This is a paper that i wrote for creative mind, about a moment that changed my life. warning--sadness ahead.

When people speak about “moments” their lives, rarely do they mean it quantitatively; rather than a precise second, they are referring to a relatively short period of time that has become encapsulated in their memory. A “moment” that changed a person’s life might occur in a minute, a day, or a week. The ramifications of the event can be immediate and drastic; other times they are more gradual, revealing themselves over time. Whatever the case, a life-altering moment is usually a time of great upheaval, a time when the entire world is turned on its ear.
My world turned on its ear when I was fourteen years old, the day my father died of a heart attack. It was a pleasant Saturday in April, around noontime. A typical teen, I came home with my mother from an orthodontic appointment, went upstairs briefly to take off my coat, and then assumed my customary position in front of the computer. A few minutes later I heard a huge crash from above. I thought then that perhaps my dad had fallen in the shower, which would have been difficult, since his shower stall did not have a bathtub and he was a large man. Seconds later, though, my mother’s shrill scream cut through the house, and I raced upstairs to find her in the bedroom. My father had collapsed. He lay on the white tiles of the bathroom, his dark skin an unusual grayish tone. My mother, a nurse, would later tell me that it was his skin color that told her that it was too late. His eyes bulged open, and his breath was ragged, coming in spasmic wheezes. My mother screamed at me to call 911 and I did so, dialing the numbers like I’d been trained to do since childhood in case of an emergency. Strangely, at this panicked moment, I was actually reminded of all those times when I had wanted to call 911 and then hang up, just to see what would happen, even though I knew it was wrong. I had never dreamed that I would get my wish like this.
I don’t really remember dragging my dad into the bedroom. I remember my mother, the nurse, telling me the paramedics would need room to work on him. Somehow, between the two of us we managed to maneuver him next to the bed, despite the fact that he weighed well over two hundred pounds. My father continued to gasp spasmodically. (I later learned from the paramedics that his heart had entered an arrhythmic state, beating wildly for a few seconds, then almost stopping entirely). His eyes were open, but he was looking past me, not at me.
When the paramedics arrived they told my mother and I to stay in the hallway. My mom went into the kitchen to use the phone. I went outside, crying hysterically. I circled the house three or four times, praying to God that he would be ok. As is typical of anyone who is about to lose someone they love, I offered God everything I could think of, if he would only save my father. Then I went back inside and slumped in the hallway outside my parents’ bedroom. I wasn’t supposed to be there; they didn’t want me to watch them trying to resuscitate him. After a while they loaded him onto a stretcher and put him in the ambulance. They were still defibrillating him at that point. No one told us whether he was going to be alright, but a part of me assumed that since they were taking him to the hospital, they had not yet given up. Someone there would save him.
When we arrived at the hospital, we had trouble finding out where he was or what was going on. One of the police officers had failed to give the hospital my father’s name and address. Finally we were herded into a small waiting room and told someone would brief us in a moment. I should have known then, probably. I’m sure my mother did. I should have known when the doctor entered without a smile on his face. But there’s no way to accept something like that, when you want so desperately to believe that it can’t possibly be happening to you.
But happen it did, in the form of those dreaded words from the doctor’s mouth—“We did everything we could. I’m sorry.” I remember sitting there dumbfounded, while my sister flew into a hysterical rage, screaming that the doctor was a liar. My mother said nothing. As soon as the doctor had left she reached for the phone, saying she had to call my grandfather, my aunts, and let them know. I asked her if she wanted me to do it, for at this point I was strangely calm, but she said no, it was something she had to do. I don’t remember the exact words she used when she had my grandfather on the phone, but I remember hearing his cry of pain when he was told that his only son was gone.
While my mother was half-crying, half-talking, I got up and walked out. I needed to be away from then right then, for it to sink in even a little bit. I remember looking across the hall and seeing another family, wearing tense expressions. They looked at me with fear in their eyes because of what I represented—the very worst, come to pass.
Somehow I managed to wander all the way across the hospital to the gift shop, where I randomly bought candy, thinking somehow that my mom would be hungry. My mother was worried by the time I returned. Someone told me that I could see him now, if I wanted to. She guided me to a small room with the blinds drawn over the windows. My sister was just leaving, with a minister whom she had asked to perform the last rites. Even at that moment, this little gesture struck me as ironic, because my mother was always chiding him for being a lapsed Catholic. The nurse asked if I wanted her to go in with me, but I said no.
I think even to the point where I opened the door, I was half-hoping that there had been some terrible mistake, that he would be sitting up in bed, a little tired but none the worse for wear. I went in, and saw him lying there on a narrow hospital bed, covered to the shoulders with a white sheet, and even then it didn’t strike me that my father was well and truly gone. The thought that perhaps he was only sleeping, and they had forgotten to check, crossed my mind briefly. I didn’t stay long with him. I kissed him on the cheek, which was grizzled like always in the morning. I so rarely kissed him when he was alive; back then I was just a stupid teenager who wanted to pretend her parents didn’t exist. He was still warm when I touched him. I remember the pain in my mother’s eyes when I told her that later; she said she hadn’t kissed him goodbye because she thought he would be cold, and she didn’t want to remember him like that.
After the hospital, we went home. We all had calls to make. The first thing we did together, strangely, was to go into my parents’ bedroom and start going through his things, making piles of clothes to be donated and things to be saved. It was just something to do, at that point, some way to keep going. I remember my mom telling my sister and I repeatedly how much he loved us, as though it was a point that needed to be driven home quickly, before any of us forgot.
Our relationships with our dad were complicated, to say the least. There was a lot of fighting. I would only find out later how much stress and pressure my father was under, both from his job as a manager at a nuclear power plant, and his own personal expectations of what his life should have been, and wasn’t. He also had problems controlling his anger; sometimes, after a long day at work and the hour-and-a-half commute home, he would fly into a rage over a sock or hanger left on the floor. He was also a perfectionist, and he couldn’t understand it when my sister and I did poorly in something. My father, the math and science whiz, didn’t accept Cs in math. Even Bs were looked down upon; it was the As that mattered. My sister had more of a struggle with this than I did; three years older than I, she had never fared well in her math classes, and this was the subject of many a screaming match between the two of them.
A lot of my father’s behavior stemmed from the pressures his life put on him, combined with his health problems, but when I was fourteen I knew nothing about any of it. All I knew was that my dad could be a royal asshole a lot of the time, a paranoiac and a control freak. So many times I told him I hated him, or that I would never raise my children the way he raised us. I never tried to understand him. I couldn’t have, back then, at fourteen, when I barely had any idea who I really was, but I never even tried. Before he died, my dad told my mom that he considered himself a failure. He was worried about losing his job, and ashamed that he hadn’t become a vice president like he should have, on account of the fact that he had always refused to kiss up to anyone. This has always struck me as the greatest tragedy of his life, that he died believing this. It was so far from the truth.
The day after my father died I sat down and wrote. My mother wanted me to write something to put on the back of the little cards they give out at wakes. Rereading that now, it seems very juvenile, but at the time there was barely anyone who could read it without crying. Most people thought there was something wrong with me, back then, because I didn’t cry a lot. My friend Heather, who had actually never met my dad, cried more than I did at the wake. Seeing him there in the casket that I helped choose wasn’t really hard for me, since my mother had arranged for those of his organs which were still usable, despite his diabetes, to be transplanted. They took his eyes, his veins, his skin. He looked nothing like himself. The only point at which I cried was when his fellow Masons performed their version of last rites, lining up to each place a sprig of evergreen, a symbol of eternal life, in his coffin. One of them later told me that he had never seen a greater turnout of brothers at a Masonic wake. When they all wanted to tell me, as they went down the line, what a wonderful, intelligent, humorous man my father had been, I couldn’t help but feel cheated. These men got to know him, got to really talk to him, and I never did. I remembered his sense of humor, of course. He could be so hysterically funny, with his little skits and voices and sarcastic observations. But all my good memories must contend with all the bad feelings, all the resentment and anger. Fourteen is too young to know your parents.
I could write volumes about what happened after my dad died. I never went to therapy, though a lot of people suggested to my mother that I do so. I never liked the thought of psychiatrists, and I didn’t feel like I needed one, anyway. I had amazing friends who helped me keep going. My friend Sara was the only one who could really understand, having lost her father when she was eight. She knew what it was like to feel different from other families, to not be able to celebrate Father’s Day, to feel strangely apart from other kids our age.
My sister was not so lucky; not only did she not have very many friends at that point, she also suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome. We rarely talk about him with each other. Jen and I didn’t get along while he was alive, even though he always warned us that when he and my mom were gone, we would only have each other. I talk about him with my mother, though. We’ve had many a long talk about my father’s life, about his mental and physical state when he died, about all the bad times as well as about the good. My mom has come to the conclusion that all really is for the best, and I agree with her. She pointed out that my father’s health was deteriorating, and he had lost his job, he just wouldn’t have been able to take that humiliation. I also know that if my father had lived, I would never have enjoyed the level of freedom that I did for the rest of high school. My mom is a nurse who works second shift; once my sister left for college, I was by myself much of the time. I learned to make my own choices and be truly independent. My dad would never have let me date while I was in high school, or be out late with friends. He required all plans to be finalized at least two days in advance, which is hardly the way my friends and I do things now. He never would have let me drive his precious Chevy Tahoe, which I do. If my father had lived I doubt our relationship would have improved; maybe ten or fifteen years down the line, when I was grown up and free of him, but there would have been many more bad memories in between.
My feelings about my dad’s death haven’t sorted themselves out yet, even now, three and a half years after his death. There will always be times when the grief wells up again, and the terrible sense of loss threatens to overwhelm me. It happened while I was writing this paper, even though I have revisited the events of April 15th, 2000 many a time, and it will probably continue for the rest of my life. It’s hard to know that my dad will never see me graduate college or be married, to know that to my children, Joseph DiMarzo will just be a ghostly recollection, lacking any real substance, just in the way my mother’s father is to me.
Perhaps the worst part of it all is the uncertainty, the part of me that desperately wants to know if I will ever see my father again. I was well on my way to not believing in Catholicism back at fourteen. I still believe in God, and I don’t harbor any anger against Him for what happened, but I have never been able to figure out what I believe in terms of heaven. The idea of reincarnation always appealed to me, but more in an aesthetic sense rather than a dogmatic one. I want to believe that I will see him again, and be able to explain and make up for all the things I said or didn’t say, but there are times when I doubt. Above all, I want to know if I will ever have the chance to tell him I love him, and that he wasn’t a failure, but the best father he could have been under the circumstances. I want to show him the people that Jen and I have become and tell him that it was his example that drove us to excel, his memory that kept us reaching for the top.
Just a few nights ago, on Halloween, my mother visited a medium. It was her birthday, and she wanted to do something fun. The first person the medium “saw” was a man who had respiratory problems (my father apparently had asthma) and who had died very suddenly. All this man, ostensibly my father, wanted my mom to know was the he was “safe”. I’m not sure how much I believe in psychics, and my mom doesn’t really either, but it was still somewhat of a comfort to hear that said.
In the three years since my father died, I have changed so much that sometimes I wonder if he would even recognize me. When he left I was a rather ungainly teen with self-esteem issues; now I’m an independent college student, and I know just what I’m capable of. I was a writer back then, of poetry and short stories, and I remember my father constantly encouraging me, telling me how talented I was. (Though a brilliant man, he could hardly spell; I always found that amusing). Though my poems today rarely touch upon him, I know that I have been profoundly shaped by his influence. How ironic that in so many ways, my father’s death taught me just as much as his life.

This is drunk dialogue from melissa's profile:

Me: What up death?? (LL Cool J style man)
Death: I have a girlfriend
Me: Ok! (Walks away)

apparently she tried to get with death himself. lol. or someone in a death costume, whatever. i don't know, ithought that was funny. entirely too much in the sugar department tonight/this morning.

One more week, and then it's party time. WHOOT!!!! heather's coming to stay over thursday, and possibly she can find love with another fairfield male? friday it's back to windsor, and having a car, and going to LAZERTAG and hanging out with my maties jess and melissa. i miss emily. that girl needs to come home from boston more often. more specifically, when i am there. then saturday heather and i are going to leave at the ass-crack of dawn to have the greatest possible amount of time with our beloved sara, whom i hear got fined for being in a boy's bed at 2am in the morning! gasp! (apparently providence security is like the gestapo when it comes to looking for the boys and the coed-ing. meep.) sadly we will not be going to the foxy lady as sara believes it's 21 and up. that's fine, we can hit the gold club anytime at home now :-) heehee. so now maybe we can do that drive in movie thing! and i have to visit the mall, not simply because it's a mall and it's big but because it's amanda's birthday that sunday!!! hip hip hooray! it's providence's parents weekend and sara was sad because she'll have less of a chance to show us off to her friends. heehee *blush*. she already has a gay guy lined up for heather to meet and add to her harem. we also might meet up with khara, since she's down in providence too. then after alllll of that i have one more night with flanny. this is going to be great, but i had better get EVERYTHING done by wednesday or i'm going to die!! aaaah!!

after this weekend it's only a few short weeks till thanksgiving break. and that class reunion thing. i have no real interest in going anymore! i'm sure i'll see the people i want to. i don't want to do the "aww, it's those guys we used to like" or "aww, that girl i barely talked to who now loves me." i have better things to do with my time. although jess and melissa aren't going to be around at all, but that's ok for them because they're going where? VENICE, AUSTRIA and GERMANY, baby! i have put in a request for a little bit o' german chocolate, which i remember from grade school days, my friend erika pescik bringing me back some. it was delicious. yes, so even though i will miss ye, phantom and stoner, i'll know you're having crazy times. i'm not sure i could handle venice, on consideration. i realized i have a real thing about tripping and falling; i tend to look at the ground a lot, especially if i'm going down stairs. i think i'd be really freaked out with the climbing in and out of gondolas, what with me always dropping stuff. anyway but i hope they have fun, and meet some hot foreigners because we all know how fun that is :-) god i can't wait to study abroad. MEN.

i'm also looking forward to seeing ashley, cause i miss her.....her sardonic personality, that crazy grin. my friend tall lauren here reminds me of her somewhat. rae you too, i'm sorry that we can't see you when we're home this weekend. :-( so close, yet so far! one of these days when i'm really feeling like driving, i'll haul ass up to wellesley. harvard boys. mmmmm....and the coop, because i'm a sucker for bookstores that look different than the average borders, and yes i do remember the little restaurant we ate at that she mentioned on her blog.

oh yeah, and I SAW PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN!!! AGAIN!! fourth time baby, and it's STILL FUCKING WONDERFUL!! and daht's friend sinead is here from quinnipiac....i think melissa's applying there. i think she should go to sacred heart or something, so she can be in the same town as ME. (it's strange how things work out....like two years ago, melissa was kinda just jessi's sister who was really nice, and now she's one of my coolest friends!) ok well now it's time to fetch my laundry. you'd THINk that doing laundry on a saturday at mdnight would be a good idea, but no, it's packed. yarr.

It's early morning, and I should probably go to bed. actually i just watched halloween H20 and some of "shadow of the vampire", so sleep might be slightly elusive. and now there's all this crashing and banging in the hallway. i'm not in dolan, so it can't be the dead nun. i bet it's jimmy. at this time of night, it's always jimmy.

tonight was halloween, which was pretty fun. i love my pirate costume. i got accosted by three drunk people, one of whom started throwing up like five seconds after she started to talk to me, another who's in my spanish class and wanted to let everybody in the whole world know that we were in the same spanish class, and then one other guy who kept calling me mike and telling me i looked beautiful. cough. yeah. i talked to my mom on the phone and she told me two things. one, she got her hair highlighted BLONDE. christ. i'll need to call melissa and find out how this looks. second, she went to visit a medium tonight! this was totally unexpected from my mother, whom i have never seen as much of a believer in the occult, though she did forbid me from using ouija boards as a child and liked to read ghost stories. anyway she heard about it on the radio, it was free and she wanted to do something fun on her birthday, so off she went. the first thing the guy told her was that he saw a man with respiratory problems. i didn't think we knew anyone with that description, but then my mom told me that my dad had some chronic respiratory thing going on, plus his autopsy revealed he had asthma. the seer or whatnot said this man had died a very sudden death, at which point my mom decided that it must be my dad. the guy said my dad wanted my mom to know that he was "safe", whatever that means. next he told my mom he saw a woman who had died from cancer, and he guessed that it was her mother. heasked (apparently it was my nana asking, really ) if my mom hadn't gotten along with her mother, if she had been angry with her, and my mom said yes. he asked if she was still angry, and my mom said yes again. then he told her that her mother wanted her to know that she was very sorry for all that she had done to her, and that she had suffered a lot in her life, and that influenced how she behaved towards my mom. eerily, the guy also said that my nana said to "give her love to john"; john was the most beloved of my nana's three sons. in addition to all this, the medium said he saw a man who was surrounded by alchohol. my mom said she didnt know anyone like that, but he insisted, saying it was so strong he could smell it on him. now, my grandfather has of late been of the opinion that he "knows" my other grandfather was an alchoholic, that my dad told him so. my mom scoffs at that, but my aunts claimed to have heard that as well. i have no idea how my dad would have known, since my mom doesnt seem to, nd her father died when she was five, of a heart attack. hmm....pattern here? anyway that still got my mother wondering.

i was amused that my mother's one encounter with a psychic seems to have been more fruitful than my three of last evening. my mother believes that this man was credible. incidentally, she asked him about my grandmother, my father's mom, and he said that she wasn't around, that only those who have a message for the living are visible to him. i felt oddly disappointed when she related that to me. i don't even know if i entirely believe in this stuff, but i would have liked to think that my grandma would have something to say to me. maybe she was content with life as she left it; after all, her goal was to see all her grandchildren, and after anthony i doubt there'll be any more. i hope this gave my mom some sort of reassurance about my dad. i wonder if she's been wondering the way i have. i have no idea about the status of my father's faith, but i know he never receieved communion and he never confessed. i must have trouble believing this, because i'm sure i should be feeling some huge sense of relief at knowing he's ok, he's not nowhere, he's safe. but i'm not. maybe because i wasn't there. i'm tempted now to visit a medium myself, to see if my father says anything. he's really the only one i want to contact up there. but i do want to believe that he is safe. dear god, how much do i want to believe that.

Am I the only person disturbed by those who use their cellphones in bathroom stalls? unless there's some kind of miraculously wonderful reception in there, which i doubt, turn them OFF for five seconds! Ewwww!!

Weeeeeeeell. Very interesting. I just came back from the psychic fair at the Oak Room, where i had my palm read, tarot cards cast, and a numerology profile done. i guess i'm not sure how i feel about this. in terms of tarot cards i know it's a load of bull--it's entirely by chance what cards are cast, and they can change each time. palm reading i'm a little more inclined towards, but after the very nice guy told me and lauren and andrew that we all had a very rare line indicating fabulous wealth, i have my doubts. he did say some intriguing things, though. he said i will have two hugely important romantic relationships in my life, which might even be the same person with a split in the middle, and that i've already had one big one, but it wasn't as important as the future ones will be. hmmm....would that be greg? methinks so. he also said in regards to my health that when i'm around fifty i'll have one major health issue, but i'll recover completely. maybe i'll be like my dad and have a heart attack at fifty, who knows? the tarot woman was crap. she kept changing things when i didn't agree. she told me i was infatuated with someone; i said no, that i'd just broken up, and she said then i must still be into him. andrew was actually right there, but i still said no, i definitely wasn't interested in that way anymore. she didn't look like she believed me. later she said i hated my roommate, then switched to "oh you'll be friends forever" when i said i loved her! the last one was the numerology guy here. i tricked him, i think, when i asked about my relationship with men, specifically my dad. he told me that men find me very independent and intimidating, and hard to approach, and that i'm difficult to read in terms of my emotions. he also told me that my father would prefer me to remain his little girl, so i should hug him more often. HMMMMMM. i refrained from informing him that that would be a little difficult. however, this guy also told me that i'm creative and a leader, that i'm a packrat, and that i was slothful in a past life! lol. he told lauren that she was evil--he compared her to hitler. and dahts thinks she has no soul, no faith and no trust in others, after her encounter with a psychic tonight. in conclusion, this is basically a bunch of bull. yes, i read my horoscope, and i marvel when it connects to my life, but i don't believe that i'm ruled by planetary bodies. puhhhh-lease.

This is amazing--I have just experienced a sighting of the famously invisible President of Fairfield Uuniversity, Fr. Aloysius P. Kelly! It's almost ironic that i've worked in this building for almost two months, right next to his office, and yet i've never seen the man. lol. he's resigning after this year though. i guess 25 years of being president is enough. hmmm, i wonder if the next jesuit will be a little more visible? :-)

this is a little odd. i wrote a response for english class to brian torff's performance/lecture, and since he talked about his his art helped him through the death of his father when he was 15, i wrote about how writing helped me through the same thing. then in the margin next to that, my teacher wrote "oh no!" lol. it was so strange. but she also said that i'm a born writer and that she wants to read more of my poetry! yipee. i really like her, despite that little thing.

I see that melissa made me a new away message of her own devising. lol. that was nice of her. that girl is just so darned sweet, she even made my bed nd wendy's bed before she left! melly you rock my metaphorical socks, as we say here at FU. i was so excited, i got be briefly be spoiled this morning and drive melissa's car to work so i didn't have to walk to bellarmine in the rain. yeah i felt cool, i was listening to phantom and having a car that can actually maneuver, for all of five minutes. :-) i'm back at work now, actually, for the afternoon, and i've got my favorite assignment--sitting at the front desk and doing jack shit online and getting paid to do so. i must say that i love this house. not so much the upstairs admissions part, because they entirely remodeled it to be like any other office, but in the main foyer and the great hall and here in what i guess counts as the living room, it's so elegant. the front desk is in a corner of the living room, right next tothese heavy wooden doors that open onto the back stone patio. the door opens with a skeleton key! there's darkwood paneling on the lower walls and white plaster on the upper, carved wooden ceiling panels and flagstone floor. the lights are all chandeliers and torchieres in the wall. it's just such a difference from the rest of campus, which is all so very modern. well, then there's me admist all this finery, clacking away on my ultra-modern contraption. ah anachronicity! (is that even a word?)

last night mel and i were supposed to see pirates, but we were misinformed as to the time, so we wound up seeing texas chainsaw massacre instead. i guess i wasted nine dollars because i was too terrified to watch most of it. i can't wait to see elf when it comes out, and also lost in translation.

school is going really well. i can't believe i'm already registering for classes next week. the registration process is really confusing, lottery numbers and whatnot, but i get to sneak in early because of my scholarship. whoot. i'm staying with dr. bridgford and my english seminar, plus i'm taking spanish composition (sadly not with profesora knight), art history: visual culture since 1400 with professor escobar (really HOT but sadly gay, dahts tells me), calculus with wendy's professor and NOT my crazy one, and then either religious studies or HI30, which i think is western civ. everyone should go to "ratemyprofessor.com". it is so damned helpful!!

I LOVE MELISSA!!!

yeah, she's here right now, in the bed that flanny and i once shared. i'm sorry heather. i just couldn't resist. you know how sexy the melly is. and now off to some wild night-time activities! mrow!!

Rae had this on her blog Hot Chocolate a few days ago, and I just had to steal it *love you rae*

Let us pray to the God who holds us in the
hallow of His hands, to the God, who holds us
in the curve of Her arms,
To the God whose flesh is the flesh of hills and
hummingbirds and angleworms,
Whose skin is the color of an old Black woman
and a young white man; and the color of the
leopard and the grizzley bear and the green grass snake,
Whose hair is like the aurora borealis, rainbows,
waterfalls, and a spider's web,
Whose eyes sometimes shine like the Evening Star,
and then like fireflies,
and then again like an open wounds,
Whose touch is both the touch of life and the
touch of death,
and whose name is everyone's, but mostly mine.

-Max Coots

wouldn't that be an awesome collage? --->from the rachel

I just love that, especially the last line.

It's raining, it's pouring, I wish I were snoring...Last night, or rather early this morning, i had a really scary dream. Jen and I were arguing about something, and there was this feeling of badness in the air, and then we were attracted by something to a large picture window. Suddenly there was a huge explosion, and we saw a giant red-orange mushroom cloud balloon up, fairly far away from us. we seemed to be at a slightly higher elevation. we were terrified, and to make matters worse our parents were out doing something, and we didn't know if they were still alive (this is one of those dreams i have where i'm a little younger, my dad is almost always in them). then it flashed to my mom and dad arriving back, telling us to pack quickly, we needed to flee to another country or we'd die in the radiation. The rest of the dream was one of those where I'm being forced to pack extremely quickly, grabbing clothes and things i love and trying to decide what i can take and what i can't, all in the blink of an eye. It was awful, and there was this sense of desperation, like we weren't going to make it....thankfully wendy came home at like ten of eight and woke me up. phew.

got my philosophy test back, with an A-. Somehow Dahts got a much lower grade, which makes no sense because we answered our study guides in the same way, quizzed each other, and looked at a test someone had taken last year. plus there was a huge curve. i don't know what happened, i'm wondering if maybe the prof forgot to curve hers. i got a 36 out of 50 pts, so does that make it a 50 pt curve? i'm not sure. also, crazy math prof story of the day: got our derivatives quiz back with a B-. Now this quiz took me all of twenty minutes because derivatives are something i can do in my sleep, even though we had to do it the long way. I knew something was wrong. so i go up to ask him about how he does his point system, and in the process of explaining why i was wrong it suddenly occurs to him that ohhhh, i was factoring a cube there, and yeah, you can do it that way, and gee that grade should be an A! that senile old fuck. if i hadn't asked a question, if i'd just grumbled and left like the others and been depressed all day, i'd still have a B-. that man SHOULD NOT BE TEACHING. i'm going to see the math chair asap.

I never posted about my actual Met experience, which was amazing as always. This time felt like the most fruitful of the three or four times I’ve been. Probably because I feel like not only have I matured in recent times, but this time I was on my own, not with friends or family or a tour group, just being able to drink everything in and actually appreciate it, really appreciate it. I had so much fun, more than I was honestly expecting. I thought I would be lonely since I didn’t know anyone and the Met is so crowded. We actually arrived at 10:30, a bit earlier than expected, and things were quite empty for a little while. I went through the El Greco special exhibit with barely anyone around, entire rooms to myself, and then when I went back through half an hour later to take another look at one of the paintings and buy a print, there were hordes. That exhibit was the first I saw, and it was breathtaking. If you think of the old masters as men who painted on a limited palette, with the same dull reds and blues and earthy tones, you must see El Greco’s work. Some of those paintings I swear look like they were done in Technicolor. I was completely floored—I had no idea that any of the old great painters had worked in such vibrant colors. His “Last Judgment” was amazing not only because of the beauty of the people and angels and the scariness of the damned souls, but because of the bright reds and greens and orange and blues. Then he had paintings that were more in the style of his time, equally wonderful in technique but less striking in hue. I understand how El Greco wasn’t well-liked by his contemporaries when he tried that sort of thing. My personal favorite, the one I bought the print for, is his “View of Toledo”. He lived in Toledo for sixteen years, painting religious art for the monks there. The caption said that the painting was not topographically accurate (he added a church and monastery not visible from the point where he was painting) but sought to capture the “emotion” of the landscape itself. And he did. When I walked into the room where this painting hung, the last in the exhibit, a huge smile hit my face. There was no one else there, just me and this gorgeous piece of art that truly conveyed how majestic and serene and old Toledo seems to the viewer. The dark clouds rolling in across the mountains and the sweeping brushstrokes that make it look like that grass on the hillsides is actually moving in the breeze is just downright sexy. I never thought I would say that about a painting, but it was true. I had to take it home with me. I just felt this huge connection to this long-dead man, who was as enchanted by the Roman bridge that leads into the city as I was, taking a picture of it four hundred years later. Says something about those Romans, doesn’t it?
Enough about El Greco. There was so much more to see! I had to visit the arms and armaments, of course, always a favorite of mine. I love how much smaller men were in those days. Some of the little rooms reassembled from foreign castles and palaces have such low doorways, such small chairs. I told my mom she’d have been right at home, and I’d have been a giantess. I visited the VanGoghs, and I’m beginning to favor his “Irises” over the cypress trees, I think. I saw my “Pygmalion and Galatea”, and a cast of the cupid and psyche that I saw in the louvre. One of the most fascinating parts of the day was wandering through the ancient art, greek, roman, Egyptian, Mesopotamian. Instead of being largely ignorant of the socio-political context of these artworks, or of the styles they used or the meanings they held, this was stuff we’d already studied in class. I saw so many objects that are pictured in our art history textbook, and let me tell you, pictures do absolutely no justice. I felt so much more involved in it than when I wandered through those wings before on previous trips. Take the Temple of Dendur, the Egyptian temple reassembled in its entirety in the basement of the Met. Now I know that that temple was built near Aswan, in honor of a youth who drowned in the Nile, and was itself almost drowned in Lake Nasser when the Aswan dam was built. Only a quick effort through UNICEF saved that, along with the funerary temple of Rames II, with the fabulous eighty-feet statues of him in front, which were actually taken apart and airlifted to high ground. Ok, I could have read the plaques in the Met about this, but I knew it going in, and that made a difference to me. I saw the lamassu of Nimrud, stone guardians that had the body of a lion, the head of a man and the wings of a bird. Impressive in the book, but small. In life, sixteen feet high and intimidating as all hell. I saw the hippopotamus with the faience glaze, a brilliant blue after four millennia, I saw the fragment of a bust of Queen Tiy, mother-in-law of Akenaten, a guy who briefly turned all Egypt on its head. Only the mouth remained, but this is the most sensuous, perfect mouth you have ever seen. It was the beginning of the aesthetic ideal of feminine beauty in Egyptian sculpture, and was continued in the bust of Nefertiti which sadly is in Cairo. We saw the famous New York kouros, which is a Greek celebration of the nude male form. What’s interesting is that you can tell that they were influenced by the Egyptians in the rigid stance, the clenched fist, the left foot forward. And most fun for me was seeing the lions from the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, fearsome looking lions carved in relief on brick and glazed with such beautiful paint that has lasted since 600 BCE. So much of what Mr. Kelly taught us freshman year has stayed with me—Plato’s allegory of the cave, the date of the Battle of Hastings, Zoroaster as the first monotheist (finally got my art professor to admit I was right on that one; technically the big Z has that honor and not Abraham)—and one of those things was the lions of Babylon. We had to choose an ancient artwork and do an essay on it, and I did the lions. I thought I did a pretty good job, but when I got it back I think I only got a B. I believe he said I only skimmed the surface. Seeing them now, four years later, I understand why. Now not only do I know what I’m seeing, a realistic lion, made of glazed rock, 7th century Babylon, but I understand what I’m seeing. I know that it was one of a hundred similar lions that would have lined the Ceremonial Way from the Ishtar Gate to the palace, that lions are big intimidation factors and a symbol of political power, that this was the route foreign emissaries took to the king, surrounded by evidence of his wealth and might. Back then I pretty much wrote about what the lion looked like, not what it would have signified in the time period in which it was created. Which is why I didn’t get an A. My term paper for Art History, by the way is to choose an ancient artifact and write a six page paper on it. That was the purpose of our trip to the Met. I wonder which piece of art I’ll be choosing….hm.

Once again a wonderful post deleted! No! Gah. Well, this one was on my trip to long wharf thursday night to see the play "fran's bed", which was supposed to be very emotional but ended up making us all crack up secretly because it was so fricking weird. the adultery scene, with that weird guy going down on the really scary mia farrow under the covers, just made us all go "what the fuck?!" the guy next to our group was sobbing the entire time, which was quite odd. i had fun on the bus ride home, though, talking to beth and tall lauren.

yesterday was the art class trip to the met, which was so much fun, even though i know no one in that class because they're all upperclassmen. good old phillip constantly pointing out how funny it is that a freshman can outdo upperclassmen is not helping my popularity, im thinking. i talked to this one nice kid with an accent, i think he's from africa, and all the grown-ups who are taking the class talk to me. oh and some french guy who apparently works for the museum tried to pick me up in the cafeteria. i was eating by myself, an overprice baguette and some soup, and he walked by and said bon apetit, and proceeded to sit one table down, so he was basically staring at me. this man must have been about fifty, very nicely dressed, and he knew all the people in the caf by name. when i got up to leave he started talking to me, tried to get me to sit down, asked me where i was from, when was i coming back, could he call me....to the last i answered no, politely, and left, but then i realized i'd done something pretty stupid--i took candy from a stranger. he offered me a couple of starlight mints, and i love those, so i took them! they could have had roofies, which they didnt because i ate them yesterday, but i felt so cliched. i doubt that a museum employee would try to kidnap me, but still. then waiting for the bus outside, an old man from new jersey sat down next to me, displacing a white piegon i'd been watchin (you guys know me and pigeons, one day they SHALL be mine) and started to talk to me. this guy wasn't creepy; he reminded me of my little jehovah's witness customer at sofia's, george hamilton. he was telling me that he comes almost every friday to the museum, sometimes to sit and watch people, or wander around a bit. amusingly he was telling me about his crazy youth, when he smoked and drank because "i liked it, that's why". he even told me that being a social drinker at any age was fine, whcih i guess it is if you like the taste of alcohol. i think we were talking for maybe ten minutes when the bus pulled in, and i shook his hand and left. we never introduced ourselves, but that's ok. i hope i made his day a little more interesting.

the actual experience of the met i will have to describe later, i have preparations to make for going home :-)

We had a mini concert in creative mind today. Brian Torff played for us, he'sthe head of the music department here and a really amazing bassist. He plays this really odd looking bass (the tall freestanding kind, not the guitar kind) that looks like a slimmed down cello, and the sounds were just amazing. it reminded me so much of apocalyptica, this group of four acoustic cellos that do metallica music. finally understood how they can get both really deep notes and really high, violin-like notes out of an instrument that i usually consider as just something to set the beat; he used his fingers and these small sticks wrapped in cloth to make the deeper sounds, and a bow to produce the higher notes. he talked about his life, which sounded fascinating, and all the famous musicians he's worked with, of which i only recognized miles davis and marilou williams, the later because i believe she just died. he talked about his belief that creativity is a way of life, not just an attritubte, and does not rely entirely on talent but on a hunger for something. he said you know if you're a writer/painter/singer/musician if you want it so much it hurts, if it's in your blood. otherwise it's just a hobby. i wondered about myself. do i truly want to be a writer? some encouragement came after class--dr bridgford told me that three of my poems got accepted for "A Class Act "by Theater Fairfied. i think i mentioned that before, it wasa contest to see your poems performed on stage, and she told me that it was mostly seniors who won, i was the only freshman, and i got three in!! I couldn't get the grin off my face for like an hour. plus i got my sylvia plath paper back and i got an A. wheeee. anyway the poems that won were "rainy day", "found poem" and my robert frost poem, which has always been one ofmy favorites. dr bridgford said she'd let me know when the performance would be, and about getting tickets so maybe my mom could come. she rarely sees any of my poetry. somehow it seems that since we don't have a particularly close relationship i would be uncomfortable letting her read something so personal. even my poems that aren't about anything in my life are reflections of my self and my personality...it would be a big step to have her listen.

It's done. I feel a great sense of relief. We're still friends, which is most important because he's one of my best friends here, and I know him so well it's almost scary. I explained my reasons for wanting time alone, to be able to determine myself aside from being so and so's girlfriend, and explaining my odd behavior these last few days. afterward our friends were gathered outside, expecting some sort of meltdown from him that thankfully didn't come. he said he had sort of been expecting it. of course he's sad, and i'm sad too, because this has been a wonderful month, but i need to do what will make me happy. as sara said, a month ago i chose what i thought would make me happy, and now that choice has altered, and i followed it. where it will lead i don't really know, but i am damn sure it's not to another deep relationship. i can't pretend to know the future, but i don't want another one anytime soon. soul mate, if you're out there, hold off, take a vacation, join a spinning class, do something, just don't seek me out, not yet.

Contrary to what my previous post might lead anyone to believe, I'm not a barely-functioning individual suffering a massive guilt complex, or someone who needs to be patted on the back and pitied. I've never wanted that, and indeed after my father's death I shrank from it. I've never felt the need to attend therapy and pour out my woes about my father. I can do that here. What do I need a therapist to tell me, that I feel guilty about my behavior toward my father? No shit. That I shouldn't feel guilty? Probably not, since I was just an adolescent who didn't care much about anyone besides herself. But true guilt is not a thing easily assuaged. I'm not depressed, and contrary to what so many people told my mother those years ago, I don't need antidepressants. My sister, yes, she definitely needs them. My mother was already on them from a previous tragedy. That doesn't mean it runs in the family. I'm not making myself out to be a pillar of strength in comparison to someone else's weakness, but I'm just not like them in that respect. I don't have post traumatic stress syndrome, while my sister does, which is ironic because i'm the one who saw him die, for christ's sake. i did have those recurring dreams a few years ago, that i wanted to believe my father had sent but which i know were just my subconscious telling me not to make the mistakes i made with my dad again with my mom. and i hope i don't. i try to understand my mother, i tell her i love her. i show my love for her in other ways too, like bringing her home her favorite cake from sofia's and buying her one nora roberts after another. so i'm not a basket case, or someone who needs to be felt sorry for. i think my father would be proud of me, of all i've accomplished. it does bring tears to my eyes when i think on how even more amazed he would have been at all i managed after his death. it makes me sad that he never saw me get all those stupid awards and graduate at the top of my class, that he never saw my AP grades, that he wasn't there to help teach me physics. it makes me sad when i look ahead and know that for all my life's accomplishments he won't be there. he won't see me graduate college or get my first job, my first apartment, or when i get married. but i know he loved me. he always told jen and i that we were going to grow up to be so much smarter than him, and though looking at my math skills i doubt whether that will ever be true, i know that was his way of showing how much he believed in us. my parents are responsible for the person that i am. they're the ones who read to me when i was little, who took me to the library all the time, who encouraged reading over watching television. my dad taught me to work hard. yes, he had a habit of yelling at us when we got a B or a C on something, which was a major conflict point for him and my sister i nthose last years, but from that I got a drive to be the best. and i still have that, it's not something i abandoned after he died. i hope it's not unhealthy, and sometimes i hav to remind myself that a B is a good grade, but it's generally a good thing to have.

so now i'm coming back to this four hours later, after dinner and gilmore girls and such, and i kind of lost the mood of whatever i was saying. suffice it to say that the emotions expressed in my previous post are not something that i'm feeling every five seconds. if that were true my life would truly suck. no, it's just that they're there, underneath the surface, and at certain points they pop up and i have to deal with them. i probably always will

In creative mind today we discussed a portion of a book called heaven's shore, by mark doty. he is an author famous for writing about his experiences being gay and having a partner with AIDS. in the section we read, he wrote about the last days of his lover Wally's life, and it was so very beautiful. creative mind has a loose topic every few weeks, and we read fiction and poetry and look at photographs relating to the theme. right now we're on "the moment", so this piece related to the moment of death. we looked at a really shocking photograph of a 1930s car accident, where a man crashed into a lightpole and somehow wound up entangled in the wires, directly above the car. it was completely unexplained how he'd gotten up there. there was a crossbar where his arms were, so there was some christlike imagery, and the spectators werent even all looking at him. there was also a photo of a woman committing suicide out of a hotel on a picturesque main street in buffalo in the 30s. the caption described her as a thirty-five yearold divorcee. she is shown halfway through her fall from the twelfth story, and there's people lounging in the window of the cafe right beneath her, and you can see that her pretty dress has flown up so that you can see her thighs. i wondered if that woman had been able to see this photo, would that have been the thing that she got stuck on, that she was being exposed to countless people, or would she have been so caught up in her misery that she wouldn't have cared?

dr bridgford also talked about the deaths of her grandparents. both of them did the same thing just before they died--they sought permission from their loved ones to leave, and they cried out for their mothers, and then they went, just like that. she said she felt a rush go by her when they died, like that last cry of "Mama!" was like the final upsurge of life, and that they were so alive in that last second that she could not at first comprehend that they were gone. i have never been able to decide whether it is better to experience death in one fell swoop, like a sudden plunge into cold water, or as a gradual process. the latter would be preferable if it gives you time to accept, but you're going to grieve afterward anyway. the sudden form of death, the way my dad died, gives you no pain beforehand but a hell of a wallop afterward. is there ever going to be a day when speaking of death doesn't remind me of him, when hearing people talk about the relationships, good and bad, they have with their fathers, makes me question over and over whether or not it's better off this way? of course it is true that no matter what conclusion i reach the outcome will never have changed. he is gone, forever, and it's only me to pick up the pieces and try to rearrange them the best i can. i remember a certain week a few years ago when every episode of the simpsons i watched had to do with homer's role as a father, especially in relationship to lisa. i cried then, and i hadn't cried in a long time. how ironic that such a humorous show did that to me. the episode where homer is told he has one day to live made me especially sad. even poor, pathetic homer got that one day to finsih out his life, to repair failing relationships, to express his feelings, to know he was loved. my dad was not so lucky. my mother and sister seem to think he had an inkling beforehand, that was why he acted strangely, but if that's true why didn't he show it in some way? if he knew he was going to leave me why didn't he... i don't evne know what i would have wanted him to do. why did my last words with him have to be so trivial? i came home from an appt, he was just getting up, he looked so worn out and i asked if he wanted anything. and he said no, and i went downstairs to get on the computer, and i never spoke to my father again. just that awful crash, and my mother screaming, and then seeing him on the floor, that awful shade of gray that my mother, the nurse, told me later that she knew signalled death. death already had his hands on my father then, and he couldn't speak to me, and i was too shocked even to tell him i loved him. i don't know if he could have heard. and here i am crying again, crying because i'm the little girl who lost her father and can never make up for everything she did wrong. as time goes on i lose more and more of him. the memories come and go, and it's hard to make others understand how i feel. the pain never went away. the loss, the savage, devouring loss, is never gone. it's only sleeping. i wish i knew he was waiting for me. i wish i knew that he was loving me from somewhere, loving all of us, missing us, waiting for us all to be together again someday. but if he's not i don't know what i'll do.

i just pulled out my journal, and in an entry from last year, lo and behold, are echoed similar sentiments: "What it all comes down to, in the end, is the sheer and utter LOSS of it all. I know now that I will never get over it. Perhaps with time the episodes will become less frequent, the pain less sharp. even now i rarely give in to it fully. it takes a lot of energy to channel that kind of pain. yet back it comes, again and again, often unexpedctedly, perhaps when i'm feeling particularly proud of my inner strength, my fortitude. it seizes me and tumbles me down, down to the level of a child, angry and sad, sobbing and lonely, wracked by the guilt of the things i said and the things i didn't, and confronted ultimately by that last great uncertainty, which will in the end decide how it all ends for me, and for him.....I don't know if he believed we'd meet again. Dad, if you're watching me write this the way Susie watched her family, if you've got your own gazebo in the sky, remmeber that i loved you, in the best way a selfish fourteen year old girl who didn't even love herself could. i never understood you; i couldn't have, back then, but i didn't even try. so many times i wished myself free of you. i never thought it would reall happen. if we meet again i hope i'll have the chance to apologize, to make up for all of it. maybe i won't need to. maybe that's what my heaven will be--understanding, forgiveness, and love. and you." when i wrote this it was sparked by reading "the lovely bones", in which a murdered child watches over her family, and manages to return for just one instant. but i don't believe that they come back.

i skipped math class today so i could see heather off. i felt so oddly bereft after she got in the cab, even though when i got back upstairs all my friends were waiting to go to lunch with me. it was so comforting having someone from home here. i'm going home again this weekend, making it three weeks in a row i'll have been off campus. most people are at school, so i'll probably hang out with melissa and stoner. plus i must get my mom a birthday gift and find myself a sword. the second weekend in november i'm going to visit sara, i'm so excited. my mom's going to pick me up friday and then i'll drive to pc on saturday. we're going to go to some big thrift store, god do i miss them ,and wendy and i could use another throw rug too, and a strip club called the foxy lady because yes we are both 18. and there's a huge mall which doesn't hurt. and there's sara!! i'm very interested to see how providence matches with FU, since people always say that we're really similar to them in terms of people. and then she can come here, and after heather, whom we all know is an experience that can shock people on their first exposure to her (lol), she'll have no problems. i was the pfirst person of my friends to have someone stay over, and i think four days is a record lol. my RA was a little surprised when i filled out the pass for four whole days. speaking of guest passes and such, things are much different at NYU. there there's a guard in all the dorms, and you have to show your ID, not just swipe it in a card thing, and if you want to get into someone else's dorm you need someoen from there to let you in and sign you in. wow. here all the cards open the dorms, except after like 11pm your card will only work on you own dorm. but there's always people smoking around the dorms so it's never a problem. heather tried to tell me that she felt less safe walking around our peaceful quad at night than walkng around manhattan, because it's not as bright and there's less people. it's frickin fairfield. nothing bad ever happens here. in fact, a kid from here was shot in new york city, admittedly in brooklyn and not near flanny, but still, there's no way this little rich suburb is more dangerous than nyc.

Wow. this weekend has been fucking crazy. after all that with the party, and my girl heather scoring some with a cute guy from jogues last night, there was some crazy drama tonight for me. i wrote a post with my impressions of friday night, and it was wild, disjointed and very blunt on a lot of counts, and i intended it to be completely private. not that i did anything of which i am ashamed, but i just felt it would be easier and invite less trouble if i kept it private. i love my friends here, but i didn't want anyone getting the wrong impression off what i was saying in my crazy fashion. plus there are certain people involved who just should not be reading what i was saying about them, lest they take offense, even if i really didn't mean any, i was just writing it like i felt/saw it. so when meghan called and already knew everyhting i was going to tell her, i freaked out, and ran around figuring out who'd read it, which turned out to be only lauren and she laughed and said that was so not anything bad, what was i worrying about anyway? then wendy went and read it, but i would have told her everythign anyway because she's my roomie. yeah so i'm calm now, and things are good, but other trials have presented themselves. the current situation with my relationships is something i have given thought to, and some things need to change. i'll be setting the stage this week, but i'm not going to settle anything definitively until next week. i'm glad i have such good friends here. wendy, lauren, amanda, meredith--you guys are great. i'm really lucky to have met you all. and flanny, my rock, i love you.

:x: name = Michelle
:x: piercings = two
:x: tattoos = none
:x: height= 5'8
:x: shoe size = 8-9
:x: hair color = black
:x: siblings = Jen the Evil One

LAST...
:x: movie you rented = rented rented? Christ I don’t even know…we “libraried” a few movies, the black swan, mad max and something else
:x: movie you bought = amelie
:x: song you listened to “keep on lovin you” reo speedwagon
:x: song that was stuck in your head = some rob zombie song
:x: cd you bought = ummm audioslave
:x: cd you listened to = andrew’s rob zombie cd
:x: person you've called = melissa
:x: person that's called you = Meghan but she got disconnected and never called back
:x: tv show you've watched = the nanny, what else?
:x: person you were thinking of = digiov, we were taking a quiz together

DO...
:x: you have a crush on someone = yeah, johnny depp
:x: you wish you could live somewhere else = well spain, but that’ll come later
:x: you think about suicide = no
:x: you believe in online dating = no way
:x: others find you attractive = yes
:x: you want more piercings = not really
:x: you like cleaning = actually I clean when I’m stressed or bored and angry
:x: you like roller coasters = Hells no
:x: you write in cursive or print = cursive

FOR OR AGAINST...
:x: long distance relationships = meh
:x: using someone = Against
:x: suicide = definitely not
:x: killing people = on this I’m conflicted
:x: teenage smoking = against all smoking
:x: driving drunk = soooo definitely against. I think this is probably the worst. Suicide and smoking usually affect only one person; if you drive drunk you could kill an entire family or something.
:x: gay/lesbian relationships = yeah
:x: soap operas = guilty pleasures



HAVE YOU...
:x: ever cried over a girl= I think so, but no instances come to mind
:x: ever cried over a boy = yes, angry tears
:x: ever lied to someone = of course
:x: ever been in a fist fight = no
:x: ever been arrested = No

WHAT...
:x: shampoo do you use = suave tropical
:x: shoes do you wear = sneakers
:x: are you scared of = heights, bugs, forgetting things

NUMBER...
:x: of times I have been in love? = private!
:x: of times I have had my heart broken? = none
:x: of hearts I have broken? = i don’t know
:x: of girls I have kissed? = four
:x: of boys I have kissed? = I bet I could figure this out if I really tried….seven
:x: of girls I've slept with? = tons, four last night alone!
:x: of boys I've slept with? = one (these two are zzzzz sleeping, naturally)
:x: of people I would classify as true, could trust with my life type friends? = hmmm maybe seven or eight?
:x: of times my name has appeared in the newspaper?= honor roll four times a year
:x: of scars on my body? = some on my head, one on my knee
:x: of things in my past that I regret? = I couldn’t count. Some are trivial, others more important

DO YOU THINK YOU ARE...
:x: pretty -yes
:x: funny – yes, sarcastically so
:x: hot – at times. Last night, hell yes.
:x: friendly - yeah
:x: amusing - somewhat
:x: ugly – on certain days
:x: loveable –no, im a frigid bitch
:x: caring - yes
:x: sweet – meh, someday
:x: dorky – yeah why not?

favorite:
5 letter word: anime, don’t ask why
actor/actress: Johnny Depp, John Cusack Sandra Bullock
Candy: milky way, milk duds
Cartoon: "simpsons”
Cereal: cheerios
Chewing gum: big red
Color(s): blue
Color nail polish: darks
Day of week: Friday
Least fave day: Tuesday
Flower: meh
Jello flavor: ewwww jello
Jewelry: my grandmother’s ring, currently wendy’s spike necklace
Special skills/talents: writing
Summer/Winter: winter
Trampolines or swimming pools: pool, especially flanny’s

|| Person who last.. ||

Slept in your bed: andrew
Saw you cry: my mom
Made you cry: thinking about my dad
You went to the movies with: sara….the rundown
Yelled at you: jen
Sent you an email: lauren

|| Have you ever.. ||

Said "I love you" and meant it?: yes
Gone out in public in your pajamas: Yes
Kept a secret from everyone: Yes
Cried during a movie: yes
Ever, at anytime owned new kids on the block stuff: no, never
Planned your week based on the TV Guide: no
Been on stage: no
Been to New York: yep
Been to California: yes
China: No
Canada: no
Europe: yes
Asia: No
South America: No
Australia: No
Wished you were the opposite sex: a few times
What time is it now?: 12:33
Apples or bananas?: bananas
Blue or red?: blue
Walmart or target?: walmart
Spring or Fall?: fall
What are you gonna do after you finish this?: probably sleep
What was the last meal you ate?: baked ziti
High school or college?: college to an unbelievable degree
Are you bored?: No, not at all
Last noise you heard?: Amanda giggling in the hall
Last smell you sniffed?: my hair, which smells like melissa’s basement
Last time you went out of state/province?: nyc a few weeks ago

|| Friendship/Love ||

Do you believe in love at first sight?: not at all, it’s lust at first sight
Do you want children one day & if so, how many: not really
Most important thing to you in a friendship is: trust, humor

|| Other Info ||

Criminal record?: No
Do you speak any other languages?: Spanish, sorta
Last book you read: philosophy
Name some of your favorite things in your bedroom: everything…the décor, the Christmas lights, my electric blanket, my pictures, my pillows…
Thing you dislike about yourself the most: eh not answering
Worst feeling in the world: frustration
Who you love: my friends, my family
Who you miss: my pirate homies and my hos


|| You ||

Nickname(s): Bob, Mitch, Meesh, Shelly
Initials: MMD
How old do you look?: probably my age
How old do you act?: a little older
Glasses/Contacts: contacts
Braces: ugh gone as of soph year
Do you have any pets?: five, four cats one dog
You get embarrassed: sometimes
What makes you happy?: time to myself to relax
What upsets you?: being smothered, being overstressed, too much drama


|| Finish the sentence: ||

I Love to... enjoy alone time
I Miss... Melissa and sara, right now
I Wish... I could be with my friends at home
I Hope... that I will be happy
I'm Annoyed by... histrionics
I Am... a poet
I Want to Be... free
I Would Never... forget
I'd Rather... be dreaming of boys
I Am Tired of... math
I Will Always be...a good person


|| Have you ever.. ||

Thought you were going to die: yeah, when someone was driving fucking crazy on a wet road on a full moon
Wanted to Run away: when I was little, and right before my dad died I almost did
Flunked a grade: No way
Skipped a grade: No

n

I love this, it's from "Picnic, Lightning" by Billy Collins:

Silence

Now it is time to say what you have to say.
The room is quiet.
The whirring fan has been unplugged,
and the girl who was tapping
a pencil on her desktop has been removed.

So tell us what is on your mind.
We want to hear the sound of your foliage,
the unraveling of your tool kit,
your songs of loneliness,
your songs of hurt.

The trains are motionless on the tracks,
the ships are at restn the harbor.
The dogs are cocking their heads
and the gods are peering down from their balloons.
The town is hushed,

and everyone here has a copy.
So tell us about your parents—
your father behind the steering wheel,
your cruel mother at the sink.
Let's hear about all the clouds you saw, all the trees.

Read the poem you brought with you tonight.
The ocean has stopped sloshing around,
and even Beethoven
is sitting up in his deathbed,
his cold hearing horn inserted in one ear.

Almost every one of his poems just hits me, in a way that poetry rarely does on the first try. Usually I like a piece or two from a single writer, but with him it's book after book that I wish I could just hold inside me forever, like a well-cherished toy.
Also, I have realized that certain things are no longer as they once were. And I have decided that I do not really care.

goddammit i just wasted a CDR on something that wouldn't record. fuck. on a brighter note, heather's coming tomorrow! i'm very excited. my pirate costume for friday night is nearly complete, though i still lack a parrot or monkey. haha heather just informed me that she touched nick lachey tonight at hooters in nyc. the lucky gal lol. ok i'm going to clean before i watch my nightly installment of the nanny at midnight.

I have a few minutes, whilst I languish in the language resource center, so I thought I'd post. It turns out some sophomore from here was murdered in Brooklyn on Sunday. He was shot a bunch of times and dumped out of a moving car, and they don't have any idea who did it or what was going on. He'd gotten separated from his friends earlier at a club. I know people who know this kid, Mark. It's so unsettling. Plus where was Andrew all this weekend? Brooklyn.
On a brighter note, my art professor really loves me! Whoohoo for the artistically challenged michelle, who can at least succeed in analyzing and writing about art. He said he was amazed by the quality of my biblical source paper, even after I told him that I'm not 17 anymore and therefore not a prodigy. He pulled me out of class to ask me about my interest in majoring in art, to which I said no but I said I'd consider doing a minor. Right now I want to minor in Spanish, because it's useful and I have to take classes to go to Spain anyway. I was slightly considering minoring in biology, but basically I just want to take more classes on genetic engineering and evolution. I liked that stuff. And of course my major is english, which is the reason I write well anyway. Yeah. AND even more happily, I won the leaf assignment! I found a leaf on my front steps that was so cool, an oak leaf that was just starting to turn so it had a band of beautiful read all around and then green inside. The whole class voted it number one. The prof put it up on thewall, but I kind of wanted it back…twas a pretty leaf.

Here's what I wrote last night at home:

I need to type right now, I need to chronicle this, as usual. The past two days have been this crazy mix of feeling weird and uncomfortable and feeling that this is exactly where I wanted to be. Before I left FU I was sorta sad that I had to leave my wendy, my comfy pretty room, my independence, my friends, Andrew, all that and go back home, especially cause I didn¡¦t know what it would be like. And while it was definitely surreal at the outset, I¡¦m so glad to be home. I got disproportionately excited just to see ¡§rocky hill¡¨ on a road sign on I-91. then there was my house, which is never a source of excitement, and my family and my pets. Sheena looks amazing. The new groomer made her look like she lost ten pounds. I can¡¦t even hate her anymore, except when she¡¦s barking and trying to kill me as I leave the house. Sapphire ignored me upon my arrival, and gave me the cold shoulder until the evening, when both she and cinni-mini slept in my room. Cinnamon is actually right next to me on my pillow, which is gross and now I can¡¦t sleep on it tonight, but she so often is a sad, neurotic little kitty that I can¡¦t bear to shoo her away. Mr Binky has morphed into the most affectionate cat of all time¡Xhe is an absolute whore for petting. Unfortunately he still hates being picked up, which is why he¡¦s hiding from me downstairs and I¡¦m in my room with a scratch on my chest. Cleo is her usual scary self.
So Saturday I met up with sara at the mall, and I discovered that I don¡¦t miss shopping like I thought I did. I went into hot topic and I wasn¡¦t really interested in much. But I bought meghan¡¦s birthday present, and parts of the gifts for Andrew and my mom, which was good. I was really happy to see sara¡K.and heather, and rae! You guys rule! Friday night was awesome¡Xlaser tag!!! What could be better? I went with sara, heather, Emily, jess and Melissa and I had so much fun. I came in eighth this time. We were the only girls in the eleven pm game, which we made by about half a second before they closed the doors. Instead of taking up one position like I always do when I¡¦m trying to win, me and heather ran shrieking through the maze, shooting whoever we could and not caring when we didn¡¦t hit them. Sometimes I was laughing so hard at heahter¡¦s antics that I wasn¡¦t even shooting, especially when she was jumping up and down screaming ¡§I know kung fu! Can you deal with that?¡¨ and ¡§Feel my pain, bitch!¡¨ I think her personal favorite seemed to be ¡§Vengeance shall be mine, (insert name of person who shot her)!¡¨ it was awesome. Afterward we hung out at baskin robbins on the pike and went to melissa¡¦s new house to see the kittens she and jess have, which are only six weeks old and the cutest things ever. They were so tiny I found myself wondering exactly how they could work. Which is silly since there are plenty of small creatures but they were like a miniature version of cats. Last night was heather¡¦s birthday bash at hooter¡¦s, but we couldn¡¦t all meet till like eleven, so sara and I ended up going to see ¡§the rundown¡¨. It wasn¡¦t such a bad movie, and there were some funny parts, including the part where the rock got raped by an over-amorous monkey. Then we went back to her house, ostensibly to give rae some time with aj, but it turned out all she meant was time to put her shoes on, but instead I was calling Andrew and Lauren and sara was crocheting a scarf. So rae¡¦s parents were annoyed. We ended up getting to hooter¡¦s like 45 minutes early but it was ok because rae gave me my gift¡Xa shirt from the garment district, the thrift store in boston I got my semi dress from and a book on writing by Margaret atwood¡Xand then the three of us had a chance to talk for a good long while. Rae mentioned the fact that I was her first friend in high school, and sara was my first real friend like ever. I do miss them. It¡¦s not like my friends at Fairfield aren¡¦t amazing, they totally and completely are, but it¡¦s not the same. It was like going back to my roots this weekend. These are the people who have known and loved me for years, through thick and thin, through the periods of weirdness that I¡¦ve had with both sara and rae, yet I feel more connected to them than ever before. When I look at wendy or Lauren or any of my FU friends, I know them, but not through and through, not in the way that I can look at sara and see that I know her, and she knows me in the same way, with the accumulation of years of little things, trivial revelations and incidental happenings and those rare, beautiful times when you feel like there¡¦s nothing better in the entire universe than to have good friends.
When everyone else arrived it was fun too. Nicole was there; it was amusing to get someone else¡¦s perspective on FU aside from my friends. One of the things she asked me was if I¡¦d been to black rock yet, and I thought she meant the turnpike but she meant the bar. She hasn¡¦t ever been to the center of town, but she¡¦s been to the beach ¡§soooo many times¡¨. She highly recommends that I go, and hit the lacrosse guys¡¦ house cause they¡¦re the wild ones. Ok then. Rae gave heather a fake attachable mustache for her birthday, she was so in love with it. And she loved my pirate shorts as well. For my gift she gave me some slippers from Chinatown, an I love NY shirt¡Xin pink, of course¡Xand a crazy wild magic scarf like hers! It was so cool! I wanna try wearing it as a dress ƒº
Anyway I¡¦ve done absolutely nothing this weekend in terms of work. Cough. Apop and I are meeting at Sofia¡¦s tomorrow at 2pm to head back to FU in my mom¡¦s van (she refused to take the Tahoe). Tonight I¡¦m hooking up with greg and heather to visit Melissa at cvs. Greg has poison ivy unfortunately, so he¡¦s not too happy. I called Ashley today to see what was up, her parents are being predictably grrrr, but she was still glad to be home. I told her that I finally got my southwest pics developed, and the roadrunner came out well!! Heehee. Oh and last night on the pike jess was behind me driving melissa¡¦s car, and Melissa had the grand idea to ram the tahoe from behind, so I thought I hit something which would have been impressive since I was at a red light. The tahoe was fine, but there was a dent in melissa¡¦s hood and she was upset, so I don¡¦t think she¡¦ll be ramming me again too soon. I can¡¦t believe I didn¡¦t cone this weekend. Maybe heather and I can cone melly¡¦s car at cvs¡Khmmm¡K.i stroke the beard I do not have. Andrew has now talked to both sara and heather. Sara said that she approved of his voice, and heather just was so hysterical that Andrew was laughing most of the time. She basically entertained us with her half of the conversation the entire way back to her house from the pike. I¡¦m glad they both like him. Plus he¡¦s even better in person! Of course plans are being made for everyone to visit everyone else, and I really want to. I feel so close to everyone right now, but I also have the desire to go back to Fairfield, to my room and my roommate and my new life. It¡¦s weird not having anyone down the hall to chill with at odd hours, weird not to be able to slap lauren¡¦s ass and elicit some strange squeak. It¡¦s weird not making any jokes about apop¡¦s purse or andrew¡¦s showering habits or just anything else. When I first got home it was like everything at school was a dream and this was my reality. Slowly it¡¦s settling in that I can have two different experiences and it¡¦s ok, it¡¦s not betraying either.
The main thing I have learned from this weekend is that without the constant support and entertainment provided by the people I really love, I don¡¦t know where I¡¦d be. Thank you all so much.

Well hre i am at work again, this time upstairs in the admissions office, and i've just recieved wonderful, amazing, splendiferous news-- i get PAID to do this! i was apparently mistaken about the nature of work study; by doing it i get some sort of discount off tuition, but i also get checks. moolah. i thought i wouldn't actually see the money from this, that it went toward tuition, but no, i get it. i got a check today for eighty bucks, that feels nice. plus i have a check from my mom that has yet to be cashed. this is good, i'll have more money to use for people's birthday presents :-)

I really hadn't realized how excited I am to go home. I love my FU, but it's going to be wonderful to be back in good old Windsor again. Everyone's saying the same things: they can't wait to shower without flip-flops, eat home-cooked meals, sleep in their own beds, see their pets, see their friends and family, NOT have to climb four flights of stairs or risk a faulty elevator to get to their dorm room. I've made a list of things I must do, first and foremost being hang out with my friends. I love you guys so much. I know we've all started saying it now that we're separated, just like my mom and i say it on the phone and we never used to. i can't wait to see all of you. heather's planning a birthday party to hooters, i would absolutely love to go play lazer tag, so that gladwrap may once again rule the day, i want to hang out at the diner with flanny at odd hours of the night like so many times this summer. i want to see greg, i want to see mama flanny, i want to visit sofia's and have one of their grinders and some of their amazing pasta, and remind myself how good i have it now (looks around at job that pays her more to do far less in a more beautiful, smoke-free, sexual-harassment free environment that features a grocery list where you can pick what snacks you want the office to have!!), i want to see my kitties so very badly. i want to go out to dinner with my mom, talk to my grandpa, get more birthday gifts :-) and just be home.

I'm actually at work while I post this. Today, after an hour and a half of mindless pasting stickers on file folders (i got through four hundred of 8,000 that have to be made), i have been given the momentous task of guarding the front desk of bellarmine hall. whoot. actually i was doing this this morning too, when there were actually people coming in for tours and interviews and whatnot, but now there's juts no one. i have this nice computer with the cute little flat screen and the amazingly outdated noisy keyboard to play with. i brought a book but i'm not in a reading mood. except maybe some fanfics. i already read the paper, did some crossword puzzles, and i even planned out the paper i have to write this weekend. ah yes, and i got another screen name so that annoying people no longer IM me.

So apparently meghan's not coming to visit after all. sigh. i guess wendy will be relieved that she didn't miss meeting her...and our room is now miraculously clean, aside from the growing pile of dishes and silverware that ineed to clean. i'm just too lazy to haul my ass down to the kitchen right now. i guess i'll start my philosophy study guide, i kind of finished everything else yesterday. more free time, whoop-de-doo.

Lauren admonished me once again to update my site, so here goes. My birthday was utterly awesome. probably the best one i've had. i haven't even gotten all my gifts yet lol! The food has now mostly been eaten, the cookies and box o'chocolates and the big cake that was waiting for me when i woke up, courtesy of my darling wendy (later this same darling saw fit to mash cake in my hair. i retaliated with cake on her shirt. mmm. frosting.) the flowers andrew wanted for me came from canada yesterday. they're beautiful, but sadly they're already dying. lauren and andrew both gave me stuffed animals--andrew's is a black cat with orange devil eyes. i kid you not. when i unwrapped it i screamed and tossed it up in the air. wendy gave me, amongst other things, a new rainbrow brite tshirt!! i was so happy! sara's present came today. i put the lobster soaps on display in my room, and i'm wearing the little bow tie necklace and the champagne-flavored lip gloss...which doesnt taste like champagne, not that i really know what that is anyway. still good. plus i got cards from a bunch of people, and rae left a singing message on my machine. it was good times. and no i didn't do anything wild and crazy beyond buy some losing lottery tickets when we went out to dinner. oh well.

i got an A+ on phillip's first quiz, so he says his objective now is to convince me to change my major to art history. heehee. and i took my first spanish test this afternoon, i think it went well. today is "new england day", so we're having some kind of carnival. i plan to get my fortune told :-)

So I will now be 18 in 45 minutes. whoohoo. i have to wait up till midnight in order to recieve some preliminary gifts from my friends here. i love the "preliminary". wendy made me clear off my desk so that i can be all suprised when i wake up tomorrow. they're all coming in "secretly" at 730 to set up whatever it is. if they think they're all going to troop in here without waking me up, they're probably, hopefully mistaken. i don't want to be observed sleeping by random people! eek! ok so andrew's seen me sleeping before, but still. in large numbers it's like a violation. oooh AND i'm getting a letter from meghan and a gift from sara in the mail. AND when i go home my mom will have gifts for me! this is awesome!!! :-) i already got my bday card from ashley and it made me inordinately happy to receive real mail. i literally giggled as i opened it. who knows what tomorrow may bring?

I can't really believe I'll be eighteen tomorrow. Finally I'll be able to vote, smoke, have sex, buy porn, play lotto....gee. how many of those will i actually do tomorrow, possibly one or two. cough cough. legality, ah. today in my art class our teacher, eliasoph (i just call him phillip in conversation, having been corrupted by meredith) mentioned how all these 19, 20 and 21 yr olds, plus the older people, should know by now that the apostles did NOT write the old testament. i guess i looked amused because he addded "and 18yrd olds, for our two freshman", to which i added "17 till this week!" haha that was nice and embarassing, have all those juniors and seniors craning their necks at the pesky little 17yrold freshman. well as of tomorrow, i join the ranks of ashley and sara. whoot. and then there's flanny on the 15th, andrew on the 20th (but he's going to be 19), and my mom and meghan on the 31st. lots of people! thankfully no one in november...you need a month of rest between that and december, what with rae and greg AND christmas. oi!

probably should, um do something meaningful, right? i have a spanish quiz. might study.

I've just spent the last half hour on the rather boring task of transferring files from my dinosaur laptop to my pretty little one. i've become rather fond of my memory key, though i don't use it a lot since the printer is attached to my computer anyway. anyway so i copied most of my poetry files, which gave me an opportunity to go back and read things i wrote junior year for creative writing, along with things i wrote just this summer. i don't really rememeber writing all of them but i must say some of them i just LOVED. it was if i was reading someone else's poetry, and i could really enjoy it without the subjectivity of it being my baby, as some of my poems have been in the past. here are a few:

A Sea-Farer Bids His Love Farewell (Pantoum)


The ship sails at dawn, my love,
With or without you.
I leave this very evening-
Will you be at my side?

With or without you,
I shall cross the sparkling seas, my love.
Will you be at my side
When we reach the distant shore?

I shall cross the sparkling seas, my love,
Never to return.
When we reach the distant shore
Will you always look back?

Never to return—
I will make a home in foreign lands.
Will you always look back?
Am I not enough for you?

I will make a home in foreign lands;
We will shrug off the old world for the new.
Am I not enough for you?
What ties you to this place, my love?

We will shrug off the old world for the new;
Make your choice between them!
What ties you to this place, my love,
So you would abandon me?

Make your choice between them—
I leave this very evening.
So, you would abandon me?
The ship sails at dawn, my love.

Found poem


This is a found poem.
I discovered it as I was shifting aside
some boxes of junk in a closet.
I moved a stack of photo albums
(which were quite dusty from disregard)
and there it was on the floor.
It lay there so limp and motionless
I wasn’t sure if it was still alive,
so I grabbed a yardstick and poked it a little,
not too hard, just enough that it wiggled
and gave a faint little crinkle
of its paper, as if to let say
“I’m here! Don’t throw me away!”
I was relieved; the thought of finding
that a poor, defenseless poem
had been crushed to death
by the weight of all my memories
would have been too much too bear.

But there it was, safe and sound
and looking haler by the minute,
even more so after I gave it a cup of tea
and a biscuit, to regain its strength.
It looked at me with such gratefulness
and made such endearing rustlings
that I could not help but love it, right away,
and I became very glad that I had thought
to clean out the closet that day.
Who knows how much longer
it could have lasted, suffering as it was,
before it finally gave up the ghost
and became one of the little scraps of poems
that lurk on the edge of the mind,
mere shades of what they could have been.

We have been very happy ever since,
my little poem and I,
and though people tend to assume
that it was I who found it that day in the closet
I am not at all sure that that’s the way it happened.
The poem, for its part, simply refuses to say.

Untitled


Sometimes I try too hard to write.
The page is fresh and full of possibility.
My hands are warm, poised over the keys.
The cursor blinks out its endless rhythm.
Waiting, always waiting.
It must be ever-patient,
For at times I have spent hours in this position.
It is always the same:
My brow furrows,
My mouth curls into that concentrated scowl
And all my senses focus
On loosing the flow of genius
Which surely lurks just below the surface
Of my temporary mediocrity.

I have heard of poets
Who locked themselves in their studies
With only pen and paper,
And perhaps a glass of water,
For days on end.
Perhaps they thought if they waited long enough
The poetry would surrender
And crawl, emaciated, from its hiding place
To be swiftly chained onto paper.

My poetry, alas, seems to be made of stronger stuff
I suspect it has found some other way
Of supporting itself.
Perhaps in some well-concealed spot inside me
There is a small farm
With tall rows of wheat and corn,
And a few cows and chickens in the dairy.
There is a well and a trickling brook,
And in the evenings the sun dies
In a blaze of glory over the trout pond.
A gentle plume of smoke rises
From the farmhouse where my poetry lives,
Content in its solitude,
And amused by my clumsy attempts
To draw it out.
Meanwhile, I grind my teeth
And stare at the screen,
Hoping it will give in soon.
Dinner is almost ready,
And I am very hungry.

my other purpose in seeking out some of these was that there's a competition to have your poetry performed on the stage. wendy's entering, so i thought i might too if i could find anything of interest. i'll probably enter these. thoughts, anyone?

I read sara's post last night, and what she said definitely didn't seem strange to me at all. it's like this is an entirely new start for all of us, and if we choose we can omit certain things from our pasts, or change ourselves in some way, or leave behind some insecurity that dogged our high school days. it was harder to change when you were surrounded by people who had known you intimately for years. i've noticed the same thing here. back home i never usually got changed in front of other people, not strip to the undies change, esp not if they were looking. here, wendy and i strip in front of each other and keep on talking. it's just not weird at all, yet at home i would have felt more uncomfortable, because of days that have long passed into memory. it was hard never liking your body because you remembered the way it used to be, and then being surrounded by people who a.) were smaller than you and b.) automatically scolded you if you mentioned it, like it was a precursor to an eating disorder or something. but here not everyone knows that about me. it's the same with andrew; whereas with greg i had some insecurities that meant it took a long time before i was comfortable taking off any clothing in front of him, i don't have them as much now. not that i'm ripping my shirt off every five seconds or anything. but back then it was a pattern of behavior i had trouble changing, but college made it so much easier to just leave behind. this is yet another reason why college, in a word, ROCKS!

Lauren just asked me if i was going to write about how cool all my friends here are. i'm sure i could go on at length, but i'm not going to. ok lauren, you're SO COOL!! happy? but that would overlook andrew and apop (cough, amanda) and wendy and meredith and james and matt, and i'm not energized enough to do an in-depth analysis for all those people. lol. suffice it to say that life's going good, despite tonight's fiasco with the birthday gifts. i talked to my mom for like an hour, and sara and rae and heather for good long times each. tried calling other people with no success. oohhhh i have to call flanny back!!

Wendy has gone home for the weekend, leaving the room solely in my possession. muahaha. of course andrew's sleeping over, but he would be anyway if wendy were here. she doesn't mind that he's basically in here every night until two am or later; she loves him. plus she falls asleep really easily and sleeps through anything. NOT that there's anything funky going on in the bunk below, when i say he sleeps over we really do sleep. which is a feat in itself, knowing the size of a college bed. those things were probably designed to prevent sex. and sex on a bunk bed, even worse.

Greg asked me all about andrew this afternoon while i was secretly IMing him in the Language Resource Center, which we have to go to for forty five minutes a week, by order of profesora knight, who is actually a really nice woman. i didn't have time to tell him much because the woman in charge was walking around making sure we were actually doing language related things, but i was really glad that we could talk about him without it being weird. of course he mentioned having picked up a girl at school like last week, so i wasn't concerned that it was taboo or something, but i hadnt been exactly sure how i was going to mention it. speaking of andrew, i met his grandfather, great aunt and great uncle today. they were staying with relatives in greenwhich for a few days and came by. i couldn't go to lunch with them, i ironically had to go to spanish class (they're all cuban), but they were very nice. they couldn't get over how gorgeous i was. apparently they spent most of lunch discussing me. plus they took several pictures. shudder. i guess they thought andrew was exaggerating when he said i was pretty; either that or they didnt think he could get a girl as stunningly fabulous as i. *preens* ok i must admit that today even i was satisfied with the way i looked, and god knows 'tis not always so. his great aunt, who really is not that old at all, has black hair, so of course she liked mine heehee. andrew andi were supposed to go on a "real date" to town tonight, to have dinner at one of fairfield's marvelously overpriced cafes, but i didn't feel very well. we were going to go to the dining hall but i didnt evne make it there; i fell asleep at 430 and woke up after 7. stupid sydexo closes at 7 on fridays and saturdays. ah well. my mom sent me a giant care package with cheerios, two loaves of banana bread (whoot), contact stuff, cough medicine, meal bars, a buddha statue for wendy cause she collects them (she brought a set of twenty little red ones with her, they're all over) and a copy of the wall street journal, which i heartily miss. i read ny times every day for art class (i'm one of two freshman in this class, which also has three adults, and yet i was the only one who got an A on a current events quiz. i learned something new--the dalai lama now lives in india. i think i said manchuria. someone else said Los Angeles. Dear god in heaven.) but it's just not the same. sigh.

anyway i think i'm through here. i read sara's blog today and it made me sad that she doesn't feel like she's getting everythign out of providence that she wants. i don't know what to say, really. i mean, it's not like i had to really go out and meet most of my friends. it just happened, because we all picked this floor. so it's not like i have mcuh advice to give in that department. even in my roommate, i was just extraordinarily lucky; wendy's one of my closest friends here, and vice versa. i'm interesteed to hear more about this joe character *hint to sara if she's reading this* :-) as for andrew, her andrew i mean, if he's going to be stupid and play that "hm let's pretend i don't know you today" game, forget him. turns out lots of guys in college are immature assholes. gee, don't they seem a lot like those immature assholes we were seniors with? hmmmm.

Tonight I went to see a speech by Liv Ullman, a famous film star of yesteryear and now a humanitarian worker. She worked a lot with Ingmar Bergman. the only film of his i've ever seen is the seventh seal, and i actually only saw about half of it because i was just not getting into it. yet it's supposed to be one of the best movies ever made. it was in that book of really good movies meg gave me junior year, so i rented it, and if i do recall it was a very quiet movie, black and white, in subtitles of swedish or something. bergman's swedish, i do believe. ullman was norwegian, i thought of meghan. it was one of those allegorical movies, apocalyptic and such. a lot of people know the most famous image of the film, though: the grim figure of Death in the black garb, with his hand outstretched and his faced painted a cold, untempered white.

anyway so we went with Creative Mind, though only seven people actually showed up, and we were the ONLY young people i nthe entire quick center, which is huge. it was entirely filled with OLD PEOPLE. it was freakish. we worried that we would be set upon and cannibalized by some modern-day Elizabeth Bathory who would try to reclaim her youth through our blood. or something like that. anyway it wasn't terribly interesting, though my art professor was the one who came onstage and asked her questions after her speech was over. he showed some clips from her films, including one where she worked with ingmar bergman as the director and ingrid bergman as an actor. i loved her in the movie "notorious" (possibly because she played opposite my darling cary grant), and i remember her as one of the most beautiful of the old Hollywood stars, right up there with Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Grace Kelly, Vivien Leigh, etc. ok, in the movie "Autumn Sonata", she was really scary looking, and it reminded me of the fact that so many of the gorgeous film star women don't seem to age very well. katherine hepburn definitely didnt, audrey hepburn didn't, meryl streep isn't...i can't think of many others right now lol. yet it seems that the men stay attractive longer; jimmy stewart, cary grant who was obviously handsome till his dying day, sean connery who is attractive still, gregory peck, paul newman, robert deniro. i know there's that whole hollywood prejudice against the aging actress, and forgive me for my superficiality but they really don't seem to retain their beauty as well as the actors do. (of course there are notable exceptions, like goldie hawn for the women and elvis and marlon brando for the men) it also made me wonder, would marily monroe have aged well? would james dean? maybe it's better that we don't know, that they were forever preserved in their youth and beauty. like hendrix and jim morrison; would their music have sucked later on? would plath's poetry have deterioriated if somehow she had pulled herself out of her depression and tried to live a happy life?

we read plath in creative mind today. my professor loves her and gave some detaile autobio info. there's a poem called lady lazarus, wherein she talks about being a cat with nine times to die, talking about her attempts at suicide. the first tiem when she was young, she accidentally ODed herself. the second time she ODed on sleeping pills and crawled into a crawl space for a really long time. by the time they found her, insects were starting to burrow into her skin. in the poem she writes "they had to call and call/and pick the worms off me like sticky pearls." ok reading this i had NO idea that was true. it's just so horrible to imagine. anyway plath wrote this three weeks before she actually killed herself, and from the description of the way she set it up, plus talking in this poem about the spectacle of coming back to life each time, it seems as though she wasn't really trying to kill herself. i think she wanted someone to save her. "Out of the ash/ I rise with my red hair/ and i eat men like air." i think she thought she would triumph over death again, but she wasn't found by the au pair the way she had basically arranged to have been found, and the gas from her suicide intention accidentally knocked out the only neighbor who had a key, a neighbor the au pair actually tried to contact. how sad that what might have been another cry for help ended up a fatal reality. "Dying/ is an art, like everything else./ I do it exceptionally well." How sad that that proved to be the case.

Wow. It POURED today. i was lucky, i was inside for like three hours and missed the worst. Lauren got completely soaked. this girl in my spanish class left her window open and her computer got doused, and now it won't turn on, which really blows. A really good thing happened today though, I got an A- on my first art history critique! i critiqued the impressionisty painting that i bought for a whole dollar at a tag sale. my professor wrote "excellent; you have so much promise." I guess this is going to be one of those classes where i really like the professor and i really want to do well. he wanted to offer me a job over winter break, but i live too far away to commute. meredith also told me that the kids who work for him have to basically do everything for him since he's so disorganized. nah, it'll be back to sofia's for me. i think i'm going to skip ballroom dancing tonight to watch the premiere of gilmore girls....

I have the sniffles. Blech.

There's a trip to NYC next weekend to see Madame Tussaud's and Times Square. I'm not sure i want to go; that would make three consecutive saturdays i've dragged my ass up early to go to NY. then again it's madame tussaud's, and i always wanted to see it.

we just had to listen to another inspirational speaker about the way his life went to shit because of drugs and alcohol and he was saved, yadda yadda. basically sean forrest without the guitar and aaron belting out "king of the jungle". today in FYE, aka freshman year experience, this weekly discussion group thingee, the topic was alcohol. there are two upperclass facilitators and one adult; the woman left so we'd feel free to discuss our boozing habits. i must confess that i found myself pretty disgusted. in the first week of school someone in regis was caught with coke; he got expelled. people are racking up "points" over marijuana and liquor offenses. our facilitators gave us a slew of tips for avoiding arrest; be real nice to the fairfield cops, who are known for being hard on FU kids; don't keep your cup in your hand on the beach cause you can get one at any party; hide all your booze in your closet cause your RA won't look; if the RA invades a party put your cup down because it's a slighter offense to be in the presence of liquor than to actually have the cup on hand. a kid in my group already had a run-in with the cops at Lantern point; they were drunk and ripping down street signs. our friendly facilitators shared their stories about various arrests, fines and hospitalizations, laughing all the while. apparently five freshman got fined 150 dollars apiece for jaywalking drunk at the Point. almost as an afterthought, the facilitators mentioned that "oh yeah, and there are some people around here who really don't drink at all." i left that room thinking "what the fuck is WRONG with you people??" can people really not find anything better to do? are they that lacking in friends or self-confidence or desire to be healthy and sane that they spend their time getting smashed? It's hard for me not to look down on people who get trashed a lot. i know people who drink, and i can't condemn them because they're really cool, awesome people who happen to like the hard stuff, yet when i look at the drunken louts that populate this campus, these superficial bimbos and jocks who think there is no higher calling on a saturday than to converge on the townhouses in their skimpiest outfits and consume as many alcoholic beverages as possible, i just shudder in utter revulsion. see, i have these things called friends, and what we call "hanging out" involves crazy wild times but not booze. i don't know, some people seem to think that they have to go hand in hand. then again i have always felt like my friends have been intelligent, funny people, the cool kids. maybe other people aren't funny and interesting enough to be able to entertain each otehr without the benefit of liquor. grrrrrr. drinking schools.

i realized after last night's incredible conversation with andrew that i am right now the happiest and freest i may have ever been. i've felt special before, felt loved, but this.....just amazes me in a way that i must admit i never expected. and neither did he. sometime i'll write it all down so i won't forget it.