the voices dying with a dying fall

        Song of the Hour: Two-Headed Boy, Neutral Milk Hotel

Not even the OCD-carniverous UNC ants chewing through my sandals and feet can dampen my mood today.
My day, spent in morbid anxiety of those shitty "let’s go around the room and talk about ourselves" first-of-the-semester class moments, has ended smoothly without having to say a single word besides "I’m here" in one class. And, after scrutinizing several syllibi, no oral presentations. Life is good.

$350 in books, and I’ll be set. Not too bad– last semester was a lot more than that. My teachers range from slightly-doddering-yet-well-meaning, to completely challenging if not downright bizarre.  My Psych 240 (Personality) teacher spent an hour and ten minutes rambling about betrand russell, ghandi, hillman, the prevalence of suffering in the world according to and catagorized by continent, his own trials and tribulations as an artist, english teacher, clinical psychologist treating war vets, and methodist theologian in a way that kept me both rapt, and constantly on the verge of laughter in the way he looked everyone in the eye challenging them to define themselves. He read us a lot of (amazing) poetry, some of which he wrote, and just. wouldn’t. stop. pressing us. He’s a character, that one. his take on peronsality:

Too Many Names 

Monday entangles itself with Tuesday

and the week with the year:

time cannot be severed

with your weary shears,

and all the names of the day

the water of night clears.

No man can call himself Peter,

no woman Rose or Mary,

we are all sand or dust,

we are all rain in the rain.

They have told me of Venezuelas,

Paraguays and Chiles,

I don’t know what they’re talking about:

I know the skin of the Earth

and I know that it has no name.

When I lived among roots

they delighted me more than flowers,

and when I talked to a stone

it echoed like a bell.

It is so slow the spring

that lasts the winter long:

time has lost his shoes:

one year’s four centuries.

When I go to sleep each night

what am I called, not called?

And when I wake up, who am I

if it wasn’t ‘I’ who was sleeping?

This is to say that as soon as we

are thrust out into life,

that we come newly born,

that our mouths are not filled

with all these dubious names,

with all these mournful labels,

with all these meaningless letters,

with all this ‘yours’ and ‘mine’,

with all this signing of papers.

I think to confound things

mingling them, hatching them new,

seeing through them, stripping them naked,

until the light of the earth

has the unity of the ocean,

a generous integrity,

a crackle of starched perfume.

— Pablo Neruda

This is gonna be a great class, no?

Anyway, I’m sure my attitude will change abruptly when my insane number of long-ass papers are due, but for now, it’s good.

Did I mention I was taking a "Philosophy of Film" class? It said in the course guide, "Ethics of Film" which was far more interesting, but it’ll do nonetheless.

Does all of this academia talk make those of you who are home-free nostalgic? envious? happy you’re away from it? 3 days ago, the thought in the car of school starting again made me contemplate a slight swerve into a head-on collision with a mack truck (am I kidding?) but as chrissy beat into my head, "life is short, but it is wide, and this too will pass". I know, I’m a whiny child of privilege, I just don’t have the energy anymore to resist the suction of  tedium. I’m ready to move out and move on and DO something, you know? But I also know that school’s not a bad place to be, and I need to keep telling myself that, finding the seratonin producing aspects (joy, whatever)  and focusing on that instead of oppressive sense of perfectionism that equates all my work and study into disappointment.  If I could remember  more of what I’ve learned so far, I wouldn’t lose heart so quickly. The survey course of Brit lit from romantic-modern, finished a scant 3 months ago, emphasized the pre-raphaelites pretty intently. The pre-raphealite class I attended this morning was only vaguely familiar in content, writing notes on things I know I knew well in May, but have since forgotten. Are you like that? Am I just retarded? If I knew I was going to be this retarded so young anyway, I would have smoked more pot when I was younger. Alas.

This is long as hell. Well, that’s all the news that’s fit to print anyway. I keep thinking more and more about grad school, and talking to Brian at lunch put it clearly: I think, that if I find some kind of meaning again after this involuntary nihilistic deconstruction of mine, I’ll pursue an MFA. If I don’t, I should move on with either Biological or Clinical Psychology. For a plethora of reasons I won’t bore you with (again), that’s the crux of it. The world doesn’t need a nihilistic writer, you know? There’s suffering enough. No need to rub the noses of the masses in it.

That leaves me a year to get my shit together. That’s not long, is it.

better get cracking.

love.

    Song of the Hour: Good Woman by Cat Power
    The latest Podcast of the Nightsound Show, with much cringing.

You know, I’ve started the rigamarole of a post, but now find I have very little to say. School starts in a  couple days, my financial aid got held up so I can’t get my books yet really, and that’s a pain in the ass. I’m signed up for 15 hours, but due to class levels and sizes, I have to take mandatory "recitation" classes to supplement  4 of the actual courses, which puts me in a classroom not 15, but rather 22 hours a week. This isn’t going to fit in my schedule, I’m afraid. I may need to quit my job. Anyhoo, if you wanted that u-haul mug or t-shirt, now’s the time to ask.

Last night, Brian and I went to see– you guessed it– Snakes On A Plane. Perhaps, there were higher quality, more intellectually challenging films out there; but that was not the goal. our goal was simple: Samuel Jackson.
You have to see it. It is so amazingly bad, it just has to be seen. Snakes dont bother me; I’m aware they may bother you. There’s no way in hell anyone would have gotten me into a movie called "Spiders On A Plane"  even if I knew it just a metaphor and the movie was really about orphans in a Colorado ranch praising jesus. No way in hell. But honestly, some of the reptiles had a 1992 CGI effect going– and it was so entirely laughable that many snake-o-phobes could get through it without a scratch. It was great. A plot more predictable than Little Red Riding Hood, characters as developed as a pizza box, and a healthy portion of T&A gratuity: what’s not to love? Two Thumbs Up for the romp of ridiculosity.

Otherwise, I’ve been sucked into King’s Dark Tower Gunslinger series in a way I find embarrassing. I’m not at all into horror, but this is different; and I’m in. I have however, taken a hiatus to read Stone Junction (thank you owen, you rock) and once school starts will perhaps lose the Dark Tower fever and get actual work done.

Nevermind. This is the most pointless post ever.

I’ll do better next time.

love.

So, my camera battery died months ago, and I just now found the cradle (in the black hole known as "Reggie’s Room") and some of these from last school year need sharing.

So, as I may have mentioned on occasion, Joss sometimes has a difficult time "catching" the bus. More specifically, I fear he fancies himself a little Peter Parker, and prefers to chase the bus when he has the opportunity– an opportunity created by waiting until the last conceivable moment to dart out the door. Anyway, seeing as how he isn’t Spiderman, he often fails to catch up.

Which leaves someone driving him to school.

On the particular day the commemorated here, that someone was me. And like any good mother whose kid missed the bus (again) we stopped at chick-fil-a for a healthy breakfast– insuring he’d be no more than 20 minutes late for school– which we insure by eating in the car. Anyway. the documentation follows:

Joss obviously feeling appropriately punished for having missed the bus.

Joss being incredibly exicted, because his sandwich looks like a little turtle.

Joss when told to "look natural".

Joss refusing to acknowledge that my camera kung fu is the best.

Here, I told joss to get out of the car and get the crumbs out  of his lap so they wouldn’t get all over my floor. I promptly locked the door, and refused to let him back in for several minutes. Which, obviously, got funnier and funnier the longer I held my fingers in my ears and sang loudly.

Joss, safely arrived (though slightly late) with a full tummy to Brentwood elementary, the last week of school. But, in my defense, he didn’t get in any trouble that day. I should commemorate more little mornings like that, I think.

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And just to contrast/compare MY last day of school proper, which was like 5/5 or so, though not the vainglorious 5/9; Brian and I celebrated with a drink at Linda’s on Franklin St.:

Actually, I have no idea what this was about. but it amuses me.

I remember how relieved  I was being done for the year… and with less than two weeks left before starting right back up again… I’m a little distraught.

Ugh. Anyway, meant to put these up months ago. Blame Reggie’s sloth. I do.