cold turns your breath into clouds

It is anything but cold here, right now, in the gasping, record-breaking Lyonnais heat. I lay in the coolest room in the apartment with all the windows open, and dream while I am supposed to be studying.

I've been listening to this song a lot, possibly because the video is too cute for words. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4sa2HoXpsE&feature=PlayList&p=3C7EDDA78EE64DDD&index=1).

I am realizing that some combination of being physically inactive and living in the Land of Pastries has done some pretty serious damage to me. I'm not looking forward to having to buy new clothes for riding and for work when I get home -- hopefully something a summer at the barn and in the dojo can help me fix.

By the way, two songs that are really good to jump around in your underwear to are:
American Hi-Fi, "Flavor of the Week"
The All-American Rejects, "Give You Hell"
My weakness for bad pop-rock will probably never die.

I'll be home in nine days!

bisous?

As I sit here frantically striving for some sort of thesis topic to present to Professors Rossman and Reed, I have one headache inducing, worry inspiring thought -- France is not done with me.

Or, should I say, I am not done with France. Despite the myriad tribulations this country has put me through this semester (and, inadvertently, in semesters and years past), it seems my thesis will be nothing other than a careful treatment of some aspect of French history.

I need to be putting my energy into thinking up that thesis, I think, not blogging about it.

notes on other blogs

"Self-pity, needing someone, and the bittersweet sense of self-reliance. There must be an archaic, non-English word for that experience. (Probably French?)"
-nightmare brunette

The best I could think of was "débrouillardise" (resourcefulness), but I'm not sure it really carries the bittersweet combination that she's searching for.

The quote is an excerpt from a short piece on cities, loneliness, and life in your mid-twenties. I am very interested to see what the next handful of years brings me.

Now, back to the teeny world of note recopying.

listening to: mixes from ML
reading: blogroll

well you put on quite a show.

This is the first book I want to read when I get home. (http://openlibrary.org/b/OL2196866M/Above-the-river)

I never thought I would actually feel like I was living in a James Wright poem.

listening to: Take A Bow (remix) // Rihanna
reading: nothing much

Maybe it will be a little countdown tradition?

It being precisely five weeks until I go home, I am taking this moment to compose a short list of places I just can't wait to go.

1) The dojo. Uptown, downtown, class, or workout, I can't wait to get back to being the eternally-abused brown belt.
2) The barn. I would be happy to reek of horses, leather cleaner, and hay-dust.
3) Bodo's.
4) The downtown mall -- I hear it's having a facelift?
5) The nest.
6) My huge, low, down-comforter-dominated bed at my parents' house.
7) Proffit Road.
8) The Lawn-proper, The Corner, steps of the Rotunda, Old Cabell, Harrison-Small, and of course ALDERMAN.
9) Greenberry's.
10) Daedalus Books.

listening to: ML's mix (rap side)
reading: notes for Souveraineté et Mondialisation

dive in like honeybees

I have so much to say, and it feels like so little time left to say it.

Maybe I never mentioned that I could never stop writing, not even for a brief hiatus, when I turned my back on the suggestion of being an English major and fell into the challenge of learning about something new. I know what you're thinking, that I could have sunk so deeply into literature, poetry courses, an interdisciplinary creative writing honors program, and come through these long four years with a portfolio worth showing.

I wonder if that would have been a better use of my time, as I tap my fingers on the dirty table and wonder how I am supposed to write a historical thesis abstract in the the next twenty-three days.

It's been more than four months since I've sat down to write an academic paper, the notes and sources and reference books arranged around my cross-legged form in a perfect semi-circle, coffee cups perched on the table and ignored, a pen twisted in my hair to keep it out of the way as I frown in concentration, my fingers flying to keep up with the corseted, gasping, tightly-laced flow of facts and images. I haven't recently had the pleasure and the tension of a deadline ticking down, the exquisitely formatted margins bottlenecking my text, three tabs on citation formats open in the background.

When I write papers, I write them straight through, churning out a page every fifteen minutes with footnotes included, racing through a detailed outline, until finally I reach the end. Then I sit back, reread, edit, scowl and change things, delete and add, move paragraphs around, polish the piece.

That love/hate relationship with the tightly bound freedom of writing papers is, at the end of the day, why I want to write a thesis so badly. Maybe sometimes I have been forgetting that desire.

Reading: my notebook
Listening to: What Sarah Said // Death Cab for Cutie

listmaking early on a Thursday morning.

In precisely two months I'll be journeying home.

Here are the things I can't wait to see:
-bagels
-correctly formed lines
-stores that are open between noon and 2pm
-trees, grass, and similarly green things
-mountains
-American coffee
-ponies
-you

Here are the things I could be fine with never seeing again:
-American cars
-news from the conservative right
-my class schedule for fall 2009
-traffic on 29-North
-prices in dollars
-most fast food restaurants