no water and no carbs have affected me strangely today. the former self-denying action has no religious significance: i just casually realized that i've thrown back a couple liquids today, but no water. not as such. no. i simply have yet to correct that. perhaps i shouldn't assign too much weight to my theory of chemical connections. perhaps i would be feeling cloudy/rocky/crumbly even if i'd drowned myself in Evian and gnawed through mountains of bagels, biscuits, and bread. perhaps, as i originally speculated, it's just a product of the natural difficulty i have with reentries.

i tend to feel, when i end up in the same place that i began, unsure that what happened in the interim happened in fact. i don't have a nesting doll to prove that i was in russia. anne gave me a hug, krissy a smile, shannon extended an invite to a film. i remain unconvinced. did i mention yesterday how much i dislike april fools day? once i was friends with a diplomat's daughter, aramenta, who lived down the block. in the spirit of fun, she orchestrated an elaborate prank -- it unfolded over the course of a month or more -- that severely/permanently dented my trust in people. i was an impressionable age at the time. also ari fink played a nasty trick on jamie that i've never forgotten. past = cud. i = cow, chewing.

estranged, estranged! suddenly swatties feel very far away. danny rattles off a list of tongues he'd like to acquire. my nodding mechanism comes to a grinding halt at his apology for being eurocentric. more than one sarah mentions saving the world. that mindset doesn't exist here. no one has used the word "paradigm" in my presence, or even seriously talked politics, in ages. it scares me: will i be able to slide back into place at swat? is there still a place for me? has my precious, cultivated guilt and super-consciousness gone? can i regain them?
yet i don't feel entirely communitied and in-thralled here. i'm anxious and antsy, impatient for classes to end but unsure afterwards what to do with myself. i have to check the extreme impulses: making overlapping plans or retiring to the interior of a hill somewhere to sit and shiver and rock.

i ate another indian meal yesterday and read 100 pages of the terrific satanic verses. don't mind me. i'm sure in a couple days the long awaited springtime sun will have soothed me, smoothed me. i'll be back to normal, slide right in, no reentry problems, no sir, none at all.