My room is slowly disassembling.  (Not really: being stripped of its frippery is a more accurate description.)  In three days, I will get on an airplane and a stranger will start sleeping in my bed.  Only briefly.  One month, even less.  I will only be out of the country for a little over two weeks, which is not so much time if you think about it.  But I'm leaving work for a month.  I'm putting all my odds and ends in boxes to shove into them into the utility closet.  I am preparing to say goodbye to normal life for a little while.

I have been panicking, the last couple days, because I was on the verge of getting sick, sick in a really nasty way that would have made it almost impossible to get on a plane on Saturday.  I didn't realize how much of myself I have hung on this trip until it became endangered: The pieces of me that have been living in London all this time.  The pieces of me that feel right and well only when sitting with Rawaan and Annie, as we gaze at each other in mutual adoration.  The pieces of me that hate going to work every day.  The pieces of me that love watching movies on airplanes. 

The danger seems to have passed.  I am still on a knife's edge, though I think now everything is okay.  And of course, it would be okay anyway.  Even if I had to push my flight back, I would still go.  Even if I didn't go, all of those pieces of me would survive.  They've survived the last year and a half, or longer, and they will keep surviving, waiting for their turn.  But I really do very much hope their turn comes on Saturday.

Work is ridiculous.  I want to say, it will be over soon, I will be gone, but I have a terrible feeling that even though I'll be gone it won't be over, and it will haunt me all through the month of December.  Maybe I am just overwhelmed right now though.  They won't be able to get to me when I am half a world away, unless I let them.

Oh, I finished NaNoWriMo!  Last Sunday.  I reached 50,000 words (plus 90 or so) and have not touched it since.  I have a lot of novel left to go, and I do want to write it, but I haven't had time.  Maybe on the airplane.  Maybe in Rawaan's garden, giggling and smoking shisha and scribbling away.

Normally when I write in here and say that life is busy, I mean that it is busy, but I still have time to read the New York Times online.  I just prefer reading the Times to writing in here, most days; it's easier, and if I don't read the Times the day does not feel complete, but if I don't write in here I get by okay.

I mention this, because when I say that life is busy right now, I don't mean in that way.  I mean in the have-not-read-the-Times-all-week way.  In the behind-on-NaNo way.  The will-have-to-work-this-weekend-because-8-to-9-hours-of-work-a-day-is-not-enough way.  The having-a-party-tomorrow way.  The going-home-for-Thanksgiving way.  The leaving-the-country-in-two-weeks way.

(Two weeks!  Hurrah!)

I literally have not had a moment to relax.  Which is okay, overall, I am fine being busy.  What's less okay is knowing I'm going to have to work this weekend (ugh) and going back and forth about how stressed I should be about NaNo.  On the one hand, I have 37,700 words, which is pretty damn good - better than most people, I assume, since we're just over halfway through the month.  On the other hand, I am insanely busy, and I am just going to get busier, and I REALLY want to get to 50,000 words before Thanksgiving so I can relax about it.  Also, I said I would finish before Thanksgiving, and I am an insane, uptight person who hates missing deadlines, even self-imposed ones.  I've decided that, to finish by Thanksgiving, I need to write between 7,500 and 10,000 words this weekend.  While throwing a party.  And writing a paper for work.

I mentioned that I'm crazy right?  I'm crazy.

One year ago today I started my first real job.  A year is so much and so little time; it is only a fraction of a lifetime, yet an eon compared to all previous jobs I have held.  A year is a solid figure, not like three months or seven months.  A year is a commitment.  I am here now, I know my way around;  I have no excuses.

This is not where I thought I would be a year ago.  Or rather, I thought I would be on the cusp of something else, when in fact I am still right in the middle of what I was then beginning.  I don't even remember my original timeline, but I think it had me departing sometime this fall.  About a year of work seemed right.  And now I have a happy life here, I went to Ikea this weekend (and triumphed! ha Ikea you tried to break us down but you FAILED!) with one of my roommates, and I love my roommates, and I love my apartment, and my job is okay, it is okay.

This weekend I went to a volunteer orientation for 826 Valencia, a program that offers creative writing classes and tutoring and other fun programs for disadvantaged kids.  I applied to volunteer there when I first moved here, and had enormous stretches of empty time.  I was hoping to make friends.  They contacted me two months ago: are you still interested in volunteering?  Now I have very little empty time, but I am still craving creativity, an interest in words that I have recently been filling with crossword puzzles and online Scrabble games (fun, but not quite the same because even when the words fit together they are separate and solitary.  They share letters but not purposes.)  So yes, of course I am still interested.  I just have to find the time.

I applied to a writing internship, at a local weekly newspaper.  I didn't hear back; since it starts in a week, I assume that means I didn't get it.  I will persevere, try again.  If I could trust my own motivation, I would just go to part time and spend one day a week writing.  Maybe that is the experience I really need: to go to places in the city and sit and write, and listen to myself, and produce something I am willing to send into the world.

But one year.  One year of sitting at a desk, staring at a computer screen.  One year of tables and graphs and copy edits and meetings.  One year of lunches.  One year of driving home squinting into the sun.

Just read this book review about why today's youth is not more politically involved.  The answer: the increase in cost of living and increasing wage gap between corporate and public service jobs means that we literally can't survive on the kind of activist lifestyle our parents might have chosen - to be a teacher or a journalist now, or work at a non-profit, means scraping by if you happen to live in a big city where many of those jobs are located.  If you want to have a house, and children, and be solidly middle class, you have to sell out to some extent or another.  The book, "The Trap" by Daniel Brook, looks at a number of educated young people who tried to do something creative or activist for a few years, before deciding it was too difficult, or even impossible.

I'm not sure how I feel about this.  My two roommates are Fellows with the State of California, which means they are severely underpaid, and are both working for the courts.  Other good friends of mine work for government agencies and non-profits, or are entering Teach for America.  No one, as far as I know, is starving, or even working a second job.  Some of these people use free time to make music and art.  Many don't.

On the other hand, I know a lot of people working at Google and other large tech companies in the area.  I don't think they've sold out, because as far as I can tell, they really enjoy their jobs, but it's true that they are not saving the world.

And then there's me.  Technically I work for a for-profit firm, though most of my actual work is done on the non-profit side.  I'm in consulting, but instead of helping corporations make more money, we help government agencies work better (that's the idea anyway).  I make a very comfortable wage, even in San Francisco - I have a car, I am saving up to travel - but I'm not going to run out and buy an iPhone.  What I do could be counted as public service: we work to improve programs for children, the elderly, and people with developmental disabilities.  I don't feel like I've sold out - but I also don't feel like I'm doing all I can for the world - or much of anything at all.  I also have little time or energy to pursue writing.  I think about submitting articles, trying to get freelance journalism work, but the effort feels great for very little return, given that I am already working a full time job.  I sat down and worked on a story on Sunday, for the first time in a month.  It felt great.  But I don't have time to work on it the rest of this week. 

I've looked into other jobs, only to turn away when I see that it would be a $15,000 pay cut from what I'm currently making.  But that's pretty standard, for an entry-level non-profit job.  Could I live on that much, here?  I'm pretty sure I could.  Could I maintain my current standard of living? (pretty nice apartment, dinners out a couple times a week, airplane tickets home to see my family every couple months, growing my savings account)  No.  So it comes down to what's most important to me.  Having not felt like I had a very secure income for a while, I'm really enjoying not worrying.  It's not the consumption; I could cut back on that.  It's that I don't feel sick every time I look at my bank balance.  I don't second guess every purchase I make.  It's knowing that I have a cushion.  That's important to me.  And knowing that I have all that on my own; I've earned this security.  It's not dependent on anyone else.

I think I've gotten off track.  I suppose on balance I do agree with the main thrust of the argument - if it was a little less scary to take a pay cut and do something I believe in, I would do it.  But I could also take that plunge, and survive, if I was willing to sacrifice a little peace of mind.

I looked up reification today, because it is one of those words that I ought to know what it means, and generally pretend to know what it means, and nod when it is used in a sentence, but could not actually define.  It turns out reification is a type of fallacy, as when you treat an abstraction like a reality - such as discussing the government as if it was a person who could want things, or hate you.

This makes me sort of sad, because if I had to guess what reification was, outside of any context, I would have guessed that it had something to do with ruler-worship, or lifting something up - to reify in my mind evokes the image of a throne.  (Obviously, somewhere in the back of my brain I equated reify with deify, except I substituted a king for a god.)  To find out that reification is actually a bad thing is rather disappointing.  (I am ignoring the fact that my false version of reification would probably also be a bad thing, implying the creation of hierarchy, etc.)

I applied for a job, a really exciting job that paid well and would have been doing exactly what I wanted to be doing, in the field I wanted to be doing it in.  Today I got an email saying I did not get it.  I didn't even get an interview.  I actually felt qualified for this job, unlike the vast majority of jobs I look at.  If I can't even get an interview for this one, why even bother applying to any others?  Which leaves me with the question: stay at my current job, so that I can stay in San Francisco, apply to (and presumably be rejected from at least a large percentage of) many other jobs, so that I can stay in San Francisco, or run away and be fancy free and lonely for a while?

I woke up today with a sore neck, for no reason I can figure out.  Not just a little sore, really sore.  So sore that I can only move it gingerly, if at all.  So sore that I have been fantasizing about Vicodin all day, and wincing and making faces and grabbing at it whenever I turn my head, or tilt my neck forward or back.  I have the 22 year old body of an old woman, new aches and pains every day.

This is entirely too morose an entry.  Last night I had dinner at Elizabeth and Priya's, with Erica and Mel and Alex and Priya and other wonderful people.  After dinner we sat around and the musicians among us passed around guitars and sang along, in harmony, their own songs, old songs everyone knows.  Erica sang a song she wrote (not about me) called Straight Girl, and lots of assumptions were made around the room, and I had to hide behind my scarf.  I sat there (over the course of the night, not at that particular moment) and thought, I am so lucky, to be here with good food and friends making music.

An article by Gary Kamiya that expresses and elaborates upon much of what I was thinking about Virginia Tech and Iraq.  Go read it.

Life continues on, apace.  No final life decisions have been made yet.  We are submitting a proposal for a project that would involve reforming the San Francisco juvenile probation department.  If we get it, I will quite likely stay for a while.  I won't know until June, probably.

I have been studying for the GREs, regardless.  I signed up and paid for the test, so now I am committed to taking it, and I would like to do well.  I expect I will go to grad school someday, even if not next year.  It is frustrating to remember that I was once good at math, and not to be good at it anymore; not only have I forgotten the formulas, but my brain does not seem to work that way anymore.  In contrast, I rather like studying for the verbal ability section; mostly it involves reading lists of words, and occasionally rolling my eyes at the "tips" (for instance, one of the tips for the reading comprehension section is, when they ask you to draw an inference, the answer should not be directly stated in the passage, it should be inferred from something in the passage.  In other words, if they ask you to draw an inference, draw an inference.)

I saw the San Francisco Choral Society perform Bach's Mass in B Minor on Sunday afternoon, in a large, white church.  I liked the Gloria, the Counter-Tenor, the final prayer for peace, very much.  I thought about this article, for which the Washington Post conducted an experiment, and placed Joshua Bell (one of the foremost violinists in the world) outside a Metro stop on a weekday morning, and watched to see if people could appreciate True Beauty while on their way to work; and what is True Beauty anyway, if no one stops to notice it?

My boss, Tom, just came into my office looking for my other boss, Peggy, andthen  proceeded to spend 20 minutes telling me not to go to grad school - or maybe to get a Master's at some point, but not until I had a more specific aim - and not to go live abroad - I can learn Spanish right here because from now on the two Spanish-speaking members of the staff will only give instructions to me in Spanish - but to stay and build a career here.  Weirdly, he was sort of convincing.

Here's the thing: I've been thinking all day (before Tom came in) about why I am considering applying to get a PhD, and whether the payoff is really worth the price and time commitment.  I don't want to be a professor.  Probably I want a job similar to what I have now, except more political and/or more service oriented, and (key factor) working on issues I am passionate about/interest in AT ALL.  The question is, how to get a job where I can write and think about what I want to write and think about.

So Tom's pitch was basically that we have a huge range of opportunity here - we work on lots of different issues, and we can expand to work on whatever it is I'm interested in.  I mentioned justice (I said criminal justice, I think he heard juvenile justice) and he pointed out that we have a lot of data on juvenile justice which we're not really using right now and should be, and that that's an area we could definitely expand on, and I should talk to them about it/think about projects/look at upcoming proposals, etc. and he would make sure I had to time to work on it.  If this works out - if I get more control over what projects I work on, and get to work on things I'm interested in - then staying here, at least for a while, makes a lot of sense.  I could get more experience actually researching justice issues, which is as or more useful than studying them in school, while also getting paid, staying in San Francisco (where I not only have friends already, but will have MORE friends coming in the fall), working with people I like, etc.

There are drawbacks, such as the organization (or rather, lack thereof) here, the lack of activism in this job, and the fact that I really do want to go live abroad and write.  But if these projects actually work out, I could stay here for another year at least, then go abroad later/could always use the experience I would gain as a researcher and writer in a more activist organization later.  Tom also said that he thought a Master's might be a good idea in the future, and I have a feeling that if I was doing good work for them here, it might be possible to end up going back to school part time, somewhere in the area (read: Stanford or Berkeley, two schools with excellent graduate programs), in which case I would still be getting paid, and maybe could get the company to foot some of the bill.

Now, this is obviously all still very much up in the air.  The big question is, will Tom's promises turn into something real?  Can I actually push the company into areas that interest me?  If the answer is yes, then maybe I will stay, and put off travel and grad school.  If the answer is no, then I can always continue with my plan as it was.

A strange in-between moment at work: I have lots of things looming, and therefore do not want to ask for more work, but at the moment I have nothing at all to do.  I am waiting for other people to accomplish their tasks before I can continue with mine.  Wasting time, in the meantime.

I have been hiding in my room all week, as promised (threatened?)  I want to call all my friends and ask about their weekends, and their weeks, and catch up on gossip, and reconnected, reaffirm our mutual admiration, etc.  But instead I have been hiding, and watching Anne of Green Gables.  It is not any person, in particular, just the general fact of people, so many people, out there.  I have been reestablishing my skin.

On Monday, when I was supposed to fly back from Seattle in the morning, a quick two hour flight and then to work, my flight was canceled.  I was stuck at the airport the whole day; it ended up taking 12.5 hours door to door.  I read all of Atonement, and tried not to cry, exhaustion and helplessness welling up periodically through the long day.  My cell phone battery was dying, and as much as I wanted to be in a private place, so I could collapse without the weight of strangers' eyes, I also wanted to be connected to someone, anyone.  I wanted to call and tell somebody how miserable I was.  (Robin pointed out that I could have used a pay phone for that purpose, which I knew, even thought of once or twice; was my failure to do so because I didn't really want to talk to anyone, or because I am a child of the 21st century and disdain the use of pay phones?)


My little sister Merlyn missed school on Friday, to drive up to Seattle.  She informed me that at recess, two little boys in her class were getting married, and she had missed it.  She was supposed to officiate, but she seemed to think they would find a replacement easily enough.  She admitted that a girl in her class had dared them to, and I imagine there was much teasing, and affectations of disgust all around; nevertheless, the thought makes me ridiculously happy.  Two boys getting married is a possibility to these children.  We move forward, baby steps.


And one final happy note, that overwhelms all else: Rawaan is coming! To San Francisco! In July!

I'm living on the edge (ie posting at work, even though anyone could walk past my office and see, gasp!)

There are about a hundred surveys sitting on my desk, waiting to be entered into databases. ("How did you initially hear about P---?" 1=Radio, 2=Newspaper, 3=Word of mouth, 4=employer, 5=spouse's employer, etc. etc... 18 options total) But my boss told me, given the number (we sent out about 900, and though I don't expect to get nearly all of them back, I'd say 300-400 hundred is not out of the question), she would hire a temp to do it. I don't have to, and I don't want to. The prob--

Hmm, well, just had a little meeting. The upshot of which is that I don't have to enter the surveys, because we are definitely hiring a temp for next week. The downshot of which is, I have nothing to do.

I had a dream last night in which I met a king, and triumphed over a very mean boy, but then felt sorry for him. The details are all very fuzzy. Yesterday I dreamt I was back in college, and I realized I had an open class. I decided to take a history class, I could have my pick of the department, and I remembered one of my favorite professors would be back from sabbatical; this was the most exciting dream I've had in weeks, which tells me something very sad about myself.

Yesterday it rained so hard I could not see the highway. Cars changing lanes sent sluices of water at my windshield, made me shudder and want to hide. But today the sun was back again.

On Sunday I poured a gallon of water into my recycling tub (I was hoping to use it to soak stains out of clothing), but there was a crack on the bottom, and the water just flowed right out, all over my kitchen floor.  It was like a movie, or an Amelia Bedelia book.

At work, my brain moves slower, and I have a hard time remembering what I've done or thought about outside of these walls.  I remember last night I could not sleep, and I lay in bed trying to remember my essay on architecture, and it finally occured to me why "I" really is a load-bearing word - the I-beam.  Multiple meanings I didn't even know.

It's after my bedtime.

I am waiting for tables.  The good news is I just got an email from one of the people working on the tables, which means that they are coming, at some point.  And also someone is more miserable than me right now (since I am home, on my couch, in my pajamas, and I believe he's still at the office).  The bad news is, the email he just sent me said he was about to send me a table I already have (apparently there are problems with it), which means 1) I have to change some of the numbers I already have, for the third time today, and 2) he's not about to send me the new tables.

I am considering napping, but I have a feeling I would not get back up, and I would probably rather do this work tonight than in the morning.  But maybe in the morning would be more efficient, assuming they would be done by then, so rather than waiting, I could just wake up and do it.  I just hate mornings.  And I've stayed up this late.

Tomorrow night, this will be over.  And Thursday Forrest is coming, and we are going to see the Decemberists, and I cannot wait to hear them sing "The Crane Wife" in person, because I am in love with it (the song cycle, the album):

My crane wife arrived at my door in the moonlight
All starbright and tongue-tied I took her in
We were married and bells rang sweet for our wedding
And our bedding was ready and we fell in

Sound the keening bell
And see it's painted red
Soft as fontanelle
The feathers in the thread
And all I ever meant
To do was to keep you

She weaves her feathers into the cloth, and when he discovers her secret she leaves him.

I am tired.

I have stayed up late working before, obviously.  It was different in college.  First of all, I slept in later then.  Secondly, I knew when I had to stay up it was my own fault, because I hadn't done the work earlier.  In this case, it is not my fault.  I have been ready and waiting all day.  Days, actually.  Third, and this is really the same as the second, but I am tired, I was in control then.  I knew what I needed, and I got the information, I did the analysis, I wrote the paper.  None of this second guessing and switching back and re-doing over and over again.  No waiting.  Fourth, I used Word to write my papers, and not Word Perfect, which is the new bane of my existence (but my boss loves it!).  There were more reasons why this is infinitely more painful, but I can't remember what they were.  On the other hand: I am getting paid.  But not actually for these hours.  Just, in general.

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.)

You know how sometimes life is like a movie, and you can't believe it's really happening to you?

I left my phone at Ashley's last night (Ashley is a friend from London, and yesterday we sat in Dolores Park and watched the San Francisco Mime Troupe call for secular humanism, but in a funny way, and then she made dinner and we played Scrabble with her law school friends).  Anyway, the phone thing is set up one for my evening.  Set up two is that I was supposed to drive down to the San Jose area to look at two cars.  One car I could not arrange to look at, because the only number for the person I had was saved in my voice mail.  The other car, I couldn't look at, because the people never called me back (but I only confirmed this after staying at work 15 minutes late, though I got there 10 minutes early).  At that point, I had found another car about 15 minutes south (instead of half an hour) that was supposedly parked in a lot, and the owner wanted people to come look at it and confirm their seriousness before calling her.  I say "supposedly" because I drove there, and it wasn't there.  It wasn't anywhere.

So that left me at about 7:45, no dinner, no cell phone, no car viewings, in Foster City.  I got lost getting back on the freeway, thanks to Google, which sucks.  I hit traffic coming into San Francisco and sat on 101 for twenty minutes.  I missed my turn onto 17th and did a fifteen minute figure-8 around Market St. to get back to it.  By the time I was driving up 17th towards Ashley's (maybe 8:45), I was in a bad mood, starving, and I thought, "If I see a store, I'll stop and get Ben and Jerry's, and then I won't arrive empty handed asking for food at Ashley's door, and Ben and Jerry's is just the thing to cheer me up anyway."  Miraculously, a corner store appeared.  I pulled the car over, left my blinkers on as I was illegally parked, ran inside, bought some Half Baked, and turned to leave, reaching into my purse for my keys.  They weren't there.  They were in the car.

This is a really funny story, and someday I'm going to find it amusing.  I stopped to get ice cream to cheer myself up... and locked my keys in the car.  The rental car.  And I didn't have my cell phone.  And I don't know anyone's number, because I just moved here.

Luckily the man at the store was very nice, and let me use his phone, and sit in the store for an hour, and the rescue turned out to be free, because my rental car is still under warranty from Chevrolet, so it could have been a hell of a lot worse.  But I was not feeling too good at the time.  I am not good without food, at the best of times, which this was not.  I just... couldn't believe it.  The end result was me, sitting on the step of a corner store, shivering, crying uncontrollably and eating ice cream with a plastic spoon.

However, I am now home (I made it back at 11 pm), with my phone, and all limbs intact, and I think I parked legally for the night, and, okay, still no car viewings, but what's $35 a day anyway?

In other news, because I realize I only write in here to complain, and I'm sorry about that:

Work is do-able, and though I am now on a project which is not my area, and which I am stuck with because no one else wanted to do, and which is sort of high pressure... I'm kind of happy, because it requires me to think, and that is far superior to formatting data tables, or copying and pasting things

As mentioned, yesterday I went to Dolores Park and sat in the sun and watched political comedy, with songs, and costumes, and it was excellent, and it felt like home: a park full of curly-grey-haired women in comfy pants and brightly colored earrings, and men with beards, and dogs, and small children, and white boys with dreadlocks.  It was wonderful.  And I got sun-burned!  In San Francisco!  And then I got to meet very nice people, and I won at Scrabble, and overall it was an excellent Labor Day.

Earlier this weekend, Friday night to be exact, Jen and I drove to the Napa Valley, to see Annie (!)  I arrived hungry, because I've forgotten how to eat dinner apparently, and she fed me peaches and cottage cheese and toast, and then we talked late and slept, hands touching, and on Saturday Annie had a party, at a vineyard on a lake, and Jen and I blew up balloons and talked to strange conservative adults, and paddled on the pond.

And I am in my apartment now.  I am still stealing very sporadic internet, but it should be hooked up for real soon.  We have dishes, and I did laundry, and there's a skylight in the bathroom which makes it so light in the morning I keep turning off the lights even though they're not on.

A quick post so I can go to bed:

I am working now.  So far, pretty boring.  But it's a first job, I don't know anything yet, I haven't proven myself, and everyone is too busy to tell me what to do.  So, I copy and paste.  I think it will get better.

I almost bought a 2000 Jetta, but didn't.  Lots of reasons: too low gas mileage (it had a 6 cylinder engine, more power, worse mileage), too expensive to repair if anything went wrong, too expensive, period, complicated payment arrangement, and so on.  Really I was just not ready to buy a car that nice.  I freaked out yesterday, and left a message on my mother's cell phone crying.  Today my little sister called back and when I talked to her she said, "You sounded whiny."  Yes, indeed I did.  I want to have someone hand me a car.  I would deal with the problems, whatever they turn out to be.  As long as someone else makes the decision; but that is not going to happen, and I have to acknowledge it.  I reserved a rental car for tomorrow morning; if Nick drops me off there, I can pick it up, and then after work I will be able to shop for a comforter, and pillows, and towels, and hangers for my closet, and I will be able to move my suitcases from Nick's hallway to my new apartment, and I will be able to get to work in the morning, at whatever time I want to get there, and leave when I want to leave.

Because I'm 21, I have to pay more than twice as much as the actual price of the car rental to rent the car for a week.  But at least if I rent for a full week it's cheaper than a few days.  And if I spend $250 renting a car for a week, it's better than spending $1000+ extra on a car I don't want or need, just because I'm desperate to have one, I suppose.  Maybe I am being crazy.  It's not so bad at Nick's place, except that last night I only wanted to sleep, and he was up playing ping pong until 2 am, and I feel guilty asking for anything, and Nick, even being nice, makes me feel young and stupid, and every morning I dig through my suitcases and end up wearing dirty clothes, because I can't find anything else.  Is escaping from that a week early worth $250?  I don't know.  I don't know how to negotiate the real world.  Having a car will make buying a car easier; I can get places; I will not be desperate.  I can write it off to moving expenses.  I would spend this much flying across the country.  I wish I was 25, and things would be cheaper, and easier somehow.  I would know what to do (not really, but it's a nice story to tell myself).

College, I understood.  I could do that.  This is... more complicated.  Less forgiving.  Or it just seems that way to me, through biased and worried eyes.

Hey, my picture is on the Brown website.  I'm famous.

I offered to work a few hours at the library this week since I would be in town anyway - I'm in the reading room, and will probably get more work done here than I would at home, plus I'm getting paid. It's a little depressing though. I walked through campus for the first time all weekend and it was empty, grown-ups sprinkled here and there on the grass, the occasional grad student. The trees look more bare when no one is around. It's warm but not really warm - I didn't wear a coat, but I was cool and pulled the sleeves of my sweater down over my hands. I want to be on a beach somewhere. I know I've had far more than my fair share of traveling and exotic beaches, but that is cold comfort when I face the prospect of Providence for another two months.

It feels dim and somnolent in the reading room today. I want a nap.

I couldn't sleep last night. I lay still, opening and closing my eyes. I turned to the other side. I stared at the clock. I turned on the light, read the book even my professor acknowledged was boring. Turned the light off again. Listened to the garbage truck at 3:30.

I'm at work now and there's a boy who just moved his chair to a corner and is napping. I'm serious. He's sitting in a chair, his head tilted to one side, eyes closed. No pretense, no attempt to appear engaged in his work.

I want to nap.

I fell asleep sometime after 4 am. This morning I had to get up early to meet someone on Lecture Board business. That took fifteen minutes, and then I had an hour and a half to kill. I was walking from the library to the Main Green, unaware of anything except the weight behind my eyes when a woman stopped me and asked, "Are you sad?" I came to life, smiling. "No, just tired." She was older, forties maybe... a professor? A grad student? "I thought, she's too young to be that sad," she said, and I assured her I wasn't, just zoned out. "Work?" "No, insomnia," I told her. She made an oh-dear face. I smiled. "You were in deep thought," she said, "I'm sorry." "No, no, it's good to be startled out of myself a little," I said, and meant it. "Thank you." We exchanged smiles and I walked on, paying attention to the people around me now.

I finished my creative non-fiction essay, at least a preliminary draft. I am actually quite happy with it, though I'm not sure how it reads to someone who does not live in my head. It's about writing and architecture, sort of, and I wanted to give it to my architecture professor today instead of the stupid one page paper I wrote to prove I've been coming to class. But you can't turn the same thing in to two classes, and it's not an academic essay and it's too long and random and he probably wouldn't read it anyway. (And I'm secretly afraid, because he's really cool and smart.)

( Read it yourself )

At 2:35 my cell phone rang. I was lying on my bed, finally engaged in reading for my Shakespeare essay after three days of claiming I was going to work and not doing so. It was my boss, asking if I was coming in to work today. “Is it Tuesday?” I asked, genuinely shocked.

It is Tuesday. I speed walked to the office, sorted and copied for three hours and am now engaged to return in the morning, so I don’t have to work next week. The morning, ugh. At least I won’t forget, since I’m setting my alarm clock right now. I think my confusion dates back to Saturday, when I did absolutely nothing. I slept until mid-afternoon and didn’t leave the building the entire day, and thus somehow, it didn’t count as a day. On Sunday, I felt like it was Saturday, yesterday, Sunday, and today… well, it didn’t feel like a Tuesday.

My boss was very good-natured about it. The real problem is that now another day has passed without my doing any work. I did finish Macbeth, which is something I guess. The paper isn’t due for three more weeks, but two weeks after that, another paper is due, and then a weekend after that, another paper. When I put it like that, my concern seems silly, because I write a paper a week at Brown without a problem. I have so much time. These papers worry me, because I have the feeling I’m supposed to be reading all sorts of things I haven’t read. I’m not sure right now if I’m trying to convince myself to be more anxious, and work more, or less anxious, and spend another two days doing nothing. Well, laundry. I have to do laundry.

Yesterday I planned to work, but just when my bag was packed and ready to head out for some more isolated locale where I had no other options, Lily called and asked if I wanted to go to the Twinings shop. I had no choice, I had to say yes. A visit to the original Twinings tea shop is not something I am capable of refusing. I didn’t realize that Lily envisioned this trip as A London Outing, taking us through the fascinating locales of Bloomsbury Street, Covent Garden and the Strand. Nor did I realize shopping and eating would be involved. Once in the middle of these activities, I could hardly refuse to participate. (Okay, so I did most of the shopping, and I was the hungry one, but I didn’t plan it that way!) Anyway, the little stroll to the tea shop took four hours, and then involved grocery shopping on the way home, which meant by the time we got back it was time to make dinner and then commence with the Valentine’s Day brownie festival.

One complaint about London: apparently people here don’t bake at home very much. There was only one kind of brownie mix in the store (and no baker’s chocolate or cocoa that I could see) and it was all milk chocolate. Milk chocolate brownies are the worst tease ever, because they look fudgy, and they even smell sort of fudgy, but when you bite into them you never get the supreme chocolate-y satisfaction of true dark chocolate brownies. Now I just crave chocolate more.

Sunday we also took a small excursion that turned into a whole day of walking — a trip to Chinatown for the Chinese New Year celebration. London’s Chinatown is very small, and full of streets with names like Newport Place and Gerrard Street which contrasted oddly with the strings of gold and red paper dragons draped from building to building. The crowd was crushing and impossible to navigate. We inched, smiling at the little girl with pigtails sitting on her father’s shoulders, listening to the woman on the loudspeakers repeat Chinese phrases and laugh. I had bean curd stuffed with prawns in a restaurant where they didn’t serve tap water, and you had to pay extra for rice. The food was heavenly anyway, and Lily and I wondered at our own assumptions it would somehow be more authentic because we aren’t in America. No fortune cookies at the end of the meal, sadly. Back in the crowd we found a Chinese grocery store and bought cheap tofu and soy sauce and then got out as quickly as possible.

Next door in SoHo, I froze; the morning sunshine had given way to a chill wind, and I, optimistic, had only worn a light jacket. My hands stuck in the pockets of my jeans in a desperate attempt to stave off frost bite, we stumbled into Bar Italia, a famous SoHo coffee bar, where we ordered hot chocolate, frothy and warm, with dark syrup clumped at the bottom like a surprise. The man at the counter gave us Bacio chocolates for free, because (his co-worker said) he was in love with me. Unfortunately, I don’t like Bacio chocolates. The walls were covered with pictures of boxers and boxes of pasta hung from the ceiling. One counter was glass and piled high with fruit; when you order juice, you get to pick the fruit you want in it, not the kind, but the actual pieces of fruit to be juiced. On top of the fruit counter was a container of chocolate, dark and swirling. We debated grabbing it and running out into the cold.

Now I’m making myself hungry. Dinner time.

Ahead of me: five articles for my Petite Bourgeoisie class, including two to summarize/criticize in a presentation. Also, all the pieces of my newest knitting project (a purse) to be stitched together. A novel, Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes, for my London in Literature class. Grocery shopping (soy sauce, butter).

Behind me: an excruciatingly boring meeting with the Brown/Penn/Cornell Centre where I handed out packets to people (strangers from Cornell and Penn, people I recognized, acquaintances from Brown) and listened to various people tell me things I already knew, over and over again. Wandering around the streets with Jeff, the other student helper, looking for a café which took credit cards. I have made it for three days without cash (the rational: if I don’t have cash, I can’t spend it – and apparently, can’t buy any kind of food or drink that doesn’t involve sitting down at a restaurant, or Starbucks, where we finally managed to get chai and muffins with a credit card). I would think they would be more willing to take cards here, since everything is twice as expensive. I understand it’s ridiculous to (as I regularly do at home) charge a $1.60 drink, but at least in central London, drinks tend to run $3 a least, which is… less ridiculous. “Another cultural difference!” Liz and Sue, who run the Centre, exclaimed happily when we told them. “You tried to use a card?!”

Later yesterday: The London Philharmonic playing Beethoven’s 8th and 9th. We sat in the balcony, where the orchestra appeared as a field of gold, the light reflecting off of moving bows, sweeping this way and that with the waves of sound. The program said that the 8th symphony has been called “light” but is really full of jokes. Jokes? I sneaked glances at Anita, sitting next to me, who plays the violin. She wasn’t laughing. What are jokes in classical music? I wanted a tour of the symphony, the way I would get a tour of a museum, someone to point to this note and that and say, “Here is where he tries something new and different. This here, this stimulates emotion, can’t you feel it? And the moment when the brass comes in, that means…” Could I do that in a novel? Maybe, somewhat. No one really needs that kind of guidance for novels, or maybe I just assume they don’t. I suppose it depends on the novel — Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood or Ulysses. I digress. The 9th was incredible, especially the third and fourth movements. There was a full choir, as well as four soloists, and when the voices and the instruments rose in rapid chords, it vibrated through my body, forced my chest to expand outward.

After the performance we (Anita, Sam Stolper, two other people from Brown I just met, two Penn students and I) walked from the Royal Festival Hall with its breathtaking view of the river down the South Bank and across the Millenium Bridge. I had my camera this time, but it took me a while to discover that my automatic flash hurt the possibility of getting a good picture of the lights across the river. Finally I managed a few blurry, brilliant images, red and gold on the water. All coming when I can download them onto my computer.

We kept walking, wandering back past St. Paul’s and along Fleet Street. My feet hurt because I wore nice shoes to the symphony, but at a certain point stubbornness kept us all going, and we walked all the way home, probably about three miles altogether, in the cold wind. London is so quiet at night, whole streets (big streets, not small, crooked side streets) empty, restaurants and pubs closed before 11, occasionally a convenience store (we stopped in one and looked over snacks I for one had no money to buy while a man in a long coat on a cell phone kept returning to the wine wall over and over saying “They don’t have any alcohol? We need alcohol?” into the phone).

I’m procrastinating from my work. Reading about nineteenth century grocers is just not as thrilling as one might hope.

An enjoyably boring couple of days. Sunday I spent five hours finishing The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood — I reached the point where I couldn’t stop reading, I had to find out what happened. After about three hours I realized that I had reached that point with 200 pages left to go. Yesterday I sat thro