I did finish my paper this morning, after a nap from 6-9:30ish this morning. The second essay was about 2.5 pages long, so I obviously cheated and made it 10 point font, which upon second consideration, I should have made the first essay 10 point too, but oh well - I was tired and headached when I finished it, but I'm feeling alright now. I might be exchanging my congested sore throat for a coughing sore throat, but I'll just keep downing thermaflu and advil - The taste of that damn medicine makes me sick, but its a great way to practice detatchment from my natural instinct to vomit. I don't know how valuable that practice is, but I need a little bright side.

I drove to class because I was running late, although I wish I could have walked - its such a warm day, nearly 60 degrees. And even though its overcast, I had to squint if I chose to look anywhere but the ground. I tried to relax my face and take in the light, but my reflexes were not having it.

I drove behind a guy in a subaru tzx or stx or sax (some obscure model of sportscar with a strange small window within the larger roll down windows of the door). His lisence plate said T-Man 86 and he had a bumper sticker that read "They can make me go to college, but they can't make me think". It signified all the things I don't like about American youth culture - they can be provided with opporotunity to learn and understand the world to a greater degree, but they chose ignorance or anti-intellectualism as a way of defining themselves as realistic or I don't even know what. It just seems to be a way to justify immediately self serving actions.
Poop on them. That would be satsifying.

So Im thinking about how its really incredibly difficult to escape the influence of the present moment, which is a dynamic presence of all events preceeding it, and how one can choose to explore the fringe possibilities that are present (those possibilities contrary to the majority's belief and statistic predictability of practicality) There really must be something driving people to look for new ways of understanding reality, better ways of living as long as the present moment does not equate to sustained contentment concerning all affairs. But I can't really think that well right now. I'm going to skip spanish and nap. Then wake up, do spanish quizes online, and start my faulkner paper which I have been sufficently intimdated by. I think I have to answer the question of how litery blackness and whiteness is created and what purpose does it serve. Ill use literary masculinity and femininity as another example of how binaries work in texts, but im not sure what my thesis will be. I'd like to write an onion paper, like the chinese style and see what happens. No way would I do it though - maybe for my own enjoyment one day.

Racism, though, seems more like something that is a result of signifying people of different ethnicities as cultural descriptions. But the cultural descriptions work in a larger context, like mythic signification, and white culture signifies superior culture than black culture, at least to the racist and his literature. I think that there are other motivations behind racism, but this might be the one I will use to guide my paper.

I'm sitting in my room, naked, the door closed and the blinds shut. The light isn't on, but the gray sunlight is filtered thrugh the yellow-beige blinds creating a strange visual feel - sort of like that yellowed pagecolor of old texts. I'm listening to TV on the radio which is sort of haunting right now - (suddenly, now its all soully with 'Mr. Grieves'). I don't feel like doing anything but contemplating what it means to be seperated from Mandy, and the significance of human connection to human being. Everytime I lay down in bed I imagine laying with Mandy, but the imagination is frustrating while being gratifying at the same time. Uhhh. I want this out of this semester, and into the next, living with her and being happy again.

if a monkey drives a car
down a colanade facing the sea
and the palm trees to the left are tin
we don't understand it.

we want poems we can understand
we want a god to lead us
renaming the flowers and trees
color coating the scene

doing bird-calls for guests.
we want poems we can understand
no sullen drunks making passes,
next to an armadillo, no complex nothingness

amounting to a song,
no running in and out of walls
on the dry tongue of a mouse,
no bludgens, no girl, no sea that moves

with all deliberate speed, beside itself,
and blue as water, inside itself and still
no lizards on the table becoming absolute hands.
we want poetry we can understand,

the fingerprints on mother's dress
pain of martyrs, scientists
please, no rabbit taking a rabbit
out of a yellow hat, no tattooed back

facing miles of desert, no wind.
we don't understand it.





I think that is the poem verbatim, except a few grammatical errors. Its by Paul Hoover, titled "poems we can understand". I'll keep working it into my memory. Its pretty fun to read, good imagery. I wish that I had written it. It was a random opening of my poetry book that brought it to my attention. I said, ehh why not read this one, and after repeating it to myself over and over again I've grown to like it quite a bit. We'll see how long it sticks.

Its very fun to read poetry from memory. Something energizing about it (depending on the poem I suppose).

I should be reading Saphira, and then typing some more. Whooo, boring weekend of work, but it has to happen now and again.

All right all right, I hear you nagging saphira (shes such a bitch - really she is).

I'm at the library right now, taking a break from reading faulkner. My mind is zoning in and out, into the civil war text, out into the world of postmodern vomit and the lit reading I went to tonight. I don't have time to explain it right now, but I really liked how the author (who turned out to be a senior ISU faculty member being awarded some distinguished medal of honor for College of The Arts professors) said that he was told and agreed that there were only two types of writing - like paintings or like music, and he wrote like music.

There was also a play, titled "who didn't kill mozart" which was funny and well timed with our going to Amadeus. Ahh, I wish I could talk to Mandy about it right now, I wish she were here and I could just turn to her, dispell what was on my mind, here her voice and whats on her mind, and then finsih Faulkner up. That would be way more relaxing and helpful than me staring out the large library windows onto the street six stories below. Although I can think of other wonderful ways to relax too, and we wouldn't have to talk at all.

Okay back to Faulkner
I hope that Im not here for another three hours with a lot of the book to finish tomorrow.

Keep falling in and out.
Let me stick, let me stay with the movement 'I' chose.
But no. There is always and emptiness that is made up to be meaningful, as opposed to my choice; because I choose not to make my presence known, not to make a persona known, not to be known apart from a fleeting hand shaken through the space beside my eyeballs.
And this is not new.
Ashamed for coughing up an essay pasted together, the sentences sticky and pursed from the cheap paste I used; it was all I could find at the last minute, and it was my own damn fault - it looks like it sounds, wasteful.
AHHHH!!!
This conflict between what I want, (What: a state, an end, a position, a point of knowledge, an occupational placement) and how I want it. This gash between vision and action, absence and presence, imagination and actualization.
All this puts questions to the 'I', the one calling the shots (supposedly), the one pointing at the shop front window and declaring "that will be mine in x-Weeks). I feel at the mercy of condition, but it is I who determines the condition to be merciful or vicious. This is contradictory... and yet I'm still in procrastination.
I know the marks we make will all be washed away, the tides will always smooth the beach. And this is why its so hard to make a mark, to stand on top of my chair, point at that sand castle and declare "Thou shalt be smouldered and space shall be cleared for the gentle peasentry who ye hast driven endlessly in circles 'round thy moat of senseless insecurities." How can I ever take that seriously. Its old, outdated. What about the goddamn content though? what about the people?

I'm eating some vegetarian fajitas. The house is filled with eye stinging smoke. That stove is so dirty. But the fajitas are good, although I think the bell peppers are little undercooked. Either that or they just naturally taste strange during this time of the year.

So this morning, after editing my paper, I quickly made some coffee and rushed out of the house. I made it to my professor's office in time and we chatted it up for a little bit. Then onto the Grad School business. Basically, ISU is at the Bottom of the third tier as far as universities are ranked. The goal is to get into a grad school that is ranked in the second tier or the low first tier. (I actually doubt if I can get into the first tier because of my grades and total lack of outstanding academic work, but the second tier sounds manageable). University of Washington is in the bottom of the first tier, while Rutgers, Virginia, U of I, UW Madison are all solid first tier. Basically, shoot for the first tier, but definitely have something in the second to fall onto because chances are, the second tier is where I'll end up for a Masters. Then definitely shoot to the first tier for PhD.

So second piece of information. Read Read Read. You are competing with tons of other minds (although this competitive aspect seems to be glossed over). Its not that you actually want to 'win' some sort of prize, but you do have to maintain a large database of information that you understand. Ummm.... yeah, I felt pretty inadequate at this point. I might have some grasp of theory, some theory, but I don't have any sort of broad understanding. And my reading ability isn't exactly phenomenal. OH its all so discouraging. It makes me just want to retreat into some job and do work on my own. I was thinking about that too.

Kass, my professor, said that there are a lot of 'Throats' in grad school (as in cut throat, but I'd never heard the saying without the 'cut'). All the more reason to basically know your shit, and be independent. But some people are just fuckin assholes (to quote her). She said her husband was fired twice from a tenure track position because of this: once it had been that he had been teaching English at a tech school and then they didn't ever tell him that he was going to be cut, they just cut him; the other time he was going up for review and plenty of people gave him good references and said he was great, but some of those same people wrote letters to the director retracting everything that they had said at the meetings when Joe was present - And then when it was made clear that Joe was going to be fired instead of secured as a Tenure track professor, everyone who praised him before kept quiet and said nothing to the director/dean. It sounded fucking despicable. Kass hates it, she hates it a lot, but she likes being able to work with the people that she's able to work with, a lot of intelligent and good people. And now she and Joe are both teaching at ISU, a place that she said doesn't have to many assholes and is much more pleasant.

Academia - the place where you are paid to teach the youth about historical and contemporary developments in human cultures across the globe; the place that pays you to do research on literature, history, psychology, sociology, fine art, film, and media (in the English dept. alone); the place filled with brilliance and innovation; the place that allows freedom from the rigorous 40 hour work day and unfulfilling work. Academia. yep. There it is on top of the plateau, the acropolis, the beacon of thought beamed throughout the world, and through STUDENTS! That’s the most important thing; a professor teaches and thus expands the knowledge/thinking base of a society.

Kass told me that CU was a good second tier school, but CSU was really good too. I told her that CSU's English dept. was overtaking CU's. She asked me who my source was and I told her Mandy was at CSU. She said that it was a good school and notable, especially if it has overtaken Boulder. This led to thinking about Mandy's grad school anxieties and how she actually is doing really well. Her GPA is 3.5ish, She has excellent grades in all her English classes. She worked for the school paper and decided she didn't like the inauthentic writing environment. She has won a creative writing scholarship, soon to win another probably. Not to mention her job as Tutor, working with a diverse student body in all aspects of language and composition. Add to that resume letters of rec from the head of the dept, her boss who works in Theory, and her Capstone professor, and she’s got a pretty damn good application. So then its all about GREs. Kass agreed that there is almost always improvement the second time around, mostly because there is so much test anxiety and unfamiliarity with the exam.

Then when Kass asked me what I wanted to study and I said applying poststructuralist theory to a contemporary context, she replied "GREAT". There seem to be a shortage of people in this field, but that’s because its analyzing literature that has just been written and its a gamble unless you feel real confident about your lit abilities, and then its still a gamble. But if you find the right author and write about her or him, you will be forever associated with the author's rise and ability, not to mention possibly making a really talented person famous if the author isn't already. I thought about my lit crit abilities and felt even more uneasy. I came to English to study theory and lit, not to study author's and texts. But this is exactly what is expected. This was countered by thinking about Mandy and how she is really well versed in literature (she says she has more to read, but so does everybody). I bet if she reread a few books that she really enjoyed, she would be able to do amazing things with them, write amazing papers, highlight aspects that nobody has ever touched on. She has been reading for a long time and that shows real devotion. She has what it takes to run with the big dogs, and she's probably nervous about it because she's only 20! That's going to look good on her applications too. She flew through school, high school and college. Most people are at least 22 before they graduate, at least. She’s ahead of a lot of other people. I bet if she were to read a few feminist and gender studies texts, along with rereading a couple of applicable novels that she really liked (Lolita for one), she would have a great load of material and feel a lot more confident in what she was doing. It was great to hear her talking about Feminist theories the other night. I love that she doesn't agree with either side of the two extremes, and I know she’s really interested in understanding these very relevant gender issues; and she it is just the beginning for her. Pretty soon the world is going to explode into all sorts of theory and analysis, and its going to be her own shift in perspective. It already started happening in England, and she is going to keep growing because SHE WANTS TO. I love her so much for it too. I admire her and wish that she knew how spectacular she really was. Then again, if she knew then maybe she wouldn't be as spectacular. I don't know, I just wish she wasn't so stressed. Hopefully once these GREs are out of the way she'll be able to ease up on herself. She has plenty of chance to excel in the Academic world, and she will as long as she cares too.

Oh, so back to toady. I was feeling so discouraged after the meeting with Kass. I went to creative writing and couldn't really focus. I still couldn't figure out what the fuck I was thinking other than "duuuuhhh, hmmmmmmmm, shit, well, ahhhhh!" Coincidentally, we talked a lot about theory in class, and about why theory was important to poetry. I know why its important. You don't have to sell me. And then Joe proceeded to talk about how its so important for anybody who is going to teach to understand college level math, science, logic, literature, and other disciplines. He was saying that math is especially important (but his first degree was in math and mechanical engineering), it helps to really strengthen your mind and blah blah blah. I felt like I was hearing Plato talk about the Ideal Education (and it just reinforced how insecure I feel about my overall thinking abilities).

I know I can think. I know that I can form good arguments and apply theory in creative ways, but that doesn't seem like enough. And I was questioning if I really WANT to go through grad school. I do. I've thought so for the past few years. I never really knew much about it though. And now the big bad old man has got me scared.

Our Creative writing portfolio is due on Thursday. This girl in my group was freaking out that we didn't have it put together. She was pretty much crying, without the dropping tears, but her face was red and her eyes were about to burst. Part of me wanted to say "just chill the fuck out. This is an incredibly laid back class and there are four other people who have just as much a stake in this portfolio as you do." But I also empathized with her distress, and it made me all distressful. I had to stop looking at her and talk at the table because her face was getting to me. There was so much concern, so much fear, so much anxiety. She even said that she felt like things were out of control, and it was killing her. I said that this is the time everyone gets used to not having total control, because in the real world there’s not a whole lot of it. You're a piece in a giant machine. I wondered if I was getting as upset as she was over grad school for the same reasons. Am I trying to control things too much? (I doubt it) Or am I holding unrealistic expectations which aren't letting me see all the other possibilities surrounding me?

I wondered about what Kass said about working in Academia with all these brilliant people and this intellectually lucrative environment. Then I wondered what it would be like to work in somewhere else. What sort of place and what sort of job would you have to have in order to work with intelligent people? Not just smart, but creatively smart, innovative as well as realistic. I don't know where (or if) this mystery job exists.

SO.... By the time I got to my Prose class and it was time to give the structuralism presentation, I wasn't too confident about the whole affair. But as soon as I started talking about the sign I had to stand up in front of the class and teach. Literally, I felt like I was teaching and it felt fucking amazing. First off, barely anyone even read the articles about structuralism and Claude Levi Strauss. Secondly, this whole idea of a sign being composed of two seperate things, the signifier and signified was quite foreign. But after I was up there for a while, people started asking questions, and I answered them. Kass chimed in to facilitate new questions about the relationship between signifier and signified, and that gave me another 20-30 minutes to talk all about it. It felt soooo good to see half of the class really confused, but by the end they seemed to really understand the core of the theory.

I've never done anything like that before. Literally talking in front of a classroom for about 50 minutes, with interjections from Kass and the two other guys in my group. I was complemented afterwards, but who would actually tell me that I was confusing and unhelpful? One guy told me I was able to turn the confusing things that Kass mentioned into easy to understand concepts (I also talked about Derrida breifly which was soooo fun, since concepts are just words and oooooo, yeah, it was hard not to get carried away). The whole time I was really energized and able to think really well despite the five hours of sleep. I felt like I was thinking on my feet and there was only one point that I couldn't quite remember, but Dom brought it up and I was able to grab on and go with the idea. He told me I don't need an education degree, I should just be an English professor. Oh it felt so nice to hear such flattery, but this is a rare area that I have studied pretty thouroughly. As far as teaching English... ummmm, yeah all my previous anxieties still apply. The important thing is that I felt really good about my ablity to learn and reproduce that knowledge for other people. That is something I was concerned about, teaching and explaining.

At 3:20 I got onto my bike and peddled over to the library so I could register to vote. I was going really fast and when I slammed on my brakes at an intersection Brice's chain fell off the gears. I had no time to put it on. Rhetoric started in 15 minutes and I was late to it last week, something I hate being. I thought about ditching the bike in the grass and just running. But I thought better and walked quickly with the bike. I threw it down outside the entrance and went into the library, found a librarian who could register me, and was out of there with a couple of minutes left before class started. I got outside, stood Brice upright, and fooled with the chain. It was actually way easier to fix than I had imagined. I remember it being so hard when I was a kid, but it was quick and simple this time. I hopped on and made it to class with one minute to spare.

I was all full of myself and couldn't focus on Rhetoric though. I wasn't getting a big head, but I couldn't stop thinking about how great it felt to stand up there without any fear and just talk about something I really enjoy. In class I focused on what I could do to apply myself to in a way that I could get this same feeling over and over, in a way that I could be helpful to people too. I was thinking about visual analysis and the elements of theory that go into such an analysis. I'll be doing a rhetorical analysis of a website, and that might be a really new field just waiting to be written about in depth.

I was able to let go of my thoughts and focus on class after a little while. Partly, because we were talking about different ways to improve one's writing style. The ancients used to copy well written texts and also imitate other's styles. Currently, we still teach imitation, but also sentence combination, which has to do with taking a lot of simple Subject/Verb/Object sentences and formulating one gigantic fucking sentence. There are studies that show these methods dramatically improve writing styles, but they have to be coupled with a lot of reading (reading well written work of course). I'm interested in possibly doing something like this. Maybe reading a book and then imitating its style in little writing exercises. Who knows.

So now I'm at home. I've been typing for almost two hours. Mandy said she wouldn't be able to talk much tonight so I guess I'm trying to get as much as I can out so that we can make good use of our limited time tonight. I've got to write the statement for creative writing and read up on Althusser agian. It turns out Kass is a big fan of Althusser. She said I was full of shit for not liking him. This was invitation into theoretical battle which sounds really fun, and she wants people to battle, she wants people to quit making jokes and get pissed off about the literature and theory. Hopefully thursday will be the start of some good ole fashioned verbal sparing, but I've got to be in good shape. If I don't do my sit ups and jogging and punching the bag, I might be tempted to enter the wring with a glove full of nails. Nah, I don't think its possible, just funny.

Oh, and I REALLY like the Monet book Mandy sent me. I was so surprised and happy to see something so thoughtful. I read through it and want to read my favorite lines of text to her tonight. They helped me to feel more optimistic about things. They reminded me of the beauty, the beauty that is everywhere except the ugliness of politics. But politics are only one part of life and theres no reason that they should completely dictate how someone is feeling. Theres no reason that any sort of job search should overshadow the beauty all around, although I know that its very important to find a job and make the moolah. But when you getting ready to sleep at night, when you walk between buildings, when yoy're eating, when you talk to people you love, beauty should be at the forefront of consciousness. Life is too short to forget about it. I'm so glad tha Mandy and I can rememeber to look at the beautiful side of this crazy ever-changing world. Just talking to her makes me feel a lot better about everything. Ahhhh.... love. If only I was a romantic poet with an ear for song; I'd write about it for the rest of my life.

Even though I'm no poet, I would like to write about love forever. I don't want hate and death is a sort of Monday tuesday affair. Love is really where the best writing stems: love of someone, language, and nature. Maybe I'm overgeneralizing. Maybe all of those nature, language, and loved ones are all wrapped up together, all in the same warm bed.

I woke up around 10:30 after having fallen asleep somewhere around 6:00am-ish. I took that 3 hour nap the day before and it kept me up all night, along with some practical bits. I spent way too long fucking with my printer which is still a confused piece of machinary, and tried to get the sublease fliers to print with the little pull tab pieces at the bottom of the page, you know, with my name number and email address. I printed 45 copies, maybe a bit excessive.

I woke this morning, ate some oatmeal, and set off toward campus. I hit about half of the quad before I had to return to the house. Scott, Keri, and I were off to Lancaster's at about 12:00ish. And Jesus christ we were there for 9 hours or something ridiculous. It takes about an hour to get to Peoria. The drive was very nice, a beautiful sunny day. We drove through a lot of cornfields, which reminded me of the movie I'd watched, 'The Future of Food'. It was all about GM crops and what sort of impact they are having on people and the environment. Its some really strange stuff, and its moving a bit too fast for anyone to know what could happen. I don't feel coherent enough too explain it all though (its been a day of energy drinks and coffee, as you might expect). The most disturbing thing in the movie, (which I'd already known, but it was reiterated repeatedly) was the fact that all sorts of non GM crops have been patented, since the Supreme Court ruled that any form of life can be patented except for Human Beings. Its real sketch and I predict (as if I actually can) that there will be some terrible unethical shit that goes down in the near future, and then the ruling will be overturned, on the basis of lack of forsight on the Court's earlier ruling.

I realize this is all a bit incoherent, but ehh, I'm pretty tired. Anyways, so Scott and Lancaster, along with any other music junkie that stopped by the house, endlessly discussed amplifiers and guitars for hours and hours - it was incredible how much information these guys were sharing, confirming, disconfirming, reiterating, predicting - all about the same few pieces of electronic instruments. I became a social anthropologist after my fascination with Lancaster's home wore off (a home that was filled with all sorts of artistic yet tacky stuff: model cars, birdcages, steins, teapots, fancy glasswork, pipes, cameras, watches watches clocks and watches, guitars, amps... it would go on for about half a page). I was thinking about how each, scott and Lancaster, both wanted information to improve their overall knowledge base and practical applications of said knowledge. It was also apparent that each wanted to rattle on about what they already knew. It was an show of knowledge, which is more of a power display (at least the perspective I saw it from; the knowledge was all for the sake of putting one in favorable positions, whether it be monotarily or musically, it was all about being ahead of the crowd and having the BEST shit possible, in the BEST way possible).

Nietzsche said that the world was a "will to power". The man was terribly isolated though and its not much of a surprise that he missed out on the most important aspect of power, that is, we need company to express power. More so, not only do we need to have others in order to hold power over, but we need equals to enjoy power with, we need companionship that is more than just a power relationship. We need to have subjective relationships, and so does everything else in this entrie cosmos. Nothing can survive on its own, nothing is truly independent, independence is weakness and lonliness, and lonliness cannot be filled by powerful remarks, thoughts, or actions.

I sat in the grass admiring the fallen leaves. I held some and found a certain type of leaf that had seedpods growing from it; the stem split into a Y at about the center of the leaf. From the top, it looked like an average, skinny leaf, but from the bottom I could see the Y split and the hanging seeds. I looked up for the tree with these leaves and discovered (hehe, like columbus) that the leaves I held in my hand were the bottom portions of a Y split of a different leaf. The trees original leaf stem split in a vertical Y midway through the leaf, and on the bottom part of the Y was this differently shaped leaf, which split midway with the bottom suspending seedpods. It was magnificent. The simple yet incredible complexity of such an organism. And thats the way I looked at Lancaster and Scott, at their interaction. There were basic needs, but they were achieved in an incredibly complex manner.

On the drive home, I sat in the backseat looking out the window at the stars and moon. All the talk and music were like background noise to the beautiful show of white-blue light in the sky. I read somewhere, either Plato or If on a Winters night (I think the latter actually... NO no, it was a poem by Jack Spicer), that there are plenty of complex pleasures in life, but the ocean and sun and moon are always held in esteem because they are always there to be appreciated. Thats How I felt about the moon, and how it was much more real than anything I had seen all day (well, all the stuff and trinkets and the entire town of Peoria). I was thinking of Mandy, of course. I really miss her, REALLY REALLY fucking miss her.

When we came back home Kari and Scott went to bed, but I heard them laughing and talking as I made some soy meat substitute. I wished Mandy was here, although I know shes having a ball tonight, literally dancing the night away with thousands of people hopefully. It makes me really happy to think of her having a good time in Denver with the old FC gang. Oh, but I still wish she was here, or I was there. I don't care, I just want to have her arms around me and wrap mine around her. I want to show her the beautiful tree with the dangling Y seedpods. I want to show her the beautiful spherical shapes of the weed seeds in Lancasters backyard, the amazing craftsmanship and strange symbolism of some of the 'stuff' in the guys house. I want to look at the stars and moon with her, the big beautiful orange rising moon, while the sun sets in the west and illuminates the shredded clouds a bright orange laid against the pale blue atmosphere. Oh.................. sigh.

I'm really tired. I want to talk to her, but I know she'd call me if she had the chance, if the dance was finished. I'll talk to her tomorrow, but its strange how the absence of her voice leaves such a gap in my day, such a big hole thats hard to fill, even if the moon is supposed to be one of the most beautiful things in the world. The moon is beautiful, but I've seen so much more beauty in her eyes and the way she moves, the touch of her skin and press of her lips. I've felt so beautiful with her, seen so much beauty with her. Ahhhhh... this is making me more lonely, but I know its temporary, the lonliness will pass as soon as I see her, and then we'll be living together, with these empty feelings wiped away from all emotion.

Wow! I have been energized all day, well ever since finishing my coffee this afternoon. I just returned from Kroger, the ghetto Kroger, which has a piss poor selection of cereal, but I found some nutty goodness... I think thats the name (just a grape nuts rip-off).

So I talked to Betsy about subleasing and she was fine with the idea. She'll draw up the legal forms, so that saves me work that I thought I might have had to do. Tomorrow I'm going to hang fliers up EVERYWHERE.

I woke up kinda late, 12ish, and took a shower, shaved, ate breakfast, and realized I was leaving at 12:35, which is when my class begins. There were no worries though since it was just my group meeting to discuss what to include in our group portfolio. I put in one page of work, but am going to get some more stuff together to include. After everyone skirted around the issue of writing the group evalutation which only has to be 250-500 words long, I said I'd do it just to get it done. Nobody knew what to write and everything they were talking about (poetry of the human condition... Ah, NO) was not something I would have attached to my name. But, for the most part the meeting was informal talk about each other's lives and a tid bit of gossip. There is a very strange personal tone beneath a lot of what they talk about, since it all stems from their writing in one way or another. All in all, I enjoy being part of a workshop, I just wish I was given real feedback on my work. Maybe I'll send my new piece to Mandy and ask for verbal feedback.

So I went to my next class and the professor was out of town professing in Michigan. I thought class was altogether canceled, but saw everyone sitting in the room and waiting patiently. It was the day we were supposed to exchange rough drafts of our hemingway papers so class could easily proceed without her. I didn't even write my paper though, and ended up talking about poststructuralism and absurd scenarios that could take place if Dom (another guy presenting on poststruc with me) were to wear the Harris Lion suit (which he is going to be paid 100bucks to wear in some parade this weekend) and nonchalantly steal freshman textbooks when they were left alone in the library.
(That last sentence is pretty long and jumbled, but thats the beauty of journals). It was a good time.

Then I went to mail Mandy's package. I remembered that I'd forgotten (hehe) her address; I have to stop pretending like I know it by heart.

I got an A- on Rhetoric paper. My professor said that he liked it and I had valid points, but I left too many of them unresolved (which was very true). I was already over the page limit though. I think it was a mistake choosing a 5 pg article, a very crappily written article even, to analyze. I'll know for the next assignment, which is a rhetorical visual analysis of a website. That should be really interesting. My teacher seems very enthusiastic (in his monotone way) about the rhetorical power of the internet and how the web is going to make a hell of a lot more complex work for rhetoricians, which is a great thing.

The spanish tutoring session was cut short, well I cut out 20 mins into it because the other three students wanted to review shit that we've been reviewing in class and at the UCLA for the past three weeks. But the bit I stuck around for was helpful. I have to make up some notecards for vocab because thats really where my weakness lies. So tutoring is becoming irrelevant, which is a very very good thing, but I'll probably keep going because it helps to keep the stuff in my memory.

Oh and on a whim, I picked up the Derrida documentary. I couldn't resist as I drove past The Movie Fan. I also got a documentary about the Future of Food. I don't know if I'll have time to watch it, but it sounded interesting and it was free with Derrida.

I feel like I haven't done any real work for a while and I'm wondering if I'm actually behind on my work and just don't realize it. This weekend will be the time of double checking that Everything is on schedule. Only 2 weeks until I fly to Denver! YAY!

I should probably do some homework. Then watch Der-EE-daa. Maybe make some popcorn for kicks.

How could I ever impact anyone or anything like the historical figures of great time have - the ones who we all fall back on. With Ancients and Enlighteneds and Medievals and Postmoderns, where in the hell could I ever contribute that hasn't already been milled over and over, flattened by a steamroller and stepped and spit on by every fucking ignorant citizen who really wishes to do the right thing, but who cannot muster up the strength to pull take their hands out their pockets and touch something besides themselves.
What is the point of all this reading, all this absorbtion of word that my memory doesn't even seem to grasp? How could my mind even hold onto all the shit thats ever been thought in order to synthesize an "original" thought? What the fuck does original mean anyway?
Why do I get angry, or at least heated, when thinking about these things; these things that I've told myself are what I should devote every unhinged thought, every extended perception, every blind and searching attempt to feel out my surroundings when all is either pitch black or blank white? Where does the nihilism end and the optimism begin - not in my own head but in what I have to say? How the hell can I make an objective argument for something that I have to constanly keep convincing myself of?
What on Earth am I doing studying English? I got Ds in my advanced English class in Eighth grade - a B in the class but Ds on tests - I always hated shakespeare until a year ago or so. I hated to read until I was nearly 18! I didn't ever care about school as long as I was riding a large enough wave to carry me with a 3.0 - Actually, I think I graduated with a 2.9.
What can I ever achieve in this field, honestly? Like she said, what can I say that is valuable, uniquely from my perspective? or at least spoken by me before anyone else has the brains enough to blurt it out? Do I really want to teach grubby immature aged adolescents? Do I actually want to set out lesson plans for the required topics I'm forced to teach, for the specific directions I have to take my students? Will I ever have a strong enough work ethic to get all my teaching and research done in time enough to be able to lounge on the beach every sunday with her? Why can't I manange to just manage my fucking time in a way that will leave me room to relax? Do I even want to relax? I am stimulated by the urgancey and possibility of failure, just enough to push me into the depths of mind that remain unprobed?
Seriously, can I even learn everything I need to in time to take the GREs? I've got a whole friggen year to prepare, but I swear there never seems like time enough to actually study. What about learning another language. GODDAMN I don't even have a good grasp on spanish and I'll need to know french to get a PHD! Fuck! When will there ever be time to learn French and Maintain Spanish?! Ahh god, will I even pass the next semster of spanish with a B? I feel like I'll squeeze by this semseter, But Christ! I'm not sure about the next.
Oh and then all of this work, all of this movement towards what, towards where, and why? I know I can never sit still; thats what death is for, stillness. Life is only movement and nothing but. Constants are memories and attractions. When can I say that all of this has paid off to fulfill my sense of self (whatever the fuck that is too) and put me at ease, contented me for the rest of my living days? What could ever do that? Critical theory? Philosophy? History? Legos? (I'm serious).
OHHHHH AHHHHHHH and why the hell can I focus so well on what is going wrong with my image of self, with what I should be doing, but yet can never focus on what it is I should actually be fucking doing! Why am I still writing when I haven't even finished my homework yet? Why am I going to continue writing this? Is there any way to turn this constant examination with all that is wrong and apply it constructively? Can I try to examine every fucking squalid human behavior without becoming an emotional wreck myself? What is it that I feel so inclined to even reference as 'myself'. She said the same. What could be more real and yet more unknowable than who I am. Is that even a real question? How could I be anything other than a movement, that is if all life is moving and only the dead are still (aside from memory and attractions, but even attractions are in flux; gravity changes with shape and size of material, electromagnetics are affected by movement... I think (what the hell, I can't even recall sophmore physics)). Why am I so hard on this thing I call myself, and suppose that I am the only one who can actually improve myself? How can the flower grow by flattering itslef? What is it I am actually chasing after in this pursuit of identity? Its not who I am, but who we are, what this is. Thats the real question. What is this, and how is it us? How are we bound and influence, controlled and thrown by its forces, nearly puppeteered to a lack of individual agency. (Why can't I remember how to spell?) To what extent do we even have agency when so much around us forces us to quench thirst with chance and possibility. Blahhhh, how do I ever expect to Say Anything If I Can't Say it Well!?
When can it all be gone, i mean the doubt, the frustration, the insecurity? Is it even possible to live without these qualities, even in regards to self identity? (and not forgeting a dynamic enough sense of self that can handle changes like evolution vs creationism and all this other ridiculous shit that people blame for the nation's identity crisis).
When can I say "ahhhhhhh.... here we are, sitting with our feet in the ocean, our hands entwined, our bodies leaning on each other perfectly holding our position, and we can be silent and know that everything is all right, that its always been all right, that it will always be all right? I know the world isn't perfect and neither am I or anyone else; but when will it all be perfectly accepted and understood?
Ahhhhhhh, I should be doing something else. Thankfully, I have nothing else to say right now. (haha, did I Say anything? If so, thats very hopeful.)

This did help

We made some tastey vegetarian burritos and now I'm stuffed.

Today has been very strange. Not interesting strange, but contemplative. There has been something off, like I've been staring at a picture that unintentionally hangs crooked. Theres been something unsatisfying about the day and I'm pretty sure it comes from last night.

I keep thinking of that guy I briefly talked to at Diggers, the first bar. Him sitting there, with empty eyes staring straightahead into the mirror, into his drink.

I keep wondering why the hell I drink. Really, Why? After looking back on the night, I can't find anything that I would opt to do again, that I would seek. Theres something grossly unsatisfying about not being able to remember how the night finished. Whats the friggen point? I've always said its a social thing, something to share and joke with. Its sort of a way to escape from yourself too though, a way to feel like a different person and at the same time feel more self assured. I guess Im wondering if the hollowness is getting to me, along with the physical side effects which fucking blow too (I've felt like a zombie most of the day, except for the drive Scott and I took). The big question is why? why even bother with something that has no positive physical effects and negates its own 'good' feelings later in the night?

What bothers me most I think is the idea that there isn't anything else besides boozey adventures; the idea that you have to retard your own mental capacity in order to have an adventure. I know that isn't true though. I have had plenty of adventures with Mandy and they are way more fun than drunken adventures. And I've had adventures with Scott that have been fun too.

I'm glad Mandy didn't call me last night, and I'm glad I didn't call her. I wish I could have talked to her longer earlier on, I wish I could have called her later on, I wish I hadn't been so drunk. I was too drunk and I would have been embaressed to talk to her. Why should I ever do anything that I'd be embaressed about? Just because other people don't find anything wrong with getting blitzed now and again shouldn't have any bearing whatsoever on how I feel about it. I feel out of control, I don't feel like myself, I don't feel good about myself.

Again the image of the guy at Diggers comes back to me. He sat there alone; he sat without emotion; he stared at the bar; he had a tattoo on his neck; he wore dark clothes; he had a buzzed haircut with a mustache; he was short; his voice was high; the dim light hid his eyes. The last thing I remember was him staring over at the college girls who had just walked into the place. There were two young/middleaged black guys at the end of the bar talking with the girls. The regular sitting next to me just stared at them all, and it was very creepy. I wanted to know what he was thinking, but I didn't actually want to know.

The strangeness of this day comes from a sense of powerlessness, I think. I feel like I have no movement within me, like Im a puddle slowly evaporating. I hate this feeling, and yet I'm so close to it. I don't want this. Its such bullshit. The whole drinking thing is. I wonder if I could actually not drink. I know I can; I think I can. I wonder what its like to go to a bar and only get coke, (root beer would actually taste better, mmmmm root beer right now would be great). I don't need booze. I don't want booze. So why do I drink it? I want that sort of fuzzy connection with other people. But its a lie - there is no connection, only a blurring of the lines; an image of connection.

We saw our neighbors at one of the bars last night, the hippy neighbors with the dog named marley. I wouldn't have talked to them if I saw them outside (which I have), but since we were in a bar together we talked, well... Scott talked and then I joined into the whole get-to-know-your-neighbors time. When I see either of them again I won't say anything more than hello though. Just because we talked in a bar doesn't mean theres any connection afterwards. People go to bars to meet people, the regular at diggers probably wants to meet someone. What are they going to do when they meet someone at the bar? go to more bars?

Ick

Mandy sent me a text when I was eating my burrito earlier. She hoped that I was having a good day - I didn't want to say that its been frustratingly boring, a day tha has been steadily going down the drain. But her text cheered me up enough to get out the kitchen and finish the thought I'd been running over in my head all day. I'm going to stop drinking. I want to find a different way to have adventure even when everyone else is finding it in a two dollar glass of 'high life'.

I mentioned to Scott that I really liked the avant garde plays of the 60s, like Beckett and Pinter. The absurdity is what I really liked. The simplicity of the events are brilliant, and there is so much to enjoy as part of the audience. Absurdity is where the real adventure is. You drink when everything is boring, when it all looks the same, when there isn't anything worth noting. When I drink, everything is the same, everything is boring, nothing worth noting except my repulsion to the world around me.

Im going to go brush my teeth (I havnt all day or last night).
Then Im going to stretch my back and other muscles.
Then Im going to play some guitar.
I want to read more of Calvino - I want to finish that amazing book.
I want to go outside and breathe the fresh crisp autumn air.
I want to get a rootbeer.
I want to draw up a flyer requesting a subleaser.
I want to figure out the electric bill and other money crap.

I want to do a lot of stuff, and I can do a lot of stuff. This empty desireless feeling that has been floating through me all day has to go. It already feels gone. I feel awake. I feel refreshed (sort of). I feel alive and empowered. Now to make use of it in the best way possible.
I think that I'm always going to feel like I did today when I do anything I don't actually want to be doing. If I really wanted to go get drunk, I would have been floored when I awoke at 9:15 in all my clothes, a pounding headache, and a throat full of mucus. I would have felt good about the last night. I would have been happy that I couldn't remember going to mejier or what we bought or what I threw at Scott (croutons apparently). I don't derive satisfaction from being someone elses entertainment. Feeling like I did today is my bodies way of telling me something, its my emotions telling me something, its my defeated desires giving up because they were drowned the night before.

I dont want to waste any of my time doing anything that isn't going to actually fulfil me. I understand there will be a tremendous amount of unfulfilling work and socializing that I'll have to do the rest of my life - just like everyone else has to. But when it comes to my time to relax, my time to focus on myself and what I really want, I'm not going to pretend or hope something is going to be fulfilling when I already know that its ultimately not. Life is way too short. I may not know exactly what I feel like doing some nights or days, but I do know what I don't feel like doing and I'm not going to pretend those feelings aren't there because its far more convienent to.

I don't want to be that regular in Diggers. There is no way he wants to be there, but he doesn't want anything else enough to have something to do. He doesnt see any options for himself. Hes stuck in a cycle of stagnation alone.

I don't think I'd ever end up like that guy, but its probably one of the most frightening things to imagine happening to myself.

I wish Mandy was here, I wish we could do something together. Shes going to be out dancing soon (hopefully, unless her cold keeps her from it). I want to dance with her. I want to draw with her. I want to laugh and love and learn with her. I want to grow, and this is why Im not going to drink, but I want to grow with her most of all. wuuuufff... I miss her so much. I love her so much. I can't wait until I see her again, three weeks :)

Okay - Its time to do something and enjoy this day, this day that is incredibly unique, this day that won't ever come again, its one in a lifetime. Don't be decieved. Its all incredibly unique even when its cyclical, even when it seems the same, theres something different about it always, about each living moment - You just have to look for it, and it might be right under your nose, so close that you had been overlooking it all along.