peaseblossom

Confession

2007-07-29T16:17:00.000-04:00

Today I spent $40 on books. I just had to get that off my chest.

Really, it's my first truly indulgent purchase since I moved here. Otherwise all my spending has been on food or drinks (and the drinks I justify as necessary to the making-new-friends process) and the occasional bus trip to visit family or friends. But I thought, here I am in Union Square with a little time to kill, and, well, there's the Strand.

I left all my books at home for space and packing reasons. There's a beautiful untouched library there now, books stacked high against the blue walls of my room in California, and no one to read them. One day, I don't know what I'll do, maybe pile them all into a car and drive to wherever my new home is. But for now, I'm in so much transition I can't have them with me. I've been trying to read New Press books as much as possible (they're free and, after all, what I do now), but I just really wanted something different.

Today the Strand was full with people seeking refuge from the rain, brushing our wet umbrellas against each other as we negotiated space in the narrow aisles. At first that place always seems too big, too crowded, the shelves stretching up so high I can't even read the spines. I thought about leaving emptyhanded. But that's what bookbuying is like, you have to wait for a while, no pressure, just meander, until you get a good idea or see something you'd forgotten about. And then the momentum builds.

First I picked up a George Saunders collection, which got bumped after I remembered some other short stories of interest, namely Garcia Marquez's Strange Pilgrims. Then I hunted down a cheap copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover---remember when I wanted to write my thesis on D.H. Lawrence?---as a consolation for the beautiful second American edition of the uncensored version that I saw in Maine and didn't buy because it was just too dear ($27). Although now that I think about how I just splurged on the Miranda July book for $17 (the yellow one; they didn't have the pink), I'm thinking it was a mistake to pass up that lovely old Lawrence book. Oh well. I considered getting a cheap Daniel Deronda, too, but it was just too ugly to be worth it. And then on the way out the door, I impulse bought Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.

Now that I've catalogued my loot I feel a little better.

Insomnia

2007-06-17T04:05:00.000-04:00

First night in New York and I can't sleep.
It's easily accounted for, of course. It looks awfully late right now, but it's only 1:06am in California. I stayed up till 3 last night finishing On Beauty and weighing, unpacking, repacking, and again weighing my suitcase. I've been sleeping in excessive amounts these last few weeks, and I slept a little on my second flight this afternoon. On top of which, I'm in someone else's bed, someone else's room.

When I arrived in Park Slope tonight, the Edward Gorey calendar on the kitchen wall was certainly one indication that I'd come to the right place. I took Suite Francaise out of my backpack only to find it sitting flat on Jessie's bookshelf. I love those bits of proof that you're with a friend. The thing is, I'm terribly uninterested in most novels for the first 75 pages or so, and after that I can't put them down. I started On Beauty three different times over the last year, but it was only in the last couple days that I swept through it. Anyway, I haven't reached that point yet with Nemirovsky's novel, so that's no good to me right now.

I'm feeling hot and full (fat) and uncertain. On the plane I wondered, why the vague nervousness? I always think these feelings are diffuse, unattached, as though I'm victim to strange passing fits but immune from more obvious sources of distress. While anyone else might take one look at me and say: maybe it's because you've moved to a new city and are starting your first job on Monday. Maybe, and maybe that's why I can't sleep.

Tomorrow, my friends at Stanford graduate. Congratulations! Now we'll really all be done. And somehow I'm exactly stepping into that fantasy I'd had of post-college life--the city, the job, the new shoes. Doesn't look so great at the moment (except for the shoes), but maybe that will pass.

I'll stop here, and resume the usual insomnia mind-games, trying too hard not to think about the time or whether I should turn the light back on, etc., until hopefully the very effort exhausts me. Check in again soon; there should be much to report these next few weeks.

Selected Passages from My Beloved Novels (or, Why the Thesis is Sometimes a Pleasure)

2007-04-07T11:26:00.000-04:00

Fanny Price joins a circulating library:

Fanny found it impossible not to try for books again. There were none in her father's house; but wealth is luxurious and daring--and some of hers found its way to a circulating library. She became a subscriber--amazed at being any thing in propria persona, amazed at her own doings in every way; to be a renter, a chuser of books!
(J. Austen, Mansfield Park)

Lucy's famous remarks on happiness:

No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure.
(C. Bronte, Villette)

Dorothea's reaction to Will Ladislaw's (apparent) faithlessness:

Why had he come obtruding his life into hers, hers that might have been whole enough without him? Why had he brought his cheap regard and his lip born words to her who had nothing paltry to give in exchange? He knew that he was deluding her--wished, in the very moment of farewell, to make her believe that he gave her the whole price of her heart, and knew that he had spent it half before. Why had he not stayed among the crowd of whom she asked nothing--but only prayed that they might be less contemptible?
(G. Eliot, Middlemarch)

Susan, on motherhood:

I have lost my indifference, my blank eyes, my pear-shaped eyes that saw to the root. I am no longer January, May or any other season, but am all spun to a fine thread round the cradle, wrapping in a cocoon made of my own blood the delicate limbs of my baby. Sleep, I say, and feel within me uprush some wilder, darker violence, so that I would fell down with one blow any intruder, any snatcher, who should break into this room and wake the sleeper.
(V. Woolf, The Waves)

SpellCheck, Meet the Academy

2007-04-01T01:19:00.000-04:00

Words Microsoft Doesn't Like In My Thesis:
(in order of appearance)

routinization
defamiliarizing/defamiliarizations
typification
dailiness
fictionality
legitimation
quotidien/quotidienne
prosiness
phallocentric
commodified
intersubjective
banalized
overpoliticize
prolificness
contemporaneity
embeddedness
flaneur
masculinist
domesticization
recontextualize
cathexis

Well, most of them are in quotes, okay? And I don't like them either!
(Except for the ones that are good to chew on...dailiness, prosiness, prolificness, embeddedness, and cathexis.)

ha, exactly

2007-03-27T11:01:00.000-04:00

from "Shouts & Murmurs" in the March 21st issue of The New Yorker:

III. How College Kids Imagine the United States Government

THE PRESENT DAY

—Did you hear the news, Mr. President? The students at the University of Pittsfield are walking out of their classes, in protest over the war.

—(spits out coffee) Wha— What did you say?

—Apparently, students are standing up in the middle of lectures and walking right out of the building.

—But students love lectures. If they’re willing to give those up, they must really be serious about this peace thing! How did you hear about this protest?

—The White House hears about every protest, no matter how small.

—Oh, right, I remember.

—You haven’t heard the half of it, Mr. President. The leader of the group says that if you don’t stop the war today they’re going to . . . to . . . I’m sorry, I can’t say it out loud. It’s just too terrifying.

—Say it, damn it! I’m the President!

—All right! If you don’t stop the war . . . they’re going to stop going to school for the remainder of the week.

—Send the troops home.

—But, Mr. President! Shouldn’t we talk about this?

—Send the troops home.

as long as it's not killing me

2007-03-13T12:50:00.000-04:00

running water everywhere. everything's melting, and maybe it's a false spring but it's still spring-like and i am wearing a dress and ballet flats today. it will definitely be spring in california on friday (while weather.com forecasts wintry mix this weekend for you suckers staying in the northeast).

disoriented, exhausted, driven along by strange momentum...this morning has felt surreal and i keep trying to knock myself out of this state with drinks of water and walks outside (where everything's fresh and streaming along!) but in the end i'm back at the computer with three documents open and about a million books on the table. if i'm in shock right now, it's at least in part because these last several days of never-not-working have felt almost natural, like things make some sense: i think i know what i'm doing and the only hitch is to just keep doing it.
taken up residence in the study room. everything now depends on my body. i didn't wake up for class this morning and felt like a complete fool. especially since that class is a welcome relief from everything else. i was bowled over by Thelma & Louise, which might sound naive but it's a goddamn powerful movie.

and so this post is nothing more than a wave to the outside world, a need i'm feeling to communicate.

St. Valentine died in a snowdrift.

2007-02-14T08:15:00.000-05:00

The College is closed. Well, so they say, but I'm pretty sure I still have class.

Last night I went on WebMD dot com. Why does that site exist? It has nothing to offer but fear and distress. It actually made me cry. Then, when I couldn't seem to stop crying, I gave up on the day and went to bed at 10:50pm. This was a good idea, because when I woke up at quarter to six this morning I actually did feel better, and I swear I'll never "check my symptoms" again. (That's a lie.) But, honestly, what would you do if the little WebMD checklist indicated that you either had 'chronic depression' or 'cancer'? Cry? Yeah me too.

The snow is romantic, isn't it? It kind of makes me want to visit Emily Dickinson's grave or bake cookies or write a letter to a soldier. Perhaps now would be an appropriate time for a meditation on Valentine's Day. But I, unfortunately, have nothing to say--no strong feelings one way or another, except that maybe it would be nice to wear red today. There was a big construction paper heart under my door this morning, which I think must have been created in a certain Big Brother Big Sister session yesterday afternoon, and I certainly appreciated that. And I sent Rachel a virtual cup of coffee. My mother had asked for the name of my dorm and then immediately confessed to trying to send me something, but I suspect that even the intrepid delivery men and women of this town may balk at the weather, reasonably so. Beyond, then, Abby, Rachel, and my mother, I must admit I do not have a Valentine. That phrase has a lot less weight than anticipated; perhaps it's because I'm too worried about my impending death-by-WebMD.

hey, this time it was for real.

2007-02-04T19:26:00.000-05:00

friday night, the snow fell slow and loose, in darkness. i walked up the heavily padded steps of the library, and it was like the snowflakes were immobile in the air, still points like so many feathery stars, turning the otherwise-scraggly trees silver. early saturday morning there were children (from where? College children? neighbors?) sledding on every slope the campus has. except that even by 11am you could already see wide streaks of dirt on Memorial Hill. it's white on the ground now, and clumpy--but the sidewalks are just slushy streams of molasses and bad patches of ice. we got the snowfall we've been asking for, on the second night of february, but, still, not enough. but maybe i shouldn't challenge the weather gods; today is apparently "Feels Like" -7.

i'm at that precarious point where i know what the next few weeks have in store--i've marked up my calendar and planner, and there's no denying it---and now i just have to keep the anxiety at bay. but clearly, any moment now, i'll crack. what with bosman already kicking my ass in terms of workload, having to write fiction again after almost two years of not, interviewing and applying for jobs i don't want, performing in a show i forgot i was in, and attending conferences i won't understand...well, February should be a little tense, is all.
somehow i had taken the 4-months-till graduation remark as applicable to my thesis as well, but turns out it's not. thesis is due april 13, and if i want a serious draft done a month in advance (which i do, even if my advisor won't force it on me), that's march 13, which, it turns out, is little over a month away. very interesting.

all of this is harder to deal with after those couple weeks of Interterm when i started to believe it was really okay to watch a movie every night. and what a time for it! this is a great movie season, you guys, and i'll never pay so little at the theater again. Pan's Labyrinth, Dreamgirls, Children of Men, Little Children, Volver; clearly i'll be seeing Diane Keaton's lamentable new movie Because I Said So, and, hopefully, having a little Oscar shindig.
i really want to believe that this semester can be both, or all, or whatever. and by all i mean maybe i'll make it to another Senior Bar Night, since the last one did prove me wrong by actually being fun. and maybe it won't be such a bad idea that i agreed to edit Circus again...scratch that; it clearly is a bad idea, but i guess i'm still doing it. and maybe i can still make those trips to New York and to Bowdoin, Yale, and Wellesley. and, you know, be a person, prepare for being a person, because, fingers crossed, isn't that what next year is all about?

first snow

2006-12-05T08:59:00.000-05:00

it's really starting to come down now, unexpectedly, and even from the basement of the library i can see the skinny black trees slowly shadowed in snow.

That Silent Evening
Galway Kinnell

I will go back to that silent evening
when we lay together and talked in low, silent voices,
while outside slow lumps of soft snow
fell, hushing as they got near the ground,
with a fire in the room, in which centuries
of tree went up in continuous ghost-giving-up,
without a crackle, into morning light.
Not until what hastens went slower did we sleep.
When we got home we turned and looked back
at our tracks twining out of the woods,
where the branches we brushed against let fall
puffs of sparkling snow, quickly, in silence,
like stolen kisses, and where the scritch scritch scritch
among the trees, which is the sound that dies
inside the sparks from the wedge when the sledge
hits it off center telling everything inside
it is fire, jumped to a black branch, puffed up
but without arms and so to our eyes lonesome,
and yet als0--how could we know this?--happy!
in shape of chickadee. Lying still in snow,
not iron-willed, like railroad tracks, willing
not to meet until heaven, but here and there
making slubby kissing stops in the field,
our tracks wobble across the snow their long scratch.
Everything that happens here is really little more,
if even that, than a scratch, too. Words, in our mouths,
are almost ready, already, to bandage the one
whom the scritch scritch scritch, meaning if how when
we might lose each other, scratches scratches scratches
from this moment to that. Then I will go back
to that silent evening, when the past just managed
to overlap the future, if only by a trace,
and the light doubles and shines
through the dark the sparkling that heavens the earth.

rabbit rabbit

2006-12-01T19:15:00.000-05:00

so most of the time, i am able to understand that any sense of persecution i have is, well, entirely made up. it's a safe bet that nobody's actually judging me as i walk through campus or purposefully jostling me in the line at the airport, even though i may feel like that's the case, a lot. it's just paranoia, and i can sort of accept that.
recently, though, i'm thinking there must be more to it; the universe must be against me. of course the kids who live in my building suck, as a general rule, but why do they have to be sucky right outside my door, leaving half-eaten donuts and cheetos for me to step over in the morning? that's really not the worst of it though. i have had three items stolen from me in the last month. the first was a beautiful and hefty black umbrella, stolen on the rainiest Saturday we'd had all year, from the Valentine cloakroom--what is usually thought of as a perfectly reasonable and safe place to leave your belongings. is it possible that someone mistook it for their own? i mean...i guess, if mine hadn't been patently superior to every other umbrella in the room. and at any rate they should have returned it. then, right before Thanksgiving break, my other umbrella was stolen, from right outside my bedroom door, as it dried overnight in the hallway next to my wet shoes. (they left the shoes, so i guess i should be grateful..?) that could not have been anything but a deliberate and rather malicious act, and although i was struck at first by the absurdity of it, now i'm just mad, and hurt. finally, there are my earrings, which i guess were more lost than they were stolen. but they weren't lost; they were left, in the locked study room in the art building, and i remembered that i had left them, but, mistakenly trusting the world, decided they would be safe to stay there till morning. they were gone in the morning. they were not to be found in the Fine Arts office, nor in the Campus Police lost&found box. this loss makes me really sad--they were interesting, useful earrings, and they were a gift.
so, the world, or somebody, is out to get me--and it's kind of working.

thunder and lightening tonight, in a refreshingly cool and gusty way. my window is banging against itself. the bottoms of my jeans are damp, and my hair is getting soft and frizzy (no umbrella, you see). i have spent this week watching episodes of Seinfeld and sleeping in--what i would assume to be clear signs of depression, except that it's felt so good to do those things, minus the two times i took naps in the upstairs foyer of the Campus Center which were just pathetic (i mean, it's not even a room). it's that deceptive time of quiet before i really begin to understand how much work needs to happen and by when; right now i don't even know what any of my finals deadlines are. i started re-reading some more Eliot tonight, which was a good decision; i can already see where i'm going to go with this, the question being, how did Eliot begin to construct the notion of a modern everyday life? and of course she's also always good for the occasional Victorian nugget, like this one: "Bess belonged unquestionably to that unsoaped, lazy class of feminine characters with whom you may venture to eat 'an egg, an apple, or a nut.'* All of this she was generally conscious of, and hitherto had not been greatly ashamed of it" (Eliot, Adam Bede). i think i might start studying at the bar in Amherst Coffee more regularly--it offers many more eavesdropping opportunities. tonight i sat next to a first date that met online ("You're the first person I actually gave my number to; everyone else has been so creepy." "Oh I've found that most people have been really polite. This one girl did send me her number in the first email and ask if I'd posed for GQ, which was kind of forward." "Aw," she said lamely.) they were just uninteresting enough that i could maintain decent concentration on my novel. i also have my first real scholarly reason for using the Special Collections (my weekly trips down there freshman year to find pictures for the newspaper column do not count). they have a 1733 collection of The Spectator, which is some twenty years after it was first published, but i'm hoping these volumes will still have some advertisements and illustrations that will help in my paper for Brit lit. i won't know, though, until next week, because they have to extricate the volumes from the mold-ridden room downstairs. it's a sorry state of affairs these days in Frost. the librarian who was helping me today couldn't use the computer or spell.

*English proverb: "An apple, an egg, and a nut, you may eat though dressed by a slut"

and finally, here is a picture from Thanksgiving night, the cousins posing in front of the stairs, a little tipsy, while approximately eighteen cameras clicked and twenty adults looked on:

exercise

2006-10-30T17:33:00.000-05:00

A Partial List of Things I Got For/Around My Birthday

- a Japanese toy gun
- a yoga mat
- a red felt cape (only a rental, sniff)
- a notebook
- a 1901 edition of Julius Caesar, completely defaced by its previous small-boy-owner
- several pairs of earrings
- a ring
- Double Chocolate Milanos and Parle G Biscuits
- a few novels
- a Rootote
- a GRE Practice Test Book. i'm no longer friends with the person who gave me this.
- a bunch of daisies
- a cactus
- a mini-fridge

***

today i went to a WAGS lunch with a psychologist who'd written about Virginia Woolf, and i all of a sudden remembered that Woolf is my person. i know tons of things about her and get excited to talk about her and have lots of opinions about her---and it's silly for me to force myself to read authors who don't interest me as much because i'm feeling lost about my thesis. this is what will make my thesis right. i just need to work on novels i care about, and i'm not sure why i couldn't understand that until now.

***

listening to Juliana Hatfield "Spin the Bottle," Death Cab's "Sound of Settling," and The Weepies "Gotta Have You"
reading Roland Barthes Mythologies and John Locke's Second Treatise
sleeping on creamy beige sheets
loving my poetry and brit lit classes and trying hard to love my theory one

other things will be okay soon too

reprise

2006-10-18T18:31:00.000-04:00

it's been quite a while, hasn't it? i guess you get busy when school starts, but it's more than that--it's that being in Oxford and then New York were experiences and i was constantly, automatically, saving up stories to tell people anyway, so it made sense to write them down. whereas, Amherst is more like life and i forget how to turn that into narrative.
but of course there's plenty to chew on here; life at Amherst is full of the kind of pleasing details you find in novels. for instance, there was that Bread Festival that i went to several weeks ago. it could not have been a purer and more telling example of what Northampton is: a few stands selling rustic bread, butter from Cook's farm, $40 bottles of olive oil; indie kids loitering on the grass, while a band played loud screechy music and a groupie held up their equipment; yuppy couples purchasing the olive oil; the hippie baker and his hippie friends; the Hare Krishna drumming and chanting. the festival ended with a ceremonial burying of the spelt, in which we all participated. after which the windy autumn day turned stormy and i went to Atkins for hot cider.
more than ever before, i think, i'm paying attention to these things. i'm burying spelt in Northampton because i know that it's special, it's the Pioneer Valley and i won't be here much longer, because i know that you really can't live in Amherst if you're not going to attend the Apple Harvest Festival and play with the llamas and kids (goat-kind) at the petting zoo. i actually notice when it's a cold and sunny and the campus looks gorgeous. i'm glad to be here; i'm glad that it's the last year i'm here, too.

it's been, in almost every aspect of my life (every aspect but one, let's be honest), a very happy six weeks thus far. i know it's been six weeks because in a few days i get to take the little hoop out of the new piercing in my ear and replace it with some sparkly stud-type earring, which i will do before my birthday party on Friday. that's another thing i'm conscious about, being happy, trying to be happy, praying and affirming, reminding myself in a very deliberate and cheesy way of what i am grateful for and what i need to work on. i agree that this kind of self-help flower-child attitude is in direct conflict with the cynicism and the judging that i do so well, but i think that's okay. i wouldn't want to not be that person too. i can't stand people who are too sunny to be critical. i just want to be grumpy and critical with a lot of inner peace at the center of it, with no nervous twisty feelings in my tummy or bitter thoughts before i go to sleep. what's astounding is that i can see myself moving in that direction, where i think before i might have assumed that change is pretty hopeless.

i almost don't even mind being in the midst of comps. which brings us to why it even occurred to me to write a new post on this thing...clearly i was desperate for a distraction. i'll get back to that essay in a minute. here, courtesy of comps and my thesis, is a quote that i like from The Mill on the Floss; it comes from a part in the novel when the narrator is explaining the local legends of St. Ogg's. we learn that Ogg the son of Beorl was a boatman who ferried people across the river Floss. one night in a terrible storm, a woman sat crying on the banks of the river, child in arms, begging to be rowed across. everyone else scoffed at her reckless request, but Ogg said the following:
"I will ferry thee across: it is enough that thy heart needs it."

of course, she turned out to be an angel or something and not only was he was blessed for the rest of his life, he also got this town named after him.

best hits

2006-08-27T14:49:00.000-04:00

i'm in my new room in Mayo-Smith, a bag of Costco dried mangoes and a packet of Double Chocolate Milanos within easy reach on my shelf, my blue furry elephant, Humphrey, lounging on the bed, and a large box of Kleenex on the windowsill. with such essentials already in place--although my clothing may still be in suitcases/strewn across the floor--i guess i'm pretty much settled in. which means summer's officially over; thankfully, there's the somewhat jittery limbo period called Orientation to ease me back into school.

that said, i have to tell a few more stories from my summer, especially as those last couple weeks in New York did not pass without incident.

Priyanka's First Blind Date
i may have already mentioned that Irene, the literary agent i worked for, is a force of nature. well, i walk into work one morning and in response to my "Good morning," Irene exclaims, "Priyanka! Do you ever date Indian men?" i answer with a diplomatic, "i'm from California: i don't have a policy." (i should mention here that Irene is one of those white people who's kind of obssessed with India.) well, it turned out that Irene had someone in mind---a young man, half-white half-indian, working at Harper's. she says she'll call him; i laugh nervously.

here's when her India-enthusiasm starts to conflict with her zest for matchmaking. she's calling up this guy when, all of a sudden, she remembers The Namesake---which, of course, she's read, though i have not. in it, apparently, Ms. Lahiri tells the story of an Indian-American youth whose parents are always trying to set him up with a nice Indian girl, and he hates it (see the forthcoming movie for details). recalling the novel, Irene is filled with remorse---is she pressuring us into an awkward situation? she covers her tracks, telling Rafil (for that's his name) that she has a lovely young intern who wants to learn more about the magazine world: would he meet with her sometime and tell her about Harper's?

i end up at a bar in the East Village for an after-work drink with this very nice guy, who went to Princeton and has lots to say about Harper's, the literary world in general, and how i might go about finding a job next year. all in all, it was a pretty interesting and pleasant encounter, although Irene was disappointed that sparks did not fly. (they didn't, in case you were wondering. my mother says my standards are too high.)

Priyanka's Fat Lip and Fat Eye
my last day of work went out with a bang: i'm struggling to grab the LMP (Literary Marketplace---it's the phone book for all things literary) from the very top of the bookshelf, when all three volumes come crashing down right onto my face. i tear up in shock, and although the pain subsides quickly, it leaves me with a very tender and swollen lower lip: Sabrina, Irene's assistant, assured me that it really just gave me a sexy pout, which i was happy to believe all day long. about a week later in California, my mother insists i get a facial from her favorite Russian beautician, Zena. i don't know what happened exactly, but one of Zena's products must have gotten in my eye--my lower left lid swelled up and hurt whenever i closed that eye for a couple days. it's better now.

Priyanka's Brush with Fame
remember 98 Degrees? yeah you do, don't lie. (actually most of my friends did not lie when i told them this story; instead they revealed an embarrassing amount of knowledge about the members of this, and other, boy bands from the 90s. way to go, guys.)
well, 98 Degrees had a lesser-known member named Justin Jeffre (lesser known in that he did not go on to wed Jessica Simpson or have a self-imposed but hilarious reality tv show destroy his marriage). and during my last week in the city, Justin became the latest New Press intern, despite the fact that he's well into this thirties.

see, Justin's from Cincinnati and in 2005 he ran for mayor there. (he lost the race, but he came in before that one ex-convict, so that's good.) despite the disappointment, he's retained his interest in Ohio politics and in independent media. it just so happens that 1) The New Press is doing a book called What Happened in Ohio? about the 2004 presidential elections and is also involved in a law suit to save those ballots from being destroyed in September; and 2) our publicity director, Ina, has all sorts of celebrity connections (she's friends with Moby, for instance). so Justin got in touch with her, wanted to help out with the book and the campaign, and decided to join The New Press as a sort of publicity intern, working for Ina.

before he arrived, i'll admit the staff was worried. how would we restrain ourselves from breaking into dance routines in the hallway? did we need to dress extra-cute for his first day? should the editorial assistant confess that she had seen him in concert when she was 16? and would Justin know how to use a photocopy machine?
i have to say, though, that he turned out to be a very nice and normal guy. i can say this with authority, since he sat next to me during the intern seminar (OMG!). we also had a few intimate moments in the stockroom, where we were both raiding the shelves for books to steal on our way out. it looks like he's going to stay with The New Press for several weeks and actually work on this book. and so i can finally say i met a celebrity in New York, and no, you can't counter that he's a has-been and doesn't count anymore. i have Justin's word for it that the band's been back in the studio recently. that's right, everyone: get ready for a comeback.

Not For Tourists

2006-08-12T18:14:00.000-04:00

my plan was to go to the West Village this weekend, find a cafe, get a little work done, and have a celebrity sighting. i got some things done and saw no famous people. i did, however, see the kind of city culture that would fit right onto the pages of Bust magazine. i was slowly working through an oversized sandwich in a semi-hip cafe, and right next to me was this ginger typing away on her glossy Apple laptop. she had on a white shirt with literary slut stamped in black across the chest. later on i walked by a coffeeshop/knitting store with bright spools of yarn on the wall, and tables around which people were drinking coffee and knitting together. very very Bust afternoon.
anyway, so back to the cafe with the sexy girl next to me. her friends then showed up and they were cute and late-twenties, the South Asian girl in grad school, her boyfriend doing something more structured, like banking or something (brief lapse in my otherwise-skilled eavesdropping). and they were chatting away, and the ginger kept referring to "my novel" and the two girls gushed about Anais Nin, and talked about not having any money. they were really just being young and breezy and kind of intellectual, and probably sounded a lot like my friends and i will sound five or six years from now. it's just that they were also kind of irritating. you really can't classify strangers into social groups without making yourself look down on them a little---even when you fully realize that their social category is your own, that you betray your group ties just as obviously as they do.
but who doesn't love that scene in Annie Hall when they're sitting on a park bench and Alvy's making Annie laugh by cutting in to every innocent passerby, summing up the lives of all these strangers. or when he meets that early girlfriend Allison backstage at a show, and after about one second's conversation, he goes, "You, you, you're like New York, Jewish, left-wing, liberal, intellectual, Central Park West, Brandeis University, the socialist summer camps, and the father with the Ben Shahn drawings, right..." and then she responds in that sleepy voice, "No, that was wonderful. I love being reduced to a cultural stereotype." (Woody's punchline: "Right, I'm a bigot, I know--but for the left!")

i ended up eating half of the sandwich and moving to a different cafe, where i am now. Housing Works is less crowded; the music is quiet and the lighting is calm. i have a view of big pricey art books, shiny sloping bannisters, and plaster pillars rising up to meet the exposed piping in a network of off-white tubes. i congratulate the designers on making a charitable bookstore/cafe also feel a little French, a little luxurious.

this summer i've been careful to know where i'm going. i look it up if necessary, get down the address, sometimes make lists of stores or cafes i might want to try---then i write it all on a post-it and stick it in my little black book, facing the appropriate map of the neighbourhood. as the summer's gone on, my Not For Tourists guide has become a real scrapbook of my time in New York, crammed with bits of paper with friends' addresses and a recommendation for a good stationary store in Soho. i feel only a small amount of embarrassment about my allegiance to this guide, because, really, this is how i'm learning. so what if i get judged when i consult my guide in the subway? the information has stuck with me, so that now i can turn up somewhere new and just start walking in the right direction. they're small victories, but i am feeling much more comfortable in this city now.

granted, i feel comfortable with a very tiny fraction of this city. last night a friend and i considered going to a party on the Upper East Side. i had to take pause.... i haven't been that far north since i got here. isn't it really far away? i mean, i occasionally work in the Flatiron district; i've had to pass through Grand Central a few times; and once Lisa and i got dragged up to Columbus Circle to see a movie. (that was the only time i've walked through, or been in sight of, the park since i got here.) but the rest of my life seems to take place between Houston and Fulton Streets, with occasional stops in Brooklyn. okay, i'm not a tourist, but nor am i used to the idea of inhabiting the whole of this very large city. it's not a big deal at home to get in the car and drive however long to get someplace; it seems to be a very big deal to traipse up and down this island, especially knowing how far downtown i have to go to get home at night.

about a month ago, i brought my mother to Housing Works (a real gem, introduced to me years ago by an insider ), and we pulled out every single one of our guides--Zagat, Michelin, Eyewitness, and the NFT--to figure out where we were going for dinner that night and brunch the next day. i have to admit it was fun to be so brazen a tourist, if just for a weekend.

the above was written on Saturday; now it's Monday and i'm sick. and like sometimes happens when you've had a rough couple of days and you're sick in a foreign spot---i've decided that i'm done. never mind liking New York, never mind being gutsy and transient, never mind living in five different spots over the course of the last year and being excited about it. the city is hot and glaring, my apartment has cockroaches, and my throat hurts. i want to go home now. not on Saturday, when i'm actually going home, but now. i'd even settle for going back to school; in fact, school sounds wonderful. either one will do, but summer's got to end.

homecoming

2006-07-30T04:07:00.000-04:00

i was back at Amherst for a total of 24 hours. i made a big deal as we drove down Route 9 (under all other circumstances, this stretch of road provokes my rage and disdain) and passed such favorites as Aqua Vitae and Northern Lights. i didn't know quite what to do with myself once i got on campus and the friends i knew i was seeing were away at work, but, sure enough, i managed to bump into enough people to keep me chatting all afternoon as i made my way from Frost to the Campus Center to Campus Police to the Triangle. it was nice, too, to spend the night in Seligman and have multiple warm beverages at Amherst Coffee, to laugh out loud when my counselor friend told me she and the other counselors would be partying in Coolidge basement that night. i was having more of a town weekend, watching tons of people walk by whom i really don't know, and looking forward to life across the street from campus this coming year. i saw the Outreach Office staff and we talked shop. this morning i saw a couple of the best professors and, as if by magic, started to feel ready for this, for the classes and the thesis and the being academic again.

right now it's 4:45am; my roommate and her friends got back from Bed half an hour ago and went out on the terrace. i heard them come home, convinced myself it might be a burglar who sounds like a small girl with a key, and peeked into the other room just to make sure.
i just finished watching the very last episodes of Sex in the City for the first time, and then i had a complete, soaking-my-pillow cry. these were tension tears mostly: it's been a confusing week; plus i lost my phone in upstate New York; and today i had to spend five hours on the Peter Pan bus. (let's face it--that last one is enough to make anyone cry.) they were also wet girly tears that got stirred up by Charlotte and Harry finding a baby and Samantha dealing with the cancer---the kind of tears that are just waiting for some emotionally manipulating story to squeeze them out. it was an i'm-okay cry, too, a cry that goes along with feeling good and strong and full.

i just couldn't sleep, mostly because my only way of dealing with the aforementioned Peter Pan had been to sink myself in a drowsy iPod-immersed daze all afternoon. this is not so bad right now, although i know if i sleep in tomorrow it will ruin my plans for a serious Sunday. not being able to call anyone has put me at more of a loss than usual---when i'm at home, there's family and a house phone; at school, everyone is always right around you; but coming back to an empty apartment in the middle of this big swamping city, i really didn't quite know what to do. still, there are other ways to communicate, and at the moment i am remembering the tactile pleasure i've always had in typing. one forgets these things outside of the paper-writing season.

i'll try sleep again though, before we hit the 5am mark. goodnight.

muggy day

2006-07-10T09:10:00.000-04:00

yesterday i saw a L'Oreal commercial for an anti-frizz serum, with the usual before-and-after images of a girl staring sadly into the mirror until the camera swoops around and her frizz transforms into smooth shiny locks. usually, the "before" picture looks like the girl stuck her finger into an electric socket, but in this commercial? the "before" girl had MY HAIR. totally reasonable, somewhat frizzy, but still cute, hair. MINE. (reference Facebook Group "I Have Big Curly Hair and I'm Not Sorry") i was very offended and am considering writing a letter.

two or three weeks in the city and things are goin' alright, but i suspect that cockroaches are exploring my kitchen in the middle of the night. other than that, the apartment is swank, the weather is insane, and today at The New Press i decided that i really like working there and working in publishing, tout court.
which isn't to say that i hadn't liked it before: it's a nice place, the other interns are fun, and the work has been decent if not exhilarating. but the other day we got to sit in during an editorial board meeting, and today the Publisher gave one of the monthly "intern seminars" (free lunch + staff member talking about what s/he does), and it's these moments of insight into the whole process of making books that have got me kind of excited.
at The New Press there is a middle-aged Eastern European woman who handles all the money stuff and like more than one other middle-aged Eastern European woman i have met, she has a bit of a mother-crush on me. i am not sure why this is a recurring thing, but when she began pinching my cheeks and touching my curls, i did not experience surprise so much as i thought to myself, "ah yes, this sometimes happens." perhaps there's an explanation for this phenomenon somewhere.
here's another question: how has the "Shamu" article stayed at the top of the Most Emailed list for like three weeks? i mean, sure it was mildly interesting, but i compulsively read the "Modern Love" column anyway (BIG guilty pleasure, even better than the Weddings). i impulse-bought the Sunday Times when i was grocery-shopping this weekend, but it takes the whole week to read it! and now i'm distracted by the Village Voice which i think i should read for local color. the latter publication also functioned as an umbrella when i got caught in the rain this afternoon. crazy New York summers.

Project Runway starts tonight and my spirit will be with you. the rest of me will be on my couch with my friend Jessie and a bottle of wine.

hey, does anyone know how to change what location it says under my name, to the right of the page? i've already updated it in my profile but can't figure out how to change it here. very tricky.

anyway, when i'm not at The New Press, i'm working twice a week for a literary agent named Irene. she's full of stories and surprises. for instance, work last friday was remarkable for two reasons:
1) i found Gabriel Garcia Marquez's number on a card in her Rolodex.
2) while demonstrating how to use the postage meter, Irene told me to "flush right, then push the label all the way up. it's just like putting in a diaphragm."

home, briefly. (lots of italics in this one)

2006-06-23T23:01:00.000-04:00

during my last several weeks abroad, home was conceived of in terms of food, and since i've been here, i've done a pretty good job of packing in the quality American-style dining that you just can't get in England. besides the mother's cooking (i really can't begin to explain how good this is), there's been the hefty sandwich from Beli Deli in San Carlos and the gourmet one from Whole Foods, the frosted mocha at Boronne's, delivery pizza (yes from Pizza Hut!), burger, fries, and a proper milkshake at the Peninsula Creamery, and really good Asian food, repeatedly. the only thing left to do before i leave California is In-N-Out, but, i'm rather ashamed to say, i may not have the stomach for it in the next couple days.
jet lag + total lack of schedule has meant i get to watch World Cup, although i'm kind of embarrassed that i didn't do this while in a country that really cared. it's just that the essay-writing in that last week at Oxford kind of screwed up my days; i'm making up for it by cheering for England from here.

i guess the tone of this blog has tended towards the cheerful...i don't want to be a drag, but i had an upsetting, infuriating experience today and i think it's okay to write about it. (spotting this article in the Times made it feel even more pertinent.) it's not that i can't handle being talked to on the street...i've spent enough summers in cities (most notably, DC; i don't expect different from New York) to get used to it. it's annoying and even offensive, but it's also mostly harmless--i can ignore it, i can even find it funny sometimes. but today, walking around San Francisco, i felt really thrown, and humiliated, and furious. i'm apprehensive about writing this here, because it's vulgar and nobody wants to read that, but that's exactly the trap, isn't it? somebody else says something terrible to you, but you end up feeling guilty for it. so i'm going to be explicit. i was walking down Market St. and out of the blue some guy next to me says "you have beautiful nipples." obviously i'm shocked and disgusted; i frown and clutch at my hoodie. if only i could have gotten away then, it just would have been some crazy isolated comment, but it gets worse: he keeps talking to me. "well, don't let them stick out like that if you don't want people to look." my mother and i are looking for a store at this point, peering around the corner, and then continuing down Market, so i can't get away from him. "don't cover them up!" he says. at this point, i am so angry, and the shock has subsided enough that what i really want to do is stop, finally look him in the eye, and say "fuck you." but i'm with my mother, who hasn't heard any of it, who doesn't know anything's going on at all, and i don't want to make a thing, so we finally cross the street and i stride away. shopping, driving home, it's quite the struggle not to cry. i feel better now, the whole thing is less enormous and terrible than it was this afternoon; after all, the only way to win in this situation is to be able to shake it off. it helped that when i got home, i called a friend and had the aforementioned milkshake. somehow i feel like i should apologize for bringing this up, but actually that's exactly what i don't want to do.

and yet the blog has been bitterness-free thus far! oh well, it obviously wouldn't be me without a healthy dose of anger. i know you'll understand.

dangerous side-effect of watching the entire Sex and the City series in the last six months: i'm determined to bring only my most fabulous clothing and shoes to New York on Monday. but really--if i have eight weeks to pretend i'm a grown-up in the city, shouldn't i also get to pretend that i'm a fantastically well-dressed one? yeah, that's what i think. okay, so i don't even know what Manolo Blahniks are except for on Carrie's feet, but i'll be so busy traipsing around in my strappy Nine West sandals i won't even notice the dirty-mouthed assholes on the street.
things get exciting soon: new apartment, new roommate, two new jobs with new offices and bosses and co-workers, plus one entirely new city. downside: there is absolutely no hope for me and the New York subway system. i will get very lost, a lot.

happy

2006-06-10T11:05:00.000-04:00

my hair puffed up the other day. more than usual, i mean; i washed it and went to my Spanish class and all of a sudden it was enormous and everywhere. ACB used to have a theory that the volume of my hair corresponded directly to my emotional state---so that if i was extremely excited or extremely upset (frequent-enough occurences), the curls would amass to wild and usually comic proportions.
but i haven't been particularly excited or upset recently. i've spent the last few weeks in a placid good mood that matches the sleepy, warm weather in Oxford right now. we had a bit of a false summer about a month ago, and the entire town was heavy with blossoms, wisteria sweetening the Worcester air and inky tulips dotting the lawn. then it stormed for a week, and what was left of the flowers outside my dorm was mostly a handful of decapitated stems and purple petals smushed into the creases of the cobblestone.
but now, now it's properly summer. the college spends most of every day reading/sunning on the Nuffield lawn. it would probably be smarter to stay inside in the afternoons, but that seems wrong somehow. and then at night, when you do have to be inside, it's gotten to that point where the heat makes you feel sticky and disgruntled and you can't sleep. this is not fun. so the heat, or rather, the humidity, was responsible for the hair puff-up. i'm going with braids for now.

everyone said that summer term at Oxford would be lovely--the town really did start to glow in the good weather; besides, there are just so many fun things one *has* to do in Trinity. we got up at 5am for May Morning and heard the choir off Magdalen Tower (and then ate a fry-up breakfast). we've drunk Pimms on the lawn, repeatedly. i was in a summer term play (the website is mediocre, but now that i've started linking, i really can't stop). we checked out the big rowing event, Summer Eights. we make nightly visits to the G&D's vermont-style ice cream parlour. yesterday was designated Ben's birthday (he was out of town on the real thing), so we walked the couple of miles to the outskirts of town, through Port Meadow, and had lunch at the Trout; then came home and watched the brilliant Everyone Says I Love You. we saw a friend in a very interesting production of Macbeth staged on the grounds (that is, in front of the mound, around the inner courtyard, and in the actual chapel) of New College. we had the Provost's dinner that i already told you about; today i went to a garden party at the Maison Francaise; tomorrow is the Worcester garden party; Monday is the JYA "strawberries and fizz" for all of our tutors. i'm feeling festive and wearing lots of pretty dresses.
(we might want to take a moment here to just consider Wikipedia...kind of amazing and really very funny, i have to admit.)
most importantly though, we've been punting on the river Isis. that was just plain blissful. i started out pretty shitty at the pole-handling at first, but after a while i settled into a steady and very happy mediocre. when you're not actually doing the work, you're reclining in the boat drinking and feeding apple to the baby ducks, so it's altogether a win-win situation. right now, my priority is booking another punting expedition as soon as possible. first: pictures.

so yes, summer is pretty lovely right now. the only thing is, a major portion of my good mood was due to the fact that i had a little bit more time than usual to work on two very interesting essays and i was leisurely stretching my reading out over several days and thinking that work should always be calm like that. but now, well, they're actually due, one Wednesday, one Friday, and i might have conceived of them on a larger scale than is really reasonable. if i close this entry right now and read a play before bed, that might help.

let's do a bit better...

2006-06-03T17:38:00.000-04:00

okay, maybe there's a reason i don't post drunk, the reason being that i don't do it very well. i'm gonna try and make up for it, although this entry will have to be abbreviated too, which is why i'm going to spice it up with pictures.
first, the Provost's dinner. there was an official, that is, professional, picture taken of us all dressed up beforehand in the main Worcester quad. we'll see how that turns out and whether it's worth the ridiculous price. in the meantime, we have the ones we snapped ourselves.

the dinner was indeed very Oxford, with seating arrangements (the Provost must be surrounded by women; i sat across), and Deans and Tutors as fellow guests, and port to follow dinner (which was guinea fowl). there were so many drinks involved--each one a formality, of course--drinks with Elisabeth before we walked over, some kind of sparkly red thing for mingling in the Provost's drawing room, white wine for the starter, red wine for the main, something else for dessert? i don't even remember, plus the after-dinner drinks---basically we were a bit trashed at the end of it. then i got up at 6am the next day and wrote an essay. good times.

THEN we went to Cambridge, which is an absurdly long and jerky bus ride, considering the actual distance as a bird flies. Cambridge is pretty, huge colleges, greener, more of a small town.
we got back in the earl y evening, had dinner, went to see Amy's play.
i'm tired, and my room is a mess, and it got hot again, just after my visitors left, so i could never convince them that England isn't just rainy and dismal.

see another picture of me below, at the top of the St. Mary's tower overlooking All Souls college and getting teary about this place; i will miss it.

past midnight

2006-06-01T19:21:00.000-04:00

i have written lots of semi-drunken entries, but never actually posted one, so this will be the first. tonight was our leaver's dinner at the Provost's lodgings, with sparkly alcoholic beverages in the sitting room beforehand, followed by a dinner involving guinea fowl, followed by another dessert wine during which our seating arrangement switched. it was lovely and Oxford, and never mind the fact that i have to wake up tomorrow and write an essay from scratch. i think, if i'm not a baby about it, i'll quite enjoy it, actually.
tonight was quite brilliant and hopefully good pictures resulted from it. i just think the past two terms have been an education in being friends with boys, as opposed to gentlemen, and I'm a bit more accustomed to one as opposed to the other.
we took official, 25 quid pictures tonight, so hopefully i will end up with something good. i have 2 and a bit weeks left. we're going to Cambridge tomorrow, for 24 hours. it looks like i'm beginning a habit of very short posts, but i really can't sustain anything more interesting at the moment. i'll try again very soon. love, p.

digression

2006-05-19T09:19:00.000-04:00

quick break from my essay on Katherine Mansfield (due in 45 minutes), just to share this:

"Dear Princess Bibesco,

I am afraid you must stop writing these little love letters to my husband while he and I live together. It is one of the things which is not done in our world.
You are very young. Won't you ask your husband to explain to you the impossibility of such a situation.
Please do not make me have to write to you again. I do not like scolding people and I simply hate having to teach them manners.

Yours sincerely,
Katherine Mansfield"

back to school

2006-04-25T16:41:00.000-04:00

She thought, he will never be so happy again, but stopped herself, remembering how it angered her husband that she should say that. Still, it was true. They were happier now than they would ever be again. ...She heard them stamping and crowing on the floor above her head the moment they woke. They came bustling along the passage. Then the door sprang open and in they came, fresh as roses, staring, wide awake, as if this coming into the dining-room after breakfast, which they did every day of their lives, was a positive event to them, and so on, with one thing after another, all day long, until she went up to say good-night to them, and found them netted in their cots like birds among cherries and raspberries, still making up stories...
-V. Woolf, To the Lighthouse

First week of Trinity Term: the weather's been erratic, shifting aimlessly from short bursts of rain to such promising sun and blue sky that we brought our books and a blanket onto the lawn today, like maybe we were in New England in May. The gnats and the cold drove us indoors pathetically soon.
I'm all about lectures this week (and hopefully for the rest of the term); now that I know where most of the buildings are, it's much much easier to show up for random things. Today I went to the first in a four-lecture series on "Topics in Early Modern History," the first topic being, Women. Next week, Food; then, Poverty; lastly, Childhood. I like this person's abrupt fashion of titling lectures, especially as there are no colons involved.
My first tutorial's on Friday and my room is crowded with Woolf--collected essays, biographies, plus every one of her novels I could find in my house and fit into my suitcase. The problem that I'm facing now is that, unlike the Victorians who make me think, Woolf--and Katherine Mansfield, and sometimes D.H. Lawrence--make me feel. So that I stare stupidly at a passage, saying, 'Oh isn't that lovely!' and brimming up with emotion, and wanting urgently to write, just not the kind of writing my assignments require. I feel a bit paralyzed when it comes to analysis. It's embarrassing, too, to re-read this particular copy of To the Lighthouse and see the intense underlining and margin notes from the last two times I read it: I've written absolutely nothing useful about the text, just exclamations like 'beautiful!' and non-words like 'mmmmmm.'
In other news, Naima and I watched Love & Basketball to soothe our hangovers on Sunday; a couple evenings from now, Elizabeth is taking us out to a French dinner on the JYA fund; and Jenny is visiting Oxford next week. The ducks are spending more time by the lake than they are by my window, but at least they haven't been *culled* for fear of the flu, so I'm thankful. And I've expanded the contents of my refrigerator to include humous.

from 47 irving avenue, atherton, CA

2006-04-12T21:28:00.000-04:00

been home for almost a week now...and have less than a week to go. don't tell that to the stacks of books waiting to be read on my dining table. i'll get to them.
my mother and i went to see Friends with Money, which is just the kind of movie i seem to consistently like....people have dry, bitchy conversation, and not a whole lot happens. plus i love love love Catherine Keener. she's the best. anyway, before the movie started, the 1:10 matinee audience broke into passionate applause over the preview for the Al Gore/Global Warming movie. and i thought to myself, "yup, i'm definitely in the Bay Area now."
i bought a 5-class pack at the new yoga place near my house and intend to use them all up before i go. 2 down, so far, though this evening's class was way out of my league. Pigeon actually gets harder. who knew.

i realize i went a lot of places and saw a lot of people in the last few weeks, without much of an update on them. so, we now have a list.

the highlights of my vacation, in chronological order:
- watching FAME the musical, drunk.
- making breakfast at Worcester, followed by Adventures of the Red Couch (see Facebook for pictures)
- Transamerica. there are no words for this one, except that it's amazing.
- watching Mighty Aphrodite with girls who truly appreciate Woody Allen.
- getting my eyebrows waxed in Edinburgh. honestly, that made me a little too happy.
- small girl-child vomits on my ballet flats (and Frank's flip-flops) in a gelato place in Barcelona.
- playing with the cat at Shakespeare & Company (i am not ashamed to admit that it was even more fun to loiter in this bookstore knowing that Ethan Hawke had been there, filming one of my favorite movies...don't MOCK).
- midnight crepe at Bastille.
- my very first visit to the Emergency Room, abt 36 hours after landing in California.

nothing much exciting has happened since then. i don't seem to have gotten over jet lag---probably because i keep taking naps at 7pm. i'm not going to take a nap now, although it is 7; i'm going to shower, because yoga left me sticky and gross.

Anticipated highlight: my mom and i are going to see Talk of the Nation LIVE at the Exploratorium!!! Neal Conan, i love you.

portobello road

2006-03-17T19:24:00.000-05:00

i shouldn't be writing this. i should be cuddling up in bed with a fat biography and summoning sleep, because i have to get up early and meet a special someone at the airport. but...i'm feeling chatty and impulsive, mostly because i've had a very solitary day, lovely in its own way but a little lacking nonetheless.

i've also been guilty of talking to myself today. at the moment i'm alone in a "studio" (read: gorgeous 3bedroom with hardwood floors) in Notting Hill. it belongs to a family friend, and when i called her, i thought i would just be tucked away somewhere for the couple nights i needed lodging alone in London. when i arrived yesterday evening, however, it turned out that the whole family was off to Milan for baby boy David's christening (his daddy is Italian). so it's just me and one of the nannies in the whole house this weekend. i have puttered around tonight and eaten their humous. there's something about A. being alone and B. being in someone else's house that makes me talk aloud in a scattered, nervous sort of way. "forks...where are the forks?" "did i leave my water bottle upstairs?" "oh, remember to look up directions." i think i'm doing it just in case there is someone here, after all, watching me and wondering why i'm wandering back and forth like a crazy person. there's a dog, a shiny black lab, and he's nice, but a bit subdued, a bit of a loner himself (nothing like Gus).

the first leg of the vacation is over, though it will probably be compulsively extended into April, because i apparently can't get enough. this was my first adult, alone trip to Paris, my first anything trip in four years, and it was wonderful. i didn't even DO anything, besides sleep late in Amelia's apartment and smoke a cigarette in the Jardin de Luxembourg...but still: Paris. actually, there were a few classic Parisian moments, like Dinner with Jim, which deserves a whole post of its own; having a glass of white wine at a grown-up lunch; and being quizzed on literary quotations by a craggy old French man in a bar. i managed to get out of the city on what was possibly the last metro not to be commandeered by the over-excited, hollering students, who were busy taking the greve to the level of May '68. still, i was sad to go (though not to be going via Eurostar, yay). and i am very happy about the last few days, because i spoke lots of French, and the thing is, i still remember it.

sheepishly updating the blog...

2006-03-03T11:06:00.000-05:00

i've just been informed that my last post was over a month ago. this is poor form, i agree. apologies all around.
quite a few times, i'd be walking around town thinking up posts in my head, but i never managed to sit down and type them up. one was about how i got pink eye AGAIN (fifth time in under 3 years?) and therefore had to make an appointment with the doctor---this is quite an undertaking when you're not in the country long enough to be on NHS. i literally wept as i emptied my wallet down to its last brassy tuppence and handed 37.50 gbp to the rapacious receptionist at Dr. Hugo Hammersley's office on Beaumont Street. yeah, don't convert that, it'll make you die a little inside. and then i went to pick up the silly eye drops in a pharmacy that had an in-store radio station sponsored by Durex (which meant i had to listen to british people say "condom" repeatedly---an experience i profoundly dislike).
anyway, i was going to write about the whole getting-sick thing, but it happened weeks ago, so that's clearly out. my eyes are fine now, in case you were wondering.

what else is new...it's been snowing here randomly, in a confused english-snow kind of way. the day will be bright and clear, and, all of a sudden, enormous rubbery flakes will pour down at a slant and cover the grass in the thinnest little carpet of white. this week was the first time i've seen snow actually hit the ground here; usually it just dissolves into a big sloppy mess that makes me miss Christmas-card Amherst (the snow gusting down on the tree-lighting ceremony? classic.). anyway, a bit of real snow got all the JYAs out of their rooms, prancing around the Fishbowl (the dorms where i live) and throwing snowballs into people's windows. it's funny; we all seem to go to school in snowy places, and most of the others live in snowy places too. Amy from Florida is the only exception to this rule. when i mentioned this to my friend Ben, he pointed out that most of the united states is snowy. is that true? i know it's annoyingly Californian of me, but i still think of snow as a bit of a phenomenon. i can't help it, Abby, so stop rolling your eyes.

speaking of California, i get to experience April in Palo Alto! cherry blossoms and light breezes. it will be heavenly. (unless it rains, in which case i'll be pissed off.) Hilary Term is drawing to a close, and my incredibly long vacation begins in just over a week. here are the holiday plans---
March 12-16: Paris with Emily, Rohan, and hopefully Lindy our family friend, if ever i call her
March 16-25: London/Oxford with Abby (and a little Frank?)
March 25-31: London/Edinburgh with Jenny, Morgue, and Racks (!!!)
March 31-?: Barcelona with Frank
April ?-5: something somewhere. possibly Ljubljana, just because Ben's parents live there at the moment (his dad has a Fulbright..? very random), and that would be pretty sweet.
April 5-18: home

oh, i was also planning on writing a post about Edinburgh, but my trip happened a month ago. to sum up: the city smells like dog food (yeast from the beer factories, apparently), and jenny, jillian, and i are awesome at gay clubbing. also, jenny has a kitchen, which is something i greatly treasure these days. we had stir fry and wine, and it was yummy. and jenny and i sat up in her bed watching Kissing Jessica Stein (for maybe the 16th time each?) and talking along to the really good lines. love it.

so yes. it's friday afternoon, i'm going to have dinner at the St. Catz MCR tonight with amherst people, and then there's a charity auction at the college bar, organized by a friend. truly, if i make it past the next seven days, i'll be so grateful. if i make it past the next 3 actually that will be enough. you know the side of me that wants to lie around and watch Scrubs and pretend i don't have any responsibilities or problems or ambitions? well that side of me is in deep conflict with the number of life-things that need to get done (in addition to the school-things) in the next few days. life-things are scary. OH, and i had a stupid email from some dean saying we have to confirm our intent to return to Amherst in the fall, because "we do not assume this." right. it also occurred to me that pre-reg might be coming up? yes? anyone? i'm not sure how i do it from here, but i should probably figure that out before i leave for vacation.

how do you feel about the change in font? i don't like inconsistency, but on the other hand, i didn't want to miss out on the possibility that this might be a better font for me. my real font is actually Garamond, but this blogging thing doesn't offer it. i apologize for being trivial.

i did laundry today.

2006-02-01T14:21:00.000-05:00

all the adults in my life right now (my tutors and Elizabeth) are smart, young, married women, and i just look at them and i can't wait. it feels like what we're doing at this age is totally unreal, insignificant, and that we're just going to look back and think, 'oh, i was only twenty.' these better not be the best years of our lives: i'm looking forward to fantastic stretches in my 30s and 40s. (well, and obviously i'm going to be a brilliant elderly woman, God willing.)
but really, life right now is so confused and floundering, and all the important things are still unknown. i can't wait for that time when you know where you are, who you are, who's with you, and what you're doing. you have your own home, not some strange patchwork of dorm rooms, sublets, and your parents' house, and you have a puppy (chocolate lab or shoodle), and you have a stable group of friends all in the same city (is that ever going to happen?...probably not...). and even if you're not sure where the next ten years are going, you know something, more than you knew at twenty anyway.
and yes, of course, i feel especially confused and floundering these days simply because i'm abroad, but even at amherst, and even at home, i felt the same impatience to get on with life. (i mean, my goodness, having your own place and puppy is, what, like, four steps away from babies? yeah, that's right. abby and jenny, i know you're feeling me on this one.)

but anyway. maybe i'm just talking like a cheap columnist because i've been watching too much 'sex and the city' recently. that show is really a phenomenon, isn't it; and the whole time i'm watching it, i'll be thinking, "oh, well isn't that an interesting attitude about class/gayness/gender relations/fill-in-the-blank-issue"---but how can you not? they're always eating in incredible restaurants and walking in incredible shoes...really the show is all about money, and it's fascinating. and they're always saying really strange things about lesbians. yes, the whole thing is definitely fascinating enough that the cheesy voiceovers can be overlooked or, rather, indulged. and i'm getting beyond my distaste for sarah jessica parker. i borrow the DVDs from this girl Naima, who's very nice, but when we watched a little bit together i got the sense she wouldn't necessarily want to analyze at length with me the curious implications of this or that in each episode. oh well. that's why i'm going to edinburgh this weekend.

i'd really like to get into fatpants right now, write some much-overdue emails, read a little Donne, maybe call Jordan or Lindsay and see if either one is doing something mellow tonight, and then finally get into bed and watch one more episode before falling asleep.
but that's not what i'm going to do at all. i vowed i would go out tonight. and i must. call me later and make sure i'm out. yell at me if you have to. i haven't been to the college bar (or anywhere else, for that matter) in two weeks, and i'm afraid that if i don't go out, i'm never going to meet anyone else or get to know anyone i've already met. but i'm such a homebody! where do i find the other homebodies? they're not out; they're in their rooms, with the doors closed. i'll never find them.
so right, i'm going out. Amy is going to call me and i am going to walk to her staircase armed with two-pound wine cocktail. tonight is "back to school night" in the bar, and everyone dresses in theme. school uniform means slutty, right? i was thinking about wearing grey wool pants and a button-up shirt (buttoned up, mind you). honestly, who brings short skirts to study abroad in the WINTER? yeah not me. maybe i'll put my hair in pigtails as a compromise.
and after all, it's early enough. i can always come home afterwards, and write those emails, and eat a little more dark chocolate.

i miss you all; please write comments. love, the management.

2006-01-28T05:22:00.000-05:00

The other night i went to see Match Point. So ODD that that's Woody Allen. Also, just so odd in general. Oh, you brooding attractive adulterous Brits....go back to Closer.
I did get to see the movie for a pittance (just under 3 pounds), because of this very silly but useful "ORANGE WEDNESDAY" when people with Orange cellphones can *text* Orange a special code *Film 241* and then Orange will *text* THEM a special code, and then they give the special code to the guy selling the tickets at the theatre, and they get 2 tickets for the price of one. Thankfully, i don't have Orange, but i have friends who do, so i can take advantage of this bizarre ritual.
Another bizarre ritual is texting in general. I had never done it before in my life---i had also never received a text before, although i know some of you have sent me some in the past. Yeah those went into the oblivion. Anyway, here i have to text because it's just the cheapest way to go, and of course everybody does it here.
My parents are in oxford this weekend, which is very very nice. We are going to london tonight, but before that we're going to Marks & Spencers (yay!).
The highlight of my week, however, will be Thursday night, when Elizabeth the Goddess/Visiting Students Director is having us over for American sitcom-watching and pizza-eating. For those who haven't heard about Elizabeth, i must just describe her. Young--probably just 30, and small and pretty, with dyed black hair and long fake pearl earrings. When she turned up in London during Awful Butler Orientation to meet us, i almost cried. She's sort of your perfect Oxford person: gentle and sweet and a little bit traditional, but also young and fun and laidback. She's a medieval literature scholar. I mean, come on. She's married to a guy named Alistair who works for a humanitarian organization in London and when there's an earthquake in South America, he flies over for a few weeks to do relief work. And they live in the wall of the college (the tiny alice-in-wonderland house came with the job of taking care of us JYAs; in case one of us has a fit in the night, she has to be close by). Basically, everyone has a crush on her and if you don't have a crush on her, there's something wrong with you. Actually, the party at her house is also very compelling because of the pizza...is it weird that i kind of miss that? I'm not sure why; it's not like I had a ton at home. It's not like they don't HAVE pizza in England, of course they do, it's just that I can't afford to eat out. I am in the process of finding a job though, so hopefully that will resolve itself.
Oh, the other day I went to this lecture with a friend, and it felt so nice and very much like home! It was at Brasenose in a pretty green room and it was on the motif of the Fallen Woman in early 20th century british suffragette plays...it's part of a series of theatre-related lectures. Anyway, it was cosy and fun, and the lecturer was awesome, and the whole thing felt very familiar. It was a moment of feeling at home at a university, you know? Like that's the kind of thing you can just do when you know the school, you can turn up for an awesome lecture and coffee and decadent chocolate cookies (not as good as the Lewis-Sebring ones though). Of course, i would never have gone if my JYA friend who's already been here a term hadn't taken me: navigating these colleges is a little scary sometimes. I turned up at my Linguistics lecture yesterday, and it had been moved to some mysterious other building (like i was just supposed to KNOW that!), and since i didn't know where that was and by the time i found out would have been terribly late, i just went home. Which is sad, because it was a very cool and strange class for me to take.
I will miss it next friday as well, because i'm going to Scotland, for home-cooked meals, reading in coffee shops, and lesbian clubbing.
But first: back to Jane Eyre and the Holy Sonnets.

more on ducks

2006-01-24T10:30:00.000-05:00

for almost three days (comprising the whole weekend), the Worcester internet was down. mind, this is at a university where libraries are closed on sundays (and certainly never open late anyway) and i could not have found free wireless in town to save my life. this caused huge problems for some people, like my friend Ben who had to email a paper to his tutor, or Elizabeth the Goddess/Visiting Students Director, who's an Adult and had Work to do. i was mostly concerned that i couldn't get on facebook. at any rate, i think all the JYAs had very american moments, as we thought to ourselves, "this would have been fixed in twenty minutes at home..."
seriously, it was a very strange weekend; i was ALL out of money on my phone, due to an accidental nine pound phone call to Scotland (by accidental, we mean, priyanka's an idiot who can't calculate 15 x 60 = too much money), and i'd get back to my room at night, look sadly at Sophie (the Dell), lament the lack of television or dvds handy, and realize: i had nothing to do but my work.
of course, i did do my work, unlike now when i am writing this but not, importantly, a paper on courtship novels.

sorry, i don't want to belabour the whole *fowl* theme, but seriously: the ducks! okay, and i am NOT a bird person, as many can attest; usually, i pretty much despise them (dirty, squawking, mean, etc.). but these ducks! there are two families, the white ones and the brown-black ones. the white ones are the best. they are hilarious. i can come home in the foulest of moods, and if see them i just start laughing.
it's not just the Worcester ducks either; this morning i was by the canal, and there were all these cuties lined up on the bank, taking turns diving in and climbing out and purring (in a duck way).
i mean...i do still hate birds though. goddamn pigeon flew past my head this morning. they're the worst.

hm. i feel i have somehow missed the logical and comprehensive update on Life at Oxford. perhaps i should start with the basics.
Bed and Board: i have a quite roomy single in Staircase 19, as it's called, with plentiful shelf space, a sink, and a fridge. i have since acquired (from a discount store and Elizabeth's JYA closet) a toaster, a kettle, and a coffee-maker, though i don't really know how to use the last one.
Academics: i'm taking two tutorials, one on 19th c. novels, the other on John Donne. i also attend a couple lectures, but that's just extra. basically i have all this unscheduled time combined with 20pg reading lists to chip through each week. so i've been going to the English Faculty Library a lot to get books, and the Worcester Lower Library to study (very small, but has the advantage of looking like a French palace). my next move will be the Bodleian Lower Camera Reading Room. after that, Frost will pretty much be hell.
Social: i mostly hang out with select JYAs (old and new) and a sort of random collection of brits who are sometimes nice to us. my next-door neighbor is very sweet, but i think she's too much of a babe to want to be my friend (damn redheads). i have identified a few kindred spirits whom i now intend to cultivate--they are the low-key, liberal arts college-types. i think they like to sit around and talk about books. i tried (i tried!) to do the other thing last week: we had people over, we drank a lot of wine, we went to the college bar and then on to Park End, one of a number of clubs round the corner. and i was drunk enough to be into it for a while...and then i kind of looked around, realized what i was doing, and booked it out of there. it's just, well, clubs are kind of gross, aren't they? yeah. i think i came home that night and started to write a drunken blog post (of the same title), but got interrupted by the phone. sorry; no doubt one of those will turn up sooner or later.

i suppose that pretty much sums it up. meanwhile i haven't written a word of my paper, and instead of doing that, i'll probably go to the library in search of more "books" i "need" to write it.

oh yes, number one best thing about being back in england: gingersnaps.

derbyshire is cold

2006-01-13T14:56:00.000-05:00

especially when you're living in a refurbished old farmhouse in the hills. i thought, mistakenly, that the next several months would be a relief from snowy-ass new england. it is, to the extent that it's different, and there isn't really snow. but oh, it's a DAMP cold here. it gets in your lungs. and at my family stay, it was the kind of thing you imagine Cathy died from on the moors (that, and a goddamn broken heart). i wore two pairs of socks.
so i was at Peep-O-Day Farm (not really a proper farm) in Chinley, Derbyshire, with a family of four plus a dog. it was great fun, actually: warm, comfortable people, lots of wine, and a little friendly sightseeing in and around the area. our first full day there, all the families got together with lots of kids and as many dogs, and we went on a walk through Lyme Park. the weather was awful, but this was amply made up for by the fact that we were walking around PEMBERLEY. yes, from the bbc version. yes, i have pictures.
was there a lake, you ask? there may have been one or two. the dogs got very muddy after the walk, so they had to bathe in the lake pictured here. i will let you imagine, or recall, who else might have gone for a swim in this particular lake.

enough about the family visit. i am, actually, at oxford, and have been for just about 48 hours. it was a gorgeous day when we arrived and there might have been tears in my eyes when i walked through the gates of my college. the next time the sun is out, i will trek around with my camera everyone can get a sense for Worcester. let me just say now that there are two families of ducks, who quack outside my window in the morning and putter around the Pump Quad.

debut

2005-12-31T20:36:00.000-05:00

less than two hours into the new year, and i have successfully grumped at both parents. i leave the house in another twelve hours, and i am sick! sick sick sick....i will be THAT GIRL with the box of kleenex and the bleary, bitter eyes during Orientation. i will also be that honking mess in seat 12A, feared and despised for bringing her germs onto an enclosed, crowded, nine-hour, new-years-day flight.

that said, things are going better than expected. i did about a third of what i needed to this week, but i also got a really snazzy new bag on sale at macy's! and for the first time EVER, i saw some of the money that i made in high school, at that souless banana republic and the even more inexplicable Epinions. (i shouldn't knock it: Epinions landed me with about two dozen really cute little dolls.) i withdrew many many dollars from my previously untouched wells fargo account, and that will turn into many pounds sterling at the airport, and THAT will probably last me about two weeks in my new, expensive home.

the next ten days of my life are a complete mystery to me, so if i'm out of contact for a while, it's probably because "Orientation" turned out to be a romp in Northumberland or a week of hard labor for the already extortionist damned-to-hell Butler University---all without internet access. still, i should emerge on the 11th, ARRIVED AT OXFORD, in a pretty college in a pretty town that presumably has computers and things.

i must sleep soon, since i have to wake early and in terror tomorrow at the packing undone, etc.