oneofthatlot

I had a moment the other night where I had to choose between a joint and a hunk of bread. Now, gluttony is this girl's vice. I chose my friends, my occupation, my school for their spirit of excess. The other night though was a moment of pure, overt, slobbering greed. I was raising the bread to my mouth as Ali handed me the joint and I had to go through a whole decision process to make my next move. I wanted both things in my mouth/stomach/lungs/body's chemical balance, but simultaneous consumption would have been impossible. So, in a matter of seconds I calculated how I could get the most of both.

Things I knew:

1. I can eat more and faster than Ali.
2. The bread belonged to me. I bought it.
3. The joint has been relinquished into my possession.
4. The joint belonged to Ali. She bought the necessary materials.
5. Ali's interest in the bread had begun to wane.

So, I took a hit. The bread was more readily available. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I will never be pope.

Also, I haven't been wearing underwear today. Underneath a dress.

It must be my adolescent years again - Papa Roach has a new single, Benjamin Netanyahu is Prime Minister of Israel, and I had snot dripping down my face yesterday because my cat went missing. Also, recently I've been having this sort of physical deja vu sensations. My body feels like it's in high school or I smell high school or I feel I am an occupying a spot on the GA campus.

I suppose this may be a part of my general discombobulated state over the past few weeks. You see, I may feel like I am a nervous preteen, but I'm not, I'm now a nervous college student who is barely holding together in the face of all of her commitments. And for some reason I am hearkening back to those days. Things were a great deal easier then. Okay, not greatly great. I was after all playing a role in a social infrastructure that did not allow me to have my own agency and I was totally complicit in the misery that brought. I cried a lot. Maybe that's why I feel like I'm thirteen all over again. I feel more like a fully-formed person than I ever have, but I have hit some sort of wall that has made me lose my footing.

Who'd have thought that the economic collapse of my country would, in fact, send me over the edge? In all my life, I have either been on the one hand woefully ignorant of the effect money can have on people because I was well provided for or on the other fully aware of financial trouble and trying to refuse to care that I am ragged and funny - it's just money and they're just things and I have my family, so what else do I need? Unfortunately, in the face of failing to find myself a position for the summer, I realized no money also means you don't eat. At this point, I need a job to make sure I eat. My parents can't back me up at this point.

And you know what's the worst thing about all this? I can't be picky. I have to take what comes to me. And it could be total shit. I could be filing and there is little I hate more than filing (and the alphabetizing associated with it). I keep trying to make sure my life is intentioned, directional, and that I utilize every moment to experience/learn/feel the most I possibly can. I know a better person would say that I could make anything into a chance to do that. I am not a better person. I have ideas about what's good for me and I stick to those. Filing will not be good for me. And choice is taken away from me. Choice! I have been fighting to control my life for a long time - it's been my struggle for a long time. When the scope is narrowed for me, I get upset.

Anyway, on top of all that, I have about a million things to do. And my boss may or may not be a horrid little sexist douche-nozzle who likes the Left Behind Series and basically parrots our department heads bro-tastic relationships with all the boys. I am a feminist, atheist Yid! Do you know how nervous he makes me? He's only cementing the "bro circle" that exists in UT-TAPS. Boys, do what you like. Girls, you are emotional, irrational, and highly volatile, so we can't really trust you with anything and we're just to lean a little harder on you. It's for your own good. Of course, irony of ironies, our department head is a woman. A gay woman who talks about the patriarchy and its sense of privilege, but obviously feels threatened by other women. She wants to be part of a boys club, to be the only girl in the room, to be the one who managed to break through, so she's treating the rest of us like we're threats to her throne. Now, I have to decide if I want to continue working there and maybe stick my neck out or if I just want to get another work-study job. Feminist test or emotional health test? I don't know.

I need to make sure I'm sleeping right. That's what my mom tells me. I think, now might be a good time to listen to mom.

I had a beautiful dream today in class. We were talking about why Kublai Khan would bother to entertain Marco Polo and his suggestion that the emperor convert to Christianity. The text gave us the impression that there were only public and political obstacles standing in the way of Khan submitting himself to the Nazarite, that underneath he knew that Jesus and his tripartite religion was the True Way. I dreamed that the Great Khan was a magnificent melange of all the regions his grandfathers overran. He was a gorgeous collage of Turkey and India and China and Mongolia and Jordan. He was this polygendered, polysexual celestial benevolent leader, who knew that his position grew out of chance and not God. He forgot no one. And Marco Polo was a pretty boy he kept around and trotted out at parties because he said such hilariously outrageous things. And the Khan would make Marco sit at his feet (when of course he didn't send him out on grand but ultimately meaningless expeditions) and he would stroke the little Venetians hair and smile down on him. Marco would talk about Christianity and the Khan would nod and indulge him, saying, "Of course, it sounds lovely, send me your priests to tell me more." And the priests would come and tell the fantastic stories of the Bible and everyone in the court would be delighted. And Kublai Khan would be pleased at watching his wives and husbands smile and giggle. And they would all talk late into the night about the panopticon and performativity and identity and promise each other walks in the gardens in their old age.

Of course, this was mitigated by my work-study job that is seizing my life and the million and one things I feel I have to do (I really don't have to do anything, but I am compelled by quite a lot). I did not come to this school to work in office job. I came to slice open my finger by accident while making a model set. I came to discover that art is another country. I came to put together a 24 Hour Play Festival with three friends and have it sell out more than a usual-registered-student organization-backed performance. I came to drink. I came to think about Kublai Khan.

Everyone around here is a bit tense. It's a quarter that's going to threaten all our stabilities. I don't want to forget the important things, but this place makes it hard.

I am a misery of a paper-writer. Sometimes, I think, “You ought to be shot for the drivel you write, or at the very least kicked out of school.” But somehow, I keep on cracking on without regard to the damage I must be inflicting on my soul. After all, for the most part, only one person will read the paper I write. So, in the end, I’m only really hurting two people – myself and my poor, beast-of-burden professor, who has probably read so many bad papers in his or her time that he or she has been rendered practically insensate. And then, the real smackdown is being laid on me and, as the Lord is my witness, that don’t matter much to tell the truth. I deserve it, I suppose, for being such a miserable, wretched, colorless, uninspired, bored, and boring student.

Surprise, surprise. This happens around funerals and end parties. I have a healthy way of dealing with things ending! Alles hat eine Ende, ausgenommen Wurste, die zwie haben. Am I right or am I right? If I weren't so obsessed with my personal hygiene, I would most certainly look strung out. Thank god for my puritanical upbringing and the shame it produces about the physical body. Well, except for the whole taking so long to be fully naked in front of another person as an adult and fear of my own vagina. God, my parents failed me. On the upside, I read Spring's Awakening on the commute and found it to be very relateable. Next project, hmmmmmm? Probably not.

Do I sound bitter right now? I do, don't I. It is because, yet and once again, I have left far too many things to the last minute. I am a thick-skulled imbecile, I am. I could put any dunce to shame. I pale in comparison to the scholars come before me. I'm pretty commonplace.

Work - good thus far, people are a hoot. On my first day, I took spirit gum out of a wig, scheduled auditions, and drew up contracts. Snazzy. Still, I am the only intern who is not from these parts (or rather not from the north suburbs). It seems so strange to me. I feel somehow older - the others get to go back to their parents at the end of the day (well one gets to go back to her husband, honestly are we all back to marrying early?), I go back to my lonely apartment and shout down the telephone to mine every so often.

Jesus, this isn't going anywhere. I should be writing on Renaissance education and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. Yeah.

Because I threw up so much yesterday. Because I was so drunk on Saturday night. Because it was the BB party. Because I hadn't drank with any seriousness since second week. Because that's how I roll. But, oh, was it painful. By half seven last night I was at least throwing up the water I had drank, as before that I was vomiting nothing but stomach acid and my Wellbutrin-Advil cocktail. The final round at the toilet actually resulted in heaving up a little bit of blood, which I am sure is not healthy what so ever.

Let's see, I got sick:
- in the alleyway behind my building at around five on the way home from the party
- in my bathroom after arriving home at around five thirty
- twice over the course of one bath at four the next afternoon
- once after sleeping sweatily and fitfully for about four hours after that

I slept most of yesterday away and felt a bit as if I had some sort of 19th century wasting disease. I wanted nothing more than to call someone to take care of me, but all my friends live in the student ghetto so far from where I am, I doubt they would have come for something I inflicted on myself. But the party was quiet enjoyable. My lovely little SM for next quarter and I hung off each other like the sloppy Eastern European birds that we are. I swerved up and down that hallway a good number of times. MM chased me around shouting "AW YEAH" in that voice that I find so disturbing. A said some lovely things about me - like how I was one of his closest friends for putting up with his constant sexual harassment. I also kissed him and his girlfriend B and B may have even slipped me some tongue, I think. Considering I don't remember how I got out of the building though I wouldn't count on my memory being too reliable. Anyway, I would normally at this point promise to stop drinking so heavily and stop kissing my friends when thusly intoxicated, but I know I will only summarily throw that promise into the lake and forget about it. I may not go about soaked in alcohol the way I did last quarter, but I will have my episodes.

So right now I'm doing a vast amount of laundry (including sheet and towel washing, which hasn't happened in a disturbingly long time) to clean away the remnants of yesterday.

We're nigh on finished with this quarter except for a few loose ends I have to tie up - write an essay, hand in a journal, get a subletter for July and August, move apartments (finally rid myself of the plague that is E and K to move in with people who will talk to me, though still be insane, but in a way that I can deal with. Then I can concentrate on my internship (I'll write about my fellows later, they are quite the characters) and possibly a paid job because the university will again give me no money, despite my being in a penniless industry and with parents without any income. Yet, I still spent a vast load of money on Friday on clothing. I need to learn to be a little more responsible with my cash. And actually revisit my bank statement more than once every two months.

Other than that this quarter has included:
- a near brush with failure in a req class
- a growing hatred for actors though I have been and kind of still am one
- a thing with a boy that included blowjobs and finger banging and an expression of my clingyness that has yet to be resolved and may sadly end and my general embarrassment
- bonding with my two A girls, in a way that I cannot only describe as glorious
- a distancing from S because neither of us has any time
- a break with my therapist and the search for a new one
- acting with the football team
- feminist literature and increasingly obscure revenge tragedies
- puppets
- anger about being undervalued and underused
- anger about incompetence
- smelly clothes and shoes
- more free and slightly odd haircuts
- riding my bike home in the driving rain on multiple occasions
- working out
- error messages on my computer
- a break down over an essay
- getting a job for next year (I AM YOUR BOX OFFICE)
- interviewing for like thirty million things
- living at the theater and learning about technical things and being on ladders
- realizing that my drama geek friends from highschool did not react to getting to college by declaring they would make theater for the rest of their lives and not being troubled by that
- dealing with shit
- sweeping my room to produce great piles of dirt
- not listening to the news
- discovering the g-spot orgasm as opposed to the mere clitoral orgasm
- reading lots of plays
- cold weather through may
- lots of swimming in the lake, late at night and naked
- redecorating my room
- getting caught up in drama drama drama

It's been...a lot. Baller.

Oh boy drugs.

1. So the young women of the post-apocalyptic, utopian, all-female art installation were on drugs. Handed anything from alcohol to salvia during rehearsals and before performances. Christ. That's thirty kinds of unethical. Most of these girls were first-years and due to the power dynamic of the director-actor relationship compounded by the desire to want to be a part of the group none of them were going to say no. Also, that's cheating. You didn't really create an uninhibited space in our very inhibited world, you tricked your actors into doing it. Supposedly the higher ups know, but there's been very little uproar so I don't know what's going on.

2. I have to cease and desist on the drug and alcohol front. Weed apparently makes you feel like your heart is going to explode and alcohol just doesn't play well with Wellbutrin - it causes motherfucking seizures. My mom called yesterday and told me she'd like me to be careful about the drinking, "you know, with this whole thing with Heath Ledger". (On a side note, one step forward two steps back with the whole HL situation. I feel like the stigma connected to mental illness is going to re-up itself and people are going to become increasingly suspicious of pills.) So no more getting shit-faced for me. It's probably better that way, I don't to make an effort to fuck myself up because I already am. However, sudden cessation of alcohol use can also lead to seizures, so I'm going to slip a glass of wine or a beer in when I can, but no hard liquor, no gin, no tequila, and certainly no vodka. Shit, I'm going to have learn how to go to parties sober. Well I can dance like an idiot at a party, stone-cold sober, so why not just expand that to include all party situations.

3. The Wellbutrin is doing me a solid. There was some actual work done at a reasonable time, not crunched up against a looming deadline. I'm sleeping less and still feeling okay. The Fog is pulling back, though I still sometimes can't work things out in my head, but my concentration is certainly better. I am, on the other hand, horny as a rhinoceros in heat, which is both literally and linguistically horny, so double wammy. It does not help that during the scene we have together, T sidles up next to me and rubs me and curls in to me as if to say, "Hold me! Hold me tight!" Arg, I can't read it, I tried to see if he does it with the other girls but I don't think he does. He's adorable, quite good looking, and incredibly sweet and straight-laced. I want to ruin him. But, I can't make the first move, because of my terrible anxiety about being rejected. I did it once last year and it hurt. On the flip side, my other "boyfriend" is a useless lump of shit. A rock could do a better job in his part. He won't look me in the eyes, change the intonation of his voice, touch me in any credible way (and I don't care if you don't find me attractive, get over it, and do your job). It's like acting at a wall. I keep shutting down. I actually tuned out yesterday during our run and our director called me out on it. I know I am incredibly transparent when I disgusted by another person, I know this, I just couldn't hide it yesterday. So today I have to go back in the shell.

I feel like this was on the ranty/angry side. But I feel unimaginably better, less prone to flipping out for sure, more awake, less fuzzy. And my mommy is coming to see me tomorrow and I'm really excited.

So day two on the Wellbutrin. A little nauseous before dinner but overall feeling alright and less tired. I've also actually read a play. I'm hoping I might actually write some of my paper for the Histories/Comedies tonight as well. I know it's Saturday and boy do I want to dance but I can do that next week because this week's going to be hellishly busy. On the other hand: no, I want what I want now and why should I postpone my own pleasure in favor of thoroughly unpleasurable activities. Ugh, civilization. I've been thoroughly hopeless about being a human all week (mostly because people have been shitty throughout the week: UT with its politics and rehearsal with its bullshit). In the end, we're all going to die rendering our own actions useless and then humanity will die out, rendering it all useless. And in the meantime, we're so disgusting and horrible that I can't think of why we continue to support our own existence. So why not have fun. Cheery, isn't it (and hedonism in a nut shell). No wonder I never get anything done.

Man, I have so much to write. My mind is constantly churning and things constantly percolating. Will a list do?

1. Just saw the performance installation - the one about the postapocalyptic all-female utopia involving several friends and acquaintances being topless - today. It doesn't have a plot and really it's a bit like a slumber party where the participants have been trapped in the bedroom and they don't really object, they just accept. It was a bit like that bit in Brave New World where he describes the children playing in the grass and fondling each other. Anyway, I didn't stay for long as I was kind of bored, but also because I might have had to act on my impulse to join in (resulting from both a comfort with the situation and a desire to ruin it). But it did feel a bit like my life just with slightly more nudity. I too stick bits and pieces to my wall, dance around with my friends, read out loud, and just generally be silly. And then I was bit bitter at the director, who being a man had coopted the female world I exist in. It made me a little oddly angry. Herr Director A for next quarter was there and I tried not be awkward. Who knows.

2. Went for a piss up with M from committee that turned into not a piss up, but a heart to heart. We talked about how the special thing about a relationship is not that you aren't attracted to other people but that you pass on those you are attracted to. And how HC is made of tendons and like Artemis. And how EDH is nutty, but in a good way. And body piercings and my desire to get more. University is funny in that way. I feel like I could go to anyone's house or they could come to mine and we could drink alcohol (or not) and talk about things that matter not just little things. I am glad of that.

3. I am really hardcore stressed about all my work - two papers, the play, my mom's visit. I really have to clean my room but I can't. I should get rid of the cigarettes butts before my mom comes, really. Speaking of, things are so much better. We're back to her suggesting meditation exercises for me and with momma that's a good place to be. Although, I talked to my dad today and she hadn't told him that I was going on the pills. They honestly never talk - what a relationship. But the work, I still get the sense that I'm just going to bang it out and not really give it much thought and have it just be okay, a thought that does not please me.

4. I can't even talk about the Court's Titus Andronicus. Ugh. Oh, I can't even.

This is disappointingly unthorough, but I can't really recall other stuff. Guess I'll have to write more often then. I might be able to now, at least I feel that way.

So my mom called me this morning and said, "I woke up this morning relieved. It's good to know that you've admitted that you have problem and that you're dealing with it. It's been hard for us, the ups and the downs, but it's good to know you're moving forward." Still makes it sounds like a drug addiction problem but let's rewind a little bit. I saw the counseling people yesterday and the psychologist pretty bluntly said, well it's pretty obvious little one that you have a depressive personality and that you need some help. We're going to talk about pills and long term therapy and it's going to be okay. And I was relieved to tell them. And my family is relieved to hear me say it. And things are not perfect but they're going to be better.

On the other hand, S has been unhappy of late. A lot of it has to do with P and their relationship and how she needs space and he won't stop telling her not to wear certain things and her being restless and wanting to do drugs and him disapproving and just general tension. But there's also elements of disillusionment with the world. She said yesterday that she wanted to be able to just say "fuck it, I'm going to skip class to go see my friend on the North side" but that she has no one to do that for and that she wishes she had someone who made her want to do crazy things. S is a former cutter and that's all about feeling physically because you can't feel emotionally and I'm worried that all this excitement craving is about injecting emotion into her life and that what used to haunt her may come back and bite her. We're quite a pair the two of us - I need to feel a lot less and she needs to feel much more. Throw KB into the mix and we've got a pot full of civilizationally discontent broken tea cups.

The play is going well and the cast is hugely adorkable. One of the guys may or may not be into me, but I can't tell because I am so horribly bad at telling these things (mostly because such things have never come to fruition with me so I don't know what that ought to look like) and also I always assume that I'm not attractive/funny/smart/engaging/sexy/alluring/mysterious/witty enough to entice anyone. Most of the time I think guys are just being nice. Though I did know quite soon when I started making eyes at me (heehee see what I did there). Oh Jesus, I don't know. Seriously though, apart from my robotic scene partner for the first part, they're wonderful. But this guy, he won't look me in the eye, his range of emotions is about three (so he has an up on some of today's Hollywood stars), and when we first had to kiss he went "Gay!" Well, no, I think it's pretty strictly heterosexual, dearest. Douche.

I'm getting signals from UT people that I'm becoming included in the crowd. I've been deemed competent enough by a certain queen bee to do props for her show (though I'd like to be doing something bigger like stage managing). My opinion is apparently valued by one of the more avante garde amongst the group. And I spend many hours a day hanging out in the Lounge. I might as well sleep there. This feels familiar, just like high school again but without the irritating East Coast prep school monetary politicking underlying it. Other politicking goes on but it's of an entirely different stripe. This is an accomplishment I think.

These past few entries haven't been very eloquent I think, but they're really meant to be more cathartic I suppose. My friendly black cloud is of the sort that doesn't aid creativity. I've been hampered by it for the past few months and I think it finally reached a climax in the past few weeks. I'm working on it though.

See, lips never lose their surprise. I always remember how palms and the backs of necks and the smooth bit at the top of somebody's shoulder and cheeks will feel. But lips are always surprising. For some reason, the cold and the wet make me jump a little at first. So kissing, it never gets old. I had to kiss a castmate yesterday at rehearsal and I was surprised by it. I mean part of it was that we've only know each other a grand sum of three days and were told we might as well get it over with, but it's really that lips are so different than any other surface on the body. It's a gloriously silly thing to do, kiss. Rubbing your cracked, bruised lips against someone elses to convey to them that they make an odd little creature bubble up from your insides seem, at least to me when I really think about these things, counterintuitive.

Speaking of odd little creatures, the monster has returned. I thought I had done with it, had done with seeing people for my problem, but I suppose that's the very nature of having your own personal thunder cloud. When enough water evaporates into the air, it's going to rain. It's terrible because it makes me indulge in my worst self-destructive tendencies - eating way too much as after all I treat food the way other people treat heroin in a constant bingey fashion without any of the purge, sleeping too much, and ignoring my work. It has become abundantly clear to me that I am so painfully insecure that I actually ruin myself because I believe I can never reach the things I hope to achieve. And I have my armor so securely fastened on that no one can see that every cell in my body wants to denature and be done with it. My own father thinks I'm tough. This is the man that saw me break down in our kitchen when I was seventeen and begged to see a psychologist because I felt so broken and worthless. Then again, I think that's how it's changed this time. Before that first breakdown, I was paper thin and it was obvious that I was hurting. In my zeal to get better, I took up this new suit of clothing of toughness to stave off any future pain. But the armor itself has become a sort of sickness too. I can be so up up up with people but left to myself I just let the darkness suck me in.

So, I'm going to see someone at SCRC in hopes that talking to someone I won't screen with will help. I have told my parents which helps but I haven't really told them everything. I don't mention that no one wants to fuck me and that I sorely need it. I don't mention that the nihilistic bent of this school stirs terror in me and that my mind constantly scrapes at the universe and can't understand it and that frightens me too. I don't mention that my roommate's issues with me still make me feel bad. I don't mention that I don't like the way I look. I don't mention that the entertainment industry, which I fought them to let me study, frightens me as well and that I failure there seems imminent to me.

In the non-depressive bulletin, my life is actually going kind of well. I'm attached to two shows for the quarter with people I really, honestly like. I'm slowly worming my way in UT and getting recognized. My classes are interesting and I spend most of my time reading plays. I went out three nights last week and danced on a table on Friday. I've been getting high a lot and just generally being a good social being. I cleaned the apartment yesterday and K seemed pretty grateful. E didn't even come out of her room, it's nice that I never see her. I'm thinking of living in a co-op never year. We'll see what comes. I lost my wallet and found it again. People call me. I'm seeing Miss Julie tomorrow, which has a oddly true line in it about hating men but being overcome by a desire for them. Ok, now we're getting into an arena I don't want to visit. But, look self, things are going ok. Try not to screw them up.

Also, everything is frozen over here. Makes it a bitch to walk home.

I have a lot to write about today, methinks. Yes, plenty. I'm finally really finished - I handed in my lab reports that I missed even though the quarter is over because it so easy to get the university people to be on your side and make sure you don't fail out. I was having terrible nightmares of being put on probation and having to take a quarter off and giving both my parents a heart attack and my brother a reason to no longer respect me. I also emailed that prop list. All I have left to do is pack and tidy up. I'm leaving tomorrow for Israel. I don't really know what's in store for me there. Intense indoctrination I suppose and lots of run-ins from my oceanic feeling (somebody accidently gifted me with the spiritual gene and a mind that can't accept it). S has a friend who's been before on the same program and he said that when he got there "it felt like home." I don't want that. Chicago is home. America is home. I couldn't be from the Holy Land.

I've seen RJ and R in the past two days. And I visited high school. Many feelings.

It was lovely to see RJ again, as the last time I saw him was in Edinburgh at the Fringe. He's really grown up, he looks at thin and stringy and manly. Beyond that he's seen the world a bit. He's been to France and Switzerland and South Africa in past few months. And he's experiencing the same thing I felt when I got back from India. This little imaginary kingdom we lived in through our childhoods is so sweet and soft and the world outside so hard and horrible and full of terror and pain. You don't realize it though. You can't - the TV, the paper, the radio, they can't tell you how it is. All the SUVs, uniforms, retro pizza joints, designer boutiques, they're nowhere else but here. You think you get poverty, but you don't. I used to fault him for being all white man's burdeny but I realize now that he just was parroting what his older siblings (who are well traveled) were saying without having anything to back it up. But that's not the case anymore. He knows. What's more he's seen racism and can recognize it at home. I thought he'd be tedious and a bit embarassing because he was when I last saw him, but he's changed and I like that. It'll be good to have a friend around like him even if we don't see each other much.

Seeing R is always sort of bizarre. We're sort of weirdly attached at the hip, though sometimes I don't see why - all we seem to do is gossip about the summer program but I'm wondering when the goss is going to run out. Still, he's a warm and comforting sort of company and I love him for it. People keeping recommending we get married. Unfortunately, I don't think we're at all attracted to each other. So we saw some of the Christmas windows (which never occured to R to do as he's so out of the whole Christian loop and I thought it would be good for him and also I wish I could get into the spirit) and then to the Asia Society to see their Kashmir exihibit. I got some dinner in Grand Central from the Indian bit there and there was a lot of it as I was ravenous. I sat down to eat and an old man asked me if I was going to eat all that. I joked that I probably wouldn't. But, as I was eating I realized what I ought to have said was "Yes, and then I'm going to throw it all up in the bathroom." And then I did eat it all just to spite him and it gave me a migraine. Oof, the migraine was intense and from about five to ten this morning I felt sure I would die.

High school. I rode up veritably blasting Jay-Z to give me a little courage. I was still sweaty palmed and a little shaky. Saw the Father, briefly discharged that duty. Saw SP - also brief, but filled with glorious joy as always and my heart pounding as always. He called my the light of the world. It's his way, but it froze my lungs all the same. Apparently, coordination is going great, but he is at least being adventurous and as wild as ever, so at least the atmosphere hasn't crushed him. Told him I've switched to theater, which made him happy. Saw Mr. M - he's retired but was filling in. He's shaved his beard and look's less like Santa Claus, still as cuddly though and a little off-beat and indie. He was wonderful teacher. Had an actual substantial conversation with Mrs. F because she always has an ear and less classes to teach. She also gave me her husband's brother's email because he runs a community theater project in Chi-town. I might be there this summer then. Anyway, that's all details. What I noticed most was my strange tone and attitude. I couldn't speak an ill word of my life. I was all sunshine and lollipops and butterflys and statues made of bubblegum. What is that? Do I not want to disappoint those people who had so much faith in me, who saw me when I still spit-shined and straight-legged? Do I want to keep them happy but giving the illusion that I am living in a perfect world? I don't know.

I wanted to go up to Mr. T's (not from the A-Team) old room and sit in for a while, maybe cry a little bit. I've not really reconciled myself with his death entirely. It was the first major death in my life (and I'm lucky I got to nineteen thusly unscathed), but I wasn't able to go to his funeral and I learned about it via Facebook. It was so cold and far away. Considering, I loved him...it doesn't seem fitting. He was my model for beauty - passionate, a little bit broken, loved his wife and kids, wrote poetry, wanted to listen to kids' poetry, got on a soapbox when it didn't benefit him, stared down walls, thought we were all essentially the same, masculine and sporty. I loved him so much. It would have been a weird thing to do, a bit mad. So I didn't.

Yesterday on the train, for the first time really and truly, I noticed the difference between the tightness of young faces and the slackness of old ones. I don't know how I didn't see it before. And I finally really knew, that it's both simultaneously impossible for me to really fuck up and also quite easy.

I nearly forgot, the family and I saw A Prarie Home Companion live at the Town Hall. Big NPR nerds. Odetta was there and full of emotion. I wonder what'll happen to the program after Garrison Keiller's done. I spent most of my time dreaming about having my own variety program - more urban, more agressive with slam poetry and acoustic versions of hardcore rock and better, edgier, grossier comedy and old standards jazzed up for the East Village set and more Jews. Then it wouldn't be APHC because the old fogies in Wisconsin wouldn't be able to eat their dinner to it.

1. Apparently, procrastination is a genetic disease I inherited from my grandfather. Ten pager due tomorrow at 5 and I've promised to pop by the alma mater in the morning. At least, I know what I'm going to write about.

2. I bought a spangly dress from H&M for fifteen dollars. I can't stop wearing it. How wondrous is that? And and neon tights!

3. I'm going to Israel next week.

4. Seriously, I cannot write ten pages on revenge.

5. I have become a demon. I went to bed at half six this morning.

6. I like lists.

7. I'm seeing SP tomorrow. I get to relive my favorite crush on teacher moments.

8. My nasal preforation is giving me a spot of bother. It's a bit sore.

Save me from myself. Please.

I'm back at my parents house a mere six days after they crawled out of my hovel and emerged back into the world of the normal people. An hour after I got off the plane, my father bought me a camera and paid for my photos to be developed - and we're talking expensive medium format bullshit. I was taken in my the Holga hipster huksterism! Anyway, buying. I know it's my birthday in a few days (oof I'm going to be twenty) and this is likely all the that will be purchased for me in my vacation time, but honestly considering the money's tight - my father's business seems to always be on the verge of collapse, though it never quite does - it seems ridiculous. It is the cheapest, least function having camera there was but, still. I don't know. Sometimes, I feel they lavish me unnecessarily. Maybe I need to start saying no to them. Be really socialist. Just refuse all gifts. Unfortunately, my desire for commodities still holds tight to me (and also to record things obssesively). However, I have been able to disconnect myself from a large volume of my clothing. I managed to stuff all the things I'll need for the next month into two carry-on sized bags. But let's not lie, I'm totally going to the mall tomorrow. Retail therapy? Again let's not lie, I made a right cock up of last week, what with not turning in my two labs or really studying for my bio final and turning in the Hindi a day late. I'm trying to take my mind of it and the fact that I have two essays that as yet are going nowhere due this week. I do this every quarter. I swear to myself I will do it all properly. Then I don't. I was so studious and dilligent once. Then I went to college.

Final theater project was actually in its own way a sucess. I mean the ending was half-assed as we never got past the waffle stage (you know I put that word into common parlance [side note, I'm noticing when my thoughts and my diction are thrown at the fridge, it's the diction that sticks and I'm not sure whether or not to be discouraged]) and never created a real end. But the experience was giddy and heady and all the people seemed so shiny and gift-wrapped. Oh, I cannot stop thinking about the holiday season. I hate it. No, I hate the music involved. Lately, I've become really angry about the fact that people always want to play music in public spaces (restaurants, airports) non-stop. Bad music, really loud, and conversation impeding. But I suppose it means no one is alone then. Though we really ought to be alone more often. Only children are the most creative ones. Anyway, the music is always terrible but Christmas music (because they never play Hanukah music) pretty much holds the title for the worst. It's bloodless, insipid, weakly jazzy, breathy, inoffensive, too clean, and so Jesus-y. It lacks spirit altogether and it steps on no ones toes. I disgusts me.

I drank a beer in front of my parents today. I mean, I was thirsty, I walked up to the fridge, saw a beer sitting at the back, considered that it had probably been there for about three years from some barbeque or other because my parents never drink, and decided I would drink it. And I did. And it was ok. There was a little bit of unspoken dissent? awkwardness? resignation? but it was ok. My brother didn't even give comment. Nose-piercing, beer-drinking daughter that I am, they still want to buy me presents and hug me? That's love.

It's time for me to get to know my music library. We need to have some "Us Time". I have 3354 songs (and let's not discuss the criminal amount of downloading I do) and half the time I have no idea what's going on. I think I'm going to listen to it straight through by artist or album or something. I barely know what I've got in there. I need to remember what kind of music I like. Ok judging by the fact that I was listening to jangle rock about fifteen seconds ago and now I'm listening to the Hilliard Ensemble is pretty indicative of my musical schizophrenia. I tend to obsess over albums or songs rather than stick to anything genre like. I then play that album/song repeatedly until I can listen to it no more. Recently it's been M.I.A's new album Kala and Saul Williams' cover of Sunday Bloody Sunday (which is so Trent Reznor infused that I'm a little embarrassed that I like it). I really want to make a surreal music video to 20 Dollar from Kala with people dancing in a protest line and a rainbow coalition of young'uns. I love the youth. We're pretty damn sweet. I want to start making movies and lots of other art. Easily distracted, me.

The weeks sort of been full of uneasy communication with high school friends. I can't get my ladies (R,C, and E) to email me regularily which frustrates me, because I want to keep up with them, but they are poor communicators. So I always have to send the start-up emails, but be careful not to talk about myself too much. So I sent one of those earlier this week, in a vain attempt to maybe seem them sometime over the next month. And the girl who I sort of cut off because she made me feel small is doing her classic when is to send my excruciating one line message via Facebook. I feel bad ignoring her. So I may do the Facebook classic and make on vague promises of hanging out sometime. And also, a friend from the grade below keeps pestering me to hang out, but I often find him unbearable. So using the same tactic on him. I want to be left alone for the most part. Listen to music, finish my essays, see my former drama teacher, apply for internships, read some books, make a playlist for next quarter's show, see the people I wanna see. I don't want other people. I wanna see M and R and A from the summer and drink with them. This entry is becoming sickeningly long. The typing makes it too easy. Nabokov wished he had kept a journal when he was young. Groucho Marx said that if you dissect a joke it's like dissecting a frog - it dies. Steve Jobs often says....oh I give up.

I watched Bill Bailey's stand up (I know, I know) and he does a bit about the sun eventually sucking the planet into the black hole that will result from it's fanastic space suicide thus rendering any and all human endeavour completely pointless. It spoke to me. I was afraid.

I should be working, I should be working, I should be working. My lust for Bob Fossil is colossal.

The family is gone. It was lovely having them here and we got on smashingly. I think my being away from them and the whole abscence makes the heart grow fonder and the me not being nuerotic and us having aired our grievances and us deciding that I am allowed to be silly and non-corporate has made things easier. It was very fluffy and sweet the whole weekend (except for when we got in a fight about who forgot to take the directions for the movie theater). They really are wonderful. And I know it's not cool or whatever, but I love my family, fiercely. They matter to me more than anything I could think of. I'm also so glad my little brother still wants to hold my hand and make an ass of himself in museums with me. It feels good that we can perpetually be five year olds together. I like that he feels like he can call me fat and I won't get angry. My parents, especially my dear old dad, did a lot of the misty eyed stuff that I can't do with them because it's a little to much to handle. My dad called me his "beautiful little girl" on average six times a day, but I don't mind even if it's not really true (I mean I'm sure he believes it, but I'm not what could be called attractive). The first night they got here, I got to cuddle on the couch with my mom for a few hours and just ramble. I like that too. They're wonderful my little family. I really hope it stays that way, it's been hard work getting us all to appreciate one another.

We saw this bizarre French clowning show at CST. I didn't understand it but it was very funny at times and also terribly sad. There was a section where the director/star did this thing with a rocking chair. He rolled in and out of it I guess, then got off and mimicked it's movements. It was the most tragic thing I've seen in a while. Also, absolutely amazing in terms of the physical feats achieved. And talk about living out the dreams in your head on stage. A gigantic mop hanging from the ceiling by a hook (fuck that theater has so much fly space, I got a little turned on)? Men dressed as doors? Crew members dressed as miners? Talking replaced by the screeching of violins? A lady singing in Latin and then turning into a giraffe, a grasshopper, a circus master, and a fish? Only in Europe. Here's to socialist art funding. Other than that, we did our usual holiday thing with museums (Remington at the Art Insitute, maps at the Field) and movies (Enchanted, Hairspray). Actually let's talk about Enchanted. Briefly, way to try to undermine gender roles by letting the lady save the man, but you set up the old binary and let it sit. Come on. If you have an old, bitchy, power-hungry queen trying to squash a young, fresh-face, virginal maiden, you are merely echoing hundreds of other narratives about female bitchiness. We always have to compete, there can only be one woman in the boys crowd. AND! The story ends with a traditional family (and the widower gets to get married, which is ok because he's a man) and all the little girls want to princesses at the end when former-princess sets up a dress shop for little girls. For all it's post-modern undermining of the traditional Disney narrative, it sure didn't really push it. And McDreamy of Grey's Anatomy, why must you always look like you are going to eat your female cohorts? Not devour them, but slowly chew on them through the long, cold winter. It's scary and you always look so sad about it. Crying into your soup because you're in love and will have to eat your girlfriend. Dear Studios, stop hiring men like this, it makes love scary. Oh and also, so many homophobic little moments in the movie and lots of anti-immigrant ones as well. Also included, black ladies are sassy. I give up.

The library is particularily artic today and I will be spending at least eight hours here. I'm hoping it will keep me awake while I go about the dirty business of translating. I know I'm supposed to love languages and be good at them (or I did when I was in eighth grade and my brain actually worked properly), but I am glad I'm not taking this class next quarter. It gives me such agida. I'm going to try to keep going to the Hindi/Urdu conversation group though, I should be able to speak another language, elsewise I'm just being an irresponsible citizen of the world. Anyway, I'm beginning to enjoy these marathon sessions in the library, in a perverted, self-deprivation kind of way. Eeeew. Also constantly on my mind - I have to figure out my plan for the summer and start applying for shit soon. I have so many, many options. What I really want though is to go back to Edinburgh and slum it. I want to sleep on the floor and do drugs that I can't name, briefly become addicted to cigarettes, and see lots of naked people. And see three shows a day. And hate things and become so riled up when I see something good that I can't sleep. That would be ideal.

Ok nose to the grind stone. This time I mean it.

I smoked three cigarettes today, in very quick sucession. I think I reasoned it away by telling myself I had to smoke them all before my parents got here. I'm hosting my parents and my brother in my home. It's a freaking adult Thanksgiving. I don't know how much I like being a real adult. I've procrastinated all day today (well that is after the terrifying crush of class) - even with the gigantic translation due in nigh on a week. I think I reasoned it away by telling myself that watching endless amounts of Charlie Brooker and Nathan Barley and Fat Pie and listening to the Postal Service again for the first time in two years and realizing it's even more relevant and heart-rending than ever is a sort of artistic exploration in comedy and rock. Bullshit really. I need water.

I wanted to write about my fucked up gender attitudes, my formative sexual experiences, production meetings, exploring the campus, my shitty room mate situation, trying to figure out my future hair cut (Noel Fielding's hair on my head), considering being in a flash mob, but I'm a bit on the tired side and let's be honest I'm doing the typical 'Naughts thing and watching telly whilst doing this.

The view from the fire escape (is it that if it's made of wood? or is it then just the back stairs?) in this building is beautiful. The moon is incredibly neon and the clouds move over it with amazing speed - oh the windy city. And the buildings are the perfect combination of levels and the randomness of the lights in the windows is so pleasing and the weeds collecting around the edges of the building and under those big bins makes the ideal level of dilapidation, you know with the crumbled piles of asphalt, sort of wild and a little bit natural. And the orange light, the lens through which man's creation and intrepidness is so unabashedly, achingly beautiful, I love it. I stood back there, smoking my cigarettes and thinking it didn't really matter that the two girls I live with find me a bit on the stupid side and that we have nothing to say to each other. I tried to describe it to people, I believe it's a bit akin to them being Beyonce and Shakira a la Beautiful Liar and I'm the man they're singing about. I'm the double timer, but I'm still living with them. Still it doesn't matter, because the theater has arrived in my life and it's all that's left. I'm looking forward to my own set of jangly keys, like all the cool kids have. Now if only I could beat my addiction to the internet and actually get a bit more done, so I can stuff more filling into my theater duvet.

I am a beast. Translating session into the wee hours of the morning in the science library (whose name I will never be able to pronounce, too many liquid consonants jostling up against each other). Maniacal second wind at four thirty in the morning. My mind moving faster than light as I tried to fall asleep. Candy, cigarettes. All I want to do now is be involved in a fantastic piss-up.

Actually, I keep longing for the British Isles. I'd really like to be in Scotland right now and wander around the hills. I want to sink my feet in the mud and pretend to be a fairy. Or Iceland! Maybe I want to be out in the bleak treelessness. This travel itch is getting far to intense for me to handle.

Roommates perhaps do not like me anymore. Ergh. What a waster.

Today has been both glorious and utterly sordid. I suppose it's quite easy to have that sort of day here. Our emotions are so high (and well as we will see so not) and everything so imbued with meaning far beyond what seems for me at least to be normal human capacity. I had another morning that I swore I would rouse myself from my slumber early to get work done but as always my dreams were far more attractive than my reality. I blithered away in Bio. I can't bring myself to pay attention in Core classes anymore. Before I arrived here the core was so damnably attractive and now I loathe it. Anyway, that's all fairly uninteresting. It got interesting after the clock struck half eleven.

Every Monday and Wednesday I have lunch with S, to make sure we see enough of each other because we've discovered (through mutual uncomfortability with the scene we were formerly involved) that we trust each other implicitly. And it's important to preserve that. Our conversation today was eerily familiar. She's been feeling down lately - no down is not the way to describe it. She says she is too tired to have emotional responses, no that she is too busy. Emotions are not productive. They do not fit in with plan that she has. It's an intense one this plan. Double majoring, being involved, loving and being loved. There's a lot going on. And there is part of her that is happy to do it, you can see that it gives her joy to think how she could be a help to others. But, and this is the huge but that floats around almost all the students here and refuses to let go, the idea of helping is still quite shapeless. Grad school, NGO, lobbying, never working, only traveling? What's next? Which makes it all very hard to want to complete things, leading to the opposite end of the spectrum: complete inaction, no solution at all.

Everyone I know has gone through this. Everyone here breaks down. Everyone here wants to take a quarter off, wants to graduate as soon as possible, wants to leave Hyde Park. And maybe this is because I know more women than I do men, but it's mostly women. Everywhere I go the questions is what is the goddamn point? And yet we're not allowed to ask that question. It is assumed we will come to college and we will finish it, even if we see no use for it. We will go to college, we will work, we will get married, we will have children, we will die. There. Civilizations and it's discontents.

On the other hand, my theater class was beautiful. We did site-specific work this week and so most of the scenes involved breaking rules or at the very least getting in peoples' way. We walked down the middle of the road! We went through the wrong entrance into the library! There were dead people that came back to life in places where I normally feel safe and people crawling out of odd places! This is a glimpse of my life as it is to be from now on. I get to play. To have small triumphs over the stupid rules that run rampant everywhere. To talk and sing and clamber up and down things. I have chosen the best path. I won't be crushed under the weight of my major. Next quarter is going to be wonderful with the theater classes and the English class and the acting and scenic design and South Asian Civ and gender class. I am overjoyed.

I'm taking back joy for my fellows who are so miserable and lost.

Last night was a nightmare. E got drunk. She's a nuisance when intoxicated: terribly rude and it brings out this odd aspect of her personality, the middle-aged southeastern white man Christian conservative from the fifties. It's a rare occasion but the last time it happened she shouted in the middle of a crowed cafe, "Is that the gay one?" This time was no better - we were talking about abortion (at Saturday night dinner, really) and she insisted it was totally wrong, killing babies is an absolute no-no, that it's procreation not recreation, sex is for babies, take responsibility for your actions, vagerah vagerah. This lead to R asking her if she was a virgin, to which she replied no though it's a lie, and then he inquired if when she had sex she was expecting to have a baby and if she had told the young man she was fucking, to which she replied yes. And O, who is still fatally attracted to her, told her to stop sticking out her tongue as she does when being cheeky and cover her exposed leg. And P's mom played beer pong with him and N (who wasn't nearly as awful as he usually is) and S. I often have these nights now, where I have to ask myself what sort of addled dream I've stepped into. P's mom was plying us with alcohol the entire night, glass after glass of wine (another of which I broke, a thing I can't seem to stop doing). I don't understand this life at all. Dinners were promised to people and those promises are not going to be kept. This morning E didn't remember any of it this morning. Not even the proclamations she made that she would drop out and have kids somewhere in the plains of Montana. Little wonder we as a group became so infamous in the old dorm. They still talk about us there even though we've all left, the hate still lingers. They still talk about the time I lubed that girl's doorknob.

I'd been away from that particular scene for a while now, a few weeks. It's got a quite negative aura, but I did remember the attraction for a little while. I find it hard to describe. It's the terrible self-destructiveness, so dire and so anti-social that it almost feels revolutionary. We won't be taken in, we'll just crumble ourselves. The far distant cousin of the hipster's erotic boredom, refusing to have a passion, refusing to join in, only willing to explode and deprive the world of another worker. And there are some days when I delight in that, when I revel in it, rub up against it and have a cigarette with it. Most days though, I feel like I might burst from wanting to do things (though more often than not I get riled up and am inactive).

In that vein, I finally declared as a theater major. After the meeting I went out in the Hutch Courtyard and did a little twirl. And hugged a person I don't even really like. Pure joy.

Oh! I finally got back together with rock and roll. All last year I felt so delicate and thin skinned that I could only listen to folk music. And I'm not talking about greasy men with guitars and bad hair cuts, I'm talking traditional music, without a writer just passed from generation to generation. That's all I could take. I didn't frighten me. It was comforting and soft, easy to swallow and certainly not at all revolutionary. But I finally made my way back to screaming guitars and the drum kit. I'm letting it thrum through me again. Late at night I pretend I'm in a punk band and dance around in my underwear, crawling on the floor, singing to my futon. It's fucking hilarious and liberating. Maybe I'll join a rock band. So I can sweat on the crowd and fondle myself in public. That is after all what rock and roll is about. It's going to have to be hardcore that's all. Real hardcore.

I really have no idea where I'm headed these days. I hope it's a good place though. I really do.