Itchy Itch

So, long-overdue update. MA done. Me grouchy. Ever have one of those days where everything you say seems sightly off and too loud? Story of my life right now.

we've been adopted

My days are really, truly blessed here. I realize how silly that sounds, but it's true.

I had a late night editing last night, and slept in a bit today. When I finally lurched awake at ten AM, Brian had already gone out (he had an appointment to help a neighbor move a cat at 8:30). I shnurfled around, retrieved the $3 Brian had left out for me to get an iced coffee with (we're out of milk, and I've never really mastered the espresso maker), and made my way down to the park.



The park is a funny little part of our daily routine. I say funny because it's simultaneously the most useless part of our day and the most important. For an hour or so, almost every morning, we sit on park benches and chat with the other park regulars. We talk about physics, gossip about the neighborhood, give each other amateur phsychological and legal advice, and watch all the dogs that frolic off-leash there get their 'dog' on. Almost all the new friends we've made since we moved here have been folks we've met at the park. Heck, our two most promising housing prospects are places we've found through park folk.

This morning, the weather was incredible. I walked the requisite three blocks to Bean There, got my iced-double-latte, and headed across the street and up the path toward the park benches where we all gather. As I got close, the bench erupted with shouts of "Nora! You're up!"

As of this week, our housing situation's been resolved. Mike, a guy we know from the park (natch) found us a -- wait for it -- six month cat-sitting gig. Nice.

Living

So the possible-living-situation with T has fallen through, and we're still looking. We've got a possible house share out in upper market (pro: $800 a month for the two of us, nice-seeming housemate; con: a bit of a hike from our preffered 'hood, wall-to-wall carpets, shared), a possible studio a few blocks from our current apt (pro: across the hall from friend Jason, private, cute old-timey details, hardwood floors and crazy-cool tiles in the kitchen; con: only slightly larger than a shoebox).

The whole looking-for-housing thing really doesn't agree with me. I hate that we have no money. I hate that we don't have great credit (thanks a lot, twenty-year-old self. I hope you had fun with those credit cards). I hate that we have to move now and that every time I sit down at my computer I spend two hours searching the classifieds for every minute I spend writing.

I hate change. I really am a creature of comfort.

Becalmed

So, I'm having trouble doing just about anything today. Yesterday, too -- that trip to the grocery for lemonade and lesbian catcalling was just about it. This isn't turning out to be a good month. Or maybe it is. I'm honestly not sure.

Last Thursday, June 30, our housemate told us he's moving to Rhode Island at the end of July. For the past two months we'd all been talking about his boyfriend moving in (which would have reduced our already-managable rent to quite-pleasantly low). Now, Brian and I have thirty days to find a new living situation.

Unfortunately, Brian & I aren't planners. It would be great if at least one of us was (preferably him), but we're more 'oh-I'm-sure-it'll-all-work-out' types. We thought our rent would be going down. We just went to Boston for a wedding. I've been living of student loans and parental generosity since December. In short, neither of us can afford to pay first months rent & deposit on a new place. Not a (market rate) $1250-a-month studio in the neighborhood we live in & love.

Fortunately, we have great friends. Two immedeately offered to put us up for a while. One of them might even take us on as roomates in perpetuity.

So it looks like we'll be moving in with our friend T, just about four blocks down Haight from where we currently live. She's smart (I mean really smart - the woman listens to calculus lectures on her ipod when she's going to bed. Me? I'm not even sure how to spell calculus), funny, and suffers from varying degrees of agaoraphobia, OCD, and ADD. So I'm a little worried that we'll have to move again before August is over. But she thinks she'll be ok with having roomates (as she put it, "I didn't even panic about it when my meds wore off"). So probably it'll work out. And (woo-hoo!) her apartment is rent controlled. So it might be a solid plus in the long run.

But it's still depressing. We're adults. We should know enough to have set some money aside. But we're scraping through this only inches away from homelessness. I'd already started on a 'whats-it-all-about' kick after my cousin's wedding (nothing like the marriage of two type 'A' personalities to make a chronic underachiever feel a bit fraudish). To top it off, I've had writers block for days. Not that I believe in writers block.

Or spellchecking. Sorry kids.

Nothing so Rare as a Day in near June

It's absurdly gorgeous today: the sky is clear and blue, the sun is shining the world is green and green smelling. A few minutes ago, climbed out from under the pug we're dog sitting and walked down to the grocery store for some lemonade. On the way back, an old black lady in a wheel chair smiled at me and said, "Lots of pretty girls out today. I gotta go home and put my teeth in."

I love San Francisco.

Verlassen auf einem jetplane

or something like that.

So, I know it'll be hard for you all, as accustomed as you've become to fresh! daily! content, but I'm leaving tomorrow to go home for two weeks in sunny Massachusetts.

And it's my dog Merlin's 14th birthday tomorrow! Happy birthday, Merls-a-pup.



I was fourteen myself when we first brought him home (and if I recall I was much more limber).

Nerd, continued

Brian and I, on a whim, went to see Revenge of the Sith (or is it Return of the Sith?) at midnight tonight. It completely took me back to that childhood space of I totally want that spaceship.

Oh, and cousin Jake? I'm totally sorry I played with the Star Wars guys I found under your bed all those years ago. I hope I didn't mess 'em up at all. *Whew* that guilt's been on my chest for like, twenty years.

Lest any one doubt that I come by 'nerd' honestly

I just got off the phone with my parents. We had a long conversation about the reasoning behind the Pythagorean prohibition against eating beans.

A long, animated conversation.

Five Questions from Tricia

1. What are the values/morals your parents (or
whomever) taught you as a child, which somehow
affected you in the future?

This is an interesting (and somehow difficult) one. One of the strongest lingering values (or at least one I've been noticing recently) is my strong 'intellectual' streak, something (oddly) that sets me apart from a lot of the people in my writing program. This isn't to say they aren't smart -- far from it, really. It's just that I have a sort of academic way of looking at the world: a love of reading and writing about strange and esoteric concepts, and an unabashed enthusiasm for things like literary theory and the history of ideas.

Of course it's not a black or white 'people see it either my way or another' type thing. But its always been one of my defining characteristics, from my brown-nosey elementary school days on up. And I take it really personally when people act like 'intellectualism' and 'elitism' are synonomous. Because thinking crtically is gonna save the world, man.

2. What is a common first thought you have in the
morning and the last thought before bed?

I don't know if there is a common thought that runs through my head when I'm lying in bed. I do love bed thoughts though - those funny little surrealist streams of consciousness that seem to show up in the liminal states between consciousness and whatever lies beyond it.

As we're falling asleep, we usually listen to Coast to Coast, a conspiracies and aliens call-in show that Brian's been listening to for forever. He usually falls asleep right away, no matter what topic is being discussed, but I'll often lie awake staring into the darkness as people call in to discuss alien abductions and haunted factories. Our bed is by the window, and I like to stare up at the sliver of sky between our apartment building and the next as I fall asleep, but some nights, when the eerieness on the radio gets to me, I just close my eyes and try to think of rational, daytime things.

When I wake up, I usually just wonder what's made Brian so damn chipper. And try to will myself out of bed in the direction of coffee. And I try to hold onto my just-before waking dreams for as long as I ca, but I never have the forsight to leave a notebook by the bed. This morning I woke to a dream of someone spraypainting the windows to a car I was in, and then me cooking appetizers and snacks for a large crowd.


3. If you were stranded on a deserted island and could
have 5 things and one person with you, what would you
have and with whom? (The ol' standby.)

Well, 'who' is easy -- I don't know if I'd even know how to get lost on a desert island without Brian. And besides, he's totally the sort who can figure out how to build a shelter and make fire, while I would, I dunno, weave together palm fronds into a cute bikini or reinvent deconstruction or something.

And lets see - five objects:

1. A phone (you don't expect me to live on a desert island without calling my parents at least once a week to talk about it, do you)?

2. A portable lavatory, well eqipped with toilet paper (I have anxieties about poopin' in the woods).

3. (ahem) a lifetime supply of feminine hygene products (can i include toothpaste and floss and make it a sort of toiletry bag? Ok, ok, I'll try to think outside the bathroom for a while).

4. I bookshelf stocked with (waterproof?) copies of Madeline L'Engle's books, the complete Anne of Green Gables series, random paperback mysteries and sci fi, and a few "infinitely re-readable" books, like the Illiad, the Divine Comedy and the like.

5. pants.


4. What is something you regret?

Sometimes I feel like regret is my default setting. Seriously -- today I had this great convestation with a girl from school, one of those totally wide-ranging and in depth funny conversations you get to have with folks every once and a while. And within an hour, I was feeling twinges of... I dunno ... free-range guilt? Even though it was a great conversation, I can't help but feel I said something stupid or potentially offensive or something.

That said, there are plenty of things I do and should regret. I fogot to call Shana on her birthday. I'm terrible with money. I often speak without thought or reflection. But if I had to choose one, everyday, practical regret : I wish I'd learned time management skills somewhere along the line.

5. What were you like when you were 10?

Ten was really my favorite age. I was at the height of my preadolescent powers. The fifth grade was the oldest class at Greenwood Elementary (the school around the block from my house that I’d been attending since kindergarten). We fifth graders were sort of uber-children, and school was a familiar world of teachers, janitors and administrators I'd known for years.

Though not popular, I was well known among my classmates, and universally accepted, even liked. Every day I wore the same uniform: a mismatched pair of Converse ‘All Stars,’ one pink, one blue; an old bomber jacket from world war two (the pockets stuffed with pens and paper), and a man’s fedora that my older sister had adopted and then abandoned some years before.

My teacher, Ms Riordan, and I had a special bond. We'd talk -- it seemed at the time -- like equals, with special jokes and secret smiles. Like every teacher I’d ever had, she scolded me for not reaching my ‘potential’ - a word I heard over and over again every year, as I turned math homework in late or missed assignments entirely - but she knew me, understood me. It was marvelous.

Except that I never did learn that 'potential reaching' schtick.

MeMeMeMeme

alternate title: boy am I wordy
Frog over at Between The Lakes was nice enough to pass on this meme to me. Anyone out there reading who'd like to play, let me know, and I'll send five questions of my own devising out your way (and thenyou get to ask me five questions and oh! this could go on forever...).

1) Tell me about your spiritual journey. I have a feeling there’s a story there.

Good question. I'd never really thought of my spiritual journey in any concrete way (and me! Dante obsessed over here. I know).

I grew up in a religious household. Which is to say that both my parents were religious, and actively occupied their respective faiths. My dad's a Quaker and my mom is Episcopalian, so I grew up attending both services as I liked -- Quaker meeting with dad when I was in the mood for quiet contemplation followed by organic peanutbutter sandwiches, Episcopal services with mom when I was in the mood for South African freedom songs followed by kool aid and raucous games of tag in the parish hall. And like I said, my parents were both very much involved in the life of their churches -- my earliest outside-of-family communities were formed in and around church.

This continued up through high school - I was in youth choir for a long time, and even after I dropped out of that, I regularly attended youth group and religious retreats (that was with the Episcopalians). Then, when I was a senior or junior in high school, I got very much into Quakerism -- in part because I was fairly shy, and in part ecause our old Episcopal church had hired a relatively conservative minister, and we (my mom and I and a fair amount of our friends there) were feeling a bit alienated.

When I went away to college, I stopped attending church regularly, and I have to say I haven't ever really gotten back in the habit. I do, however still consider faith and religious thought to be a big part of my life -- as I mentioned above, I'm fairly obsessed with Dante, and I read other stuff, like Aquinas and the Journals of John Woolman, which keep me on my spriritual toes. And I have a subscription to Soujourners magazine, which my mother says is just as good as church, really.

And when I was picking up my veggie box today, I noticed that there's an Episcopal church just a few blocks form me. So who knows, maybe there's more kool aid and tag in my future (though in SF, I've learned, one does not menation kool aid and religion in the same sentence).

I feel like I'm getting away without doing any sort of real meaty rumination here. But this was a great question to start mulling over - I'm sure more stuff will come out of it. I'm ruminating right now - I swear.

2) What brought you to SF?

This ones a little embarrassing, because so little brought me here, and so much makes living here so wonderful.

A little over two and a half years ago, I was living in Medford, MA with Brian in a perfectly nice apartment and working at a difficult but interesting job. I'd dropped out of Marlboro College about two years previous to that, and while I had a nice apartment and a happy relationship and a job that could be considered carreerish (that is, I wasn't slinging lattes), I still felt like there was something pretty tremendous lacking in my life. And I couldn't see myself going back to school -- there was just some sort of block there.

A week or so before thanksgiving, my old childhood friend Chris came out from California with his new boyfriend. Brian and I put them up for the duration of their stay, and Chris mentioned that should we ever want to move to San Francisco, it would be fun for all of us to live together.

That really planted the seeds. Brian had been fantasizing about California since he was a young and freezing teenager in rural Vermont, and started really talking about San Francisco as a long term plan. My job was getting more and more unpleasant, and I started fantasizing about San Francisco, too. Poor Chris had probably forgotten the whole conversation as soon as he got on the plane back to San Jose. But we started talking with him about it, anyway.

Then, at thanksgiving, my cousin Claire mentioned that she was taking a year off before medical school and moving to New York City. Everything in me that wanted freedom and something new and no more job and no more snow and arrrg! rushed to the surface, and I blurted out, "Yeah? Well, Brian and I are moving to San Francisco."

After that, things pretty much fell together. I gave notice at my job, Brian and I started saving money, and Chris started looking at two bedroom apartments in San Francisco. By March, we were here, in this small-but-cute-and-location! little apartment on Haight St. And in the two years since, I've finished my BA, started on my Masters, and made more 'neighborhoody' friends than I've had since college. Go figure.


3) What was the best thing about your trip to Hong Kong?

Thats a toughie. I went with my old college friend Liza, which was awesome in and of itself, because she and I hadn't laid eyes on one another for more than two years. So, seeing Liza, getting over (mostly) my fear of flying (because when you're in the air that long, you just cope), and getting outside my well-worn grooves. Those were the three best things.

That and looking for a lost turtle on Lamma.

Lost Turtle
Originally uploaded by Nora Sawyer.

Or at least wondering how one might find a single, specific turtle on a tropical island. Which leads us to...

4) How long have you and Brian been together and how did you meet?

Brian and I have been together five years as of April first (april fools day makes for a memorable anniversary).

I actually wrote down our 'how we met' story a few years ago, when I wanted to get all my family's love stories together in honor of my sister's wedding (a project that never really took off -- the collection that is, not the wedding). Anyway, you can read it here.

5) Tell me about the photo in your profile. I’m intrigued by it.

Ack! I just wrote a whole long bit on this, then accidently deleted it. Boo. Apologies if it comes out rushed.

That's probably my favorite photo from my trip to Hong Kong. Its of an alleyway in a town called Tai O, which is on Lantau Island in the Hong Kong archipelego. Liza and I went on a daytrip to Lantau one of our first days in Hong Kong. My guide book, "The Top Ten Guide to Hong Kong," reccomended that one take the Star Ferry over in the morning, then take a bus to "the quaint fishing village at the end of the island" -- Tai O, then hike up to the Buddhist monastary (and its 72-foot statue of Buddha) and enjoy a vegetarian lunch provided by the monks.

We got up early and took the ferry over, munching on red bean buns and sipping tea as we tried to get pictures of Hong Kong retreating in the distance. Once on Lantau, we poked arount Mai Wo, the village where the ferry dropped us, then hopped a bus bound for Tai O, on the other side of the island. The bus, filled to the brim with elderly people and their groceries, chugged up and down steep mountain roads for about a half hour before finally dropping us off in Tai O. We poked around for a bit -- Liza bought shrimp paste and I tooke that picture -- and congratulated ourselves on discovering something so far off the beatenpath (at least to those not in possesion of a "Top Ten Guide"). After a while, we started to get peckish and headed up the only road out of town (past the 'Fat Ho' middle school, for all those adolescent sniggerers out there), and towards the monastary.

After about fifteen minutes, the sidewalk ended. Another ten minutes, and we started to consult our maps, trying to figure out how many miles were contained in the half-thumb-width between monastary and town. Finally, after about forty five minutes of conversation about what an adventure this was and attempts not to look annoyed in front of one another, we managed to flag down a monastary-bound bus. Ten minutes and several(!) steep hills later, we were at the monastary. And man, was that monk-food good.

We must imagine Sisyphus healthy

Oof. In my continuing campaign to be a guaranteed size eight for my cousin Claire's wedding, I've taken to jogging, and the propensity of hills and three-storey stairways in the neighborhood make for quite a work-out. Holy hindu cow-in-a-bucket, is it a work out.

In other news, San Francisco is freakin' gorgeous. I'm wishing i had a more eensy camera for in-the-pocket transport. The sunsets I'd show you!

Obligatory Guilt Post

This blog is starting to feel like the journals I kept intermittently from about third grade on. The entries all read something like this:

Dear Diary (ugh - I hate cliches, don't you?), sunny today. Went for a walk with Merlin (did I tell you we got another dog!!!?). I can't beleive I'll be FOURTEEN tomorrow. Oh well, gotta go.

[next entry]
Dear Diary, Well - I just found you under my bed. I'll be sixteen next week, and lots has happened! I grew my hair out! Have you ever thought about sunsets? The're so pretty, yet so specific. Anyway, I'll write more later. Bye!

[next entry]
Omigod! I just found this diary under my bed again! I really should be better about -- oops! Time for dinner! Write soon!

You get the idea. Though I suppose, with the actual expectation of audience (hi guys!) inherent in blog writing, neglect is a slightly greater sin. And it's not like I need to go fishing under my bed for blogger software (digression: remember disks? That came in boxes? Playing Kings Quest III back in the day when it took four disks to play, plus at least one to save your games on? Sigh, and time marches on).

In other news, omigod! I'll be twenty-eight this Saturday. Brian and I are going to see Camille Paglia read from her new book (Break Blow Burn: Camille Paglia reads forty-three of the worlds best poems) Friday night, followed by a late dinner at the Metro Cafe. On my actual birthday, Brian will be testing for his blue belt in jujitsu, so I'll probably just stay home & worry. And write, of course, since I have 25 pages due for workshop on Monday (between-semester break? ha!).

I'm also working on some graphic stuff I hope to post up in here in the near future. Watch this space.

Been a while

72-foot Buddha
Originally uploaded by Nora Sawyer.

I finally uploaded some of my Hong Kong Photos to flickr. Click the Buddha to see more.

In other news, I [heart] flickr. So easy to use, so fun, so free. God bless the internets. They live, I tell you.

Nel Mezzo

Alternate title: Sestinas: what can't they do?
Alternate alternate title: Sestinas: say less using more words than other people say with less.

In France they have drugs that improve memory
(I read an article about it at a time in my life
when I thought I’d carved a space in the wilderness
though I was as unsure of the path
as I was of anything). Anyway. The article described
miracles: sparse thickets of thought thickened into woods

But that was the problem really. I already had a wood:
a place bereft of reflection or of memory
(for those who walk unpleasant places do not describe
a path; these are not reflective joints of life)
a place absent even the memory of a path;
where all that is belongs to wilderness.

Wilderness
far from being just a wood
becomes an essential piece of any path
(path: a place within cohesive memory
that defines the whole of life;
that which edges describe)

And so: a line describes
an angle, and so a triangle is made. And out of wilderness
we make our life,
in amongst a wood
of shivers, thought and memory
and suddenly there becomes a clear way, a path.

(or I suppose it should be a path
though mine does not for sure describe
the way through brambles of memory
through the dark of the sleeping wilderness
in the thickness of the wood
or whatever. Life).

Midway along the journey of our life
I strayed, abandoning the rightful path
And found myself within a gloomy wood.
So hard it is in its aspect to describe
This savage harsh and fearsome wilderness,
That fear rekindles with the memory.

in the thickness of our life (strange as it is to describe),
there is (or perhaps could be) a path, a way inside and out of wilderness
into the wood, out of memory

Excuse me? We could use some resurrection over here.

It's rainy and chilly here in San Francisco, and I'm feeling rather homesick, like Easter and spring just aren't real without family around. We'd planned to go see the Sisters' easter celebration in the park today, but it was all chilly and we had trouble getting motivated, and then the rain pretty much settled things.

Oh well. There's always next Sunday.

Doppelganger Sestina

written in class, March 19, 2005

When I was eleven, I saw my double
(Double didgets granting second
sight) rising from the yellow grass, waiting
Under swaying pine trees. It was still.
A strange hiccup, one two three.... three
Calling me, my echo, a child

The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child
In his garden chanced upon his double
And Shelley (the poet) saw his, too and died three
Days later. So: an inauspicious second
That hearts and minds and thoughts lays still
(Grass blew against its stiff legs, waiting)

Outside the house it’s waiting
Inside I’m just a child
Under blankets lying still
Counting breaths, double double
Eyes clenched against the seconds
Listening as the clock strikes three

The clock strikes three
And outside the dark is waiting
Somewhere out there stands my second
Night’s never so long as when you’re a child
At every hour the darkness doubles
At every hour, unbearably still

Chimes and echoes breaking still
Counting breaths, one, two, three, three
When I was eleven I saw my double
Standing outside, just there - waiting
I was just a child

Not prone to seeing seconds
The eye is cones and rods and retinas, still
I was a literally minded child
Who knew prime numbers (1, 5, 7, 3)
Numbers for with no factors waiting
No other’s double

As a child I saw my 2nd, counting one, two, three, three

The night still, waiting

And I was just a child. Two ones, double.

Hang spring-cleaning!

Ahh. spring in San Francisco. The weather's been between 60 and 80 (steadily! With almost no bizarre and sudden turns) for almost a week now, the clouds in the sky are there purely for their aesthetic value, and woodland creatures all over the city are feeling the first stirrings of that thing called love.

But alas.

The apartment is filthy. My papers are a complete mess; I can't find half my school things half the time, and the other half of the time someone's asking me to move them so that we can eat dinner or find the sofa or some such nonsense. And to top it off, an overnight guest is expected at the end of the week. But the Mole in me just keeps looking outside and thinking, well, how jolly it would be to be idle.

Poetry at 2 AM

Usually a bad idea

Inferno V:85

Dido
In her flocked and tattered robes superlative
Hovers idly
Without encomium or fond remembrance
For whatever oily stain was left
On Carthage’s sea salt cliffs

Love cries ring out empty
The high wind
Mocking fire’s memory
With August procession
In the flickering dim.

Just a miiinute! I'm in my niiiiighty!

Eeep! Here Tricia's gone an linked to me, and I've nothing to say. I'm working on a collection of short stories (an early version of my thesis for the conclusion of the MA portion of my MA/MFA program), and spring has completely sprung, complete with sun & flowering trees and a return to sandals as daily footwear. It's hard for a girl to stay focused.

But blogging! Must! Continue!

So, what can i tell you about my little life? Brian and I went for several walks today, one of which ended with a sausage and a beer at Toronado's. They had something on tap called 'nogginbonker,' but I was afraid to try it.

And that, my friends, is all you're getting.

The Hits Just Keep On Coming

So, I get these moods. Sometimes, even though the sun is shining, birds are chirping, and small puppies frolic in the park, I'll start to feel a case of the ol' ennui. And even though everything is going swimmingly, even though spring is here, and Herr Brian is all a girl could want, and I'm in a program that satisfies my every creative desire, I crash.

I'll sit on the couch, sinking lower and lower into despair until there's nothing left of me save a tuft of hair poking out from underneath the beige cushions. And poor Brian, who's trying to work, gets interrupted every five minutes: "I'm sorry I'm like this. You shouldn't see this." and a minute later, ""Do you love me?"

I tell you, the man's a saint. An atheist, but a saint.

Anyway, I've been like this all week. And then there was class this weekend:

Saturday:

Morning class: I'm more subdued than normal, and when I do speak I stutter, and then giggle. I hate myself for seeming weak. The instructor announces a new structure for discussions, wherein we raise our hands and wait to be called on instead of just speaking up. I can't help but feel that this is an inderect rebuke to my normally effusive classs presence.

Afternoon class: Four times, I start to speak, only to be cut off mid sentence. Twice, I am cut off mid-sentence by a prospective student. No one else seems to notice or care, particularly the instructor, who I thought liked me.

After school: I stand talking to my fellow students. J, an older man with a sort of rough and tumble sense of humor, asks "where's Brian?" in a way that makes the woman next to him hit his arm and giggle. I'm self-conscious about being the only one who's boyfreidn meets her at school. Do other people think that's weird? J gives me a ride home, along with two other girls. Getting out of the car, I trip and almost fall. I'm the only one who laughs.

Sunday:

Morning, before school: I'm running late. The toilet clogs and must be delt with. I have no clean laundry, and end up wearing a shirt that is low cut and has a tendancy to ride up at the belly. I spend the whole day intermittently pulling the collar up and the bottom down.

Morning class: I arrive ten minutes late, at the tail end of an in-class writing exercise. It looks interesting, but I don't get a chance to find out exactly what it was. During class, I work hard to make constructive comments about other's writing that I didn't particuarly enjoy, but that doesn't seem to be garnering much response. When we discuss a piece I really loved, my comments seem redundant and I have trouble articulating my thoughts.

During class break, I go outside and stand in the sun. No one esle from my class is around, except for A, a tough-seeming, pretty girl from the midwest who is sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette. I think about sharing with her my discomfort with my overly-revealing shirt, but go inside instead.

When it comes time to discuss my piece, comments are generally favorable. David, an older man who's work I enjoy, ways "Nora really has what I think makes a good writer: whe can write a good sentence." I am genuinely touched.

After class, I get back people's written responses to my piece, a work of fiction that combines first-person narrative and fragments of the protagonist's academic work. The crit from A reads as follows:

- Don't give a fuck
- If you're an academic "at university" then fucking stay there
- you're no writer if this is your kick
- this shit is hard to understand BECAUSE it has such a specific audience! We are not your audience! Academic Journals about Greek/Latin philosophy and mythology are.

then, on an interior page of the story:

It's been done - interpret something new - something folks give a fuck-in-the-hole-of a running donut ABOUT.

I go to lunch, and manage to giggle over beer and sushi with some of my classmates. We discuss (humerously) the feasability of ordering ritalin over the internet using scholarship funds.

Afternoon class: Memoir and Testimony. during the in-class writing exercises, I can hardly get myself to write. My voice seems false. Sentences don't come. Tears are pricking at my eyes. I want to go home and go to bed, but doubt my energy could even take me that far.

Did the commenter get that the piece was a work of fiction? Is my voice too obscure? Surreptitiously, I flip through the other comments, but all I see are negatives: beautiful writing, but..., the narrative sections aren't as vivid as the other bits..., Very few love notes this time. As usual, however, I'm impressed...

I feel something akin to suicidal. I want to remove myself from the picture. Deperately, I want to be gone.

Class ends. I see Brian, Chris and Ruben across the street. Chris is anxious to make dinner, which means he's anxious to plan a dinner that I'll end up cooking. They ask about class. I change the subject.

Home: I'm grouchy and unreasonable. I keep going to the bedroom to cry. Chris makes steak, I make salad. Everyone seems a bit nervous. I'm acting like the crazy head of a disfunctional family.

Oof. Anyway. Today, Tuesday, I'm meeting with my instructor to discuss my piece and the crits. I feel a bit silly, like I've been up all night staring in horror at a hooded figure lurking by the closet door, only to realize with the creeping dawn that I've been on guard against my own bathrobe.

I mean, all told, its not that bad, is it?