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

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

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

no school for me tomorrow!

I'm confusing even to myself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias

1. Cogida and death

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

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

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



2. The Spilled Blood

I will not see it!

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

I will not see it!

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

I will not see it!

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

I will not see it!

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

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

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

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



3. The Laid Out Body

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



4. Absent Soul

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

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

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

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

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

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

~Federico Garcia Lorca

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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