everybody's talking about the goddamned war. if you're not, well, as my father's friend trotsky once said, "you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." where i am the anger is palpable. -- & speaking of anger, i happened across this mesmerizing list of the 50 worst people of 2002. some of its bombast is funny, some of it just takes your breath away. but some of his points are particularly well-made.

not that i'm the kind of person who'll hate someone else just cause i'm told to. and i won't agree to go to war or stand for peace just cause i'm told to either. unless of course, it's funny, like the tractor standoff:

Watson said he is acting alone. Asked why he decided to protest this week, Watson said: "I just played it by ear. The Lord told me to do it. He said, 'Time is running out, Jack.'"

i mean, i don't want to like this guy. he's a tobacco farmer and clearly a nut-job. but he is against the war and hey, maybe this is the kind of effective political action the peace movement needs.

i'm not sure why the anger hasn't hit me. because i accidentally slept thru cowboy bush' s 13 minute call to action? because i'm too stressed with more immediate personal issues? (ha -- that makes it sound so serious. i don't really have issues. i have perfectly reasonable things to deal with, things i brought on myself.) because i'm suspicious of melodrama? because people are worrying about the future and i think, what's the point? the future hasn't even happened yet!
my bad mood lifted last night thanks to a moonlit rendez-vous with ross in the ampitheater. before that, tho, i was sincerely anxious: if i was breaking down and it was only MONDAY, what kind of quivering pastel mess would i be by friday? thank god i've stepped back from the brink. now perhaps the world will too.

to wit:

I will be a stout
and blissful seventy,
with a stomach like a cushion
for my breasts

sturdy legs to walk me
round and round the zoo,
with one hand on some man
for support

which man, with luck, will
make me laugh across tables
accompany me to cinemas
or mountains

and with me watch retreating snow
reveal mirrors, and birds dislodge
shards of songs
from their throats

maybe, by the time I�m old,
science will have found a way
for women to give birth
to grandkids

so I can have some
They�ll bake cookies to feed me
and frame the poems I
write for them

some of which may be famous
if I am, in certain circles
I�ll remember when people
envied me

told me I changed their conception
of beauty, or slept with me
to spurt urgent, sour words
on my sheets

I�ll tell stories, when I�m 70,
of my affair with the president,
who had me write on him with
fountain pens

and had to explain
to the president of Cameroon
why �fleetingly fascinating�
circled his wrist

and I�ll grow faint and wistful
telling stories: at 70, stories
are what�s left, and more than
half fiction.

stressed and frazzled. which is to say, i'm caught up with everyone else at last. at dawn, ben and i fought over the words to the tiny toons theme song. he finds out about the watson (the fellowship where they pay you to stay out of the u.s. for a full year. they should give w. an honorary one ...). such things are always nerve-wracking. no excuse, however, to get up at dawn.

it's st pat's day. who has time to drink beer and reinforce stereotypes? although the closest i come to irish is present assocations with a couple cute catholics, and past strong attachment to scarlett o'hara. presently i'm listening to billy bragg, worker's playtime. accidental but appropriate.

i'm stressed, so oversensitive. frazzled, so frizzy. i have to write a poem in quatrains. shit. -- er, shamrocks.

sometimes waking up to the internet can be oddly discouraging. it's a representative chunk of the huger, general abyss, and staring into your computer screen makes you realize what a molecule-like part you play.

enough about abysses! it's a beautiful spring morning. at least i think it is. roomie brigid has cracked the window to let the soft blue air float in. i'm back at swarthmore, got back at noon yesterday having being deposited by a loving father on his way to new jersey. we talked iraq nearly the whole time, as we did the night before at the dinner table when we weren't talking about whether or not polanski should be able to return to the u.s. without [fear of] punishment.

his argument: it's been 20 years; he probably was on drugs back then; he's harmless now; what good will it do, either him or society, to lock him up?
mine: [expletive deleted]

no, really, i was much more eloquent. as always i could see where my father was coming from; but come on. our justice system isn't based on principles of "what good will it do?" roman polanski, in case you're too lazy to read gailey's account above, stands accused of posing as a photographer to get access to a 13 year old girl, taking pictures of her with her shirt off, driving her to jack nicholson's house on mulholland drive, giving her drugs and alcohol and then raping her. instead of facing any of these charges, polanski fled to france. that country of truth and virtue refused to extradite him. now he's made a marvelous movie that's up for an academy award. in the plainest of plain cliched english, that doesn't put him above the law. we shouldn't pardon him b/c, unlike millions of other arrested americans, he had the means to flee this country and live happily in the hypocricy of another.

back on campus, i talked less and did more. my stage manager and costume designer have been working since tuesday and they greeted my late entry into the windowless basement room of Getting The Play Ready rather coolly. we open on the 27th: come! i can say that safely since i haven't had to think [panic] about AIH since before break, and i had break to relax and buy soothing things. despite workworkwork yesterday i'm still in soothed mode. it'll be fine! come see the show: it's free!

brigid walks in from taking a shower and says, "my auntie em was married to this guy rick and then they got divorced. she said, 'you know, i thought he was into jazz. but no, he was into cocaine.'" o, the tribulationish future we women face.

ideal day in bethesda, yuppie overeducated capital of the midatlantic:

begin at mustard seed. you remember this 2nd-and paradise from back when it was dinky and window-less, supported by a cult following willing to seek it out in that ugly shopping mall next to Honeybaked Ham and Iran Books. it stands proudly on its own on wisconsin avenue, with mannequins for eyes, now, and it bustles. say hi to the owner, a strange midly-bitter woman who knows you by name and who has made casual reference to a past pockmarked with an eating disorder and a present that features a cat. she once expressed jealousy at your closeness to your friends. they also shop there compulsively.
they're not there today, however. you try things on and decide to take a shiny skirt that could be considered pink and a terrific vintage ketchup-colored dress. at the register, the girl ringing you up grins and hollers to the owner, "see?" turning back to you:

she: [the owner] didn't want to take this. but i think it's great. it's, like, scandinavian.
you: hey, maybe that's why i like it. i thought it looked like a tripped out alice in wonderland.
she: no it doesn't. no. ... it looks scandinavian.

owner smiles thinly at you as you leave, folding up your coat because the sun makes it unneccessary and tucking it in the bag next to the acid alice piece. walk to bethesda row, choke slightly at paying the $9, and buy a ticket for habla con ella. buy a diet coke at the new giant and hide it in your bag before the show starts. mmmm, the show. cry. ignore the old people whispering plot details loudly to each other. feel slightly creeped out by the ending and want to talk about it with someone.

last, hop over to secondstory books and zero immediately in on a vhs copy of wonder boys. pick up a cheap white noise while you're at it, reading the back impatiently, perfunctorily, before walking it to the register. return to the sunlight and stand, head high, waiting for your chariot to appear.

the last few days have been more relaxing than exciting, and then there was my little driving error coming home from visiting my friend nomi in college park. 20 minute trip ballooned, swelled, boiled over, volcanoed into a 2 hour long wheel-gripping rain-and-rush-hour highway navigational excursion involving new carrolton metro station, a gas station swarming with cops, my father, route 50, no cell phone, and one near-death experience that luckily resulted in no injury to the car, myself, or anyone involved outside of my imagination.

in an unrelated but pulse-quickening incident, a spider appeared on my ceiling later that night, after i'd taken out my contacts, so i had to squint to get more than a vague impression of many-legged-brownness scurrying around above me. finally i called lil bro in to kill it. i haven't been keeping track of femme points recently but these two episodes combined must add about +30 to my total.

apart from that, though, it's just been mild weather, lots of work on my grant proposal, crossword puzzles, chatting w/ friends, and several movies, including my lil bro's pirated version of jay and silent bob strike back at last. whatever you can say about j.a.s.b.s.b.* you have to acknowledge it's funny as shit. i watched it by myself and i still laughed. something about mary did not pass that test.

* k. smith should write, not direct. k. smith needs a good editor. the movie itself needed to be shorter by about a quarter. ass jokes are overdone. miramax jokes, however, never lose their flavor.

at dinner tonight, my mother made salmon and i took a piece. and ate it. no forked lightning, no applause, no symphonic sentiment swelling in the background -- phillip glass, i assume, being otherwise engaged. the 9 months since i'd last eaten fish withered to nothing inthegrandschemeofthings. i didn't gag. i'm still a vegetarian, just one who eats fish. or who has recently eaten salmon. which -- and this upset my mother disproportionally -- was a little dry.

serendipity! the book i picked up in northshire, near randomly -- on sale, looked appealing -- deborah eisenberg's short stories so far contains one of my all-time favorite stories that i read once years ago in a class; then lost; then couldn't remember either (a) the name of or (b) the name of its author. "days"! it's thrilling and somehow very satisfying. and, i should note, it is precisely as good as i remembered.

back from the relatively unfrozen north. jonah , who may chronicle the journey on his grandfather's webtv, drove sarah, with whom, before this series of coincidences interlaced our paths, i had never seriously spoken and who, moreover, does not believe in blogs, ben and me up to my grandparents' house in the green mountains. we celebrated skool finally letting out by stopping in nyc for dinner, dessert, and actually-funny improv in chelsea before dropping in on a much startled crowd in ben's dad's house. half the assembly stared at us fuzzily in matching bathrobes, then threw up their hands and let us have our way. marauding college kids, high on adrenaline and comedy! they knew they didn't stand a chance.

we calmed down once we made it to the serenity of manchester, vt. the calm, i think, had a calming effect. we slept and made popcorn, rented 5 movies for $5 and watched three (not bad) (reefer madness -- camp: hilariously unbelievable; sleeper -- funny for fifteen minutes and then same-old woody allen claptrap; and women on the verge of a nervous breakdown, vintage almodovar). we ate a lot of sugar. all day saturday we skiied: in the morning we [read: ben] taught sarah to ski on the bunny slope and then ben and i hit the squares. we're so hardcore. sarah acrued an impressive collection of bruises to go with her knee socks and we totally earned the shitty overpriced hot ski lodge lunch food, not to mention the yummy mexican dinner and ben&jerry's.

sarah distributed fake tattoos that made us all look like we'd been mauled. they pleased us much. eventually, sadly, we had to pack up clean up and go, after a stop at my favorite bookstore in the world. jonah drove us safely back to ny and this morning ben squired me into the city to meet my mother and grandmother for lunch. they'd popped up for a Good Cause Auction and i got to take the train back to dc with them. phew. travelling done, at least for the moment, i'm going to sleep deeply -- when i'm done with this conversation w/ sarah kelly about the INCREDIBLE PARTY WE'RE GOING TO THROW:

WHAT'S YOUR LUV WORTH-STOCK: coming to you this spring!! probably april. a couples only olympics: prove your luv in games like "heart hickey giving" and "co-dependent [aka, 3-legged] racing", the exhibitionism treasure hunt and name that luv-tune! you know you want to, so if you're not in luv, give that good friend a second glace or get going on that elusive crush. more details to follow soon.

periodically yesterday i felt so overcome by exhaustion that i managed to stay awake less by sheer force of will than by punching myself periodically in the kidney.

philly. one date made out of two (i still don't know what happened to the first): dinner with the lovely miz becca, which began with 4 free cookies, hot from the oven, handed to us by a disgruntled employee of a closing store. the best cookies in the city, supposedly, but i think any cookies handed to me under those circumstances would taste like chocolate chip heaven.

today i need to pack and make lists and remember everything. it's relatively beautiful out so i don't know why i'm sad; hopefully it'll go away. meanwhile i found this hilarious:

"This is going to make millions of women very happy," Mr. Detroyer said. "As happy as paper plates may make them, this is going to make them happier."

o postmodernism. the only exposure i had to the sponge until this article was that episode of seinfeld. (also, paper plates?)

happy spring break everyone. or to whomever it applies.

i've been offered an intership at the abrams artists agency in new york this summer. casting! casting! that's what i want to do. well, if writing doesn't pan out, or while i wait for writing to pan out, or you know. !! isn't it exciting? unpaid, of course, and the chances of me meeting anyone important are of course slim. but oh good -- it's something. my first relatively concrete something for the summer.

(i have to get one of the two grants for which i'm applying or the Scholars thing; and/or eliz needs to get the jp money & chase internship for me to live in new york at all. so many elements, it's hard to keep them straight, and in the attempt i'm eating far too much sugar. i need a personal assistant. or an organizational skillz class. or a little robot to follow me everywhere reminding me of due dates and lunch dates and keeping my papers nicely filed in his electronic briefcase, as opposed to just piled precariously on my floor/bed.)

a package arrived from my parents today, containing a whole winter's supply of ski clothes. since we're only expecting to spend a day or two on the slopes, i got that warm "oh, mommy" feeling in my heart. also the key to the house in vermont, a very important article that i WILL not forget. i am very excited. veryveryvery. now that i'm done with my pre-break work, i'm focused on rehearsals, people, and this trip. i am also enamored of the post-its danny got me; i don't know how i ever managed without them.

my brother and his intelligent musings on war:

Bush's efforts to make his rhetoric jive with Reagan's created a continuity in American foreign policy between the Cold War and the post-Cold War that should not exist. The "Evil Empire" and "Axis of Evil" have combined to form the "Revolving Door of Evil," whereby America installs a government and then treats it like a jar of mayonnaise: "Keep contained after opening. Best if deposed in 20 years."

appropriate for a day like today. what strikes me as particularly great about the whole standing for peace thing is that it is:
(a) a swattie response to an international day of activism that is well-reasoned and intellectual and self-satisfied and so, so swattie (other skools organized walkouts, but as one fella in my poetry class revealed to me, we value education too highly)
(b) a swattie response to an international day of activism that is inspired by the pope -- you know, the catholic one? in rome?
(c) a swattie response to an international day of activism that is inspired by the pope in rome and set on today of all days cuz today is Ash Wednesday.
(d) activism that is inherently inactive. but in a good way. i mean, at least they're not blocking traffic (except for that one guy in my poetry class who left early to go into philly for that purpose)

i found the contrast between observant catholics walking around today with ash-crosses on their foreheads and people wearing the Stand for Peace t-shirts really interesting. i didn't notice anyone of color in either category. but as i only had one class today and it was small, i didn't get too much exposure to the range that was out there. in poetry class, the boys wearing the shirts decided that if we all as a class "consensed" that we were against the war and stood together for a minute, they could sit the rest of the time. so we did: stood, then sat again. that was my contribution to this worthy cause.

(note: i do not [entirely] mean to be ironic and caustic. that's almost as bad as being cynical, which is what people used to call me. i swear i'm not. i really am anti-war and pro-people doing whatever they feel they need to or what will make them feel useful/engaged. this is just my natural edge and if it offends you, you should realize i don't mean it and i probably love you and by me, anything you do is right.)

i'm beginning to wonder whether being vegetarian is like havine dated someone for 4 months -- you're getting antsy and you realize you either have to move on to the next stage of committment (i love you / veganism) or break up (bacon).

or maybe being vegetarian is like listening to ani difranco -- something respectable people only do in high skool.

i'm metaphor hungry. i'm also just-plain-noexcuses hungry. (but for what?) i do fine, vegetarian. the only thing i miss, occasionally, is fish, particularly on holidays. that's why fish was the last thing to go. go it did. i don't feel better about myself as a human being. in sushi restaurants in particular, i feel like an idiot. so why not eat fish?

why not eat fish? better with guidelines? it's headache inducing. the admonishments; the alternatives? (mom, don't look).

speaking of mom, i know it would make her happy if i went back to eating fish. there's a reason i can feel unconflicted about.

chocolate + diet coke propelled me through the writing of my seminar paper, but now that i'm done, it's past midnight and no atom of my body has any intention of going to sleep. so i offer this, dave barry's take on LOTR. the funniest i've seen him be in a while.

timmy: golly, problematic man! you look down. what's the matter?
problematic man: well, timmy, i've just gotten back from a Problematic situation.
timmy: really? what happened?
problematic man: cleverly disguised as a swarthmore student, i was reading some lacan in the kohlberg coffee bar when i got a distress call from a nearby classroom. i swooped over to see what was happening. a young well-dressed asian woman with an acoustic guitar had moved to the front to present her comic dialogue, as, over the past couple weeks, so many of her classmates had done. alarm bells rang immediately as she began, "inspired by the Vagina Monologues as performed recently by several very talented actresses, i thought i'd write my own monologue," and then proceeded to play the intro the dave matthew's "crash."
timmy: why didn't you stop her, problematic man?
problematic man: well, as the assignment was to write a comic piece, i thought perhaps the ensuing monologue would be an ironic sendup of the monologues. i let her proceed. she put down her guitar and, in a stereotypical representation of a poor-white southern accent, intoned, "i loves my guitar. my guitar is alls i got going in this world. my mama, she don't like me to play my guitar ..."
timmy: holy classism and more-than-likely racism, problematic man!
pm: precisely, little timmy. but she didn't stop there. she continued to tell the story of how her mama found her one day playing her guitar and threatened her, screaming curses ("you little crackwhore bitch girl") and expletives before wrenching the guitar from her poor daughter's grasp and smashing it against the wall. when her father came home later, she explained, he verbally and sexually abused the girl's mother, and as he had once played in a band that explained the mother's aversion to the daughter's guitar.
t: how did the class react to this cliched, melodramatic, manipulative potboiler?
pm: that's the funny thing, little timmy. people seemed to react as though it was a legitimate piece of drama. when i couldn't stand it anymore, i assumed my typical role of a sensitive swarthmore student and i raised the issue that the dialect made me uncomfortable. but just then, my arch nemesis, dr. ditz, spoke up.
t: not dr. ditz!
pm: i'm afraid so. "but like the dialect made it like so much more interesting," she said, "because like i don't get to hear that kind of talking so often, you know? it's like really exciting, cause it's different." i turned my ExoticizingTheOther laser gun at her but before i could pull the trigger, the professor stepped in and made the point for me.
t: so you didn't exactly save the day, didja, Problematic Man?
pm: no, timmy. i wish Consciousness Raising Girl had been there with me. but i did the best i could.
t: don't worry, Problematic Man. there's still every other class you've ever taken or ever will take here in which a travesty like that could never take place.
pm: you're right, it's true ... all the same, do you think i should destroy the Vagina Monologues before they tempt others to follow this young woman's lead and create other offensive stories that essentialize females-as-victims?
t: gee, you know, i haven't actually seen them so i'm not sure. [turning to the camera] what do you think?

tonight i'm afraid is when my monthly reality check gets delivered. fitting as is first of month. welcome [back], my lovely, to the addictive world of blogging.

a chai in the company of sarah c. and my spirits are back up. i have a kickass [idea for a] first paragraph for my history seminar paper that illustrates the thesis i will present through the example of ariel, the little mermaid; and a kickass title ("intercoarse: changing social and sexual habits in recent americans." harkens back to WISSHH.) in between stretches of dutiful, fruitful labor, we discussed how co|motion has positively influenced our lives, both at this college and in general. it's like a consciousness raising group circa 1972 ("good old 1972 ...")

exhausted. as we went around the table at the dinner comotion meeting tonight, it seemed clear that everyone feels the same way. it's relevant, of course, that it's the last week before break. also that we have too many things we have to do. (swatties.) but without regard for that or other logic, i want to shave my head, take several showers, and sleep for three weeks, possibly not in that order.

screw this weekend (a swattie ritual in which roommates set each other up on blind dates, and each person & their date have to meet through some implausible set of all-in-good-fun publically humiliating events) went fine. ben&i as a couple were screwed to jonah&sarah as a couple, which suited my purposes: we 4 shared an ambivalent attitude toward the dance and forsook it for beer and birthday cake, teenage mutant ninja turtles and simpsons, and pizza. over break, which can't get here fast enough, we're camping out in my grandparents' house in vermont. o that will be wonderful. o undisturbed tv watching, and frolicking, and bliss. o skiing, the only sport i've ever vaguely enjoyed, tho it scared me to go too fast or on the advanced slopes.

there is much to get through before then. i'm steeled for it. good luck with your endeavors and your dramas, your sicknesses and stressors. and happy happy birthday to dearlana, even if it feels less than buoyant now.

between rehashings and fallout from tuesday's seminar drama and other unforeseen events, i didn't get the clean break from discussing judaism/israel that i expected. which is not to say it was all bad. maybe it makes more sense that it lasted a week, that it was a theme for a week even. now it's done.
last night eliz and stef invited a group over (including danny who made post-its appear in fairy godmother style) to their apartment for majority-goyish shabbes. cheerfully adorably domestic, they proferred hummus and drinks ("coke or water?"), let us lounge and watch lock, stock. the only difficult point came at the celebration. expectantly, everyone looked my way. at the end of a different week, blessing unkosher candles might not have made me so uncomfortable: but i couldn't do it. before it could become too awkward, we moved on, one hostess blessing the kosher, lovely challah that the two of them had made by hand. although it was huge, it circled the group again and again until nothing remained.

i could have probably been chiller about the candles thing also if i hadn't grown up taking shabbes seriously. friday nights are a ritual unto themselves in my family. either we join my grandparents at their apartment or they join us. i set everything up in the dining room, leaving the blinds open. hebrew from start to finish, sung, standing. my mother hovers over tarnished candlesticks. someone prays and we drink manischewitz from old silver cups. my grandfather blesses his homemade challah and distributes it. salt, and it's over. one by one we kiss each other, murmuring good shabbes.

it's -- it's, what can i say, tradition. facing squat encased candles from pier one, i had no confidence that i'd remember the words.

on a lighter but also religious note, this is wonderful:

The altered ruling will take effect in the nine western states of the 9th Circuit on March 10 unless opponents win a court order blocking it. It would ban teacher-led recitation of the pledge by 9.6 million schoolchildren in Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

"maybe that's why we're going out. we have 2 things now. we dig respect and -- what was the other thing? the thing we thought of yesterday? dammit. ...
are you making fun of me?"
-- my b. loved

after my two hour power-lunch with a successful screenwriter, i'm uncertain what i can or should do with my life. but i was uncertain before. on one hand, he said, If i can do it you can do it. luck and grit. the ability to sit still. &c. on the other, he said he doesn't understand this business, no one does. he could be out tomorrow (aaron mcgruder said that too. i suppose it's a truism about most kinds of success). we had a pleasant chat; i really enjoyed it. tho he stated and restated his committment to the mainstream, the man's hair, tweed, and glasses all point to intellectual with-a-capital-i. he looks like what he is, the son of an english professor and a librarian and a life-long resident of swarthmore, pennsylvania. he may have eaten lunch with nicole kidman but what shows is he's a writer.

to finish with a flourish, he said, not to rain on your parade or anything --

and this came on top of: nothing new comes out of hollywood; every screenplay is digested by a 12-stomached cow before it makes it to the screen and the vast vast majority succumb to the bile; people like charlie kaufman, todd solondz, david lynch and neil labute (a) are flukes and (b) don't exist

-- but a screenplay on victoria woodhull, the subject of my screenplay qua honors thesis project, is in the works, a pet project of the man who did robocop. the kicker is, his'll undoubtedly be far better than mine.

well thank god that's over with. an intense, relatively emotionally-stressful week, by which of course i mean three days. thursday and friday, being as i have no class, i usually get up late, dawdle, gawk at the internet, and maybe dabble in homework or necessary tasks. unfortunately i actually have to write a seminar paper this week (on social vices -- this could be fun) so after my exciting lunch date on thursday and except for the 2 como info sessions on friday, i'll be reading reading reading. reaDING!

while walking through the increasingly redundant snow this afternoon, which the WA in me wants to cross out fiercely in pen, i sank mentally into the comfortable realization that these are the Best Years of my Life. it's marvelous. i have been happy since graduating high skool. even a little before. i've said this before, i know. it's terrible; this statement is as unnecessary as the weather. it reminds me of when i said iloveyou for the first time cuz i no longer felt like i could notsay it. (to be historically precise, it was "ithink iloveyou" and it was squeezed out of me in no small part because of the inescapable resemblance his gray sweatshirt gave him to the man of my dreams.) (also, i adore parantheses. as long as i'm stating the obvious. and anyone who reads this drivel, especially [penn]becca who is a Girlfriend for the first time in a long time and it seems to be making her happy. or especially if they hug me after, in real life. i appreciate that.)

i need post-its. this shouldn't be so difficult. i feel like everyone in the known universe has post-its except me, and uses them for strategic, appropriate purposes, like sticking them to desktop monitors with helpful reminders about appointments and assignments. i have old fortune cookie fortunes taped to my monitor but it's just not the same: "A cautious person leaves no stones unturned (Lucky Numbers: 3, 12, 15, 17, 35, 37)" is a little vague.

right now i could be working on grant essays, but i had seminar all day today. some people have seminars during the afternoon. this class, the seminar papers don't come in til early morning, so you have to spend the pre-lunch hours going over them. then seminar itself starts at 1:15 and it commonly runs til 5:30. if that's not all day, i don't know what is. we watch the sun set, for god's sake.
this week one of the seminar papers got my blood boiling. i'm trying to be apolitical this semester, i'm trying i'm trying like i tried last semester, i'm trying to be calm, reading with my little pen in hand, and OH MY GOD this guy is making unsubstantiated generalizations about the mainstream jewish community and its intellectual leaders, and christ what is that PARAGRAPH OF ANTI-ZIONISM doing in an american social history paper? i don't read anti-zionism before i've eaten. it's a policy of mine. i also don't take classes in which i have to argue it with people; that's another policy. it's a sensitive, complicated, personal issue to a lot of people and a 5 minute discussion inevitably won't do it justice. i thought a class like this would be safe. i draw hammers in the margin and write SOAPBOX in big red letters, which helps me blow off a little steam, but i still tremble a little when the prof says we're going to start going over his paper.

the social is political is personal, it turns out. as we start, i preface, "i was personally upset and offended by your paper," which might even be under-playing it, but he snaps to attention and nods soberly. i restrain myself to pointing out logical inconsistencies and historical inaccuracies in what i hope is a logical, rational matter (please don't write me off as an emotional woman). other folks join the fray -- the ones who are arguing with me, i notice, are two of the other three jews in the class. the prof has the last word and it's one i agree with. whee!
everyone likes my colorful, junk-food seminar break. i relax. after class, the prof tells me she thinks i handled it well. i shake hands with the paper's author who smiles and says, We should talk sometime.

i am not a rightist. just because i will defend to the death israel's right to exist does not mean that i don't think its current government cannot or should not be criticized, like tikkun. i believe in a two-state solution. i believe in affirmative action and the necessity of white guilt. (i don't believe in Beatles.) drop bush not bombs. equal access to marriage for any committed couple, if they desire it. (the dream is over.) (valentines day is over.) there should be more space on campus for people to articulate opinions that are left of center but right of the barn. be polyamorous if you want but protect yourself and be honest about it. against abortions? don't have one. (he was the walrus. i could be the walrus, i'd still have to bum rides off of people.)

i think what it amounts to is i have too many men in my life. not possible, you say? well. clearly you didn't have a chance to listen, starry-eyed, to aaron-fucking-mcgruder saturday night: unwilling prophet and [emphatically not a] social leader of my generation, graduate of umd (just like frank cho! man, they really churn them out over there), compelling, acidic speaker, and all-around articulate, bitter, talented, funny guy.

clearly the screenwriter responsible for steven spielberg's last summer blockbuster didn't just write you back, setting up a lunch date for this thursday.

clearly you don't have a terrific boyfriend who continues to make you girlishly giddy, long after your relationship is due to have become blase.

i could keep listing, i guess -- my father, my grandfather, my brothers, my various muses and friends, shakespeare, vonnegut, tom robbins, douglas adams, j. franzen, m. chabon, b. dylan, p.t. anderson, j. carrey, w. goldman, b. bragg, b. & sebastian, m. python, t. tykwer, m. brothers, m. miller (science/religion teacher from high skool. you don't know him), e.e. cummings ... o, and chaucer. this is no particular order. have i forgotten someone?

i could not be happier. i'm halfway through a bear-cookie valentine that i bought at target because it looked lonely and frightening and also pink, and was very drastically on sale, along with everything else there (i got a kickass seminar break for $15). jonah&sarah, one of the hotttest couples of campus, invited ben and me to spur-of-the-moment ethiopean food on the phringes of philly. all 4 of our orders appeared on one huge tray, prompting the question of how many people need to order before they receive more than one tray. it hardly matters, good ethiopean food is always so good, and so filling. mmmmm.

that, and the target run (we spent an hour there -- how?) came at the end of a terrific day, in which i got the final OKAY on my screenplay idea. OKAY, i can finally 100% throw myself into doing it, as long as i get the grant. elizabeth, who i may live with in nyc this summer, said that not only could her dad, who rents apts, possibly let us have one, but we might be able to have HIS. a summer in new york with cable tv and space to twirl in? could that be more perfect?
then i went to break up with my advisor, who can't be my advisor anymore. but i asked if he'd remain my father figure on campus, and he said of course. heart heart.
then i wrote a poem, and i like it a lot, but it's long. i don't know if i should post it here or not.
i'm almost done with the bear. the icing's so hard it's kind of made me nauseous. within 3 hours of feasting, one should never attempt to eat other food. oh well. i haven't mentioned yet but aaron mcgruder is coming to campus tomorrow -- hands down the coolest speaker i'll have ever seen.

oh dude! we were just talking about absinthe.
and we're always talking about the axis of evil.

oh my god, how did i miss reading television without pity joevan recaps while the show was going on? they are hilarious. hi-lar-i-ous. admit it, you and 40 million other red-blooded americans, loved that show. loved it! you watched BOTH HOURS of the finale on monday. you would follow joevan into battle. you would nominate zora for president, or at least psychic priestess of america (didn't miss cleo leave that post vacant?) you cheered, maybe you even almost cried, during that last 'waltz' around the ballroom, and when zora asked if she could kiss him. it actually looked genuine!(ish) -- genuine enough.

go read the snark. it's virtually as much fun as repeating the entire gleefully-prefeminist experience from episode I. (my campus paper published an article from some idiot in connecticut trying to make an anti-joe millionaire argument. go back to russia, okay? maybe on the boat you'll find your long-lost sense of humor.)

after history seminar yesterday an intense powwow with my teacher-mentor. when i'm done with this class i'll have taken 4 credits with her -- that's virtually a minor. you have to have fire in your belly, she says. you get too distracted. (starved for declarations. tell me more.) want this more than anything, she said, or it won't happen, and you'll just be another one of those people that Wants a lot but doesn't get anywhere. make this the first step. after all, why NOT you? (okay but.) (i'm short?) you're short? since when? i blinked at her again. she told me stories of her old best friend from college. who's your best friend?, she asked me. (i haven't considered that question since israel, right after highskool ...) you have lots of good friends, don't you? matt rubin brought you diet coke in class. her best friend was tall. i could call her up right now, she says. (will she, once i leave her office?) instead, she turns to the computer, impatient with me or just eager to get on with the rest of her evening. i'm tired, she says. as i walk out, i answer, Go to sleep.

it's inspiring to have people tell you things about you. or have you not noticed? a woman i'd only worked for for a few days last summer told me i had bad depth perception. transfixing! how did she know? indeed she was right -- or, i'd never thought about it, but why not? parking was always tricky, and abstract math. tempting to get a psychiatrist just so she can tell me things about me. i'd rather divide people into categories than join the fray. if i'm not the resident expert i don't want to address an issue. i think, I don't belong here, when what i mean is, I wish i'd done this reading. it's more fun when it happens spontaneously, when you don't have to pay for it.
anyway, i'm so inspired i come home and entirely redo my resume, basing it nearly word-for-word on my brother's, which he spent ages on over winter break. that's what brothers are for.

terrible twos

for you, I will drink my ginger ale quietly
and eat my 19s with my fingers

instead of throwing them at other kids, even though
targets abound, and so tempting, oblivious

and chewing, with TV eyes. I like making them cry
and trying to describe it: their faces expand

and turn the color of juice while juice
drips from their eyes.

for me, you will stop staring at the wall,
your frown of intense concentration (you

have the most dramatic eyebrows ever seen
on a toddler) will scamper off, leaving you

surprised and forced to find a new expression. you will cope
by sucking my thumb & we will stare

as deep as 2 year olds can get into each others�
sticky happy faces, immortally softandround with youth

while around us children break things. we are serious
and calm: we read already: our palms tell our stories

in Mr Sketch. I reach up and smooth your hair: your curls
are burnt-toast, mine are maple-syrup. we�re suited

to each other, all the adults say so:
I�ve never seen 2 year olds so sweet

on each other! & we smile, our hands hidden
and working under my blue duck dress,

beneath your Osh Kosh. soon, we�ll sneak to the kitchen
steal cookies and watch Pulp Fiction

but for now we�re content in the playroom, playing, dodging
other kids� cereal, celebrating being 2 years old, and coming.

ester&ben = 2 years old today. this is the happiest 2 year old i've ever been. let's hear it for love -- and clocks.

there's no reason to be up on a sunday morning before the dining hall opens for brunch except to look out the window and think "snow! we don't need more of that!" and find funny things to read on the internet. so here's one from the onion, in case you missed it; and another from rabi's lj: cooking with monkey. try the brie and baguette one.

people are sick everywhere. walking around the library with your eyes closed, you'd think you were in a hospital of some beleagured war-torn south american nation, where hoarse delirious voices call out for water and legs have to be amputated and there is no morphine. actually, with very little connection to my metaphor, i'm picturing the atlanta scene in Gone With the Wind where scarlet gets more and more grossed out by having to play a nurse. but who wouldn't?

that's enough of that. i missed the protest but i hear it went well. i missed everything last week, in fact. but i'm beginning to get my energy back and that's exciting.

um, interesting (and you have to admire a clever title). two people got married last year in maryland. this year, as it turned out that one of the individuals involved is a woman -- or rather, that both individuals are women, but especially the one that was taken for a man -- the state has revoked their license. who knew the state could do that? and why don't they do it more often?
the twist is that the individual taken for a man actually was a man once before she transitioned.
it's certainly one of the most trans-positive articles i've read. it refers to georgie with female pronouns throughout, though possibly just because she's had a surgicial operation which makes her new gender "legitimate." still, it's respectful, and it seems to take the side of the couple.

i just got back from worth, the health center, where i spent 27 in one room. yesterday my fever hit a high of 103.6 and my lovely friend felicia got me over there. first time i'd ever spent time in anything like a hospital, but it wasn't bad at all. people visited nearly constantly; when i was alone, i slept, ate, or read. thousands of doses of nyQuil and voila: temperature back to normal. ester can go back home where she belongs.
this morning ben and i exchanged our non-chocolate v-day presents, marking my 1st romantic recognition of this hallmark holiday (last year i cried in a bar in western denmark. love, yes; romance, not so much). so happy v-day to everyone -- hope it's sweet.

fever's down for the first time since i had to come home, midday yesterday, and collapse into bed. various friends fussed over me the way friends should when you can barely move, and for ten hours i could barely move. ben convinced me in the evening to take my temperature ("i don't need to, i don't think i have a -- oh.") and it 100.8. i can't remember the last time i had a fever. today tho i felt better -- i can move around, and eat, and withstand light -- my temperature reached 101.9. that's a fucking radio station, man, not a body temperature. maybe it's just down now cuz i took a shower but i do feel more energized.

so much nyquil. so many vitamin c drops. so much negotiating and renegotiating plans with teachers, doctors, mother, friends, love. if i feel horrific tomorrow at noon my wonderful mother may whisk up to fetch me home to recoop there; if i'm better i'll wait it out here. everything as it comes.

awesome. no Adaptation for best picture but no About Schmidt either. and check out the original screenplay nods (yes, i know you have to scroll down the page. writers don't get any respect.)

i seem to be sick now in several new and different ways, which at least is a nice change. stupid winter.

slowly, i think, Why am i thinking slowly? then i remember, i'm taking sedatives.

here's my stab at a love poem for this week's session:

go marching two by two, hurrah

in tenth grade I marched, manacled
in construction paper, to the Chinese embassy,
stood in the swelling snow and shouted Free Tibet!
until my feet turned numb because I liked a boy
and that was his Cause. we played witchcraft
together & for his birthday, I bought him handcuffs
tied in purple ribbon. he never caught on.

this saturday I�ll go marching, manacled
in pessimism, to the United Nations,
stand whether in swelling snow or simply
as part of the amoebic Left & shout
Leave Iraq Alone! because our cowboy president
is pied pipering our boys in blue to slaughter, but
principally because the boy I love has asked me to.

Evil keeps a running tally, continues to present
unique spins on itself � equally inexhaustible,
if not as creative, the Left continues to fight.
poor redundant love will keep us marching
despite our despair. while Evil produces subjects
and the Left counters with rhyme, love
will give us reason to chant. who cares if feet freeze,
if the Chinese embassy stares blankly back,
if the UN is UN-helpful -- TV has tutored me
to expect as much. you continue to delight me.
for the sake of this falling, I will march, I will scream
Make Love Not War! & mean it.

i've been subsisting on bread and soup, supplemented by crackers and liberal doses of promethazine. why am i still ill? i thought this damn thing was supposed to clear up over the summer. oh well. excitingly, the oscar nominations come out tomorrow. so far this february hasn't been bad at all.

sick (again! what is this?) illness unfortunately hit last night in the city at the hotel where elizandstef and benandi had gone to celebrate our various anniversaries. we managed to get in a good solid meal at a mediterranean restaurant and a few hours of cable tv watching/bashing beforehand. still, i don't understand this flashback to the summer and i wish most seriously it would stop.

speaking of seriously, ben and i had an intense conversation over dinner about whether or not to attend the peace march in new york this saturday. it doesn't jive with this year's devout apoliticism; it gets in the way of my timely completion of my very first seminar paper; it has the potential to be disorganized, alienating, or just plain cold. alternatively it could be uplifting, important, or memorable. frankly i don't know if i have the optomism for mass marches, but if worse comes to worse i can observe.

in less than 24 hrs i need to have written a love poem. [good] love poems are very hard to write.

how strange everything has turned out today. i have all the time and energy i need to recooperate, only no recooperation seems to be necessary. ben asks me where i see myself in five years and i'm knocked so off-balance i can only answer, "angry. in LA." a moment of clairvoyance or just wishful thinking? brig, when i relate this story, adds, "you'll be 25." i hadn't even considered that element.

i look over my screenplay and am so dismayed at how much revision is required that i immediately close the window and play 10 games of freecell of which i lose several. brig reminds me, it's freecell, ester -- not life. i've always had problems keeping the two straight.

i try calling my mother every half hour but her government agency only registers a busy signal. i stare at the phone, perplexed. how can the government not have call waiting?

i walk into the bathroom and wash my hands. when i look over to my towel hook, i notice that the dishrag that i stole from parrish hall and have never washed -- and have been using as a towel -- has fallen to the tile. i start laughing and find it difficult to stop. i reach down, pick it up, gently replace it on its hook, and return to my room.

sick. slept most of the day, skipped (well, called off) rehearsal, even left my poetry class early. a couple enthusiastic responses to my love song (see below) coupled with a remark that it was "eliot-like" and "eliot-esque" and a complaint that there wasn't enough rhyme. some members of the class had no idea that eliot was in any way connected to Cats -- they looked appropriately chagrined.

tomorrow is for recooperating. until evening, i have nothing else to do. i'm trying to figure out whether it's worth it to go to the anti-war protest on the 15th in ny. pointless jumping-up-and-down and arm-waving, or a part of an escalating international response which is sure to catch the government's attention at some point? war feels inevitable, as does the suspicion that we will all look back on this as a crucial turning point -- the u.s. giving up their moral authority, the rest of the world losing patience, the threat (potentiality?) of terrorism against the u.s. focusing and solidifying in retaliation. but that doesn't mean that even if all of us go and scream at the top of our voices, it will stop anything.

too bleak a note to end on. it's february! a year ago i was despondent in denmark, although that would change; now i'm happy here. stef'n'eliz and ben'n'i have booked one night's retreat in celebration of anniversaries: their 1 yr last week, mine and ben's 2 year on the 17th. a pool, a hottub, cable, a door that locks, time uninterrupted by responsibilities -- what more could you ask for, really?

scary scary seminar soon. over breakfast this morning ben sat in my chair and calmed me down, walking me through what ifs (if i'm not a _____, what am i? if i could do _____ all again, would i make the same choices?) just say one thing [at seminar -- last week my tally was 0 comments after 3 hours.] actually, he amended, say 4 things. 4 is a lot more than 0, i said. but he insisted. 4. i can count that high.

aside from today's mid-morning crisis, i've been feeling unusually mature and responsible. with my week sectioned for me -- half for AIH, half for seminar -- i get to organize my time into efficient blocks. i've been getting things done. that wouldn't be quite worth turning cartwheels, this being only the third week of the semester, except for me, it's significant. the addition to my arm helps, tho it's turning fuzzy around the edges as its adhesiveness retains remnants of whatever i wear or sleep on. so far i'm accomplishing things, and managing without too much drama.
speaking of which, altho i didn't think i could i ended up able to watch 3/4 of joe millionaire last night even -- and he tossed melissa m.! REJOICE. now it's down to zora v. sarah, tall slender lovely brunette zora v. tall slender lovely blonde (evil) sarah. cinderella v. the step-sister. virtue v. vice. body image problems v. willing to be felt up on national tv. joe, i don't know about you, but i know which one my money's on.

because i'm excited about it, and while wonderful godlike danny helps fix my page, here's the poem i wrote for poetry this week:

t.s. eliot: a love song

T.S. Eliot (what did his friends call him?)
wrote his wryest, chiseled his most compelling
character, span best, scanned best, while at Harvard,
age 19. (I was 19 recently enough to remember:
it�s a self-serious age.) Without tax forms to file
or a wife to commit [to], under the umbrella
of intellectualism, happily schismed from the more
complex racial and cultural prisms that make up life beyond
that gilded cage, T.S. Eliot (how did his fellow snobs know him?)
penned Prufrock, a love song, and
my favorite poem.

what was he like, aged 19? had he yet embraced
the Catholic faith to such a frowny-faced degree
that he�d chase his chaste and pious wife out of the country,
across the sea, to an asylum (she�d decay in pine for him, in
the coffin set cruelly above the ground) �
and seek comfort in the arms of Ezra Pound?
T.S. Eliot (what did the other anti-semites call him?)
glares up at me, Elizabethan, unamused,
from the Norton book whose pages, much perused,
offer up the sage and solemn Prufrock
I can�t resist:
like a patient etherized upon a table, I am kissed
by a doctor whose other ministrations I abhor. sometimes, T.S. Eliot,
(what were you called by the other lonely,
crazy rich?) I want more (and I don�t know which
is worse: seeming to endorse you by confessing I adore
some of your adolescent brilliance � or,
leaving all the fanfare and the accolades for critics who,
like mermaids, sing them, each to each, relishing
the high notes I can�t reach) I wonder
if you�d like me either. most likely not.
(I�m the age you were, but far less surly;
I giggle more, I�m vaguely girly;
and though I�ll admit that you were wiser,
I�m not a Nazi sympathizer.)
still, I�m sure we could agree
we�ve hit the nadir with Fox TV;
indeed, we could sneer at this whole ersatz culture
in a succession of tea-timed chats; and if we felt hot,
we could venture out � me in sunglasses, you in spats �
buy ourselves tickets and laugh through Cats.

well clearly all of a sudden this site has fucked itself up. any clue as to why? anyone? i didn't change the code ... double bonus points for an answer. it doesn't necessarily even have to be a good one. you may have to email it to me at ESTER [at] SCCS [dot] SWARTHMORE [dot] EDU cuz [sigh] comments seem to be among the things affected by this fuck up. [sigh.]

liz has started to put her sheep comix up on a page.

i'm near giddy, having successfully steered my First principals only Rehearsal. lovingly brigid brought me diet coke and lovingly i'm drinking it, listening to billy bragg. in a bit i'm going to dinner w/ her parents, and then we're all going to see About a Boy on campus. nice, low-key things that will hopefully prevent me from emotional roller coasting down into low. another rehearsal tomorrow, then big como gathering sunday -- my god, i have to figure out WHEN during the week i will do WORK.

damn and drat it. i woke up early to go meet a fella from my poetry class with whom i share a goal: to write a screenplay as an honors thesis project. this goal has been approved by everyone to whom i sold it except, most recently, the head of the film department who has returned from time off looking fresh and slim and young -- which is to say, she bears no signs of having either (a) just had a baby [which she did] or (b) to care for said infant. rumors abound that the infant's father is none other than the lauded director/screenwriter todd "far from a safe velvet heaven" haynes, with whom she is friends, but that's neither here nor there.
here nor there: as she doesn't know me and has never seen my work, she's doubtful that i can produce a screenplay that's honors worthy. she's worried that there's no one on campus qualified to judge or advise. &c. it is up to me to convince her. this, my friends, is a frightening prospect. on the other hand i don't have to face it alone. this fella emailed me -- he has a similar idea, he met with similar skepticism and wariness on the professor's part. so we met this morning to hash out a plan of action. mostly instead we talked about movies (magical realism!; two towers eh; he also considers adaptation the best film of the year and brilliant beyond that) but it still felt good, like we were creating a united front. always helps to have a compatriot.
-- oh but the bad part: i had to leave the conversation unfinished b/c i had an appointment. except it turned out there'd been a miscommunication (grr). instead i am rescheduled for 9:30 in the (damn and drat it) morning. at least i got up early, tho i am now swiftly happily squandering the day ...

yesterday evening my entire cast assembled for the very first +2 hrs read through. i nearly started hyperventilating. my cast is so cool. SO COOL. i don't just think that cuz i chose them. they're witty and relaxed, they seem to have good chemistry ALREADY, even the freshfolks. they laughed at my jokes, not to mention at the play (if they hadn't i would have called it off right then. what's the point of working w/ actors on a farce if they don't get the humor? but they do, they do, the little darlings). i think i managed to keep a strong, consistent Director thing going too. wouldn't it be awesome if they liked and respected me, and i liked and respected them, and the play ended up being entertaining? i mean ... *dreamy sigh* wow.

coming home post- the meeting of my very first seminar, during which my best actively listening facial muscles -- since i sure as hell wasn't about to open my mouth -- (what could i contribute to a theoryhead conversation, even one about reading i did? the seven other people around that table, mostly senior history honors majors, *knew* the difference between post-modernism and positivism and can intelligently argue about the merits of both. i miss the days of "vocab boxes" in the bottom corners of worksheets. in hebrew classes it was even better: the term was "otzar milim", lit., the treasure of words. who could call structuralism a treasure and keep a straight face?) -- i tried not to become too depressed at the prospect of spending a semester in this fashion and i blasted indigo girls. there simply was not an alternative.

but this evening, after conversations w/ two out-of-swat friends cheered me and i did some laundry and sundry, the only appropriate music to blast was tori amos. don't you love that song about wanting to kill the waitress? i think it's classic. as i'm unfortunate enough to be a junior residing on a hall teeming with freshmen, i feel that rendering services such as these impromptu lessons in musical apprecation are the best i can do. and sundry. i love that as an end to sentences.

so, after 10 hours of auditions split over 2 days, during which time i tried to project Competent but Upbeat, Authoritative but not Dictatorial (rebecca summarized this behavior as "punchy"), and sarah my helpmeet ran back and forth from room to phone and led vocal exercises and deliberated with me, we have a Cast. 12 actors. 6 m/ 6 f. a helluva lot of freshfolk, which is fun if you think about it. these are the people who will be steering the theater department in several years, someday possibly the world; i get them Now.

the experience took its toll. as much as i love auditioning, deciding between two people (or 5) who in their own ways could be excellent as a part is exhausting. every possible visible element came into play ultimately: actions during the opening exercises, attitude, time committments, friendliness, a look, a vibe. i want to hug several folks who didn't make it and explain to them how good they are and how hard the choosing can be. but no matter how sincerely that's meant, it can feel condescending and hard to believe. i figger i'll just stay back and talk to people if they approach me.
scripts arrived today! read-through #1 tomorrow! oh it's all so exciting. i'm even managing to get work done despite/around this craziness. well, a little.

i. have been published. in the washington post. this goes a long way towards redeeming the paper. or maybe it doesn't, but for good or for evil i will be more fond of it now.

my little brother has never, to my knowledge, called anything racist. when he switched last year to a dc public skool, most of my family braced to see how he'd manage: surely the transition from a jewish skool -- even accounting for a stopover in a only-mostly-white private skool -- would be tough. but he adapted immediately. wilson suits him far better than either of the other two. he's got a group of friends so diverse my most pc friends would envy him, and effortlessly, because as far as i know, he doesn't think about race. without disregarding differences, he seems to render them unimportant. as ideally they would be across a chess board, or while watching anime.

that's why when he IMed me this evening and referred to a post columnist as a "racist bastard" he knocked me off-balance. but he certainly wasn't overstating. even (especially?) for a mainstream publication, this is egregious. how could they publish an opinion piece, "They Should Behave Better" this rambling, racist, and badly thought out?

first paragraph: Sometimes, watching students coming and going from Coolidge High School, I wonder if Americans would have supported the goals of the civil rights movement if they'd known these children would be among its inheritors.
last paragraph: I can think of no more compelling reason to insist that the kids from Coolidge -- and black kids everywhere -- adhere to certain standards of behavior.

in between: myriad reasons this author should be thrown through a plate glass window. and further evidence that my family knows better than the media.

everything i'm not. although this almost puts it in perspective. switch back and forth fast between the two pictures for best comic effect.

20 people have signed up now. quite exciting. even more so perhaps i went to my first definite class of the week: my poetry workshop. better than i expected. that is, of course, the unremitting joy of being a fatalist: your experiences, even if they are only mixed, can't fail to please you.

poor ben meanwhile is down for the count. his website, boldrobot, has mysteriously fallen ill in that way of mysterious internet things. hopefully in the next couple of weeks the fellow in charge will return from france and restore to ben his compiled two-years worth of memories. in the meantime those of you desperate for a benfix can visit his lj.

to distract him and you, i profer fame tracker, a brilliant site mentioned in this latest installment of Bitch. my favorite section so far is the galaxies of fame. read the golden globe one -- the bit about lara flynn boyle brought tears to my eyes. in the best possible way.

not to be a rabble rouser, but i just came across this article from academia.org and thought it was hilarious. this ufo sighting may or may not be funnier, especially when you take into account that a "bra fence" exists at all {via malpractice}

this has been the strangest week. one class i may not be able to get into but i'm hoping; one class too full i bowed out of; one class canceled. that leaves me sitting on my hands at 2 in the afternoon. not entirely of course. with a play in the works, there's always something to do. 6 people have already signed up to audition (this weekend, the 25th and 26th, 1 - 4 in kohlberg 116) and we haven't even put up posters! actually i should probably go do that. or -- does anyone want to watch a movie?
no, shit, i know what i have to do. i have to pick an introductory poem to bring to my workshop to read out loud tomorrow. that's a real challenge.

goals as a general rule don't work for me. you don't want to set them cuz if you don't meet them, well, what then? but as long as i'm playing at being organized and managerial this semester, i may as well try a couple small goals. just to see what happens. my fairy godmothers dropped off a cup of my favorite cereal on my desk this morning; the world feels full of possibility.

so: goals:
-- when i am alone in my room, i will not play ten successive games of freecell. rather i will at least strongly consider visiting others.
-- i will not panic about my seminar. i came to college to take seminars. remember: if i didn't like american social history i wouldn't be majoring in it.
-- if infuriated by newspaper piece, i will write a Letter to the Editor, because writing (and sending!) one to the washington post yesterday made me feel quite good.
-- i will try not to be cowed by new people or large groups of people or people who are thinner/prettier/smarter/more talented/cooler than i am, because there's no money in it. besides, *i* have a weblog.
-- i will eat less sugar.
-- as i declared at the comotion meeting last nite, swigging from the cheap bottle of french wine and crunching harry and david's caramel-chocolate popcorn, there're lots of reasons why this semester could be hard or upsetting but fuck it; i intend to have a good time regardless.

back. drinking the diet coke and eating the kugel my mother provided for me, wisely since the meal plan doesn't kick in til this evening. yesterday ben ross and i managed with the dinner party o' soup and bread taking place at a nearby offcampus house. there we met up with many people i don't know and several i like quite well indeed, including ms("i'm going to be apolitical this semester" "really? oh wait, you're making fun of me")kelly and the-recently-sri-becca. ben and i had the distinction of leaving a couple hours later because ben admitted he "had to work." the words landed among these still vacationing folk like a large dead fish. in bewilderment, people stared, and ben and i shuffled out.

true enough, ben may be the only person in a 4 mile radius to whom those dreaded words apply. the rest of us have a day or two of denial left. but even without Work to do per se, i have enough Stuff to keep me busy. auditions for An Ideal Husband will begin saturday. i needs must create signup sheets and posters (go wilde!!). luckily sarah rose is around to keep me sane. oh but it's strange: an unfamiliar soul is lodged in sorelle's old room. stef and eliz are nowhere to be found, tho they left cheerful piles and an ancient typewriter on brig's-and-my floor as remembrances.
and i'm still chewing the cud of my outrage at this style section article. in short it laments the "hook up culture" of contemporary young women. it outlines the problems as follows:
1) girls hook-up increasingly in high skool and college rather than dating or getting in formal relationships. hook-ups are characterized by sexual activity that ranges from kissing to oral sex, tho they usually stop there. rates of intercourse among high skoolers have actually decreased since this phenomenon, which occurs between mutually interested acquaintances, friends, or ex-lovers, began.
2) this means girls are more assertive, depend less on guys, have more interaction with guys, date less and thus aren't prepared for marriage.
3) however girls who seem to desire this are just fronting, abetted by the dangerous combo of IM and emancipation:

... even as they seek the same sexual rush that guys historically have enjoyed, young women confess to dreaming about the romance of the old-fashioned pursuit: being wooed by leisurely strolls, candlelight dinners, small gifts and other gestures of courtship that were more common when their mothers were their age.
Could this explain the large amounts of alcohol some girls say they consume to make hooking up more palatable? So much has changed, so fast, as gender rules have collapsed.
Less than a half-century ago, girls hung out mostly with other girls, guys with other guys. A girl who was interested in a guy never came right out and told him. She'd tell a girlfriend, who would tell a male friend who would tell the guy in question. Then she'd wait for the phone call.
If the call came, the two then might phone each other every night, talking for hours before going out on their first date. The steps after that were understood: a guy would offer a girl his ring and the couple went steady. Maybe she got pinned or lavaliered, then engaged and so forth.
Today the distance between genders has virtually dissolved. Young women have taken PE with guys since elementary school and gone to movies with them since middle school. They compile coed Buddy Lists on their computer screens and think nothing of instant-messaging guys or calling them on the phone.

4) this is rock bottom for women. we are throwing away our only leverage to rope in young men: Oh, but there is something left to lose, what dramatist Ben Jonson 400 years ago called the "coupling of two souls." Young women talk about this, too. If romance is reserved for the truly serious, what guy will choose serious when he can get the other stuff without committing more than a few hours of his time? and morally, we're going down the toilet: But when will they learn that just because you can do something doesn't necessarily mean that you should? Who will teach them that there is power in holding back?

isn't this precisely what the bush administration wants? more and more women are abstinent! that's the distinguishing characteristic of this "culture." free love in the past has included women having sex without love, sex with friends, sex without guilt. nowadays according to this it's just oral sex substituted for intercourse. why should that make a difference, unless it speaks to a greater canniness on the part of females to keep themselves safe (from pregnancy, at least). so what if we date less in college? we intend to marry later, as a few individuals in the article note. we can date in our twenties or thirties and prepare for marriage -- if that's really what it takes -- then.
the subtext of this article may well be, strangely, that if women engaged in intercourse their men would stick around and relationships would form. that flies in the face of not only centuries of experience but a poster i saw at barnard when i spent a summer there: it advised, straightforwardly, and resonately, "sex won't make him love you and a baby won't make him stay."

whew am i scared of this semester! sure i'm always scared of what hasn't happened yet, but this semester is especially chock full of Things That Could Go Wrong, New and Public Ways I Could Fail, and Potential Miseries. this is why i can only think as far ahead as tomorrow. tomorrow my brother will drive ross, who should be arriving momentarily, and me back to swarthmore. soon after tomorrow -- preparations for auditions for an ideal husband, auditions, the meeting with marge where my class from last semester goes over our projects, meeting with marge about my grant proposal, finishing my grant proposal, submitting my grant proposal, rehearsals, having to pull off seeming to be a competent director, taking my first seminar ever, being graded on my first seminar ever, exposing my play to the lofty criticism of swarthmore students, watching people important to me graduate -- that's when the tough stuff starts.

overdramatizing? me?

to compensate in advance for the over-intellectualism i will be resubmerging myself in starting tomorrow, last night i watched both straight episodes of joe millionaire. so what if the show's built on, and glorifies, lies? so what if the 21 -- 22 if you could the french chateau's bewilderingly australian butler -- don't have as many IQ points among them as a big mac has calories? it raises interesting sociological questions, like, can you believe he dumped that chick, you know, the classy one with the earrings? take that, heidi, you over-confident snob! and go allison. she's definitely my pick.

though it's only 11:30 i feel totally wiped out. appropriate for the end of an urban evening. my friend marc from skool is in town staying w/ his brother in dupont circle. we met at 5:30, dined at a thai restaurant to the accompaniment of two cosmopolitans (that's the 2nd time in a row i haven't been carded. do i look older or in this wintry economic climate does nobody care?) i enjoyed a introductory meeting with marc's brother. in the midst of siblingish bickering, he looked up at me and said, "you have terrific hair. i'll bet you get that all the time. have you seen yentl? you know what they're trying to do w/ amy irving's hair and it doesn't quite work? they're trying to make hers yours."

after that bit of careless flattery, he headed out w/ his friends to mothertongue, the monthly open-mike poetry reading. marc and i tripped over to the studio theater where a friend of his had promised him two comp tickets to runaway home. an all-black ensemble performing for an predominantly white, older audience -- for some reason i find that unsettling. the staging and pacing of the play, and even to an extent the script and the acting, seemed like it would lend itself better to tv than the stage. we enjoyed, tho we weren't compelled to stay after intermission. instead we moved on to kramerbooks & afterwords for coffee/dessert. they, as you might know, are the geniuses behind the Trent Lotte: separate but equal parts coffee and milk, to be integrated as you see fit.

i am a sucker for this stuff. the buildup of excitement excessively beforehand is my version of the christmas shop'n'sing season. who'll get snubbed? who's getting noticed? if you read a few pages in you'll notice that they answer a question i posed a couple days ago: yes, apparently once before two actors each got two nods. in 1994, holly hunter and emma thompson shared the honor. that was another excellent year for films (pulp fiction, shawshank redemption, red, forrest gump -- well some people liked it --, ditto the piano, and clerks.)
but since 1997 was the first year i paid attention, it retains a special place in my heart.

an op-ed explaining why class-based campaigns don't work in america. we're all "pre-rich" here, cooling our heels as we wait for our lucky/worked-and-fought-for break. a funny way of thinking about it that actually rings true. i've never experienced much class resentment; i figured that's cause i've never spent extended periods of time with underprivileged people. but if even the bulk of lower-income men can't be persuaded to vote against the interests of the rich, there's little hope for a serious grassroots revolutionary spirit. unless i guess it comes from the nonwhite sectors, people who still feel that the system is biased against them.

yesterday when searching for one thing i uncovered a twelve year old capital steps album, "sheik rattle and roll." yelping with glee at the good timing of it, i brought a tape player into the kitchen and my father, my brother and i sat there listening to the whole album. some parallels are eerie -- the looming iraq war, of course, being the paramount example, but also the deficiencies of the democrats, their inability to come up with a coherent, consistent, meaningful message, and the crookedness of the rich.
other songs were evocative just for the part they played in my growing-up. they certainly got my family through the first gulf war. they may have been my primary source of information, especially since, at the age of 9, i was bound to better absorb and understand anything sung than said. you can't go wrong with rhymes.
overall it was quite a trip (down memory lane). remember those days of S&Ls?? i don't!, but i sure do remember the songs.

over fine southern dining at georgia brown's last nite, in honor of my parents turning 26, my brother told two jokes:

1) in england during the war it was common practice for enlisted soldiers to spend weekends, get meals and some hospitality, with british families. one woman requested, "please, no jews or blacks." that friday, she opened her door to five african-american men. "there must be some mistake," said she. "no ma'am," said one of the men. "general cohen, he doesn't make mistakes."
2) one new leader of his country found on his desk two letters from his predecessor, numbered 1 and 2 and to be opened in the case of the first emergency (1) and the second (2). well, the first emergency happened. the new leader opened the first envelope and the letter said, "blame me." he did; his people bought it. life went on. a year later another emergency hit. he opened the second envelope and the letter said, "now sit down and write two letters."

my grandfather told a story:
stationed in england during the second WW, he developed the habit of walking with his head down (stupid british weather) and his hands in his pockets. a superior officer was heading his way and he weighed exposing his hand to the cold against exposing himself to the officer's wrath. he decided to take his chances and not salute, hoping the officer would ignore him. five steps past each other, the officer barked, "sargeant!" my grandfather froze and turned around. "don't you remember me?" said the officer. "it's morris -- we went to hebrew skool together ..."

and i saw the hours. gorgeous film. meryl streep is all you could ask for in an actress (i ask you: in that first scene, when she goes into the bathroom and there's a beautiful white orchid next to the sink -- is that a coincidence?) nicole kidman manages to disappear into the role. those shapeless dresses help, as does phillip glass's constant evocative mood-setting score, but she gives an honest performance, one i believed. julianne moore had arguably the most difficult task. that section of the book occurs almost entirely in her head. that she manages to convey as much as she does without speaking, voice-over, or narration is remarkable.
(conceivably both streep and moore could be nominated for two films. i wonder if that would be a first.)
read the novel, if you haven't. the film does it justice, and, as it's one of my favorites, that's saying something.

so: tho i still haven't seen talk to her, here's my top ten for 2002:
1) adaptation. only if you're willing to work with it. complicated, layered, completely original. real in a way that films almost never are and unreal in the way great films should be.
2) the hours. "someone has to die so the rest of us can value life more." have a life-affirming cookie afterwards.
3) chicago. the most enjoyable film of the year -- cocky, ironic, exciting, it seems to like itself quite as much as you do.
4) y tu mama tambien. the beautifully photographed, smart-ass, wake-up-call coming-of-age you never had.
5) the pianist. haunting, unrelenting, like, you have to imagine, the memories of warsaw in the 40s must be.
6) far from heaven. the first film i've seen to capture the spirit of the 50s earnestly, without disdain or melodrama.
7) monsoon wedding. more colorful, more subtle, and more joyous than the big fat greek one.
8) punch drunk love. who knew an adam sandler flick could leave you grinning at the credits? bizarre, imperfect, but captivating.
9) catch me if you can. winning, diverting, easy on the eyes. the best spielberg film i've seen in ages.
10 ) secretary. a deviant, risky romantic comedy that gets points for originality and excellent performances.
runners up: about schmidt, which i'm still on the fence about, and bowling for columbine.

my oldest friend turns 21 today. hip hip hoorah! even tho she's too far away to hear. in my own small way i celebrated by drinking bourbon with my father and playing a cut-throat game of scrabble, my first in a while. i was taking it too seriously; i needed a break. really, this was no holds barred and the way we bluffed as much poker as scrabble. he played "nonquam" on a double, i countered with "zoom" on a triple. he put down "toxic" -- an hour later i made it into "toxicity" for another triple. i won by about 50. the sole accomplishment of an otherwise lazy day. that "toxicity" made me mighty pleased. i debased myself to every deity i could think of for that "ity". anyway, the point is, happy birthday, liz.

hey, my people. just in time for shabbes.

my brother looks more manicured every time he leaves the house. he's going job hunting, on the hill of course, dc's nerve center. it's frightening to hear this kid, who til now has spent his vacations waking at noon to play video games til midnite, musing to himself whether he'll have enough money next year to keep his cell phone. society inflicts these various arbitrary-ish deadlines on adolescents: be economically independent of your parents by 21 or else. but it's certainly gotten my brother moving.
glimpse-into-the-future-wise, last night i ran into a mournful-eyed boy who just started penn law. not good?, i asked. he shook his head. his girlfriend jumped in: it gets better after first semester. right? her boyfriend didn't look convinced. just tired.

that after i sat through the palme d'or winning the pianist starring an even more mournful-eyed adrien brody as a jew in warsaw during those 6 midcentury years where it was frankly unwise to attempt such a thing. get out!, you wanted to scream at poor adrien brody, poor beautiful talented adrien brody; take your eyes and run while you can! of course he doesn't. the fool has character and optomism: in true catch-22 fashion that probably accounts for his naifish beauty.
the 2.5 hour film contains some of the most wrenching, unsentimentalized portrayals of cruelty i've seen on narrative film. the contortions it put both me and my various organs in were impressive even by my standards. then, of course, i can only cry for so long before i get angry. at extreme temperatures sorrow turns to rage and my head filled with the kind of bitter, redundant expletives that would have made adrien brody blush. if someone had handed me a trigger i would have pulled it, and halfway across the world, poland would have gone poof.

the pianist lightens up a bit during its last 20 minutes -- thankfully, cuz otherwise i would have left that theater prowling for just such a trigger. i got home and slept til noon, my night midsectioned by a horrific 5 a.m. dream in which three men with boards were attacking me and i could only beg, "please." better this morning -- er, afternoon -- i still am in no condition to see the hours, as planned. i need some recovery time.
on a more cheerful front, i spent a terrific $20 on: two paperbacks (barth's chimera, and the fermata), one mint sondheim recording of the frogs and evening primrose, and a screenplay of casablanca illustrated with still photographs. since yesterday marked 26 years of my parents staying together, my dad and i shopped cashmere sweaters for my mom at saks and found a lovely one. good shopping experiences are very satisfying, she said banally. but all happiness is banal, right? as well as all un-. there's nothing to be done except to wade through whatever's in front of you and put as unique a spin on it as you can.

i spent a lovely twenty hours in the company of two darkly-curly-haired girls i don't get to see often enough. when various people called the one whose house it was she chatted briefly then said, "listen, tho, i have two high skool friends over ..." funny: i don't feel like a high skool anything. i guess it's a convenient label. we rolled our eyes at high skool for the most part and discussed college, marriage, grad skool, when we'll be adults; baked no-pudge fudge and ate popcorn with sesame oil (hey, that's good stuff); and watched titanic -- yes, titanic -- in two parts. and wept. at least i did. i always do.
we slept three to a bed, well, dreamlessly, and woke to continue the conversation until near sunset today. we're very different, except for hair and height (and body image problems and faith and class ...) rather, i should say, we are as different as three female honor students the same age from the same background raised in two-parent liberal households within 20 miles of each other can be while sharing a sense of humor. not that different at all, i guess. i should remember that more often. just like perhaps i'm not that different than i was three years ago when i couldn't imagine being more than 20 miles apart from them. nostalgia: my drug of choice.

home for the first time in 03 and hours from some of my favorite playmates. well i have three books to comfort me: two my indulgent father bought me yesterday (another chabon, another franzen) and one i'd forgotten my aunt gave me for hannukah.
sidenote: in high skool it was so simple. everyone celebrated hannukah. that was it. no stockings, no ho-ho-ho, no carolling (unless you were mocking them) certainly no presents under christmas trees. when ben's father added, on the evening designated as their gift exchange, that something lay wrapped under the tree for me, i was so flummoxed i viscerally learned the meaning of the word. that the gift turned out to be classical music -- "no words," grinned ross, looking over my shoulder -- unsettled me further. no one ever taught me how to sit still and listen to classical music. after 20 minutes of staring into the candelabra ben's dad had set up in the fireplace, my ADD started kicking in. when the music ended i wanted to say something profound and simply could not think of a thing. i blame the tree.

ross ben and i had spent that evening with ross's 2nd set of maternal grandparents, up in the country where they own their own vineyard. george, our disaffected intellectual host, went to harvard and studied government with jfk, for whom the skool was later named. michelle, our redgrave-like hostess, studied at juliard and danced on broadway before shifting her focus to culinary skool. they prepared us a lovely dinner and served their own, surprisingly good wine.
the day before we'd paid a visit to ben's russian grandmother in the bronx. she compensated for her difficulties with english with her ease with food, urging on us cake fruit chocolate buttered-bread coffee wine brandy.

now after all that family i'm with my own again. i guess i have to get started on that stuff i have to do. or maybe i'll go read wonder boys ... or explore mckee's website. the guy from adaptation -- yet another meta level. wow. that's the kind of thing i need, a story seminar. structure is my weak point in fiction too. i can't stand those conventional endings where everyone grows and learns and is happy forever after. i really liked about schmidt's ending even if i had issues with the film. it worked for that character; it felt plausible. but making that compromise between what's plausible and what's palatable is really damn hard.

on new years, you write resolutions. on your birthday, you make wishes. since my birthday and new years lie almost precisely 6 months apart it feels appropriate that the corresponding demands each make are diametrically opposite. except i have trouble with both. on my birthday, i wished for more. now, that round-new-years time, i'm tempted to resolve same. more. only call it Renovation instead of Resolution, a la brilliant liz, and worry cause i don't mean it to sound like i'm greedy. i'd be fine if things stayed the same. renovation-wise, i just want the evolutions in me to keep on grinding: more of the progress: more courage, more self-sufficience, more adventure, more forgivingness, more openness. basically i've been happy since i turned 18 and hit an emotional growth spurt, and i want more.

i'm in new york still, 6 hours south-east of where ben, rebecca, ross and i spent new years. ben, our intrepid invalid coachman, got us safely there and safely back despite wrenching weather conditions. once there we sprawled. i finished three books in the first couple days: rushdie's east/west, leant to me by the other becca with whom i spent a lovely preface-type afternoon, the ice storm, and the fermata. the latter engaged me most by virtue of being entirely different than anything else i've read -- ross and rebecca, both of whom have read it before, smiled knowingly at my devotion to it. one review i came across labeled it "morally confused," from which it derives part of its charm. nearly plotless, insightful, funny, and [borderline?] offensive, i found it squirmingly fun to read.

anyway, we parted from the mountain idyll, having finished off two homemade pizzas, two stirfrys, one bottle of champagne, two bottles of wine, one bottle of kahlua, one pitcher of margaritas, one tray of homemade nachos, one yule log, one pumpkin pie, one apple-pear pie, one package of tortillas, several diet cokes and much more besides, including one afternoon-long monopoly game won by yours truly. for the first time ever, i think.
ross ben and i saw about schmidt in the city, which was more controversial than i expected it to be. pointlessly misanthropic, manipulative and depressing or scathing perceptive reactionary satire? for hours afterwards, ben and i mulled over films that we both find wonderful and rewarding, and we settled on harold and maude, barton fink, and mallrats.
two more weeks of break. is this heaven or what?