, the Iraqi Minister of Information is still denying the fact that any Americans have entered Baghdad, despite the fact that several news sources have taken photos of soldiers storming Saddam's palaces and walking through the streets. This guy is still claiming that the dirty Americans haven't even gotten near the city. I wonder how many Iraqis believe him? They showed pictures in the Courant of Iraqis cheering the British soldiers who are taking over Basra. Obviously they can't speak for the entire nation of Iraq, but it supports the idea that at least some of them are happy with what we are doing. Some people are of the opinion that we're not liberating them, we're murdering them and going to war with a peaceful people. Hello, we're not at war with the Iraqi people! We're at war with a crazy dictator who has for decades controlled the lives of his people absolutely. He has murdered every dissenter, crushed every revolt, and determined what his people can wear, watch, hear and eat. He massacred the Kurds in the northern part of the country and used chemical weapons against his own people. He developed weapons of mass destruction with the full intent of using them on innocent people. He attacked a peaceful neighboring country with no provocation, merely out of greed and ambition, and when the UN stepped in to stop him, he turned those weapons on the soldiers. Saddam Hussein is not "good people", and his continued health and well-being posed a distinct threat to the rest of the free world. Ten years of disregarding UN sanctions and a total lack of respect for weapons inspectors show that this man never had any intention of relinquishing any sort of power. The people of Iraq were suffering and dying under those sanctions--should we have waited for Saddam to die, only so another dictator could take his place? I'm not saying that Iraqi civilian casualties are acceptable; they're not. It's terrible that those people were killed. But it's my belief that when the Iraqi people have a taste of true freedom, they will prefer a new existence to the tyranny of the old days.

Ok, rereading what I wrote, that probably seems really strong and grrr men suck because they don't read minds. It's not like that....entirely....I know greg loves me, and I know that he probably tries to think of interesting things, but I just can't help but wish that after all this time he would just understand the kind of thing that I'm thinking of. I just don't want to feel as though he doesn't really know me enough to understand where I'm coming from.

It's thirteen days now, till the trip to the Southwest. I'm excited. It also means i have so much stuff to finish before then, especially my research paper and greg's anniversary present. I've been working on it almost every day, and it's about half-way done, but i have to make out a schedule so i'll have everything i need for it in time. A friend of mine observed that whatever greg does is going to have to be pretty damned special to merit all the effort that i've put into this thing--which is a lot. But it's like I'm trying not to put my hopes too high. I know he'll try, of course, but in the unfortunate event that it turns out to be, shall we say, less than stellar, I don't want to have had a thousand romantic notions and then find myself utterly disappointed. Those aren't fun times. And it's not like i expect him to do something along the lines of what I am, because I just love doing things like this, and I'm perfectly willing to spend a long time with it, and he's, well, a guy. At the same time, someone tried to tell me that this is just the way things are, that men aren't any good at this whole romantic thing, and that's such crap. This person's basic message was: you better just deal with it, because it doesn't get any better. Hm, then how is it that I see a lot of the guys around me doing really cool things? Example: on scott and marianne's anniversary, scott decorated her locker with balloons and ribbons and this gigantic heartshaped collage he had made of the two of them. Now, this is scott, the big class clown who delights in making dumb jokes and laughing like a monkey with his little chimp friend, and it was seriously the sweetest thing i had ever seen him do. So i don't believe that this is a general fault of the gender. I can't help it if i want something that required imagination or inspiration or just something beyond what can be purchased in a store! See, now I'm getting all worked up. And i really need to go start my homework, so this rant is officially over.

Happy anniversary to Rae-J! That means it's one month and one day until ours, so I need to get cracking on greg's present. I also need to consider what I'd like, since i can't just put greg out there on his own and expect him to come up with something. that doesn't work out so well. still it sucks that i can think of so many romantic things that he could put together or make on his own, but once i tell him what to do, they're not romantic anymore. then it's just pointless. and i could tell him some material object that would please me, but what i'll still really want is something that he just thought of on his own, like "wow, wouldn't michelle love it if i did this?". is that strange, that i could tell someone what i want in terms of a gift-gift, but still expect that they will divine that the material thing is not what i'm really after and act accordingly? there's women for you. greg told me that his mom just hands his dad a list of things that she wants. my mom always did that too, and my dad would buy her whatever perfume or something else she wanted, but he always made things, i don't know, special. his cards to her were always really sweet, and he'd draw pictures for her, and call her his kitten, and the perfume itself never seemed as thoughtful to me as everything that surrounded it. So it happens that i can think of a million romantic things i'd love for him to do, but nothing stands out in my mind for him to buy...

A long talk in HILL about the war today. Probably one of the better class days, in my opinion; there weren't that many of us there, and there were no ad hominem arguments from certain highly conservative parties against more liberal parties.

Once again, the news seems to be so very far away, happening thousands of miles apart from our little school. Walking down the hallway this morning there was no indication in the laughing countenances of those who passed that they were conscious of the implications of this morning. The war has begun, not in the brilliant blaze of munitions that our administration promised, but with a smaller yet still decisive salvo against the Iraqis. No doubt the conflict will be brief, and hopefully bloody, but I hardly forsee an easy road ahead.

The fact that Saddam Hussein would rather martyr his entire country than lose power and lose face is an indication not only of this man's resolve, but also his utter lack of regard for human life. Beyond the fact that he unleashed chemical and biological weapons on the Iranian people, or that he used them on the Kurds in his own country, or that he's murdered thousands of Iraqi dissidents including his own daughters' husbands, how can anyone stand a man who would choose the path of defiance and death rather than humbling himself to save his people, not to mention his own life? He must either truly believe he can win this war, which, judging from the massive force arrayed against him is unlikely, or he truly doesn't care about anyone at all, and wants to go out in a blaze of gunfire. He would rather see his nation drowned in blood and unleash a jihad than surrender his sacred person.
PS. Saddam Hussein's idol is Joseph Stalin, the man who murdered about 8 million of his own citizens, the majority for no reason at all. Anyone who is unconvinced by history books that Stalin was a more ruthless and evil man than Hitler should read The Gulag Archipelago, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The brutality, the oppression, the utterly random cruelty of this man's reign is abominable, and yet largely unrecorded in textbooks. So much of what he did was not perpetrated in any war, nor did he focus on specific ethnic groups. He was an equal-opportunity killer.

A long talk in HILL about the war today. Probably one of the better class days, in my opinion; there weren't that many of us there, and there were no ad hominem arguments from certain highly conservative parties against more liberal parties.

Once again, the news seems to be so very far away, happening thousands of miles apart from our little school. Walking down the hallway this morning there was no indication in the laughing countenances of those who passed that they were conscious of the implications of this morning. The war has begun, not in the brilliant blaze of munitions that our administration promised, but with a smaller yet still decisive salvo against the Iraqis. No doubt the conflict will be brief, and hopefully bloody, but I hardly forsee an easy road ahead.

The fact that Saddam Hussein would rather martyr his entire country than lose power and lose face is an indication not only of this man's resolve, but also his utter lack of regard for human life. Beyond the fact that he unleashed chemical and biological weapons on the Iranian people, or that he used them on the Kurds in his own country, or that he's murdered thousands of Iraqi dissidents including his own daughters' husbands, how can anyone stand a man who would choose the path of defiance and death rather than humbling himself to save his people, not to mention his own life? He must either truly believe he can win this war, which, judging from the massive force arrayed against him is unlikely, or he truly doesn't care about anyone at all, and wants to go out in a blaze of gunfire. He would rather see his nation drowned in blood and unleash a jihad than surrender his sacred person.
PS. Saddam Hussein's idol is Joseph Stalin, the man who murdered about 8 million of his own citizens, the majority for no reason at all. Anyone who is unconvinced by history books that Stalin was a more ruthless and evil man than Hitler should read The Gulag Archipelago, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The brutality, the oppression, the utterly random cruelty of this man's reign is abominable, and yet largely unrecorded in textbooks. So much of what he did was not perpetrated in any war, nor did he focus on specific ethnic groups. He was an equal-opportunity killer.

Lordy. I got stuck tutoring another freshman again. In grammar, again. The guidance counselors assume that because I write well and because I'm called an editor for Voices that I actually know and can pass along the incredibly complex and annoying rules of grammar. I can't! St.Gabe's taught me almost nothing about grammar; my freshman teacher, Mrs. Hennessey, God rest her soul because she looked old enough to be dead even if she wasn't, taught us nothing but how to diagram sentences, endlessly. That helps you not at all in life. Who can remember what part of speech gets the arrow or the spaceship or the table? Who cares? I learned grammar the hands-on way, so to speak. I read, and I read, and I read, and the proper way to write just sort of sank in until I could easily tell what was correct and incorrect. That doesn't mean I remember any of the rules, or the tenses, or the different kinds of clauses, etc. So what am I supposed to tell this freshman girl, who was very frightened looking and said barely a word? The last girl they tried to have me tutor, this annoying girl named Tijuana, actively hated the fact that she was being forced into tutoring. We were both annoyed at giving up our frees, and she blatantly didn't care what exercise i was trying to have her do, so we eventually stopped. Oh and there was heather gostyla, whom i was supposed to tutor in geometry. I'm a senior--that was freshman year! She knew half the theorems and corollaries better than I did. It was pointless.

Senior day yesterday wasn't so bad. We built doghouses, did some yoga, and finished the day with a very interesting Mass with father Moran. It wasn't a big mass, there were only about twenty of us who stopped our activities and went, and instead of a homily, we sat in the chapel discussing what we regretted about high school, what we'd learned, and how we were going to apply those things to our future lives. Very interesting. Even though I don't find the whole truth--the Truth--in religious ceremonies, Mass can be comforting if you're in the presence of someone who believes so very fervently, and is so very affecting in his speech as Father Moran. There is no formalism, that detested shortcoming of priests, in his celebration. To listen to him, and to really think about some of those Biblical passages, can lead you to appreciate the good ideas that people have had and shared over the course of two thousand years. Do I agree completely? No, even less with the Church today than with the Bible itself. Yet it all has some grain of truth, some basic precept of existence as good human beings which we need to dig around and find underneath all the blather. Truth is hard to find, but it's worth looking for.

My friend Meghan Bonney showed me an interesting quote from an Ani DiFranco song: "On cold toast, butter melts out of habit." I don't know why it struck me....but I thought it was clever.

Well, an interesting thing happened in school today. While Sara and I were meandering down the hallway, Fitz stopped us as usual and began cacklnig with laughter over some new juicy gossip that he'd gained about yours truly. This happened yesterday afternoon too, so I figured it was the same tired game, but this time it was something altogether different. Apparently he'd recieved secondhand information from a girl in his AP Gov class that Meghan and I were seen making out in a mall. With each other, should anyone need such a clarification. Obviously, anyone who knows us would realize instantly that that's so not true, because cmon, she's my best friend, that's just nasty. So while I was annoyed that suddenly people had decided to start spreading rumors about me, I took it as more of a joke. Meghan was extremely upset by it, though, which made me upset. I mean, my friendship with jackie sophomore year earned me the rumor title of "lesbian". I'm not bothered by it anymore, and even though someone said that's just because im going out with greg, it's not true. Having a boyfriend doesn't suddenly magically protect you from insults; I simply choose to not care, and to see the funny side of it. How crazy is that, anyway? Meghan doesn't understand why anyone would make up somethign like that about us, which is rather mean, and then tell someone like Fitz who cant keep his mouth shut to save his life. Of course there is the possibility that seeing me and meghan make out is actually some guy's wet dream, so he made up a story to make it sound more plausible. fitz actually suggested that i tell my "piece" (which now means boyfriend instead of gun, apparently) about it, since he'd probably be ecstatic. I never thought i would have to hear the word "three-way" coming out of Fitz' mouth, especially not in relation to moi. Ewwww. He also thought this "piece"'s name was Chris, for some reason. Anyway, people are stupid, and meghan and i so aren't lesbians. I guess the saying is "We're straight but not narrow."

Tonight it's like eight girls and a hotel suite! Sweet! (hahaha yay for homophones!) And a basketball game before that, so we get to ogle some hot guys (unfortunately, our guys aren't playing farmington, so no jason abromidas or whatever his name was mrow) and then....some even more interesting entertainment.

Things I Hate About High School


People telling me what time of day I’m allowed to eat.
Hall passes
Eight continuous periods of class a day.
Learning things I don’t care about.
CSAs
Math class.
Going up to the board in math class
Not knowing the answers in math class
Anything related to math class.
People trying to convince me that math class is beneficial.
Uniforms.
Mr. Callahan.
Detentions (or the threat of detentions)
The disgusting lack of hygiene on the part of fellow students.
Bathrooms (see above)
The cafeteria
The cafeteria workers and their crazy rules
Traffic jams in the parking lot
Traffic jams in the hallway
Groups of shrieky youngsters.
Being shushed in the library.
The administration.
Morning prayer.
Morning announcements.
The Pledge of Allegiance.
Assemblies.
The PA system and that godforsaken clicking it makes when it’s off.
Crushing amounts of homework on a nightly basis.
Fire drills.
Gym class.
Standardized tests
Guidance counselors
People discussing their sexual behaviors in raised voices in the hallway.
The sexual behaviors of teenagers
People constantly bragging about illegal activities.
Seeing people sneaking cigarettes.
Having classes with morons.
Seeing the same building, without end, for four years.
The word “leadership”.
Everything that anyone has ever claimed will “prepare us for college”.
Doing everything in hopes of getting into a nice college.
Worrying about getting into colleges.
Not getting into colleges.
Having to commute between home and school
Rampant PDA
Observing young love
Having less time to spend with individual people because you see all of them, every day
The shocking lack of tampons in the bathrooms
Short vacations
....And everything else that I've possibly forgotten, but I still detest.

Would you believe this started out in spanish class as a list of everything I'll miss about high school? Yeah. I only wrote down like three things. Then I realized that I pretty much hated everything else. I want out! Three months could be a lifetime.

Jen's back. It's like the Amityville Horror. The house is possessed by a malovolent, destructive spirit, and I'm trapped.

I find recently that I completely disagree with what some people seem to consider a loving relationship. I used to feel very glad for some of them, that they had found nice people to be with, people they were in love with. Not so any longer. Now I just shake my head in dismay, and fail to understand how these people could transform real supportive love into occasional lust.

On a better note, we kicked Farmington's ASS tonight, 70-60! We were losing all the way into the third, and then we just took off. The guys played great. Of course, the best fun was had standing in the bleachers listening to the junior and senior guys with their crazy and insanely loud chants/taunts, including "He-pa-tit-is" "Your-dad's-bet-ter", and for some stupid reason, "you're-not-rea-gan". I don't know if that's even what the hell they were saying. then of course there's that low "uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu" sound they make when Luke has the ball, which is supposed to be his name but always sounds to everyone else like we're booing our own player. They even made up a series of code chants for players from Farmington; one kid with a shirt on underneath his jersey got "Teeee-shirrrrrt", the leading scorer, the hot guy who lives on meg's street, got "Aaaaaabrooooo", part of his last name, and this other guy got just a "Booooooo". It was pretty funny when it got to where the ball was changing hands extremely quickly, and the guys had to keep changing what they were chanting for each person.

Oh, and Aaron dressed up in some exotic bird costume minus the mask, and was planning some sort of crazy stunt, but mr cusson stopped him from doing it, and aaron refuseed to risk expulsion to run onto the court. and of course scott was dressed up all in green as well. i think they have a dressup fetish, personally. The only bad part was that the corner meghan and i got there early to claim was PACKED with sweaty guys wearing too much bad cologne. they all absolutely MUST stand together, even if that means packing obscenely close and nearly crushing the two of us.

no school for me tomorrow!

I'm confusing even to myself.

This is a line from one of Annie's poems that i liked: "He showed me how to think behind my eyes."

Personally, I'm very glad that I talk in plain english on this site. I'll say no more than that.

A lot of thoughts are running through my mind lately, all at top speed. Emotions have been running with them, too; some loving, some contemptuous. I used to always try to fight the contemptuous ones. But now I don't much bother. If you love something let it go. If it comes back to you, it's yours. If you don't like something let it go. If it doesn't come back, thank the good lord above and find yourself something better.

Mine and Greg's (grammar?) anniversary is two months from tomorrow. HILL class will just be getting back from the Southwest. I'm excited for both! Even when the fun of the trip is ending, I'll still have him to look forward to. And it becomes more and more apparent to me with each passing day how lucky I was to find a Greg. I can never figure out if it was fate or luck. At various times, in various moods, when I'm thinking about it and marveling at the fact that it happened at all, I lean toward one or the other. I'm in a warm mood tonight. Tonight it was Fate.

Personally, I'm very glad that I talk in plain english on this site. I'll say no more than that.

A lot of thoughts are running through my mind lately, all at top speed. Emotions have been running with them, too; some loving, some contemptuous. I used to always try to fight the contemptuous ones. But now I don't much bother. If you love something let it go. If it comes back to you, it's yours. If you don't like something let it go. If it doesn't come back, thank the good lord above and find yourself something better.

Mine and Greg's (grammar?) is two months from tomorrow. We'll just be getting back from the Southwest. I'm excited for both! Even when the fun of the trip is ending, I'll still have him to look forward to. And it becomes more and more apparent to me with each passing day how lucky I was to find a Greg. I can never figure out if it was fate or luck. At various times, in various moods, when I'm thinking about it and marveling at the fact that it happened at all, I lean toward one or the other. I'm in a warm mood tonight. Tonight it was Fate.

I sit here in the library next to my friend Ashley (note the link to her Ewan McGregor site!) She is ratehr average height, dark brown hair, brown eyes, and an impish sense of humor. She enjoys the misfortunes of others. She enjoys giving people sly glares and looks. When they are not looking. She did Keats for her poetry paper and reports that he was pretty good.

Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias

1. Cogida and death

At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet
at five in the afternoon.
A frail of lime ready prepared
at five in the afternoon.
The rest was death, and death alone.

The wind carried away the cottonwool
at five in the afternoon.
And the oxide scattered crystal and nickel
at five in the afternoon.
Now the dove and the leopard wrestle
at five in the afternoon.
And a thigh with a desolated horn
at five in the afternoon.
The bass-string struck up
at five in the afternoon.
Arsenic bells and smoke
at five in the afternoon.
Groups of silence in the corners
at five in the afternoon.
And the bull alone with a high heart!
At five in the afternoon.
When the sweat of snow was coming
at five in the afternoon,
when the bull ring was covered with iodine
at five in the afternoon.
Death laid eggs in the wound
at five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon.
At five o'clock in the afternoon.

A coffin on wheels is his bed
at five in the afternoon.
Bones and flutes resound in his ears
at five in the afternoon.
Now the bull was bellowing through his forehead
at five in the afternoon.
The room was iridiscent with agony
at five in the afternoon.
In the distance the gangrene now comes
at five in the afternoon.
Horn of the lily through green groins
at five in the afternoon.
The wounds were burning like suns
at five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon.
Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon!
It was five by all the clocks!
It was five in the shade of the afternoon!



2. The Spilled Blood

I will not see it!

Tell the moon to come,
for I do not want to see the blood
of Ignacio on the sand.

I will not see it!

The moon wide open.
Horse of still clouds,
and the grey bull ring of dreams
with willows in the barreras.

I will not see it!

Let my memory kindle!
Warm the jasmines
of such minute whiteness!

I will not see it!

The cow of the ancient world
passed har sad tongue
over a snout of blood
spilled on the sand,
and the bulls of Guisando,
partly death and partly stone,
bellowed like two centuries
sated with threading the earth.
No.
I will not see it!

Ignacio goes up the tiers
with all his death on his shoulders.
He sought for the dawn
but the dawn was no more.
He seeks for his confident profile
and the dream bewilders him
He sought for his beautiful body
and encountered his opened blood
Do not ask me to see it!
I do not want to hear it spurt
each time with less strength:
that spurt that illuminates
the tiers of seats, and spills
over the cordury and the leather
of a thirsty multiude.
Who shouts that I should come near!
Do not ask me to see it!

His eyes did not close
when he saw the horns near,
but the terrible mothers
lifted their heads.
And across the ranches,
an air of secret voices rose,
shouting to celestial bulls,
herdsmen of pale mist.
There was no prince in Sevilla
who could compare to him,
nor sword like his sword
nor heart so true.
Like a river of lions
was his marvellous strength,
and like a marble toroso
his firm drawn moderation.
The air of Andalusian Rome
gilded his head
where his smile was a spikenard
of wit and intelligence.
What a great torero in the ring!
What a good peasant in the sierra!
How gentle with the sheaves!
How hard with the spurs!
How tender with the dew!
How dazzling the fiesta!
How tremendous with the final
banderillas of darkness!

But now he sleeps without end.
Now the moss and the grass
open with sure fingers
the flower of his skull.
And now his blood comes out singing;
singing along marshes and meadows,
sliden on frozen horns,
faltering soulles in the mist
stoumbling over a thousand hoofs
like a long, dark, sad tongue,
to form a pool of agony
close to the starry Guadalquivir.
Oh, white wall of Spain!
Oh, black bull of sorrow!
Oh, hard blood of Ignacio!
Oh, nightingale of his veins!
No.
I will not see it!
No chalice can contain it,
no swallows can drink it,
no frost of light can cool it,
nor song nor deluge og white lilies,
no glass can cover mit with silver.
No.
I will not see it!



3. The Laid Out Body

Stone is a forehead where dreames grieve
without curving waters and frozen cypresses.
Stone is a shoulder on which to bear Time
with trees formed of tears and ribbons and planets.

I have seen grey showers move towards the waves
raising their tender riddle arms,
to avoid being caught by lying stone
which loosens their limbs without soaking their blood.

For stone gathers seed and clouds,
skeleton larks and wolves of penumbra:
but yields not sounds nor crystals nor fire,
only bull rings and bull rings and more bull rings without walls.

Now, Ignacio the well born lies on the stone.
All is finished. What is happening! Contemplate his face:
death has covered him with pale sulphur
and has place on him the head of dark minotaur.

All is finished. The rain penetrates his mouth.
The air, as if mad, leaves his sunken chest,
and Love, soaked through with tears of snow,
warms itself on the peak of the herd.

What is they saying? A stenching silence settles down.
We are here with a body laid out which fades away,
with a pure shape which had nightingales
and we see it being filled with depthless holes.

Who creases the shroud? What he says is not true!
Nobody sings here, nobody weeps in the corner,
nobody pricks the spurs, nor terrifies the serpent.
Here I want nothing else but the round eyes
to see his body without a chance of rest.

Here I want to see those men of hard voice.
Those that break horses and dominate rivers;
those men of sonorous skeleton who sing
with a mouth full of sun and flint.

Here I want to see them. Before the stone.
Before this body with broken reins.
I want to know from them the way out
for this captain stripped down by death.

I want them to show me a lament like a river
wich will have sweet mists and deep shores,
to take the body of Ignacio where it looses itself
without hearing the double planting of the bulls.

Loses itself in the round bull ring of the moon
which feigns in its youth a sad quiet bull,
loses itself in the night without song of fishes
and in the white thicket of frozen smoke.

I don't want to cover his face with handkerchiefs
that he may get used to the death he carries.
Go, Ignacio, feel not the hot bellowing
Sleep, fly, rest: even the sea dies!



4. Absent Soul

The bull does not know you, nor the fig tree,
nor the horses, nor the ants in your own house.
The child and the afternoon do not know you
because you have dead forever.

The shoulder of the stone does not know you
nor the black silk, where you are shuttered.
Your silent memory does not know you
because you have died forever

The autumn will come with small white snails,
misty grapes and clustered hills,
but no one will look into your eyes
because you have died forever.

Because you have died for ever,
like all the dead of the earth,
like all the dead who are forgotten
in a heap of lifeless dogs.

Nobady knows you. No. But I sing of you.
For posterity I sing of your profile and grace.
Of the signal maturity of your understanding.
Of your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth.
Of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety.

It will be a long time, if ever, before there is born
an Andalusian so true, so rich in adventure.
I sing of his elegance with words that groan,
and I remember a sad breeze through the olive trees.

~Federico Garcia Lorca

If his poetry is good translated into english, imagine what it must be like in his own tongue. How could Franco execute such a man?

Another wonderful evening, this one filled with cupcake making. Every time I'm at greg's house, one of his parents, usually his mom, yells up the stairs or down the stairs that i have to be gone by a certain time. Tonight it was eleven. However, this never factors in the reality that it always takes us at least ten minutes to say goodbye. On a good night when his parents don't care, or when he can be persuaded to ignore the time, it can take forty-five minutes. He knows I'm supposed to leave, and he always makes some pathetic attempt to shoo me out, and then I convince him otherwise, and he says at least five times "you really have to go". lol. It's a ritual. I like rituals. Sometimes it's the little things that are the most endearing.

Oh, and we agreed today that if we're not married to anyone in seventeen years, we're getting married. I figured I won't be able to find many other funny, sexy, friendly men who also cook, clean, dress neatly, bathe regularly, like cats, like to shop, and--here's the clincher--always put the toilet seat down. So I'd better stake a claim on him now! :-) It's not like he's exactly getting a bad deal either, anyway. After all, there is only one me!

This is a list of questions that we were given on V-Day by an old man who came in to talk to us about True Love. Basically, this list tells you whether you're really in love, or if you've just got a bad case of "romantic infatuation". I thought it was a pretty good. The guy had a board divided into true love and infatuation, but I don't have that luxury. Oh well.

1. What is the Main Attraction? If it was their money or their body, bad sign. Personality, good sign.
2. What are the number of things that attract you to the other person? If you can only think of a few, bad sign. If you can think of a lot, good sign. This might take longer than some of the other questions; it wasn't something I could just decide instantly in the auditorium while he was talking. I had to sit down and think about it.
3. How did the relationship start? If everything happened really fast, all at once, and two weeks later you're in love, chances are it's just infatuation. If things take longer to develop, better chances it's love.
4. How did it stop? This is not something you can answer during the relationship (duh). But if you didn't really love the person, it ends and you're over it a month or so later, wondering what you saw in him/her. If it was love, you never get over it (well you do, but never completely, even if you love again, which you probably will), and it changes you forever. I'm not sure this is so applicable if someone got really hurt by another person. That might change them forever, and they might never forget it, but that doesn't necessarily mean they loved that person.
5. Is it consistently good? If you're usually pretty good with the other person, outside of regular spats and fights and periods of grouchiness, good sign. If it's all ups and downs, one minute you want them dead, the next you want their pants on the floor, that leans more toward bad. There go all those romance novels--rage and passion do not a happy love match make.
6. How does distance affect things? Can you handle being separated, does that make you appreciate the other person even more? If so, good sign. If you get all impatient and go looking for some ass a week after the other person is gone, very bad sign.
7. How do you see each other? Do you think in idealized forms, like "oooh he's perfect", not seeing the faults? Bad sign. Muy malo. If you recognize the other person's faults, and love them despite their flaws, good sign. Muy bien.
8. How do you handle quarrels? If you break up after arguing over who controls the radio dial--every single week--that's a bad sign. If you try to work things out and don't run away, good sign.
9. What are the attitudes of your friends/family, and how does that affect you? The guy made the excellent point that having your friends and family hate your significant other is RARELY a good sign. These people know you, and want the best for you, and chances are that they're seeing something you're not. Their opinions should matter to you, because you love them back--not that they rule your life, obviously. Anyway, good sign if they like him/her, possible bad sign if they don't; good sign if you care about what they think; possible bad sign if you don't. This is an iffy one, different in each situation, I guess.
10. How does the relationship affect your personality? If being with this person has made you retreat from all your relationships and responsibilites to focus exclusively on them, very bad sign. If your relationship has made you even more complete and well-rounded, good sign.
11. "Feeling Reference". In conversation, when talking about your relationship, do you use "me and her" or "we"? Do you say "I did this, and he did this" or "we did this". If you're using "I", that leans toward lack of committment. If you say "we" more often then not, then you really think of yourselves as a couple, a pair, a team.
12. What's your ego response? Are you selfish toward the other person, or are you unselfish?
13. What's your overall attitude? Kind of the same as the last. Do you percieve your role to be more giving or more taking?
14. Finally, the Jealousy question. Some amount of jealousy is nice; everyone likes to feel loved. However, if the other person freaks when you talk to an ex or just another person of the opposite sex, bad sign. Insecurities ahead! If however, the other person is secure in your affections, they probably love you enough to trust you.

The girl next to me at the assembly said that all of this was common sense. Of course, but in high school, how many people have common sense? It's just nice to have the list, so you can put the questions to yourself. I asked myself all these questions, and I came up with way more "good signs" than "bad signs". I couldn't answer a few things, like how it will end (amicably, I hope), or the distance thing, since the longest we've been apart is when he went to philmont, and what, was I going to hook up with some other random boy scout to keep me warm for a whole two weeks? Plus it was summer. I could keep myself warm. I also wasn't too sure on the I/we thing, mostly because I just can't remember how I talk when I talk about the two of us.

I don't think I needed this list to figure out that I love greg. I knew that already. It was still nice to see that my reasons held up, though. I mentioned it to sara and heather that night, that we'd "passed" and heather immediately said incredulously, "No you didn't!" I don't think she really believes you can love someone at our age. She said pretty much the same thing a long time ago, I remember mentioning it in my Secret of Staying in Love paper. I still believe what I wrote then, that you CAN be in love with someone, even at a young age. It doesn't mean it's the same as the love you'd share if you were older, because as teens we lack the necessary maturity. It doesn't mean the relationship will last forever, even though I'll always care about him. It means that, even as a teenager who knows absolutely nothing about life compared to most adults, you're trying your best to value the happiness of another person above your own. It's tough--we're all still selfish little brats sometimes. But it can be done, and greg and i are doing it! (Not in that sense, before certain friends fly into a protective rage.) That's so cool!

This is a quote from the book which struck me, and I dog-eared the page even though I know my sister will kill me for it.

"The moment was very quiet. He sat looking down at his bloody leg, feeling the gentle wind, the heat from the south, seeing Kilrain dead on a litter, no more the steady presence. Sometimes he believed in a Heaven, mostly he believed in a Heaven; there ought to be a Heaven for young soldiers, especially young soldiers, but just as surely for the old soldiers; there ought to be more than just that metallic end, and then silence, then the worms, and sometimes he believed, mostly he believed, but just this moment he did not believe at all, knew Kilrain was dead and gone forever, that the grin had died and would not reappear, never, there was nothing beyond the sound of the guns but the vast dark, the huge nothing, not even silence, just an end...."

I have read several books in the last couple of days....my old favorite, Howl's Moving Castle, which I have discovered is going to be made into an animated movie by Disney this year. Actually, it's being animated by a Japanese guy, so I hope he doesn't turn Sophie and Howl and the whole land of Ingary into one giant anime landscape. I also read the sequel, Castle in the Air, and another book by the same author, Hexwood, which was mightily confusing and had many time-shifts. Did I mention all of these are books I first loved when i was in fifth or sixth grade? They have the same remarkable quality as do the harry potter books, that you can read them over and over and still love them, no matter how old you are.

I also read the Killer Angels, which was absolutely amazing. I've never been that into anything dealing with the Civil War before. I want to go rent Gettysburg now, which was made off of the book. They're making another movie out of Gods and Generals, but I'm not certain if that was written by the original author or by his son, who wrote the Last Full Measure. We have all these because my sister used to be a big Civil War buff. I opened the Last Full Measure to find that while the son does have literary talent, his writing style is not as appealing as his father's. There was a stream-consciousness feel to it, and a poetic element that i appreciated. The characterizations themselves were incredible. Never before have those old historical names, Lee, Longstreet, Stonewall Jackson been so real and three dimensional. Most touching of all was the story of two great friends, Armistead and Hancock, who would up fighting on opposite sides. The last night their gang was all together, Armistead promised that if he raised a hand against Hancock, may God strike him dead. He is thankful in the book that they have not met on the field of battle during the entire war. However, as he and the Confederate armies march toward Gettysburg, he knows that up on the hill that so many will die trying to capture is his old friend. Armistead is fatally wounded in the last heroic effort known as Pickett's Charge; a Union soldier tells him that Hancock cannot see him because he too has been hit. Armistead dies bitterly; however, Hancock survives the wound, and the war.

A quote from E. M. Forster prefaces the book: "I hate the idea of causes, and if i had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, i hope i should have the guts to betray my country." Isn't that incredible...which does come first? Your loyalty to your family and the people in your community, or to one with whom you share the bond of friendship? I lean towards the friend, of course, but what if you were friends with an Iraqi, and suddenly your countries were at war. Should you not support the war, even if you believed in the cause, because of your friend?

There were dreams last night. None that I can remember really. Dragons, and a forest, and children screaming.....

Another person's blog has gotten me thinking. It's possible to want opposite things at the same time because people are not homogeneous on the inside. Inside, we are strange amalgamations of completely disparate tendencies and desires. We are multifaceted, like the brightest of jewels, and it stands to reason that at different times, different aspects of ourselves will catch the light and make themselves known. Every part has its secret wish. Some parts of me wish that certain things could stay exactly the way they are, forever....and other parts wish i had my own separate universe, where things would be the way i made them, and i could carry out all those secret wishes without consequence.

When I opened the front door tonight and looked out onto the snow that is possible several feet deep on my lawn, I was struck by how similar it all seemed to the rolling sand dunes of the Sahara. The same little peaks and shadowed valleys, the same constant blowing and shifting....just all in silver-white. Beautiful. And then I went out there and blew it all to pieces.

Does this say something about humanity? It seems that we can never appreciate anything without destroying some part of it. We love flowers, and we pick them. We admire the fierce wild beasts, and we catch and cage them. We are awed by the vastness of the world and we set out to explore it, spreading conquest and disease.

Who hasn't felt it, though? That feeling you get sometimes when you come upon something completely pure, pristine; that dirty dangerous feeling, that overwhelming urge to just fuck it all up. Maybe we just can't handle things being perfect. Roald Dahl--great author--expressed this in the book Henry Sugar and Other Stories. He wrote one very short tale about the last really Good Child the world had ever seen. He was courteous, he was respectful, he was neat, he was quiet. And he was murdered by all the other children in the world who were tired of him making them look bad. So it goes.

Wow. I just spent half an hour clearing off the driveway, and now my hands are very red and on fire, and I think the nerves have sort of been slowed down or something, because I feel as though I'm feeling the keys a nanosecond after I've actually hit them. I like the word "suffused"....I think of this now because my fingers are suffused with blood, as my body tries to ward off the frostbite that comes from such outdoor adventures. It is almost a nice feeling, since I have bad circulation or something and my hands are always cold.

This also marked the first time that I've ever used the snowblower! I admit to being a pathetic typical female who usually relies on knowledgeable men for help with such things as cars and various other appliances. Case in point: yesterday my mom instructed me to put oil in my car in preparation for today's storm. I knew many things in this particular instance--where the oil was in the garage, where the little measuring rod for the oil level is, how to check the little rod thing, where the cap to the oil thing is, where the thing is inside my car that pops the hood. You'd think I'd be able--or my mom and i, using our combined intelligence--to successfully put oil in the car. But alas, I was foiled in my single brave attempt by one small but infuriating detail. After one pulls the lever thingee inside the car that pops the hood, you have to put your fingers under the hood, which goes up about one inch, find this metal thing, and yank it backwards, which then causes the rather large hood to fly upwards toward your face with the force of a space rocket. I found this small metal thing, but for the life of me I could not get it to move. There was screaming. There was yelling. There were tears--but only because it was very cold out and I was standing directly in a wind. The solution? I drove down to the gas station, walked in, handed the oil to my old friend Joe and begged him to help me. Of course, possessing that magic little Y chromosome as he does, he managed to get that hood up right quick. No problems for him. Yes ladies, that tiny X-without-a-leg does have some (few) uses. It may not code for any interesting genetic traits, and it may render them unable to put down the toilet seat or scratch themselves only in private, but it sure does come in handy with things involving gears and gasoline and little metal pullee objects. (On the cruel/amusing side, it also sets them up for inheriting all those nasty little sex-linked diseases from their mothers. Duchenne's muscular dystrophy, anyone?)

It's nine fifteen and I'm done with everything that I planned to get done tonight. Tomorrow's going to be really really busy, since I need to get everything ready for friday, finish getting greg's gift together, pick up my paycheck, make some phone calls...thursday will be just as bad, since i have a math test, plus greg and i are exchanging gifts....the exchanging of the gifts it's not bad, i'm quite looking forward to it, but the fitting it into the schedule is trying. i do love him so much though....i hope he likes what i'm doing!! *dances excitedly*i even called upon some old fourth grade st gabe's craft experience. oh yeah. old school, literally.

if i go to bed now, that's more time i can spend in idle daydreams-that-you-have-at-night-before-you're-actually-asleep.

Snow Day! I actually wasn't even looking forward to a school-free day, because I spent three hours helping to decorate our senior hallway for the spirit contest yesterday, and because meghan and i had plans to go out after film club. But, luckily, all was not lost, and we got to spend most of the day/night together anyway! I don't think the mall has been that much fun for me in a long time, and especially not westfarms.

I went into this art gallery when I was waiting for meghan to show up that i'd never even noticed being there before, and they had prints of some of the coolest paintings! There was one in the window of the lady of shallot, but it was a different one than the one i have. I would actually like to buy it, just so i can hang them side by side and compare and contrast. They depict different scenes from the poem; mine is at the pivotal moment of the poem, where she's weaving and then suddenly catches a glimpse of sir lancelot in the mirror, can't resist, and runs to the window. This one showed a later scene, when she's putting herself in the boat to float down the river to camelot to die. Her face is so anguished in this one. Mine's also more colorful, and the Lady is much more beautiful :-) The one in the window had frazzled hair. C'mon, she was supposed to be gorgeous! She should have looked most beautiful and tragic as she was just about to die.

Anyway, other cool stuff happened; we ventured into sephora, which is just overwhelming with cool stuff; we got makeup advice from a gorgeous woman in nordstrom's who looked just like halle berry, as meghan said. and we bought nice makeup things (i will say here that after all this was done, we both looked HOT. we were pleased.) We had dinner at Sbarro's, where we ended up running into Mr. Reese. I was thinking that the guy with the large head in line looked really familiar, and then i realized it was a teacher! I also saw Ryan Clapper earlier, surrounded by a flock of girls; the green jacket with the big N on it caught my eye. Birds of a feather. plus there were fun times had in several bookstores, but meghan knows why those adventures cannot be detailed here.

all in all, a beauteous, relaxing, splendid day spent in fabulous company. May there be many more, just the same.

Yo estoy leyendo "El Alcalde de Zalamea" para el examen de mi clase de espanol manana. En realidad, yo no estoy estudiendo para el examen, porque no doy un shit sobre cual nota que yo sacara. Yo leo, pero no recordo. Y nuestra profesora siempre les engana a nosotros. Como dice Teresa, que malo!

My future is so bright. At least in my imagination.Can reality ever be what I have shaped it to be on the limitless plane of what-i-wish?

I really want to know where it is we're going to be heading on the HILL trip, now that Portugal has been effectively ruled out by the annoying stupidity of one George Dubya. If it's somewhere interesting, and worthwhile, like Puerto Rico or the Southwest, I'll go. But if we wind up taking a bus trip down to Appalachia to do some sort of service project that I could very well do here at home--for less than fifteen hundred dollars--I'm not going to go. And let's not even think about the awful specter of Canada. I haven't worked and saved these past six months to be screwed into some stupid vacation that I could take with my friends on a long weekend.

Fitz is wearing a red polka dot bow tie today. I wonder if he knows Tacky Day was yesterday?

Mr. T told me in HILL that getting my neatly typed exam in his mailbox this morning was a new and enjoyable experience for him. yay! i hope that means he graded it easier.

Second semester having begun, I'm sitting here contemplating my English homework from mrs juda. I actually have a light load since i did somethings last night, and i wrote one essay in my free period today. she assured she yesterday that she knows i can handle this, which i know i can too. it's just that i will curse aloud the evil work she gives, meanwhile enjoying the fact that i can get it all done and do it well. it's like academic olympics!

my doctor actually prescribed ice cream for my throat today. i could have hugged the man, if he weren't one of those antiseptic kinds who looks as though they race for the soap after coming into contact with another germ-bearer. i mean fellow human. hello ben and jerry, my old friends!

they are arranging a senior day for us at school. i was fine with it until i noticed it included prayer--not a bad thing, in itself, but when you combine prayer with the prosyletizing of mrs. gillespie, the whole thing becomes theatrical, a la billy graham. i don't want to sit with a hundred other kids pondering the latest jesus-dote that she has thrown at us, listening to the whispering and feeling the annoyance and boredom rolling off of us in waves. if they wanted to have a senior day that we would remember, let us do the things that have brought us together as a class. i don't recall praying as ever having been one of those. people's conversations with god are more likely to occur on their own, not while they're trying to play footsie with the girl next to them or exchange gossip with their best friends *raises own hand* mrs. gillespie's ineffectual religious proddings are not what i want to remember about high school. she has never inspired me, and in fact, i recall an instance when her ignorance truly angered me, when she suggested to my sister freshman year that i might be suicidal, simply on the basis of a poem i'd written. i have had little interest in her and her precious little campaigns ever since.

I just found out that I'll be spending Valentine's Day alone this year. My boyfriend's family is leaving the fourteenth to go to this family retreat up north for four days. It's ironic that he told me just as I was happily scribbling down ideas and hunting out things online about what to do to celebrate. Maybe it wouldn't have made me feel so shitty if I hadn't at that moment been imagining the perfect valentine's day evening. isn't life grand?

I haven't said much of anything here in a while. Exams are over, except for the HILL one which i must take tomorrow morning on my day off from school, on account of having missed the actual test. bummer. i haven't really studied, since i'm past exam-mode, but everyone said it was pretty easy.

so tuesday begins the last semester of senior year. i'm excited--meghan has first period free now, so we'll have a free together every morning till we graduate! *cheers* plus i'll never have lynch as a teacher again. and now i have mrs. juda, and praise jesus i might actually *learn* something in english class!! i look at invisible man, confined to my bookcase, never to be opened again if god favors me, and i laugh at its pathetic symbolism, its four hundred pages of stream-of-consciousness, its hyperbole, its rite-of-passage bullshit. fuck you, invisible! and fuck you too, stephen dedalus! i never read your damned book, i probably never will, and i'll get an A on that exam just to spite you. i should feel sorry for these literary characters, it's not their faults their creators are so annoying, but i've grown to know and hate them *ok not stephen dedalus, but i hate the idea of him!*, and so i feel nothing for them but contempt. i don't like the feeling of hating a book usually, though; those collections of millions of neatly processed words usually mean a great deal to me, in theory in not always in practice. but not all, not invisible man. i would lock that book up in chains in a dungeon and feed it nothing but water and breadcrusts *books don't eat* and let rats be the only ones to turn its pages. so much for ellison's vision.

Quote of the Day that is Intensely Humorous to One Who Has Read and Hated--or Not Read and Hated-- Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: "Why don't you write books people can read?"
- Nora Joyce to her husband James (1882-1941)

A lot of talk in HILL today about North Korea, Kim Jong II, and this whole nuclear missile mess. Mr T calmly concluded that the whole business will be resolved and forgotten in less than a year. It's interesting how quickly the things which captivate so much of our attention are left by the wayside. Think Elian Gonzalez; think Afghanistan's reconstruction; think the continuing strife in northern ireland. It doesn't all just go away; we just seem to ignore it.

Candy drive begins today, if we get the candy, anyway. The less money I have to give mr tressler *remembers bank account sadly* the better.

I'm only slightly less disturbed today than I was yesterday. The presence of so much evil in the world is nothing less than overwhelming...

Maryann


Her cousins remember her
as friendly
and straightforward;

her friends remember her
as rebellious
and confused.

Her teachers remember her
as a discipline problem.

The police remember her
as a sad story.

The river remembers her
as frightened
and desperate.

Her killers remember her
as an easy lay.

If thirteen years old
is a little young to be a whore,
it’s even younger
to be a statistic.

Maryann was a girl my age. She would have been a senior now, if she hadn't been gang-raped and murdered five years ago by a group of older men with whom she'd been having sex. They killed her because they knew she had finally confessed to her mother what was going on; that she had gone to the police; that they would be arrested. Their girlfriends, jealous of the way their boyfriends looked at the younger rival, encouraged them to get rid of her. First they beat her, then they raped her, then they threw her in the woods like garbage. Finally, they duct taped her, wrapped a chain around her body, and threw her in the Housatonic river. The coroner said she asphyxiated. No one knows exactly when she died.

This happened in 1998. The police have finally arrested the five men responsible for Maryann's death. All of them plead not guilty to a slew of charges including sexual assualt, assualt and battery, kidnapping, murder, and threat of injury to a minor. Two of them face the death penalty if they are convicted.

I sincerely hope that the animals who attacked and killed this little girl do not recieve the death penalty. I hope they are sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. Maybe their hearts will jump for joy if they hear this from the judge's lips, but I'll smile. Maybe they don't know what happens in prison to the kind of criminals who rape little girls, but I do, and it's no less than they deserve.

Update that html, damn server!

I'm going to college next year. Where, I don't know yet; what I'm going to study, I have no idea. What happens after college, I haven't decided yet. However, what is certain and what has always been certain in my life is that I am going to college. It's one of the messages recorded on what SOSIL called "Parent Tapes": You're going to grow up, go to high school, go to a good college, get a good job, get married, have a nice family, and die." This has been altered slightly by my teenage condition, pushing the "get married have a nice family" part back farther and farther. Yet none of it has ever been erased in me; I have never questioned the fact that I will attend college, that I will do well, that I will graduate. These have always been unassailable commandments in my mind, so unassailable that I had never, to this day, seriously considered the possibility of not attending college. So when someone brought up the topic to me today, I was caught completely off my guard. I just didn't understand it. I really thought another friend of mine wasn't serious when she said she really didn't feel like she needed school to teach her, that she wanted to be out in the world living. She said she didn't enjoy school. I couldn't really grasp how that would be so... Now it seems foolish to me that I never realized how many people are completely uncomfortable with the world of academia, that I never considered what I would have done if I weren't the big school buff that I am now. It's like what happened on the HILL trip, when some of us had to be made to understand that everyone doesn't feel and react the same to what we would consider the most basic things, like making friends.

I can't help loving it all, though....the satisfaction of the things I've learned, and the excitement of what I can learn if I want to. I ripped through the Amherst course book when I got it, circling all the classes I wanted to take. I want to take something of everything! literature, art history, creative writing, psychology, criminology, anthropology, archaeology, astronomy...ok, i don't want to take math, science, computer stuff or things of that nature. but I want to explore the "humanities".

A man who regularly comes to Sofia's, whom I like, a retired police officer, told me this past week that if he could live his life over, he would be "a perpetual scholar". I liked that idea, to always be learning...when I'm grown up I still want to be taking classes every once in a while. There will always be new things to learn.

I hope those two people I mentioned, both of whom I love, know that I will love them no matter what their decisions are. I hope they do what's best for them.

I'm going to college next year. Where, I don't know yet; what I'm going to study, I have no idea. What happens after college, I haven't decided yet. However, what is certain and what has always been certain in my life is that I am going to college. It's one of the messages recorded on what SOSIL called "Parent Tapes": You're going to grow up, go to high school, go to a good college, get a good job, get married, have a nice family, and die." This has been altered slightly by my teenage condition, pushing the "get married have a nice family" part back farther and farther. Yet none of it has ever been erased in me; I have never questioned the fact that I will attend college, that I will do well, that I will graduate. These have always been unassailable commandments in my mind, so unassailable that I had never, to this day, seriously considered the possibility of not attending college. So when someone brought up the topic to me today, I was caught completely off my guard. I just didn't understand it. I really thought another friend of mine wasn't serious when she said she really didn't feel like she needed school to teach her, that she wanted to be out in the world living. She said she didn't enjoy school. I couldn't really grasp how that would be so... Now it seems foolish to me that I never realized how many people are completely uncomfortable with the world of academia, that I never considered what I would have done if I weren't the big school buff that I am now. It's like what happened on the HILL trip, when some of us had to be made to understand that everyone doesn't feel and react the same to what we would consider the most basic things, like making friends.

I can't help loving it all, though....the satisfaction of the things I've learned, and the excitement of what I can learn if I want to. I ripped through the Amherst course book when I got it, circling all the classes I wanted to take. I want to take something of everything! literature, art history, creative writing, psychology, criminology, anthropology, archaeology, astronomy...ok, i don't want to take math, science, computer stuff or things of that nature. but I want to explore the "humanities".

A man who regularly comes to Sofia's, whom I like, a retired police officer, told me this past week that if he could live his life over, he would be "a perpetual scholar". I liked that idea, to always be learning...when I'm grown up I still want to be taking classes every once in a while. There will always be new things to learn.

I hope those two people I mentioned, both of whom I love, know that I will love them no matter what their decisions are. I hope they do what's best for them.

Is it bad to feel more grateful for your own life once you understand how much worse someone else's is? I'm not prone to that disease that some of my acquaintances have, who are all competitively trying to convince each other of who has the very worst life. i know i have a nice middle class existence and i'm grateful; i've never been abused, i don't have any diseases that i know of, my family's ok despite the fact that i can't stand my sister; i have a lot of friends and i do well in school. i'm not into any harmful activities and i don't let video games tell me what to do...none of this is especially my doing, of course, just a natural confluence of events that ended with me being me, right here, right now. so why do i feel so guilty reading another teen's journal and listening to him complain about the drugs that he can't stop taking and the loneliness that he can't escape? it's not my fault, and it's not really my problem. i want to help, but there's not that much i can do.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: "One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world."

Tonight I walked out to the parking lot with a girl who is nineteen and pregnant....we walked carefully, because we were treading on diamond sand

Tomorrow it's back to the grind. I can't believe vacation is over so quickly! Sucks that I spent it doing everything but my homework, right. I think this is the first vacation where I haven't missed school at all; possibly because I saw everyone more, and had things to do, unlike the pre-car days, when I couldn't go anywhere I wanted and be out at all hours of the night. Not that we exactly carouse, anyway, although my boss, izzy, appears to be under the assumption that my friends and i are like all the other teenagers who've worked at sofia's: work work work, drink, do drugs, sleep around, maybe go to school a little on our down time. he constantly asks me what i've been doing over the weekend with a paternal air that annoys me no end. and of course, he always finishes by asking "am i annoying you?" in a very sarcastic tone that just dares me to answer yes. but i don't. because i like having money in my pockets on weekends.

one more free night of rest! i'm off to neverland with peter pan....boys in tights are cute.

Tomorrow it's back to the grind. I can't believe vacation is over so quickly! Sucks that I spent it doing everything but my homework, right. I think this is the first vacation where I haven't missed school at all; possibly because I saw everyone more, and had things to do, unlike the pre-car days, when I couldn't go anywhere I wanted and be out at all hours of the night. Not that we exactly carouse, anyway, although my boss, izzy, appears to be under the assumption that my friends and i are like all the other teenagers who've worked at sofia's: work work work, drink, do drugs, sleep around, maybe go to school a little on our down time. he constantly asks me what i've been doing over the weekend with a paternal air that annoys me no end. and of course, he always finishes by asking "am i annoying you?" in a very sarcastic tone that just dares me to answer yes. but i don't. because i like having money in my pockets on weekends.

one more free night of rest! i'm off to neverland with peter pan....boys in tights are cute.

Today I made a choice;
I followed a path
and it took me to a place
of learning
and of loss.

The knowledge came from the faces
that lined the sterile walls;
I dared not think about the pain.

What I found there raised questions
about myself
and others,
but the television we all watched so intently
had but one channel
and no answers.

At the end of an hour,
I had what I'd come for,
and a little more besides;
so back i fled along my chosen path
pursued by that sea of grim faces
mouthing questions to which i had no reply.

I drafted some New Year's Resolutions tonight at work. They run as follows:

~To make the most of my last year at Northwest, and to fashion lots of new memories, ones that will linger in my mind long after the sound of our footsteps has faded from that green linoleum.
~To recognize those things which I cannot or should not have, and let them go.
~To go through my relationships like I'm going through a closet; gettingrid of what no longer fits, setting aside what needs to be mended, and cherishing the all-season favorites.
~To maintain those relationships which mean the most to me, even when we're all split up this fall.
~To remember, as best I can, everything about this time in my life.

"Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed."
- George Burns (1896-1996)
I wish I had that ability. But alas my life more follows what e. e. cummings so sagely noted:
"I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart."

Over the past couple of years, ninety percent of the quotes I've used for just about everything have come from this one website, Qood Quotations from Famous People, which is a loooong list of quotes compiled by some college professor with a degree in computer science. It says at the bottom of the site that when using one of the quotes you have to credit the professor guy. well, i've used about thirty of these, so i owe him a lot of crediting. it's still the best site for quotes i've ever found, perhaps because so many of them are sarcastic.

umm....i'm not sure i like this template either, now that i look at it more. a little too in-the-face for me. poop.

It's now about ten days and counting till jen is removed from the house once more, leaving behind her wonderful tv/vcr/radio for me to play with. it's an awful think to say but sometimes i feel such brimming antipathy toward her that i never want to see her again. and when i repent and think no, that's not true, it's usually only for my mom's sake that i envision her staying in the picture. sigh.

my left hand is warm and working fine, and my right is cold and stiff. why do things like that happen?

testing

new blog style! i couldn't for the life of me get links to show up in the old one, even after i stuck them in every place in the HTML template. it sucks that i lost whatever computer skills i once gained by keeping up all those shameful websites.

my best friend got asked out by the boy she's secretly been adoring! yipee! i love when things like this happen. and it's amusing, because i've been trying to convince her to ask him out herself and not wait around for him to take charge, and she's been insisting that she really wanted him to ask her first, and lo and behold, he did it! a man who is not afraid to call a girl up and ask her to dinner is a rare find in our advanced society. it seems with the advance of feminism and gender equality, a lot of guys no longer feel obliged to take the iniative, preferring to let the girls chase them instead. what most of these boys fail to realize is that equality or no equality, most girls still like being pursued...."wooed" being the old term. personally, i like it both ways, but i'm much more likely to do it myself rather than get frustrated waiting for him to do something.

so it seems that ashley, sandy and annie are not going to europe with us. hilary is; her parents said they wouldn't force her to choose between portugal and martha's vineyard. personally that wouldn't be a conflict for me, since my friends are almost all in the hill class, with the notable exception of my best buddy meg *i love you meghan!* taryn and nicole have become worried about why annie's not going. since she has a bad feeling about it, they're getting a bad feeling about it. i think about it this way: if i die on that plane, at least i'm dying with my friends, instead of staying home and losing all my friends in a fiery plane crash. i think the second would be worse than the first. although naturally i have no plans to die or be harmed in any way while in portugal or en route to portugal! and i don't have a death wish, either, since there's so many things i look forward to in life, and so many people to be thankful for. topping the list right now are my friends and of course my beloved boyfriend greg *i love you greg*

I love that boy so much, it surprises even my cynical mind.

Oh, in other news, I got deferred from harvard. deferment is not a rejection as such, it's more like saying you're good, but they're not sure if it's good enough. that's fine. i think i've gotten over my initial feelings, which were intense disappointment and that awful sensation of being told you're not good enough. i wasn't so much upset that i wasn't definitely going to harvard, i was upset that they looked at me and didn't immediately see someone they wanted. they saw someone they might want, but they weren't sure. i'm not planning to wait around to find out if they graciously decide to accept me in april. fuck it! the guidance women told me "the next step" in this would be to send them a letter thanking them for deferring me and assuring them that i sooooo want to go to harvard. yeeeeaaaaah. i don't want to go there that much. i wanted to get in, that's what i wanted.....and that's not a good enough reason for me to suck up to their admissions people. i'd be lying if i told them that this was really something my dreams depended on. does it sound strange, that i wanted to be admitted more than i wanted to go there? i tried to explain this to someone who doesn't see academics the way that i do, and they didn't understand what the big deal was. i'm sorry....but it's the way i am, the way i was raised, the way i'll probably always be. if they never understand that, that's ok, because i'll never see things their way either. and don't get me started on those people who say that knowledge you get from a book is useless compared to knowledge you get in the "real world". name me one famous philosopher, no matter how radical, who didn't go through a classical education before they thought up their own theories and i'll eat my history book. education provides a framework and a foundation upon which rational thought and creativity are based. nietzsche was a professor of philology, whatever the hell that is. kierkegaard had a doctorate in philosophy. descartes taught geometry at the sorbonne and later to queen christina of sweden. they didn't get to high school and declare the subjects taught them mundane and unworthy of study. wisdom might be found by the experienced mind, but it's the educated mind that puts it to use. and yes, the things they are making us study, like the global economy and NAFTA and the WTO and GATT, are horribly boring and make my head hurt. but they're necessary to understand the world we live in. we can't insulate ourselves from reality.

I love that boy so much, it surprises even my cynical mind.

Oh, in other news, I got deferred from harvard. deferment is not a rejection as such, it's more like saying you're good, but they're not sure if it's good enough. that's fine. i think i've gotten over my initial feelings, which were intense disappointment and that awful sensation of being told you're not good enough. i wasn't so much upset that i wasn't definitely going to harvard, i was upset that they looked at me and didn't immediately see someone they wanted. they saw someone they might want, but they weren't sure. i'm not planning to wait around to find out if they graciously decide to accept me in april. fuck it! the guidance women told me "the next step" in this would be to send them a letter thanking them for deferring me and assuring them that i sooooo want to go to harvard. yeeeeaaaaah. i don't want to go there that much. i wanted to get in, that's what i wanted.....and that's not a good enough reason for me to suck up to their admissions people. i'd be lying if i told them that this was really something my dreams depended on. does it sound strange, that i wanted to be admitted more than i wanted to go there? i tried to explain this to someone who doesn't see academics the way that i do, and they didn't understand what the big deal was. i'm sorry....but it's the way i am, the way i was raised, the way i'll probably always be. if they never understand that, that's ok, because i'll never see things their way either. and don't get me started on those people who say that knowledge you get from a book is useless compared to knowledge you get in the "real world". name me one famous philosopher, no matter how radical, who didn't go through a classical education before they thought up their own theories and i'll eat my history book. education provides a framework and a foundation upon which rational thought and creativity are based. nietzsche was a professor of philology, whatever the hell that is. kierkegaard had a doctorate in philosophy. descartes taught geometry at the sorbonne and later to queen christina of sweden. they didn't get to high school and declare the subjects taught them mundane and unworthy of study. wisdom might be found by the experienced mind, but it's the educated mind that puts it to use. and yes, the things they are making us study, like the global economy and NAFTA and the WTO and GATT, are horribly boring and make my head hurt. but they're necessary to understand the world we live in. we can't insulate ourselves from reality.

footsteps and the dirty streets


empty hallways
slow walks and
my feet hit the ground
softly
and i saw the winter today
and i saw it was beautiful
the streets may be dirty
but so is life and so are life's lessons
and it touched me
i knew it all then
i knew she loves me
i never had doubt before but now i'm sure
i would cry for her
and i saw the winter today
it all sounds so simple
so i saw it all and i knew then
so i saw it all and it reached out to me
and i walk on this dirty ground
and i walk through these hallways
and my life is this love i have
it is everything
and all the times i thought about suicide
were so wrong
and i was wrong
so i admit i was wrong about it all
so my sadness is fading day by day
so i can not see what lies behind
and the future is clearer
and i knew she loves me
and i knew i love her so much
and i saw the winter today
almost for the first time
and i saw it was beautiful
i walk the dirty streets
my feet hit the ground
softly
and they make the sound of life
and i saw it was beautiful

~greg paul

Today is the day I find out whether or not i have been accepted to harvard. At some point this morning, an email will go out in cambridge that could possibly affect thecourse of my life. isn't that an odd thought? thecontents of this email will definitely affect me. i just don't know how, yet. if i've been accepted, i'll rejoice, but then i will face the decision of whether or not i really want to go to harvard. if i'm not accepted, then i have the joyous task of dealing with such self-recriminations and disappointment that naturally accompanies such rejections.

meghan made me a support basket of stuff to cheer me if i dont get in and make me happier if i do. she made popcorn and brownies and there's lotion anda cosmogirl and a scrapbook of attractive men for me to look at. and two letters--one for if i get in and one for if i dont.

oh yes, the math test. i should go study now. you know, in case i do go to harvard and i somehow need to know logarithms.

The school's internet blocking software has just informed me that i cannot check my email here because it contains "adult content". is it my fault i get all those porn emails? i shouldn't be barred from checking my email illegally during classes just because of a few emails about penis enlargement thrown in among the herbal remedies and home mortgages ads.

meow.... mrs. juda's hot teaching assistant guy just walked in. he goes to the university of hartford, so i'm told. he looks like freddy prinze jr!

Greg lent me his Modest Mouse cd last night. I like the songs i head this morning on the way to school more than the ones i heard before. I should ask him the name of that norwegian band and have meghan dl some of their stuff. it sounded like something she would enjoy, or rae.

God bless ye merry gentlemen, let nothing ye dismay....

contrary to both what i have read on other corners of the internet and what i have sometimes myself said, i don't hate people. people make the world interesting. sadly we cannot pick and choose with which humans we share the planet, so we have to take the good, the bad and the ugly all at one go. sometimes it's harder to put up with the good people than the bad. and ugly people can be so nice.

How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways


I love you with a beard
and I love you clean-shaven.
I love you in your cords
and in your baggy jeans,
in your Boy Scout socks
and your big floppy sneakers.
I loved you in your old white van,
and I love you in your “coffin mobile”.
I love you when I haven’t seen you in a week
and when I see you every day.
I love you online, on the phone
and most of all, in person.

I love you in Starbucks, Borders, Friendly’s,
and all those places we hang out.
I love you as a housecat
and as a jungle cat.
I love you when you’re smiling
and when you’re not,
when you’re relaxed
and when you’re frustrated.
I love you in your basement
and in your bedroom.

I love you when you’re listening,
and when you tune me out.
I love you when you sing in the car,
and when you play air drums.
I love you dressed
and undressed.
I love you in my thoughts, my dreams
and my fantasies.

I love you when I think of how much you love me.

So I was reading greg's blog this morning, lacking once again any kind of real schoolwork/research to be doing on this computer, and there's a truly frightening picture of me on there! I look somewhat demonic, to my mind, and not even in the cool way. I have a phobia when it comes to pictures of me. No, phobia isn't the right word.....more like a deep and abiding hatred of any image of me captured on film. It comes, naturally, from all those years that I don't speak of, and those pictures which have long since been shredded, to the perpetual annoyance of my mother.

I sense a lot of bitterness and anger on greg's site. it's not something i can fully understand, never having been treated in the same fashion by someone, but i do understand that bottling it up never helps. it just sits and festers and grows even more terrible in your own mind, until when you finally do release your emotions, they're a thousand times more vitriolic than they were in the beginning. i have a problem with that, and i've tried to work on it in the past. so far i'm doing ok i think, but there's still that one big thing that i can't talk about to anyone else. i mean i can, and i do, but they don't have the understanding of the situation that they'd need to make me feel comfortable talking about it. i always feel as though i have to keep clarifying and making explanations so they don't get the wrong idea. and of course i never discuss this with jen or mom, jen because she's too fragile emotionally when it comes to the topic of dad and mom because i feel as though it would make her think im heartless. sometimes it feels as though i can only have honest discussions about him with myself. i can't even write down what i feel because there are too many emotions, and the guilt that follows some of those emotions, and then the sadness that just overpowers everything. how can i reconcile all the ways i feel? the fact that sometimes i think of him and i want him back so bad i'd give up everything on this earth to see him again with the fact that sometimes i look at the way things turned out and i'm glad? how do i reconcile the desire to have him in my life with the knowledge that i wouldn't have my life as it is now if he were here. i wouldn't be this free. i know i wouldn't be this happy. i know he probably wouldn't have been happy.

and how exactly do i reconcile my memories....the way he was when i was younger with the way he was before he died. i read his journal the other day--it was full of love and happiness. he ended every entry with "i love them all so much". he sounded like he knew what he meant to us. the voice on that tape i have is full of amusement, full of a smile! how do i reconcile that against the memory of the man who was so often sick and tired and not satisfied with his life? just thinking about it makes me want to cry again. and i can't stop, i never stop feeling guilty. maybe one day i'll have forgotten all this but i still won't have forgiven myself for the things i did, and above all the things i didn't do, didn't say, didn't understand. and then people tell me that they don't believe in an afterlife, that we just float away into cosmic debris and vanish and it makes me sad and it makes me ANGRY. how dare they say that to me? don't they understand how much i need to beleive i'll see him again someday! that i'll have a chance to make it up to him, and explain, and have a chance to be happy? don't they know how much it means to me think that he's up there somewhere, happier than he ever could have been here, and being proud of me for what i've done? i don't want their depressing theories about the transitory nature of human existence. fuck it!! i don't care, i don't need it, i don't want to listen to it!

and now it comes back to what it always does. me sitting here, staring out the window with tears burning my eyes and thinking the same thing over and over and over and over.... "I'm sorry." I'm sorry for who I was, and who I wasn't. I'm sorry for it all.

Why oh why can i never get beyond this.

I skipped school today heeheehee!!

Greg just left my house, slightly late for his 1030 curfew for the evening. i hope none of my nosy neighbors noticed (was that assonance or alliteration?), though my mmom kinda sorta knew he was coming. as in, i told her, and she said ok, but then i told her he wasnt, but then he ended up coming anyway. *laughs at private joke* he tells me that i'm more sensitive to smells than other girls, both good ones, like his hair, and bad ones, like BO. i think this is true, because now that i have time to think about it, i place a lot of importance on the way something smells. when i was a kid, i used to smell-test my mom's new dishes before i would ever taste them. if it didnt smell ok to me, i wouldnt try it. used to piss the crap out of my mom. then there's my dad's old cologne, canoe...we have the last bottle that he didnt finish; sometimes i open it and it reminds me of sunday mornings, him getting ready for church in his room, slapping on the old spice and smelling strongly of cologne. (it's interesting that although i loved cologne on my dad i hate it on other guys. ) sometimes it even reminds me of waking up for school when it was still dark, walking into my parents rooom, where the lights would still be off so my mom could sleep, and finding my dad rushing through his bathroom routine because he was late getting up. i wonder if the smell comforts my mom the same way.
then there's just the host of other things that i absolutely love to smell for no good reason, such as gas, wet ink from old school printers, shoe polish, etc. i can always detect the odor of something before my mom or my sister can, though my mom claims to have a chronically disabled nose. so maybe greg was right about my fantabulous powers of smell! i am Super-Smeller! I can smell evil-doing a mile away! muahahahahaha!! heehee but my heightened olfactory abilities don't make me adore him any less when he's stinky. i don't know what it is; on any other guy, perspiration and BO is absolutely gross, get the fuck away from me gross. on greg, though, it just smells like him, and it's ok. i'd rather be smelling greg stinky than another guy clean!

greg's father just called and asked me to "send gregory home, ok?" in a very authoritarian tone of voice. it's as though he thinks bad things could be occurring! what does he take me for, a woman of ill fame? it's not like i'm going to tie him down and rape him or anything, although as greg so often points out, one cannot rape the willing.

yawwwn it would appear all my friends have lives this friday night. no one's online. and i'm getting hungry now anyway, since i had dinner which was in the oven cooking, but then greg came over really early and i ended up abandoning it. tootle-loo

This post is expressly designed to postpone even further the beginnning of studying for the biology test. the last period of the last day before the weekend, and before the semi, and we have to spend it furiously regurgitating factoids about respiration and glycolysis and thylakoid membranes. who comes up with these scientific names, i don't know. personally, i am much more fond of the approach taken by scientists observing apoptosis, programmed cell death. after observing the globular breakdown of the dying cells, one of them said "hey, that looks like a bleb!" bleb is not a real word, but it stuck, and so the process by which a cell self destructs and is consumed by neighboring cells is known officially as "blebbing".

I suppose the inevitable may be put off no longer....here i go

Yawn. Today is a good morning, though indescribably cold. Why can't dress clothes be made of something warm, like fleece? Or flannel? I've been reduced to wearing nylons for the first time in recent memory. I hate nylons. They inhibt movement and if you put your hand on your own leg it feels like you're touching an alien skin. Creepy.
I meant to come online last night and record the most amusing thing which greg said last night, but then i got tired and went to bed at ten o clock instead. Imagine! me in bed at 10! it was refreshing, i must say. oh look-- "there's my poppy!" :-)
Our school just got a bunch of new computers, pentium 4s with windows xp and the most delightful little keyboards. not annoying at all! i could sit here and type all the day long, except we only have three more minutes of first period. oh well.

Corny joke: A mushroom walks into a room and says "Hey everybody, I'm a fun guy!"