2000-12-11 :: 6:25:16
i am sorry you have so many friends coming in from india
Soundtrack: Guster, "Demons" - lousy 20.0 Kbps RealAudio; Foo Fighters, "Fighting the 'N' Factor" bootleg (it turns out I had about half of this on MP3, but it's nice to have the entire set and the bonus Nirvana tracks)
I was about to leave the lab this ... morning (at about 5AM) when I saw Esther in the computer cluster and realized I hadn't printed out my Amazon book wishlist to compare with the independent bookstore's sale prices before the end of the sale. I went in; I think she noticed. She left for a bit. I logged in at a computer facing the same direction as hers, with three people-rows between us. I could see her screen from mine. When she sat back down, I looked down and started reading some discarded printouts from a student's presentation on torture. They had several bits about how torture was a method that uses agency to associate sure pain with sure power when in fact the power it is bolstering is quite uncertain since it relies on brute force. Or something. It was very liberal arts. Torture theory. Honestly. I had my diary onscreen, just curious to see what it looked like in Netscape with the new design. It looked fine; I glanced down at the paper as Esther seemed to look over her shoulder, her shirt and its close fit admirable from several angles, her eye tweaking back just so, letting me catch a sliver of pupil before I yanked my gaze down to the paper again. Her screen switched from the college homepage to Yahoo! to Yahoo! Mail. I enjoyed the beautiful nature of reading about torture, the eye dance with Esther, and my diary glowing onscreen but out of view from everyone. I was bathing in metaphors. It was a rare moment made better still by my exhaustion.
It looks like I'll be going home on the 16th and filing for two incompletes. Many thanks to my special friend, mononucleosis. It's impossible to get up these days, even as I feel the end creeping up on me. I wonder who I will miss, who I won't have any real closing with. Who, when all is said and done here, will I still be in touch with? Where are my so-called lifelong friends that I am supposed to make at this $30,000-a-year networking institution. (That's a bit of a melodramatic stretch, I've probably gotten my money's worth, in the end.) But what am I getting out of it lately! What have you done for me lately, College. All I can motivate myself to do is watch MTV and eat 1.5 meals a day, so what have you done for me lately, hmm? Why is it that I take any out that I can get and exercise it until I have my back on the wall and a deadline gun barrel at my head, which I will dare to shoot me just so I can cartwheel away, grinning, spasming, tensing, laughing through tears that refuse to pop free? Redecorating here (web-wise) almost seems a sad gesture of attempted progress.
I made a list of who I was betting I'd be in touch with, and who I was thinking I might be in touch with if I'm willing to make the majority of the effort, and who were lost causes. It makes me sad to think of all the people with whom I've had -- I hesitate to say it -- meaningful interactions that I will probably not talk to as soon as we leave here. I think the list is stuck with the writing scraps in my backpack, but it was a pretty good sized list overall. I just wish it felt like that all the time, especially during these end of the semester seclusion bluesy times. Making the list felt awful and shallow, but now seems a good time to take stock, so stock I took.
Change of topic: The Fairypond Fan Club is still in full effect. We are very glad to note that she has updated. As usual, it is excellent. Much better, than, say, this almost comically bad example. A well-named diary if there ever was. I may try to critique it sometime, but it's so self-absorbed that I don't think it's worth doing.
I'm looking forward to Australia.There are a lot of things I want to get to, but it's 8AM and I haven't slept, so just give me a breeze that's long winded and I'll leave them lying in the digital notepad to be expanded or ignored later.
I've asked Erik some questions.
last five [im]personal journal entries:
