tuesday january 23 2000    |    8:39 p.m.

what a day. what a hectic, horrible day. thank god it's basically over.

i was stupid last night. i went over to john's apartment with julie, initially to watch a movie for my chinese film class (and because we don't have a tv, much less a vcr), but of course we ended up staying and drinking a few too many beers and so on. all the while knowing i had a film critique paper due by noon the next day, and class at 8 in the morning, and class at 9:40 in the morning, and a poetry reading to go to at 11 and a poet to have lunch with at noon. i got back to my room well after one in the morning. and talked to erick for a good long while. so then i went to bed, planning to get up an hour early (read: 6 am) to write the paper. in fact, i ended up sleeping through my eight o'clock class, rushing to my nine-forty, all dishevelled, cup of lukewarm coffee in hand. and naturally i had to skip the reading and the lunch to write the paper.

and then there were two classes to get permission to enroll in, and a visit to the advisor so she could sign my enrollment form, and two trips to the registrar's office to register, and a trek to professor bai's office to get a signature, and a trip into town to buy books and cigarettes and more coffee, and some quality time in the computer lab printing out response papers and articles for the seminar tomorrow night . . . and it was cold and muddy and icy and gross, even more so on roughly three hours of sleep.

so now finally, finally, finally i'm back in my room, trying to relax a little before plunging headfirst into the endless reading for tomorrow. and the comps-writing. people are finished and i'm scrambling. i have the most fucked-up work ethic imaginable (it's a travesty to even call it a work ethic): put everything off until the stress reaches explosive levels, and then try to do everything in a frenzy of insane activity at the last minute. it's always been like this and no matter how many resolutions i make and unmake resistance is futile, as they say. friday after i turn in my comps i'll be so drained that instead of going out and drinking myself into a stupor, i may well just collapse in my bed and stay there until my body decides to stop punishing me.

sigh.

now i'm smoking all the cigarettes i couldn't smoke while running around campus à la headless chicken, and working on daniel's birthday present, which, for lack of funds and to my chagrin, will have to be a mixtape. good news is i haven't made the boy a mixtape since the winter of our sophomore year, and there are actually records of mine that he doesn't have and likes. this, in case you're not familiar with the daniel in question, is quite an event. so i'm taping him (and i hope he doesn't read this, but i don't think he does) the hits (according to me) of yo la tengo and the plan and a blonde redhead ep and johnny cash and i don't know, we'll have to see. mixtapes all around, hell yeah. hers goes in the mail tomorrow if it kills me.

tim shutt told us this great story yesterday during his divine comedy class. we were talking about birds, because the lustful lovers of the second circle of the inferno get compared to thee different birds on three different occasions (oh number symbolism, i love it). so he told us about some crazy early-20th-century american millionaire who decided one day that every bird mentioned in shakespeare's writings should be imported into the united states, and that he'd be the one to undertake the task. and so he did it: brought in starlings and turtle doves and i don't know what else, and let them loose in the wilds of new york city. and naturally they all died out. all except the starlings, which are stubborn and resilient and windswept little bastards. "As in the cold season their wings bear the starlings along in a broad, dense flock, so does that blast the wicked spirits." the lovers like starlings in the city, swept off by storm winds braved resolutely, indefinitely, infinitely. thinking of this, which is beautiful, has been carrying me through these days.

in a glossy mass-marketed package american beauty made a feeble attempt at articulating this, and we discussed the far nobler and abler attempts of frank bidart in "herbert white" this morning in class: essentially, that beauty lives in the darndest places. dante could show it in one line. now imagine reading three volumes' worth of these lines, and you'll get an idea of how infatuated i am with this class.

i can't kill my idols until i ride along with them first.

so the dante class is cancelled tomorrow and friday, which means that tomorrow i can either a) seriously sleep in, or b) wake up early and do work. i'm going to try for c) a compromise between the two. i hope i hope. i'm barely even awake right now, so i'm going to take a shower and read for a while and hopefully go to bed very, very early. as in before one in the morning. this to me is very, very early. it will be quite an accomplishment.

i have to grasp onto the small things (and don't get any dirty ideas, because you know i know what you're thinking right now) to get me through this semester. a word or a sentence or an imperfection on a page or a day-trip to columbus or a joke from my dad or a letter in the mail. i don't know. it's going to be hard. but i feel the willpower building, and i'm not sure where it's coming from but i welcome it.

might go see a local show this weekend in columbus, i don't know. dusty will be there and maybe ben will want to go and i think maybe even jules might get a kick out of it. except the evil ex will probably be there too, since the band in question is one of his favorites, and he's friends with the guys. but all the more reason to go, no? or at least it shouldn't be a reason not to go. i can't believe i even allow myself to think about that creep anymore. maybe i should have erick's pittsburgh skinhead friends beat him up. :] tee hee. just kidding. although it's nice to know your boyfriend would happily kick someone's ass for you. you know? is that too un-modern-liberated-female-of-the-21st-century of me? well shucks, too bad. this chick can appreciate a good ass-whuppin'.

but who knows what evils lurk / in the hearts of man