latrinalia

scrawled on a stall in the women's restroom was, " I dare you to skip class..." under it, someone had written in blue ink, "at UCB? ha! the asians would flip out." i admit, i thought this was quite funny.

time out

when i was younger, i used to wish that someone would walk in on me doing something irregular. such as, standing on my head or doing cartwheels down a hill.
there are things that are true about or for ourselves which have no voice. at least, that has been the case for me. for example, there are people to whom i can no longer apologize; it would be too much.
and so sometimes, i dream of subversions. if i dropped a letter on the ground at this and this time, this person would find it and then... honestly, my mind is like a shakespearan comedy, except that i don't expect the ending to involve a marriage. how do i explain? there is a mad desire in me to express without obligating others to react or reciprocate in any way. there is a supposition, not completely unfounded, that when one person speaks, another must respond. but i do not wish to enact that violence.
so, i dream of subversions. and stand on my head with my bedroom door open.

in which i finally give up

you know, i have a mother who calls to ask me if i'm meeting people. by people she means men, to which i say no. i say that i'm a woman in the humanties and that there are no men (i'm skipping the diatribe on why that might be.), and then she suggests that i make a foray into the business world, where the men are, and then i reply, "that's ridiculous" and that i am not going to change my profession in order to procure (procure -- as if this imagined man were a pair of shoes) a someone. and then she says, "nono, that's not what i meant. i meant just to make yourself available." ah yes, available. excuse me, i am the pair of shoes. my mistake.

unable

this is one of the days, among so many others this week, that i wake up and, within the first 5 minutes, give up. i stay in bed for hours. i get up to drink water or go to the restroom and then almost run back to bed. otherwise, i have to smile. i have to make decisions, basic decisions. what to wear, what to eat, how to feel. yes, i have to decide how to feel, because the default is to feel nothing.
that's not exactly true. i do feel. i feel fuzzy, the way a tv looks when the reception is out, which reminds me of a poetry class i took when i was nineteen. my professor said there was no way i could feel "dark." now i understand. as there is no way to feel a color, the message behind "feeling dark" is unclear, yes -- definitely a principle of good writing. but i wonder about alternatives. i don't know how else to say whatever this is, nor do i know what to do. currently, my only solution is to wake up earlier. give up between 7 and 10 instead of 10 and 1 in the afternoon.

growing pains

today, i looked in the mirror and didn't see my own face. i saw the reflections of the people i affect.