thursday november 1 2001    |    4:49 a.m.

i used to write better entries in here. less inhibited, more articulate, more myself. maybe because kenyon was a constant source of inspiration, whether i liked it or not.

[ got a letter from the kenyon review the other day, asking for donations for the magazine, and i actually got all choked up. ]

so. i got the job. and i won't be selling coffee, i will be selling books, and that makes me happy. here. i start on monday. finally: five months later: my first job after college. for what it's worth. for the annals. employee discounts, here i come!

i loved his entry today. (yesterday?) because for halloween i ended up going with papo and alison to lincoln road, and then later with roly, papo, celia, and celia's friend to level -- because papo's friend hooked him up with free passes, otherwise we would never have gotten past that rope. the beach was ridiculously packed and over the top: i mean from the most sumptuously baroque-outfitted drag queens and glowing, glittering, glistening boys in über-pecs and loincloths to this dude dressed up as a gondola guy (gondolier? gondolieri? am i making these up? es tarde.), complete with gondola attached to body and doll-people attached to gondola. and level was insane, like i imagine studio 54 would've looked like: rooms that look endless and everybody beautiful and sweaty and covered in confetti and drops of foam, an amazing sound system, beats i don't know enough about to describe.

so yes, it was fun and kind of exciting and very crazy. but it's the removed kind of fun, you know? "fun". the way quoyle describes it in the shipping news, a kind of ludicrous situation to find yourself in.

and so everything jeremy wrote about -- making jack-o-lanterns, unexpected snowfalls, handing out little bags of treats, hanging out at home with a few good friends -- made me nostalgic. for what? for ohio? for my friends? for cold weather?

for everything. for the fireplace and the freezing wind and long comfy coats and sloughing snow off windshields and dead branches and ruddy cheeks and cursing at the cold under a scarf in small bursts of visible breath.

but mainly for someone's sweatered self to press up against and put arms around. to throw away all defenses. not to feel alone with.

i know it's super sappy. and that's not even the half of it.

oh well. bed. yay bed. yay sleep. it's time.

quick p.s.: who in russian federation zone 7 (thank you sitemeter) could have possibly known that katpowah + do the collapse + diaryland = this here journal? odd. very odd. and sort of neat maybe.