i could speak italian

I can now change the oil in my car (and, presumably, in other cars as well).

Parkour = something I want to play with more.

I also am in posession of a loaner pair of drumsticks, and will henceforth proceed to drum loudly on all available surfaces.

Have I mentioned how awesome life really is?

listening to : kanye
reading : feministing.com

and in this place we stagnate

It figures that, just as I start to get twitchy and feel like just soaking up the afternoon sunshine isn't enough, a huge peal of thunder cracks overhead. I really want it to pour, and it seemed like it would earlier, but now I'm not sure.

Lazy afternoon / evening, you know? School is so close to over. I wish I could move before next week.

There are things I need and things I want, but unfortunately, times are tight and free cash is in short supply. Recession is coming (recession is here?) and I am lucky that I am secure in all the big things, and that I have a job.

That being said, there is no question that my horse's expenses come before my own. If the money is optional, it's going for him. After that, it's any equipment I need for MS (thankfully, those expenses are rarer), and then car / gas stuff, and then me.

I'm seriously considering working 40 hours / week over the summer, like an actual working lady. It would suck not to get a third day off, but I'm thinking it might be necessary.

I'm going to take a shower, try and get some work done, and perhaps go running later. It's getting dark outside the window and I want so badly to be back in the morning, to let that lightness and warmth and closeness carry on.

reading: nothing
listening to: st. peter's bones // girlyman

I can dim the lights and sing you songs full of sad things

Parce que l’ennui de Jérôme et Sylvie se tourne sur le matérialisme, il est à la fois un symbole et un symptôme d’un plus grand mal dans la société contemporaine. Selon Perec, ce besoin de se soutenir avec les choses est un problème parce que les choses matérielles ne peuvent pas provider le bonheur concrète.
[translates as]
Because the "ennui" from which Jérôme and Sylvie suffer turns upon the axis of materialism, it is at once a symbol and a symptom of a greater evil in their societal experience. In Perec's opinion, this need to underlay/support oneself with mere things is a problem, because material things can never provide a solid happiness.

That's the paragraph I'm working on right now. We're at the bottom of page three (out of four) THANK GOD. This paper, like so many French papers before it and oh so oh so many to come, is making me want to drown myself in the shower. I don't know why I can handle papers in English with such finesse and French papers drive me up the fucking wall, but that's the way it is.

On the bright side, I'm only a paragraph and a half away from calling it a night (about another half hour), and J. made me a squid! I love it. My reward for finishing this paper of ennui/death, aside from the excellent reward of collapsing into sleep, will be to name the squid and to title the blank CD that B. is going to fill for me.

I've got a few ideas about both but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

listening to: only the good die young // billy joel
reading: redaction 2 -- l'ennui comparitif selon Zola (La Curee) et Perec (Les Choses)

c'est quoi, la vanille?

I was fully intent on spending this morning asleep, sprawled out warm on my stomach with a stuffed pony tucked under my arm, yet another delightful weekend morning. The weather's finally turning warm and it's raining a little, making this the perfect time to brush aside all the things I should be doing and lounge under the window.

Failing that, I was going to wake up, be good, go to class and then come home to get some workthings done. Or, since the whiplash is still fierce enough to keep my head still, maybe just skip right to the French homework and short seminar paper and then skip out for the afternoon.

Instead I am lying in bed, blissed out on expensive chocolate, diet coke straight from the bottle, watery sunshine filtering down through the blinds. I was vaguely going to write in tribute to C., to make a weird curved line between the way that her sister once called me "the tautness I hold myself in" and how her forays into photographing and being photographed are part of a sense of self that I will never have.

That's all for this morning. I'm up and awake and on the move; I can't ever be unconditionally attracted or unconditionally blissed.

didn't we almost have it all?

...is the title of the Grey's Anatomy episode with the Ingrid Michaelson song "Keep Breathing," the intro to my current moodstate. I was going to have an involved / mildly pretentious post about how fucking cool that song is, but unfortunately the lyrics are fighting for top shelf in my brain with my intense hatred of Shakespeare right now.

I mean, it's not that I hate Shakespeare on principle or even in actuality, but seriously, this paper? It's making me realize what absolute hell being an English major really would be. Seriously. "Let your paper grow organically." "Go with the flow." What does that even mean? I need organization, and facts, and cross-references, and backdating, and total precedent for my claims. Not Elizabethian English. It's a tad pathetic that I fought valiently through the first six pages and I'm taking three times longer than I should to write the last one.

/kvetch-fest. Paper's due at noon tomorrow, either I'll hate myself while I'm turning it in or I'll just be sleepwalking.

Right, Ingrid Michaelson. While it took me awhile to warm up to the song "The Hat," it sort of infiltrated my subconscious until I was sitting in class and the whole "I should tell you that you were my first love" refrain started to play in my head. But she's got this cool vocal thing where what looks like one line on print gets trilled and stretched and carried out to two or three, so it's kind of a slow-moving song in some respects. "The Hat" is cute and sweet and fun to dance to, but nothing mindblowing.

"Keep Breathing," though? Blew my mind when I heard it first (Grey's), and I thought a little of that was probably because it's the close of season ... 3? When Cristina leaves Burke at the altar because fuckall, she is too much of a badass lady to get married, and then Burke leaves Seattle without telling her. And she starts hyperventilating in her apartment and Meredith has to cut the wedding dress off of her.

The song stands well alone, still. It sort of builds through verses, and then the last half is one long rolling build of "all that I know is I'm breathing / all we can do is keep breathing..." but with a little half-breath hesitation before the end of each line. She a capella's it for a while and then when the percussion comes in the whole song sort of peaks, which is so cool.

What I think is really interesting here is the simplicity. All we can do is keep breathing now? I mean, who hasn't felt that way entirely too many times? Physically -- running, pounding the pavement, gasping for air, all you can do is try to breathe. Have you ever been punched square on in the solar plexus? All you can do is sort of fall over and agonizingly wish that you were breathing. Moving from the physical into the more emotional sense -- jumping horses, adrenaline that is half fierce terror and half fiercer joy, a static awareness of how loud your breathing is.

Other things. The way that we breathe in different situations; breathing in the anticipation or in the wake of pleasure, or of pain. Listening to someone else breathe when you lay your head against their chest. And of course, the way it was used originally -- the way that when depression crests inside you, the automated function of breathing is lit'rally too much effort for you to expend. That's when people have to cut you out of dresses.

That was entirely too much discussion about one song, but I thought it was applicable.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, I will be done with this hateful paper and this staying-inside nonsense. I will go to class, turn in my paper, and if weather permits, lie down in the soft grass and the softer sunshine and watch the world spin by.

reading: ENLT final paper
listening to : Keep Breathing // Ingrid Michaelson

you can't let the evil pink robots win

I am annoyed that I failed to realize class was cancelled this morning until about 5 minutes before I had to leave. By which point, of course, I was up, showered, dressed, and on my way out the door.

Sigh. I sent off the paper that's due by noon, so that's good. Now I just have to:
write my weekly seminar paper
write my final seminar paper (AUGH. and do all the reading for it)
write my exposition de style en francais (which reminds me, I need a cool place in the 'ville to write about)
go to the Hearing Israel : 60 Years of Music and Culture conference at Darden

++ all my usual reading work. Go me!

But, today I am feeling cute, and my super cute girlfriend is coming to the ville! Yay for that. I'm also due for a free coffee at the bookstore (coffee cart loyalty cards, represent) and I think I might just skip out on some of that work for the moment and go shopping for new jeans, since my old ones ripped yesterday. What will I ride in now? And more importantly, what will I wear?

things I need:
sunglasses (aviator style? will I be mocked for this?)
new jeans x2
summer clothes (blech)
a summer work schedule
keys from sophi x2
new stirrup irons + leathers for Jessica
grocery store things (lists never work for me there)

things I have:
halfchaps (brown, size small, up for grabs)
tons + tons of new music
a pony!

I'm going to rethink this whole jeans thing today; it's supposedly super warm. Ah, what a glorious lack of productvity today.

will this make our lives much better?

As you've probably heard by now, I'm into the history DMP program. I have never been more proud of my academic work.

Tempering this intense happiness is the realization that it's your birthday and yet, I still don't know where you might be. You're twenty today, starting a whole new decade of yourself, and all I can tell you is that I'm thinking of you. You would laugh, perhaps too forced and too hard, and I could finally give you these letters that I have poured out for you.

So; happy birthday, Netti -- I am still here where everything began, honestly believing that you're happy and that you might not be too disappointed in me.

reading : french literature syllabus
listening to : azure ray