friday february 9 2001    |    4:00 p.m.

i am currently having a fabulous time hanging out with myself in my room. the dante class was cancelled (cancallation was on the syllabus and everything), so last night i disconnected my phone and turned both alarm clocks back towards the wall, and slept until i physically couldn't sleep anymore, which happened at around 2 this afternoon.

i devoured a few more chapters of the unbearable lightness of being, which is like a luxury vacation and a trip to the killing fields all at once, after having been submerged in vapid richard bach for a few weeks. i think i'm figuring out a sort of scale against which to compare the two, although i'm sure by the mere suggestion of a comparison some god is getting very very wrathful. anyway, as far as an approximation to understanding the human condition, richard bach's books are on the men are from mars, women are from venus side of the grid, and milan kundera is at the holy shit, higher truth side of the grid. we're talking an abyss of understanding here.

on the plane to nueva york, my mom and i noticed that across the aisle there was this young couple dressed in khakis and leather jackets, perfectly put together the both of them; he was dutifully skimming the men are from mars book while his girlfriend alternately dozed and woke up to point out passages or discuss them with him. this made me profoundly uneasy, it made me want to rip the book out of his hands and hit him with it and maybe give him a reading list to take home. i have no problems being self-righteous when i believe i'm right. and i'm pretty good about recognizing when i've been dead wrong. the sooner you move on to better things, the less crap your brain will be forced to process. but i guess you need to process the crap before you can recognize the substance.

so i think after i finish typing this i'm going to write julie an e-mail quoting the several breakthrough passages in lightness.

i wish i could stop the weekend from propelling me into leaving my room and doing things. but that's impossible. i'm always looking for something.

today she talks about writing valentines to the unfulfilled potential. not to the flings or the exboys, but the ones that (figuratively) struck you and stood out and never quite allowed you to move on without the lingering memory, for whatever reason. this is a brilliant idea. i can think of very few people who've left this impression on me, who would merit these nostalgic valentines, but there have been some. to mike s_, whose high school demo tape is still in my box of tapes, who discovered music to me in a way (because you can discover things to people), whose coke i spilled in a frenzy of talking about fugazi, who as far as i know is now living in nyc and playing in a bar band . . . to him i've written lots of blue valentines through the years. around the same time there was the boy at the art museum, tall and with a mess of blond hair, bottomless eyes and casually exuding breathing aura, like in a dream. and i suppose elliott smith will be my perpetual blue valentine: a moment frozen in time, he passing me back the autographed record and raising his eyebrows like "now what," me running off in a half-panic. and most recently the elusive boy at school, i'm not even sure of his name and i've never heard his voice, but there's something about him. and that's all i'll say.

richard bach shook me to the core because he made me suspend my disbelief. but now i'm back to what feels right. i don't think my soulmate is out there somewhere waiting for the forces of fate to bring us together. nothing like that. that sounds like predestination and, i think, renders life as a worthless manipulation. i completely blindly fervently believe in free will. but i know there's something better. i'm not unhappy, but the knowledge that there is something better is killing me. but i've been in love, i know what it is, and i know this isn't it. there is a thick line between love and affection (ooh i feel like i'm deconstructing def leppard). i know. so what happens now? < / end confession >

i'm listening right now to the tape that fritz made her boyfriend for valentine's day. the first song is "romeo had juliette" by lou reed. i'd never heard the original until i listened to it in her room, and then i brought her this version, the one on the united states of poetry compilation. whereas the first one is punchy rockabilly, this is dark moody shit: "his brains run out on the pavement" sounds more like death row than the reservoir dogs of the original. i love them both.

what a beautiful afternoon. the sky is opaque again outside my window, but it's warm -- maybe 60! -- and humid like it's rained or it's going to. i'm checking fritz's tape for a glitch (it isn't there, happily), and lou reed is the perfect background for all this. a great score for this particular section of the movie.

i can't narrow down a quote with which to end this, but if i were to pick one it would say something about chance and serendipity and afternoons like this and love.