On Monday, my roommate sent me an article about a matzo shortage in the Bay Area.  Matzo is “unleavened bread” – basically a kosher cracker – that observant Jews are supposed to eat in place of bread for the week of Passover.  Even unobservant Jews, like myself, eat it during the holiday, usually (in my case) during Seders, which are ritual dinners celebrating the holiday.  Matzo is an integral part of the Seder: you eat it, you talk about it, you point to it, you hold it in the air, you hide a piece and make someone find it, and then you buy it back from that person.  

We are giving a Seder tonnight, so the possibility that there might not be any Matzo sent me into a panic.  To steal a phrase from “Little Women” (with slight alterations): a Seder isn’t a Seder without any matzo.

I called supermarkets: all out.  I looked on craigslist: lots of requests for matzo, nobody selling it or giving it away.

I told my aunt and she offered to send me some from Seattle.  This seemed slightly ridiculous, but also like a perfect solution: family coming together to save a thousand-year-old holiday ritual via FedEx.  It’s like a commercial come to life.

Of course, it does raise some issues, starting with: is it really worth $30 to overnight matzo?  If you get past the monetary cost (anything for family and tradition, right?) you are confronted with the less-obvious environmental costs: the gas expended on the airplane used to fly it down, the cardboard used to package it.  It is definitely not eating locally.  Did we really want our Seder to contribute to global warming?  Not to mention the social implications of being able to ship boxes of matzo around when there is a worldwide wheat shortage and people are actually starving in developing countries.

Being terrible at making decisions, I passed this one off to my uncle, who went ahead and FedEx-ed the matzo.  It arrived yesterday, to my office.  The Seder was saved!  Tradition trumped environmental and social guilt!

Of course, a half an hour after I received my FedEx tracking number by email, I got an instant message from my roommate saying that her grandmother (who lives in San Francisco) had gotten some matzo from a friend.  This was followed twenty minutes later by another instant message from a friend who is coming to our Seder saying he has extra matzo he can bring.  Then I went to my brother’s Seder, where they ended up with two leftover boxes of matzo, one of which I took home.  Now, instead of no matzo, we will probably have too much.

To make the whole situation even more ironic, I was asked to drive to Sacramento yesterday for work, so I did not go in to my office.  I asked my brother to pick up the FedEx-ed matzo, but he might not be coming to my Seder, and it is possible it will never arrive.

What is the lesson to take from all of this?  I can think of a few possibilities.

One: Exhaust all local options before turning to outside help.

Two: Murphy’s Law holds – as soon as you don’t need something, it will appear in abundance.  If Doug had never FedEx-ed the matzo, no one would have found any, and we would have been matzo-less.  Since he spent the time and money, we ended up not needing it.

Three: Shop early for dinner parties, especially when they involve unusual foods.

Four: God will bring you matzo one way or another, even if you are not really an observant Jew.

On the drive home, the western sky was incandescent pink with dusky purple lows.  As I neared the city, the pink deepened without darkening, becoming one of those shades you don't expect to encounter in nature, which make you remember how flawed and confined your view of nature really is.  Waiting on the freeway off-ramp, the sky above San Francisco was jewel blue, so rich and lovely that I thought, "I want a wedding dress that color," before I remembered wedding dresses are supposed to be white.

On the Writer's Almanac (a short daily radio piece by Garrison Keillor) yesterday he talked about the longest running newspaper columnist of all time, Herb Caen, who wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle for 60 years.  I found this in one of his columns from 1940: "It's the indescribable conglomeration of beauty and ugliness that makes San Francisco a poem without meter, a symphony without harmony, a painting without reason -- a city without an equal."

Every time I try to sit down and write something distracts me.  On Sunday it was dim sum and the St. Stupid's Day Parade, which was a wonderful excuse for young and old alike to wear their Burning Man/Oregon Country Fair/Berkeley Day/mismatched/political/bizarre/naked costumes.  On Monday, our Seder: 12 people (4 wrong-half-Jews and 8 gentiles), a Haggadah aimed at young people (including songs by Lou Reed, Billie Holliday, and Bob Marley, along with the normal prayers), and lots of food.  It was stressful, and amazing to see it all come of, a real Seder, with the (mostly) full ritual and all the right courses, and a Seder plate, and a shank bone.

And now I must go, before finishing my description of our Seder, or anything else.  I am called away from the computer once again, for friends and more charoset, etc. etc.  And off to Seattle tomorrow, for Family (hurrah!), and more charoset (hurrah!) and more craziness. Crazy craziness.  Next week, when I come home, I am going to barricade myself in my room and write reams, about everything that is going on in my life and in my head.  Or just watch Anne of Green Gables.  One of those two things.

On Sunday we drove to Point Reyes, a national park about an hour north of the city, a large group of people: fourteen in all, I believe.  I elected to make base camp on the beach while everyone else went for a hike in the nearby hills and forests.  I spread out a blanket on the side of a dune so I could see the ocean (the bay actually), while I took a practice GRE.  The combination of algebra and sea breeze was a little incongruous, but pleasant.  I paused, occasionally, to watch children frolicking, or dogs passing, or the cloud shifts.  I feel very lucky to live in a place where water and sky are easy to access, and I could spend a few hours working, and a few hours playing, and not feel that I was missing anything.  In the dusk, we built a fire and made s'mores; someone passed around a bottle of whiskey, just about big enough that everyone could have a swallow.

Life has been busy.  On Friday I made butternut squash quesadillas and Elizabeth and I talked about religion and spirituality for over an hour (no conclusion was come to).  On Saturday I read, and libraried, and then we went to the Chinese New Year's parade.  I love parades, though more for the crowds than for the parade itself.  Little children sat at the curb and conducted negotiations with their standing mothers for fruit juice.  When people came by throwing out treats they held out their hands and shouted, unashamed of their greediness, while Elizabeth and I shyly waved our hands, and muttered under our breath.  In the next five days I have, in order: Spanish class, a date, Santa Cruz, a party, and book trivia.  I have a feeling the party may be subject to cancellation, but everything else is set, I believe.  (And having said that, how crushed will I be if everything falls through?  I have recently noticed my tendency to cling to expectations, even if what actually happens is just as satisfactory.  Life is not as good if it's not what I thought it would be.)

Speaking of what I think life will be.  My aunt asked me why I want to go to the school of Jurisprudence and Social Policy at Berkeley.  I've been puzzling over the question.  Part of it is certainly that the subject is so open and interdisciplinary that it requires less commitment - or a different kind - than another program, and while part of me is longing to go back to grad school, another part of me still doesn't know what for and this might satisfy both those pieces.  But there are better reasons too.  I am exceedingly interested in - passionate about - the wreck of our criminal justice system, and the havoc it plays with people's lives and families and communities.  A lot of the big problems in America - poverty, education (or the lack thereof), health care - all manifest within this system in egregious ways.  So that's one thing I want to study and think about and help fix.  There are other things this program would touch on or let me touch on - reproductive rights law, marriage law, international law, human rights law.  I envision this providing me the kind of access to knowledge and expertise about to influence these areas that law school could, but without having to actually suffer through law school, or end up a lawyer.  So I suppose those are my reasons.

(Thinking of those things, I also think of my reasons against - I don't know if this is really My Passion, or if it's just what I know, what I have seen and worked on and therefore is accessible.  I also care passionately about women's health in the developing world, and child poverty, and peace in the Middle East.  Maybe I really want to work on those things, I just don't know how yet.  Maybe I should wait and try different things, and see if I become more passionate about something else, before I commit myself to a six year program.  But then again - jurisprudence and social policy doesn't have to be about America.  It could be about the way law helps or oppresses people anywhere.  So maybe that is an argument for too.)

Yesterday I remembered how unbelievably lucky I am, and tiptoed on the edge of happy hysteria, laughing uncontrollably at semi-random intervals.  I picked Mel up in the morning, wearing my enormous sunglasses and purple flowered dress, and we drove across the Bay Bridge, listening to the music that made me happy my sophomore year of college: "Hey Ya" and "Float On" and "Moondance."  A friend, Becca, was having her birthday celebration at the Thai Buddhist Temple in Berkeley, where you buy tokens and barter them for heaping plates of food, and then everyone sits on the lawn, eating and talking, and sun-sleeping.  Last week's cold went away and the sun stayed, so that I sat with only a thin sweater was warm, glowing, and people moved in and out of grass-circles, and Melissa stood atop a fire hydrant talking on the phone, and Erica planned a media strategy for me to combat the Brown Alumni Magazine article (key points of the strategy: me wearing stilettos, and saying something incredibly witty), and we talked about iTunes play counts, and awkward dates, and then played Set, there on the lawn.  

But this was only the beginning!  Followed by an afternoon in a coffee shop on the Berkeley campus, reading, talking, playing more games, and then another shift of locale, and Speed Scrabble, and then deep dish pizza, and trivia, a small group this week, and Mel and I being ridiculous, having "une boum" on the couch.  It was, we decided, like a family, where people came and went, there was no hurry, nowhere to go, we just drifted through the day.  Rather like last Sunday in fact (though it was considerably colder then).  I am the Crazy Grandmother of the family.  This is a life I could enjoy for a while.

Driving across the Bay Bridge, both ways, I was reminded of, astounded by, how beautiful it is here.  In the morning, in bright sun, the Berkeley hills rose from the water, and at night coming home, downtown shone crisp and elegant, framed by the spangled glow of San Francisco hills and the dark sweep of the water.  I am happy.


We were talking about blogging, the purpose of such.  I would like to say that, for me, it is a way to keep track.  Even if I am bad at writing here, I do so more consistently than I do/would write a private journal, if only because I know other people wonder if I don't write here for a long time, and the fact that I do it at all is valuable to me, because, for instance, I will remember yesterday better, given that I just wrote down a slice of it, than if I never recorded it at all.  In which case this is just a diary that other people can read, and which I have more impetus to update.  But that's not it, entirely.  That's a piece.  I use it to communicate, for instance, about my computer.  About where I am, with the moving situation (I think I have a place; knock on wood).  About where I am going.  But I only use it to communicate with certain people, and there's always more to say.  I use it as a forum, occasionally.  A space to draw out thoughts that otherwise knock around in my brain being difficult.  An ego booster.  A place to whine and receive sympathy.  It's very personal; I don't think of it as something anyone who didn't know me would have any interest in reading.  Part of me wishes it was, more of that, that it spoke to greater issues and had a following, or obviously, that my writing is just so excellent and fascinating that people would want to read it all the time.  But then it would be something else.  Not a tool for memory.  I would rather, I think, use it to remember the life that I am out living, than to have it be the life that I am living, inside.

Home. My roommate is asleep on the couch, with a plastic surgery reality show blaring on the television, I am very tried, and we have ants in the kitchen. However, my comforter is still a lovely color, and warm and fluffy, and Sufjan's Christmas box set came in the mail, complete with stickers, a Rick Moody essay and Christmas stories by Sufjan himself ("Santa Magic Hands" and "Christmas Tube Socks").

( Thanksgiving, home, family, etc. )

( Portland, tea, paper, friends, etc. )

We had a picnic today. It was picnic weather, in late November: sunny, high 60s at least. I lounged in my T-shirt, and ate far too much, and we had a sing-a-long, and chattered about all kinds of things, and met a few dogs, and waved at a few people, it was one of those days where life could really not be better. A picnic on a hill in San Francisco, in November, in the sun, with a view of the "Full House" Victorians and downtown in the distance, and wonderful people I am getting to know, and wonderful people I just met, and goat cheese and homemade apple crisp and crepes filled with strawberries.

I love Saturdays.  My hair is in pigtails, and I am wearing bright pink sweatpants, and have eaten only macaroni and cheese and not-fully-cooked brownies (Hae-In was here last night, and we got the sudden urge to bake, but she had to catch the Caltrain, so we had to take them out early... honestly, I like them better this way.)

Sufjan was almost all I could have hoped, and more.  He had an accompanying orchestra - 34 people according to Elizabeth, who counted.  They were all dressed as butterflies.  He also had the Pacific Mozart Choir for back-up.  And three random Illinoisemakers/band members/butterflies playing normal rock instruments - drums, guitar, bass, piano.  Sufjan himself mostly played piano, but also banjo, and guitar.  And he sang in a husky insistent lovely voice.  His voice quiet, with just the piano, and then the orchestra and choir would enter, suddenly, a swell of music filling the enormous concert hall.  What power and grace.  Sufjan wore hawk wings that moved with the air.  He sang a Christmas carol he wrote called "That Was the Worst Christmas Ever" and in the middle people appeared at the edges of the balcony throwing blow-up Santas into the audience.  Then, during "The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts," he did the same thing with blow-up Supermans.  I really like that he did it twice.  He played "Casimir Pulaski Day," and I got teary, and he finished with "Chicago":

I was in love with the place
in my mind, in my mind
I made a lot of mistakes
in my mind, in my mind

Elizabeth and I exchanged nervous breakdown stories before and after the concert.  It's nice to know that I am not the only one having a hard time in a new place.  I am doing better now (she said that she had a hard first two months, and then it got better, which is reassuring).  But the above lyrics take on whole new meanings. 

I am doing interesting work now, writing a paper on food stamps.  But organization is a problem within the company hierarchy, and I have been given very little time; I should be working on it now, in fact, instead of doing this, but I need a day, at least, one whole day to be whoever I want to be, and write only things I want to write.  Tomorrow I will be a worker bee.

EDIT: Here is the song quoted above.  Listen to it, it's wonderful.  Chicago by Sufjan Stevens (if you like this, there are three other versions - Acoustic, Easy Listening and Multiple Personality Disorder.  But this is the best.)

Quick post from work - my stolen internet at home has stopped working, and we haven't yet got the real thing set up, so I am disconnected outside of the office.

I took a half day off this morning.  Annie and Jen and I went to Chez Panisse last night (the upstairs cafe), for a late dinner.  I have a cold, and could not taste anything properly, but it was still excellent.  I had a roasted red pepper, eggplant and ricotta salad, and a baked sonoma goat cheese with mixed greens.  Frisee!  And homemade bittersweet chocolate ice cream for dessert, with creme fraiche and pistachios.  Yum.  This morning we slept in and went to brunch at a vegan restaurant called Cafe Gratitude, where all the dishes are called things like "I am Energized" "I am Charismatic" "I am Bright Eyed" etc.  I had quinoa with fruit, and thought of home (home, in this context, being Eugene.)  Then we went to Samovar, a tea house, for dessert and tea.  I discovered a lovely yarn store kitty corner from Samovar, and I have vowed to return to that corner as often as possible, as it is obviously a blessed place.

I have my car, and spent more than expected performing maintenance on it; but now it should be all set for a while, I hope.  I received all my things in the mail (except one box I sent from DC, which has yet to arrive; I'm worried it's sitting in the post office somewhere, lost, and it has one of my favorite sweaters, and my tofu seasoning, and my small teapot) yesterday, 9 boxes which I had to carry up my stairs one by one.  They are now sitting around my room in various stages of un-packedness, so tonight I am going to make a concerted go at them.  Tomorrow night I am driving up to Calistoga, because I could not say goodbye to Annie today, it was impossible.

That is all.

What an eventful couple of days! Yesterday I got my hair cut, made spanakopita and went bowling. To elaborate a little on that sequence of events... My hair cut at first seemed disastrous, but today I like it. It's not much shorter, a few inches, but very layered so it's a lot shorter on the top/in the front. The disaster came in because my hair was shampooed twice yesterday (it does not like to be shampooed EVER, so that was pretty traumatic) and then had very little product put in, resulting in major frizz and my head looking like a big round ball. Not cool. Today it's curlier and smaller though, and looks cute.

The spanakopita turned out quite tasty. Though it's hard to go wrong with feta from Whole Foods. Matt came over and ate dinner with me and it was excellent. We had a really great conversation - that sounds wrong, because it's not "a conversation" when we talked for three hours about a number of different things - but anyway, we talked a lot about being here, about travelling, and also about our families and the past and things we had never shared before, which was really good.

Around 10:40 pm, one of Matt's friends called, and I figured he would be off, but instead he said, "Want to go bowling?" So his friend picked us up and off we went to Pawtucket, or East Providence, or somewhere with a bowling alley open until 1 am and we spent two hours bowling. I managed to not fall ridiculously far behind the boys I was playing with, so I felt good about myself, and it was all great fun. At midnight Laura called me from South Africa, so I took some time off bowling and talked to her, which was also great. In all, an excellent evening.

This morning I played a bicycle thief in a movie my friend Eric is making. (Eric is in my thesis workshop, and is a good friend of Rawaan's, and I think I can now claim his as my friend too.) I wore my "bicycle messengers" shirt and a striped scarf and I got to be the angry thief trying to pull the bicycle off the rack without bothering to pick the lock (there were a large number of bicycle thiefs, all in a row.) There were a few enormous tour groups on the Main Green at the same time we were there, and people kept stopping to peer at us curiously. One pre-frosh and her mother came up to ask what as going on, and then "if there was anything she should know." Um... Brown is cool? People do crazy things all the time, like pretend to steal bicycles? It was beautiful outside, and we stoood around and ate donuts and traded thief costumes.

Tonight Eric is giving us Cuban dinner to thank us for being in the film and then Rawaan, Annie, Annie's best friend who is visiting, and is super cool, and Cutter and I are all going to a show of short films at a local movie theater. The theme is "Childhood." I am very glad to be here.

Spring break has unofficially begun. I had my last class today: my thesis workshop, where everyone said the revisions to my story were excellent, and I just need to tweak a little. Good things to hear two weeks before it's due.

(By the way, I'm now letting everyone read it, because it's close to done and I need all the (constructive) feedback I can get for the final push to completion, so if you're interested, email me and I will send it to you. But please be nice and keep in mind, I have a limited time frame and cannot change everything. Also, it's 50 pages long.)

Annie and I had sushi for dinner and shared a bottle of wine, and then went to a lovely little cafe/piano bar on South Main Street and shared a mint chocolate martini and a piece of cake, and stories about boys, and rants, and politics, and thoughts on children and families and marriage and writing and gender stereotypes and artistic boys. Not spending money travelling for spring break gives us a very good/very bad excuse to spend money on food. The pianist played "Tiny Dancer" and "When I'm 64," among other things. It was quite a wonderful evening. I love sushi, and Annie.

I don't know where I've been for the last week. Someplace good, I think, with baked goods and nice people.

Thursday is about as far back as I can recall. I'm not sure what the half week between Gala and Thursday was - but on Thursday my thesis workshop was cancelled and it was a lovely sunny day, and in the morning my professor gave a very inspiring lecture about the Civil Rights movement and left me feeling very uplifted, and I walked to the grocery store and baked chocolate chip cookies for my students and had dinner with Kate.

Friday I stayed at work a long time, but that was all right because I did it as a favor, the library was short-staffed and I was happier being there knowing I didn't have to be. And then Liz and I went out for St. Patrick's Day, and were given shiny green necklaces, and got a cheese plate at the GCB.

On Saturday I met Rawaan at the Book Arts studio and watched her print, and then her friend Jason Li and I went back to her house with her to eat soup. We watched a cartoon about imaginary friends and talked about things and the time between 10 pm and midnight vanished, as it always seems to when sitting in her living room. I came home at 1:30 am and baked pumpkin chocolate chip scones for a brunch the next morning. I've discovered that I like to bake in the middle of the night, and am considering doing it more often.

Sunday morning we had brunch/a make-up thesis workshop with all of my favorite people from the workshop. We ate: scones and puff pastries and bagels and eggs and grapes and strawberries and hot hot chicken wings (they weren't that hot really). And we spent four hours, instead of two, and talked about babies with malformed heads and freeway exits and Meredith Steinbach, our advisor, and our upcoming Power Lunch. We all agreed firmly that we should continue to have such brunches, even after our theses are all turned in. I thought, I don't want to miss this. We'll all leave and this won't happen anymore.

Today was Underseas Monday. We've decided to have theme Mondays (last week was Weetzie Bat Monday; next week Epic Battle Monday). I wore pearls and blue and green clothing. Rawaan, Annie and Alicia and I went out to sushi, because we wanted to, and it fit the theme. After we browsed an antique store, and bought very expensive chocolate and went to Coffee Exchange. I was supposed to go to Tealuxe for office hours, but Annie got the number from information and convinced the owner to put up a sign on the door saying "Felicity cannot make office hours today, please email her with questions" just so that I could stay with her and Rawaan a little longer. I bought a purple pen from the art supply store. My friends make me very happy.

I just realized that I don't want to go away. I was thinking about it in terms of school ending, and that was sort of exciting. But now I'm thinking about it in terms of people leaving, and not having theme Mondays, or lunches to look forward to, or tea, or the excitement of bumping into people I adore, or long, wasted wonderful days. That makes me sad.

On the other hand, Ashley called me today and left a message asking if I was still thinking about going to San Francisco. So I won't be alone, probably, wherever I end up. But it won't be the same either.

I like independent films and I am far less attached to plot conventions than most people I know. I like movies to be slightly weird and maybe a little hard to figure out (since most movies are so incredibly easy to predict). Given all that, I just spent over two hours watching the most nonsensical movie I have ever seen. Two hours I can never have back.

There's a French film festival all week and through the weekend at a local artsy movie house. I decided I had to go see at least one movie, but instead of carefully selecting which movie to see, I talked to some friends who were going to a movie tonight at 7, and decided I would go with them. Not my smartest move ever. It's a movie called "L'Intrus" (The Intruders) and it's... well, I can't really say anything about it. It's about an old man with heart problems. And there are dogs. And he has a son, maybe. Though maybe not. Or maybe he has two sons. And several people die, and it's likely they were murdered. And the old man walks around naked or half naked a lot. And goes to Tahiti.

It was visually quite lovely at parts, but... I need something to hang on to in a movie. The plot doesn't have to go in a straight line, or go anywhere. I wouldn't mind a movie where people sat around and talked for two hours, if I knew who they were and was getting something out of the conversation. I just... this is clearly a movie made only for people who spend a ridiculous amount of time thinking about movies. Which, granted, was most of the people in the theatre.

On another note, I think I'm getting sick. I got a sore throat this afternoon, and just now my inner ear started hurting. Bad! The Gala is tomorrow! I'm going to bed really early tonight, and just hope I feel better tomorrow.

But in good news, a friend of a friend who I really like and have been seeing here and there, sent me a card/letter, which I received in my mailbox today, just saying hi and how great she thought I was, and it was so nice and exciting.

And also in good tidings, last night I went to Rawaan's and lots of other lovely people were there and we had two kinds of pudding!

Surprisingly, this was one of my better Valentine's Days. Granted, I have never been in a relationship on Valentine's Day, so as the holiday goes, it's not my top rated, but nevertheless, today was... really quite nice.

I woke up to homemade Valentine's from Rawaan and Annie. One had feathers and a fabulous haiku, and the other has paintings of birds. They both made me extremely happy. Between City Politics and work a new friend bought me a chocolate and strawberry crepe, at work they game be a break and I walked in a circle through the sunny main green and back to the library, and then they sent me down to the basement to have cake for my boss' birthday.

After work I sat on my futon and graded a couple papers and worked on a fellowship application and my thesis, and felt somewhat productive. Turned on the Olympics in time to see Johnny Weir's lovely short skate. Briefly considered the idea of Valentine's Day.

My friend Rachel threw a party, for all her single and semi-single and single-through-distance friends. She baked chocolate lava cakes, which are very close to heaven, and I overate and talked to people I like very much and got a purple carnation from Nayla. And didn't think about boys very much, or what I might be missing, and didn't feel sorry for myself or worry too much about overeating (besides the stomachache). As the party was winding down I got a call from home, and picked it up and said "Hi Mom." It was Merlyn. She said she wanted to sing me a song.

I wish I knew the words of Merlyn's song, but the gist is this: she would like to wrap herself up and put stamps on her and send herself to me, and when she got here I would fill her up with cream soda and give her a bubble bath and snuggle her into bed. It was the best song ever. There were three whole verses, and she sang them perfectly and without hesitation, and I stood in the hall listening and grinning like an idiot to myself, and then got to go back in and brag about my amazing little sister and how loved I feel.

And I've been listening to the Magnetic Fields all day. This week in Seattle a bunch of local bands gathered and had a Valentine's 69 Love Songs show, proving once again that Seattle is a wonderful place.

So in honor of a lovely Valentine's Day:

Love is Like a Bottle of Gin
and, not better but perhaps sweeter...
The Book of Love
both by The Magnetic Fields

After I posted my new roommate Jalle came home with scallops and we had a two-course meal and shared a bottle of wine and it was lovely. And my soup tasted good! Hurrah!

That's all I got.

I am making pumpkin soup. My eyes hurt around the edges, red and swollen (from the onion, for the soup.) I have not been updating, I know. I never did fill in about the end of my trip, nor about home, nor about arriving back at Brown for my final semester. But here I am on a Friday evening making soup, so I thought I would write... something.

My apartment feels homier so far this semester. Maybe because it's still clean. Maybe because our new roommate (our third roommate from last semester went to Italy for the semester) is really cool and loves tea and so we have been sitting around in our kitchen drinking tea a lot, together, which is sometimes nicer than sitting around in the kitchen drinking tea alone. The light is nice now, our yellow kitchen is a little dim, but safe and warm.

I don't know what I'm saying. I'm a little tired. The onion seems to have gone to my brain. It's been a good week. I am going to be a TA (teaching assistant, for anyone who was confused) for that class. I went to my thesis workshop and my head didn't explode, though we didn't actually do anything besides introduce ourselves, so maybe I shouldn't leap to conclusions about my ability not to have a nervous breakdown. Besides that, I am trying to decide whether to take International Health: Anthropological Perspectives, or African-American History from 1865, neither of which sound at all useful or relevant to my life or my studies, but both of which are actually quite interested and are taught my excellent professors. I could take both, but I promised myself I would only take three classes this semester, so as not to stress myself out. But I could do four, I know I could. My only other problem is that I seem to have put myself in all lecture classes, except for my thesis workshop, and maybe I should be taking advantage of being a senior and taking a seminar. The problem with seminars is that the professors have to be really, really good to make two and a half hours bearable. And... more work there. As always, I am unsure of what to do. I guess it wouldn't be shopping period if I knew what classes to take.

Besides school, being back is... good. The weather hasn't been terrible (knocking on wood), and I can go out now like a normal person.

Ironically, just after I wrote the above sentence Liz came in to say she had dinner plans and was leaving. That's not actually the ironic part. The ironic part is that I had a sudden but rather intense pang of loneliness, just as "Lonely, Lonely" by Feist came on. I can't decide if iTunes loves me or is mocking me.

Well my soup base is ready, so off I go. I will eat my soup in joyful solitude.

So, as predicted, today sucked. But I bought myself some Ben and Jerry's (Half Baked) and I'm about to go watch QAF, so it's okay.

So right after my post, I went to take a shower - no hot water. (Remember, I haven't been warm in days, my apartment is FREEZING, so the last thing I wanted was to get wet without also getting warm.)

Then I find out I can't come in the front because they're painting the floor, so I have to come in the back way, which I don't have a key for, and which would hopefully be open (it was, so... okay, fine... but there was stress.)

Once I got out of the apartment, things were okay for a little while. I bought myself tea, I went to class, I went to work, etc. Then I went to my workshop...

Here's the thing about the workshop. What I gave them was bits and pieces which left a lot of questions and could be confusing, given that they should be read with other bits and pieces. So that's one excuse. Unfortunately, they're also bits and pieces that I re-read last night and realized were not great. Now, I'm not saying I'm a terrible writer or being melodramatic - I'm saying what I had workshopped today was four short pieces about one character, ranging from when she was 15 to when she's 32, that basically all tell the same thing, but in different ways and showing different aspects, and re-reading them I realized that while there are good lines and parts in all of them, they're not... there's no why, there's nothing gripping, there's no meaning to them. And there's also parts that aren't as good. And specifically what this class has been focused on is narrative voice - and the narrative voice of these pieces was very jumbled. So I was expecting some criticism, fairly.

That doesn't mean I was prepared for sitting in class and listening to my professor, who is an amazing writer and a man I very much respect, basically tear apart my whole piece, and dwell on how either poorly done or careless was a great deal of my language, how confusing, how sometimes pointless it was... and so on. Not that there weren't good things said, there were. He pointed to one paragraph he thought worked very well. He said there were some other lines he liked. But for the most part, he ripped it to shreds in front of a bunch of other people, some of whom I know and like and respect and would like to have know and like and respect me, as a writer as well as a person, and others of whom I am just beginning to know. It was humiliating, and crushing, and horrible.

The sad thing is, I'm actually feeling better about it now. Immediately afterward I smiled bravely and thanked everyone for the helpful commentary and made small talk with Adam and made excuses, and then called Kate and burst into tears on her doorstep the second I heard her voice on the phone. Luckily she was home and not busy and she gave me tea and talked very reasonably about the fact that it's October, and I can change everything in my thesis, start all over if I want to, and that's okay, and it's all the process, and we don't know what we're doing, and that makes sense because we've never done this before, and there's lots of ways I can try to fix the problems I see and he saw, etc. etc. Good friend talk.

And then I came home and made cous cous and veggies and had dinner with Kari Betts, which was really nice, and then Liz and I hung out a little, and I went to an anti-war meeting, which made me feel good, and bought ice cream and did my creative non-fiction assignment. All of which was good, and now I'm feeling better.

I am definitely PMS-ing. I mean, I like to think the bursting into tears was mostly due to that. Though the critique was pretty brutal, and I was the first person so I couldn't just tell myself he is this hard on everyone, and sitting in a room full of people listening to someone destroy something you worked on is never fun - but still, I overreacted. I mean, when I was blubbering to Kate it wasn't about the critique at all, it turned in my mind into something much bigger and much worse.

I think the thing to do right now, in terms of my thesis (this is all assuming I get accepted and can even write a thesis), is to put aside everything I've done, and let it sit and start all over. New style, new scenes, whatever I feel like writing. I have created an enormous amount of backstory, and that's good, and necessary I think, and I understand these characters so much better. But maybe that's all I needed from that. Maybe the reader doesn't need to see it all, to have it explained. Or it can come out when I'm writing about "the now" whenever that is. I've been really confused whenever someone asks me what my thesis is about, and I think that's because I don't know what it's really about, at the core, what it is. I know who the main characters are, and their relationships and their issues - so where is that going? I don't really know, and that's okay, I have time. So I'm going to try and start over (sort of), and see what comes up. Not that I have time, but... well, I'll try and make time.

God, it's 1 in the morning. Better go. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day. Knock on wood.

It's been a sort of meme-y two days:

LJ Interests meme results

1. ben kweller:
   indie boy, makes the pretty music.
2. chocolate:
   do I need to comment?
3. edward monkton:
   so happy I got this one. Edward Monkton, for anyone who doesn't know, is an artist, who makes very lovely and friendly drawings, which come on cards, and in books, and make me very happy. also see: penguin of death, the. Because it's difficult to find his work in the US, go to www.edwardmonkton.com right now. you will laugh. you will cry.
4. italy:
   the food, the sun, the hills, the art. the food. the gelato. the food. the gelato.
5. literature:
   I don't even know where to begin.
6. oregon ducks:
   The University of Oregon sports teams - notably the football team. go ducks!
7. rent:
   the musical, which I have seen five times and can sing through from beginning to end. and also paying of. (movie version to be released in November, with the original cast - lots of fingers crossed hoping it's good)
8. sushi:
   a recent love, but no less passionate for its short duration. raw fish and seaweed and sticky rice. yum.
9. the royal tenenbaums:
   one of the greatest movies of all time, in my humble opinion. "Everyone knows Custer died at Little Big Horn. What my book presupposes is... maybe he didn't." or, if you prefer: "How long have you been a smoker?" "22 years." "Well I think you should quit."
10. writing:
    my life, my sanity, my insanity, my illness, my cure, my cliche, obviously. hey, it's two in the morning.

Enter your LJ user name, and 10 interests will be selected from your interest list.

Tonight Kate and I made eggplant parmagiano (is that how you spell it?), layers of cheese and her mother's sweet red sauce and baked breaded eggplant. Yum. Then we were good and went to read at a cafe for a while. An older woman arrived, annoyed that the newspapers had already been picked up from around the cafe. She grumbled as she sat down, and then went to ask someone for the paper stuck under their chair. A moment later, one of the employees arrived with a paper he had gone across the street to get for her. She sat down, put her feet up, and started talking on her cell phone.

After studying was no longer an option I came home. Liz and I made soy chocolate pudding and had a private dance party in my room. I am pleasantly exhausted, as opposed to earlier, when I was just exhausted.

Physically I feel like shit. Deep pain in the pit of my stomach since yesterday afternoon. It hurts worse when I eat. But when I don't eat, it starts to hurt too. My throat is sore and scratchy despite two cups of throat tender tea (they did help, only briefly). Stupid rain. Stupid Brown Dining Services food. I just want my body to function normally!

Otherwise, life is pretty good. Orientation is over. Tomorrow I meet my freshmen. My advisor seems really nice, and my Co-Meiklejohn is great. Liz's parents are here, and installed fire alarms. I should be cleaning/putting things in order, but I feel too crappy. So instead, since I was first on the list of people who should fill this out:

( 7 things... )

Well, I bought an umbrella. After getting soaking wet and sitting through all-day orientation with a wet skirt, in intense air-conditioning. My umbrella is rainbow colored, and was apparently designed for or by MOMA, and is probably too small to be of much use, but it has a red handle and looks like a toy, so I don't care.

Orientation itself was fine, some rather obvious things said, but good advice from people who know, and lots of information on the program, resources, etc. My group is the coolest. We didn't win the trivia contest though. Not for lack of heart.

Apparently I get free meals in the cafeteria from now until the day classes start, when meal plan officially begins. Free food! Free bad food, but free food! Plus, by the time that's over I'll be really happy to start cooking, if only to not be eating at the Ratty anymore. I went around 7 and the whole gang was there - Matt and Andrew, Diksha, Nadia, several other very nice people. Like old times. And actually the food wasn't bad, though it did give me a stomach ache later. Or maybe that's the lack of sleep. Matt gave me a ride home, and we made announcements with his bullhorn as we drove. Welcome to Brown! Nice sweater! Freshman orientation begins tomorrow. People were moving in during the downpour this morning. An hour later I meandered over to the ice cream social, the first event of freshman orientation. Open to all, since most upperclassmen aren't on campus. Enough were, however, there seemed to be more seniors than freshmen. We stood around discussing our summers and reminiscing. Occassionally two or three freshmen would approach and inquire if we were freshmen, or simply introduce themselves. We ended up giving academic advice, discussing the relative merits of dorms. We didn't exchange cell phone numbers with any of them (the standard inter-freshmen greeting, though I recall quite clearly arriving at the ice cream social late, without a cell phone, and feeling very out of the loop). Now the facebook seems to be The Thing. Some freshmen have 300+ friends already, and they've never been on campus. I feel morally superior, but I shouldn't; I would have done anything to claim I had friends when I arrived. To have friends. (During training we were brainstorming what made a good advisor and someone said "Give the appearance of caring," and then amended it to, "Care.")

Back at the beach in New Jersey. I lounged in the sand, swam a little, fell asleep on a towel. On the way home I made my little blond cousins laugh. Tomorrow I'm going back to Brown. I can't quite believe that it is that time again. Everything seems very shaky and unsure, like where and how I'm going to get a bed, and furniture, and my stuff from storage. I wish I didn't have to rely on other people for everything. At least now I have a little money of my own; a car on this coast would be nice.

Saying goodbye to the girls was heartbreaking. Merlyn kept saying "I miss you already" and, not to be outdone, Vivien declared she missed me already the day I arrived.

In better news, Lily and her mother visited Saturday and we all went to the Market, had crepes, looked at hippy crafts and saw some old family friends with a two month old baby. It was sunny and warm but not too hot, and people walked around with dreads and tye-dye and afterwards we stopped at Sweet Life to bring home some very chocolatey things. The Sweet Life stopped turned out to be providential, as the stuffed artichokes I made weren't ready until 10:30, by which time Eric was asleep. Oops.

Lobster tonight and re-packing. I feel like all I ever do now is pack and re-pack. It will be nice to be in one place for a few months.

I'm in love with my new icon.