march, 2001

Thursday, March 1, 2001, 11:59 PM

Missed Dip again. At midnight I was drinking an excellent White Russian (belorussian?) in Paces, made by a girl in a velvet tank top and a mirrored necklace, and feeling munificent as i paid for Alana's ice cream with the remainder of the afternoon profits. Total income for the day was $5 from tutoring, two new pairs of socks (which is four new socks! four days of new cotton-clad happiness!), a big sundae for alana & Joel-O, $7 which I found in my laundry, and a leftover lime. I think I took it from Paces. Not bad for an afternoon and evening.

Tuesday afternoon i was procrastinating, as usual, on the couch in the mini-lounge by the freight piano elevator in Lang, and talking to Dan Blim. (Dan is master of the awful pun--when Daniel was talking shit about moveable do, insisting, "mi is always mi!", dan responds, "except when you wake up and you're someone else." Two: today he proposed a music theory breakfast group: Bagels and Plagals. Oh my.) Dan had an extra ticket to the Curtis orchestra concert that night. As it turned out, there were several. Claire was going with Gabe already, so as not to be thirdwheelish (which would have been inevitable), I found a second boy in a suit (hellzyeah), and the four of us (claire holds up two fists, worlds--smash, she mimes) sat in ecstasy through mahler's last finished symphony. if I ever become a composer, remind me to call a few of my symhponies song cycles as I get closer to 10. Happens to everybody, and even the ineffable, indelible, indefatigable mahler (tastes as good and better as my gateau orgasmique--i still have to make that for you) succumbed. xando's afterwards and the aztec decorations on the smores (prettier than sterno, but it) was ridiculous. no, there is no fourteenth month. i accomplished five pages of reading at paces.

Tutored yesterday afternoon. I started at my tutee's forehead for a good hour, wondering what the fuck that smudge was. Finally, recalling my Lutheran upbringing, I remembered that we might be somewhere near the season of Lent, and recalling also that it was Wednesday, I took at stab at it: "Ash Wednesday?" --yes, it was. They got a demerit if they wiped them off. Five demerits and you had to go to detention on Saturday. (She was also wearing a uniform.)--And yet, for all the discipline and indoctrination (the 8th period of the day was "theology," a.k.a. Sunday School but every day of the week -- shit, i dropped out even when it was only once a week, as soon as I figured out what they were trying to tell me I believed)--for all this stricture, they can't effectively teach algebra to ninth graders. The more kids I encounter through this place who just have failed to grasp the basic concepts, the more I'm convinced it's not their fault--sure, they're not A+ students, but there's something intelligent in them--but the teachers'. How hard can it be to take the five extra minutes it would take to explain why you substitute this, why the y-intercept is where it is, what the fuck a slope is (rise over run, and what fractions really mean)? --I shouldn't complain, capitalist me (oink)--after all, I get paid $12 an hour to un-fuck what The System has fucked, to smooth over a corner of the wrinkles that would have taken one pass of the iron but were just thrown in the proverbial dirty laundry. (And yes, i realize that the use of the word "proveribal" in that past sentence does not excuse the awful metaphor, but you're not here for poetry, are you.)

there for poetry was the company assembled at paces last night, however, there for Small Craft Warnings' slam. Peter was disdainful and left to go eat at a diner, but I stayed and the aforementioned drinks (and the lime) were free. Dan asked me this morning what i was doing sitting on the pavement outside of Sproul last night. Um ...

I woke up this morning, not yet awake and with paintings tiled across the background of my field of vision (first it was red, rothko-like, then i think a skyscape), and i knew that there was music on my back. Scores. But of what i couldn't possibly remember. Must be Schubert, i quickly realized. Schubert was on my back. but (consciousness started to kick in), my back couldn't possibly have music on it ... it was just empty staves. which was the most startling revelation i've had in a while. there are empty staves on my back, running over the shoulderblades, around the spine, and across. a full manuscript page down over the small, as far as i know. but then Franz Schubert Patrick started drawing music in blood on the empty lines. (I much prefer to have my back filled with schubert.)

we talked about Liszt in theory, for which i was actually five minutes late.

People said i looked preppy today because i was wearing Sarah Kate's turtleneck. I guess I did. We agreed to have a day in which we each dress each other up, no objections allowed. like last year when my old roommate jennifer decided to be me for about thirty seconds.

Listening to Tori Amos with Ross in the background, singing harmonies. I think i want to live in the Barn with him and Ben Galynker (too bad the latter'll have to be a joint tenant with me, as we'll be abroad different semesters). We'd need two other tenants, but that oughtn't to be much of a problem. cookies now, or ramen or pierogies, as i encounter laurel or myself or kasia (respectively).

Saturday, March 3, 2001, 1:50 PM

yeah ... like, take the purely-hypothetical situation in which you sleep through orchestra for the second week in a row (this is VERY atypical), arrange to meet your roommate in Philly afterwards, and then wake up at twelve-thirty, realize she's already in the city and you have no way of contacting her until she thinks to call (which she did around one). Rrrrrrrrraaawr. And i even went to bed early last night! Left the stupid movie we were watching (I'd seen it before, anyhow) and went to sleep! What does my body want from me?

Apparently it wants a full week of real sleep. Well, it'll get that over spring break, but not before. Before then I have to write my sophomore paper, get this Vienna application off, and do all the pre-break work. This is not apathy like it was last semester. This is somehow academic apathy. And it's so hard to surmmount. Is this something inherent about sophomore year? Wise fools indeed.

There are certainly diversions, however. Screw. Last year Screw was kind of dumb in a lot of respects. Olivia screwed me (my roommate didn't feel like going and didn't feel like screwing me), and managed to get someone who could have worked had we been half a degree each closer in another direction. As it was, it was like when the girl i was tutoring in algebra a few days ago proved that 0 = 8, and that the two lines never intersected. "No solution," she wrote, recognizing the situation. Perry and I had fun, certainly, but it was not quite the type of fun it could have been if we had been, say, able to talk to each other. But this year, ha. I've been lied to--lied to!--kept in the dark, mislead, lied to! I'm a little bitter about this. I'm also a little bitter about the fact that I was half-naked in Sharples yesterday, writhing to Alan Hovhaness.

The other day in orchestra, Daniel was describing the scene that we were playing in Scheherezade: "it's a big party, women are belly-dancing on the tables ... actually, that's what some of you might have to do Saturday for screw!" The orchestra laughed but I turned to Phil, sitting next to me, and said, "actually, I think I might have to do just that ..." He grins in Phil-fashion, and agrees, "yup." Shit. So, yesterday, while I had on more than scarves, I was clad as Salomé, dancing to Alan Hovhaness' The Rubaiyat, while Chris Gall (Herod) watched. After the entire fucking Big Room of Sharples was watching for a minute or so ("take it off!"), he raised his voice, and said, "I am well pleased. You may have anything you like, up to half my kingdom." I had to ask for the head of John the Baptist. In came John the baptist, clad in a loincloth and with his head on a platter, ketchup ("I hate ketchup") for blood. I knew it had to be Martin the minute Laurel initially went up to Gabe upon arrival and said, "she's here," but it was still ridiculous that everyone had been able to keep this from me for a week or two.

He took my yellow and gold moroccan scarf, and was wearing it around last night. I love that he loves yellow.

In researching the background of my screw, i found some fabulous paintings. One of these Moreaux (Moreaus?) is the background today, but another of his deserves mention, as does a smaller one I ran across. Never heard of this guy before. Also, a Stuck rendition of Salomé dancing for Herod (I had on a few more clothes than that).

More later, perhaps. I'm off to the women's self-defense workshop (shit i wouldn't have believed going down here), then to Sharples to watch the rest of the world get screwed. Full orange tonight; a vodka martini with two olives (stirred).

Sunday, March 4, 2001, 7:15 PM

Wednesday, March 7, 2001, 12:56 PM

Things are alternately complex and simple. (it tends to happen this way.) I wrote my essays for my Vienna program last night. Such bullshit questions--essentially, why do you want to go on this program; why are you good for it; how will you contribute to the college community upon your return; &c. i started spewing parallel-structured phrases and using neat rhetorical devices until i realized that i could actually make sense. Nadav bitched at me over AIM the other day for not applying to a "challenging" program--not going to Ecuador, not sleeping on mats in the middle of the desert, not going to South Africa, India, and Brazil, not going to Japan to study Buddhism ... suck it. If I did everything I wanted to in every context I would have to redefine some laws which, up until now, have proved immutable. (However, if every night is indeed Friday night, to be followed by fridays except once a week when it's saturday, this might work ...) I ran into Anna Woodiwiss in Kohlberg today--chai and distractions from midterm studying--and while the discussion wasn't quite meta (time like a broken CD player, says laurel), I'm amazed that, having gone abroad, she's considering adding a course major to her already-Honors load. (It felt so good to circle the "NO" for honors on my Ling sophomore paper form!) Co-pres of student council, directed the Vagina Monologues last year, Feminist Majority, sings even!--and this is the first semester in twelve years when i haven't been singing! what do i do now but wish i were fischer-dieskau in the shower--die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz--somehow she's the one should be in heels and leather, whipping time back into its place. I don't understand. I honestly don't, and it's so frustrating.

also frustrating (but less so than usually when it comes up) is gender. the dichotomy is usually so good--but when i don't know how to play pool, when i could fuck up a machine running linux in a few strokes, when i drive a sedate sixty, am behind on my jazz (though i could give you a harmonic analysis), and don't know dominoes, where am i but back in my girl box. Fuck it. From one angle i'm nowhere near in; from the other all i can do is bat my eyelashes and draw with blue crayons on my face (to match blue turtleneck).

Need to reinstall some OS soon. Windows likely. Linux intriguing but i need to control it myself ... i can't decide if it's just a learning curve or will reinforce my goddamned gender issues.

On the good side--i'm listening to Alan Menken's (Disney) Aladdin--i haven't ever consciously--it's great orchestration. well-written. i'm impressed. package yesterday from mi madre--seven bagels forever poppyseed bagels and a big green bathrobe. I tutor this afternoon. Ate dinner with eve, martin, and cyndi last night, and toasted to never going back to sharples. (jenny, it's going to be ramen soon.) photos come back today. florida in three days (my panacea after which everything will fall into place). Lunch and shower.

Thursday, March 8, 2001

Sunday, March 11, 2001, 3:07 PM

listening to the tape--"a lark"--ross made for Alyssa right before break; she writing essays to go study buddhism in japan; me poking on this dinosaur. i know NO pop music. i don't understand how someone like Ross can make a tape, with his huge knowledge of the genre (or genreS, or however much is encompassed in "non-classical" which i frequently lump under the term "pop"--forgive me, Notbach). it's a great tape, especially, the track "Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs (reduced)."

the few days before leaving (we flew into Tally around 4:30 yesterday, followed by acquaintences and pizza), were foodful and wonderful. Thursday night a small dinner with Eve and Cyndi turned a little larger and impromptually became wonderful, even with five spilled eggs, with the addition of Jenny, Martin, and Alyssa. I'd made fresh bread (mom, your french bread recipe is so simple and so wonderful--i've been sticking a little oregano in it)--cooked to perfection, beautifully steaming when you broke it in two, and complemented by laurel's rosemary-garlic olive oil, it itself was perfection. eve and i were pleased. broccoli(stems)-rice-feta dish got some added ingredients when jenny's omelet fell through, or rather, down, and the garlic and red peppers needed a home. eve brought white wine and we had oreos for dessert. (These meals, i realize, are not all that exciting to read about, but hot damn (said alyssa's friend matt, in reference to something entirely different) are they fun to make and eat. I and my habit of ending sentences with prepositions must be borne with.) Eve, Martin, and I walked across the new grass to Tarble, and eve and i back for the gameroom key, so we could play pool. Eve and I suck but i love the geometry and i hope to find the time (and the justification) to learn this game in the rest of the semester. It's (forgive me the comparison) Snood, but cooler, and in three dimensions. (Mom, that might be a way to wean yourself--take up pool.) A frosh named Boris challenged me, and I almost beat him-i seem to have this problem with sinking the 8-ball after i've gotten everything else in its pocket. Duffy had a shindig in Old Club, music this time, so I went and got down on the dance floor with a couple music majors. I love the way we boogie. So ridiculous, but if you're majoring in it you're at least guaranteed able to hold a beat. Friday was lovely in that nothing (except a new yellow toothbrush) was accomplished before 2 PM. That really needs to happen more often. More fresh bread in the evening, and quite possibly the best culinary experience the kitchen of Lodge Deux has ever experienced: A salad, greens picked out by Gabe, salad dressing made by Jenny from her mom's recipe; pasta (linguini) and pesto from two fresh basil plants which the guy behind the produce counter at Genuardi's handed me when I asksed for a little for jenny's dressing (scratch the kugel--this fresh basil is begging for garlic and parmesan!); chocolate mousse with chocolate bitterer than it should have been and Gabe's Grand Marnier (no cognac on campus--i think i would be afriad if someone had had any). We (or at least I) sat and moaned through the entire meal. This was all followed by a viewing of Labyrinth, which i had never seen before, and with which Martin recited every word. Incredible (cool movie, too).

Now we have alana price and martin krafft living in the lodge while we're gone. I'm so very happy about that--two people, so ridiculously different, who both occpy distinct places in my heart. In my house!

heh ... i'm excited to meet alyssa's friends. She's just talking on the phone to one of them. "Hey ... it's alyssa ... i'm home. and guess who's here? Nori. yeah ... nori ... notori ..." :-) We're going to chill at her friend Dave's house tonight, i think.

i need to repaint my nails. the polish has gone so far that its edges, now at the center of my nails, catches on my hair when i wash it. fuschia to match my bikini? yes, with pink flowers on it, i think. i'm feeling lovely and female in this sunlight. and not just here in tallahassee--it's been this past two weeks. my skin is happy. I smile more than i feel like i should, grinning off into space and then laughing at myselfconsciously. wearing my hair down more than i ever have. spring is in the air but that's not the quarter of it. que je suis heureuse. (alyssa wrote on my hand today when i was reading one of the best emails i've ever gotten: "SMITTEN x10⁶". (She wrote on hers, "smitten x10³".))

Is the flower smell from through the screen wisteria? or does it just sound like it should be?

"It's a different lizard." --me (There have been three lizards in the same spot on the wall outside the window now: one brown, one green, and one black.)
"It just changed color." --alyssa
"I thought that was only chameleons. ... What's a chameleon?"
"Bigger."
"Karmic?"
"Only if you're 80's pop rock."

Going to Wal-Mart now to pick up the requisite pink nail polish (i happen to have fuschia (also orange) on me). Driving. Hair will be down and in the wind. Que je suis heureuse.

Tuesday, March 13, 2001, 2:35 PM

Thursday, March 15, 2001, 5:24 PM

Twenty years of peeling, i lamented to gabe, martin, and alyssa in one of the ridiculous exchanges of email that have been circulating between the robot lab and tallahassee, florida, in the past two days--twenty years of peeling and i still haven't learn to bring the sunscreen, i still haven't learned that even though there may be clouds out, you can still burn.

Yesterday the sun thought it would remind me of that obnoxious fact. Alyssa and I spent the afternoon driving down to Port St. Joe, two and a half hours southwest of tallahassee, where the Ultimate team was chilling and practicing. Brought cupcakes to laurel et al.; she was very happy. were coöpted into making dinner (i happily agreed--there's a reason i voluntarily brought my cookbook down here with me), and, as the blister on my knuckle will attest, i chopped approximately eighteen onions and three heads of garlic. black bean tortillas (enchiladas? quesadillas?) fed the multitudes, we had a corona each, and alyssa and i stepped over the driftwood anchored in the sand along the shore, half-overwhelmed by the thousands of new stars come out of the usual philadelphia smog to look at us. two (one each) fell (we wished on them). The three of us slept in a tent on the sand, the water whooshing back and forth about 20 ft away, depending on the tide. in the morning nori and i prostrated ourselves on the sand, were deceived by the cloudy sky and brisk wind, and managed to cook ourselves bright pink. the back of my calves and the left half of my face got the worst of it; nori's calves and entire back are pretty toasted. we came back, julia trippel in the back seat, and after showering painfully, i put on the least and swishiest amount of clothing i could find (my pinkish dress), trying not to move, and we bought aloe and went over chez caitlin and diane for dinnerish things.

i am so tired. it's not quite sun-poisoning, not quite the degree of lobster i was in japan three summers ago when mackenzie didn't successfully slather my back with anti-sun, so in additions to the lacerations on my feet i received from the rocks (jet-skiing required we be away from groomed beaches), i couldn't think straight for several days--nana chose the chinese food for me that evening and i fell asleep, coma-like, on my bean pillow and tatami mats oblivious to the antics of my temporary brothers Yuusuke and Ryousuke. now i'm just sleepy. and Pinker, even though he has coherent prose, is soporific. i want to be a giant in my field someday. not famous, just a giant. that or a mezzo-soprano.

lots of new music, pretty equally from ross and martin. the former's tape has been on whenever there's a stereo, and i have the björk and kid a i burned from him a few months ago on now; tangerine dream, ferry corsten, and jean-michel from the latter. so far my favorite part about the tangerine dream is the Polish at the beginning (dobrý veczer, or however the fuck you spell it, the emcee says)--it's nice, it's well-done, but it's more down-tempo than i've grown to like in that genre, it's not particularly melodically inventive, it hangs around c minor the entire CD (not that that's necessarily a bad thing, just that it has to be done exceptionally well to be done at all) ... a few more listens. after dinner. sleepy and hungry, in this nice floridian afternoon sunlight and breeze through the screen. alyssa and i are going to go to the video place tonight, and she's going to fill in some holes in my movie vocabulary.

I have three stories left of Salinger's Nine.

Saturday, March 17, 2001, 3:28 PM

i talk too much. should be more concise, express thoughts neatly in incisive sentences instead of quasiproustian paragraphs. (my sophomore paper is about three times the suggested length.) (gabe still says joyce has me beat, although my dad equated my prose with the latter's in a recent email complaining of illegibility.) could just cook, express things through quiches and flourless chocolate cake.

(bah, art's not a vehicle, just a good something to eat and make other people moan with fresh bread and oregano. what's the logical twenty-first century continuation of bruschetta?)

like juliette binoche in chocolat (last night a movie; spring break and minimal clothing (for the pain and the weather) is lovely). (dame judi dench is madame delord, my high-school french prof, insisting the reine de saba was orgasmique.) nipples of venus as in amadeus--give me the requiem with that chocolate anytime, and i'll give you kubrick with strauss and zarathustra accompained by mousse à la grand marnier--; raw cacao with chili powder and late shostakovich; chocolat chaud like i had it jet-lagged outside the tour eiffel in paris two months ago, or right outside the comédie française with my flustered mother eating half a cheese sandwich (the rest consumed while walking on the reflections of the glass pyramid in the triangular pools of the louvre that evening).

give me the chocolate (i'll make it myself) and a river rat, as alyssa called him--give me rusted root who says, all i need is food and creative love. (give me laurel to protest who gets to quote it.)

(give me a thesis.)
give me one more day.

Thursday, March 22, 2001, ~11:00 PM

i realize that some of my beef with martin is this cognitive science stuff--he [appears to have] such a complete grasp of it, which is fucking astounding at the undergraduate level, and i wish i could do the mathy and computer bits more. Or rather, i don't wish i could, i wish i was more interested in them. because they feed so directly into what is fascinating about all this ... which isn't, i guess, what i want to do, either here or with my life ... which might mean academia in general can suck it. the only really good thing about academia (perhaps not only, but it's the one thing to recommend it that comes to mind) is the people it involves. the ivory tower attracts some cool [peeps / chaps / lads] cats (thanks but no thanks on the terminology)--it's like Daniel was saying tonight in orchestra. "I was afraid that this Mozart [flute concerto] was going to be a disaster," he confessed after the first reading of it tonight. "I did a Mozart piano concerto with a Juilliard chamber orchestra a year or so back, and they didn't understand the style at all." Louisa (ever garrulous--oh my god, she's a fucking riot) chimes in: "yeah, they get this big cheeseburger sound, and that's it!" We all laughed at her choice of similes but it was pretty accurate--pressing the bow almost through the string, the pathos-laden, romantic, violinist or cellist virtuosic, vibrato-rich sound (to which violists i think are sometimes the most susceptible--once they figure out what their instruments can do, they refuse to ever play a brush stroke or lift the goddamn bow off the string ever again). Daniel continued: "perhaps it's because you've all played more chamber music ..." [i looked around--of the sixteen of us strings present, eight of us had comprised the two quartets currently and in semesters past] "... but no, you know what it is? You're smarter." He said resolutely. And again we laughed at him but it was that swarthmore, ha-ha-i'm-better-than-harvard laugh, semi-self-consciously but with a we-all-know-it's-true component. I believe it though. Martin occasionaly sighs (portentously) and says he wishes he'd gone to Berkeley to study drums. I wish i'd gone to Oberlin or NEC or wherever to study viola. But the instant i think this enough to vocalise it, Olivia reminds me that we're so much better off here, with people who can not only whip out a Kreuzter etude at age thirteen but can analyze it, talk about it, and talk about other things to boot. Who can do cognitive science. Fucked as i am time-wise here (i hate to bust your bubble, Martin, but there ain't 48 hours in *my* day--i know, because i've tried operating like that, and without fail it has landed me in the health center), I love it, and love the people i encounter here, and i honestly think I'd hate juilliard. "Big cheeseburger sound," said Louisa, who transferred this year from Manhattan School of Music. i may not have hit all the notes tonight but damn, i played Mozart.

And it was so good to play mozart tonight. I spent half the rehearsal (tonight was the flute concerto and Scheherezade, leaya on the masterful title role solo violin) inhaling the smell of my viola. i don't know what specifically comprises that unique smell. it's individual, like skin. The viola i had in ninth and tenth grade didn't smell like this one does. (Julie wants me to name my instruments. Hers was Orlando, and now is Vega--i hate the idea of assigning a gender to them, and besides, the only thing i've named in years is my (now-defunct) car. My stuffed animals don't have names. Bear. (Sheep.) Pets i have in the future will likely be just Dog. If i ever have a child (no, alexis, you're going to do this whole maternity thing), it might be just Kid until it can think of its own name.) Other peoples' violas don't smell the same, even from the same shop. I've had my baby--a William H. Lee, from Chicago--since it was born, in 1997. Not too mature but it's a deep throaty one, with hips and a sonorant C-string. i think i could really make it speak if i could ever take the shoulder rest off. But these smells. Everything important in my life recently has become strongly associated with a good smell. Fresh bread. Skin. My viola. Viola (which sounds like too much of a proper noun; it needs an article, really) smells of Beethoven, of Mills concert hall, of Morphy (the small wooden one off to the right as you entered Humanities), of Mozart for a grad student's recital two years ago, of endless Saturday mornings of first WYSO, then PYO, of the last chair of the viola section of the UW-Madison Symphony Orchestra, of so much Debussy, of string quartets extensive ... especially string quartets. I miss that i'm not doing any chamber music this semester. Hopefully that will come with Vienna (knock on wood, all ye superstitious). I'm playing now--have been all semester--but it's hard to keep it all in balance, the people, the smells, the music, the academics, the rehearsals, the sleep--and the playing has been PYO rehearsals, Scheherezade with the swat orchestra, the like. Now i'm doing the Bach B-minor mass next week, and a 2001 gig the week after (i think). Playing with the big kids again. Igor and his Mahler-loving grin during the concertmaster solos in the development of the first movement, fourth symphony. (Sonata form. So amazing, you bastard. I wish I could compose (and that's only because I have to, right now).) I've always wondered where the adults lost their sense of wonder along the way. Why did my stand partner in Shostakovich 14 not moan and why did her eyes not step up their brilliance when the soprano and bass sang in duet for the first time in the last movement? Where does the mystery go? I've hoped to whatever fucking god there is that it's not like finding out how you put salt in the salt cellar, that once you realize that the bottom comes off the magic goes away. I hope it's not a remnant of childhood in me. Because, if it is, it will be the hardest thing to keep. I think i can--talking with Alyssa, driving home from Little Italy in the tallahassee rain last week, about religion--there's a hidden layer (between the input and the output nodes, i suppose) of something only Neitzche really speaks about, that religion speaks to in a plurality (maybe not here, but in the world proper) of people. Secondary dominants in Mozart's flute concerto (he hated the instrument; i did too until I met Olivia) speak to that in me. MahlerShostakovichBeethovenDebussyBartokBach speak to that in me. Given two wishes in life, one would be to never lose that hidden layer, for my eyes to always reflect the luminescence of this music.

On an unrelated note: The plans to live in the Barn next year, saving myself and my parents a shitload (an assload? a satisfactory definition still has not been reached) of money, and getting off the goddess-awful meal plan, and inserting three thousand subordinate clauses into the middle of a sentence between the noun phrase and the verb phrase, as if to belligerently prove the principle of generative grammar and almost as if purpoesly obfuscating the sentence, almost fell through. (Shit but I amuse myself. I'm almost as bad as Alyssa. :-) (Who, by the way, is adorable with Ross.) Yeah. Ben, who was going to be my joint-tenant, backed out, needing to live on campus. It's understandable. You do what you gotta do, and it sucks that both times i've used that phrase tonight the circumstances have decidedly not been in my favor. Fuck it. Ross and Joel-O are still in, and I think we've got Esther and Rebecca on board. That balances out the gender, and even though i'll have to learn how to cook vegan, I think that can be arranged. I'm excited.

On a moderatley related note--I love the dinner parties that have grown out of the lodge this year, and the fresh bread that's been a recent installment. I don't know what possessed me, but somehow page 109 in Oda a la Cocina just called to me (my mom's french bread recipe), and i started throwing in oregano, and then last night, rosemary and garlic. Fresh, both. So good.

I'm going to convert to Linux in a week and some. It's contingent on a thesis. [I should annotate my journal just for myself--i think if i read this in ten years, half the time i won't have any idea what the fuck i'm talking about. the stuff i disguise for my mother and other parties who may as well stay in the dark will also be completley obscure to me.] The next item on my new to-do list (after having my hard drive filled with tangerine dream) is "convert to Linux," directly followed by "console Laurel when she has a crisis about my conversion to Linux." Fuck, but i like text.

Speaking of which--Somewhere in the course of the evening, while my thoughts and stream of consciousness were gradually beginning to revisit my week-vapid brain , I decided i had to have a paragraph about the word "fuck" in today's entry. Here, then, for whatever daemon in me fiended that:

Fuck, fuck like i screamed when i couldn't find the laundry detergent--either fucking box--in the ldoge today; fuck like ross iterated and fuck like the band name of the CD he subsequently showed me; fuck like i screamed at the mouse i spotted scurrying frantically over the green and yellow squares on my fucking floor this evening (and then into its fucking hole at the baseboard between my room and the kitchen), FUCK.

I think I'll end with these:

itinerant, adj.

Traveling from place to place, especially to perform work or a duty: an itinerant judge; itinerant labor.

One who travels from place to place.

1. Of, relating to, or characterized by conjecture; conjectural.
2. Statistics.
a. Involving or containing a random variable or variables: stochastic calculus.
b. Involving chance or probability: a stochastic simulation.

Sunday, March 25, 2001, 27:43 AM

there's pumpkin pie on the table and three wine glasses full of water. jamie rowen sits on a pillow eating hot pie and wonders at the stick of european chewing gum. it likely fell out of a european pocket recently.

fabulous weekend. i think. i'm too tired to remember it all. i believe i had a lot of food in it, and that eve cooked some of it, making japanese pancakes and couscous while wearing a white muslin dress, that someone smoked a black clove at paces, that martin tried on eve's dress later, that i played pool with danny and justin while the latter was in a skirt (jerome at the next table dressed to the nines in blue velveteen and a wig), teaching kellam to walk with his hips and eve without them ... all i remember right now is three words at a time. Lush. Pool. Novel. might have been saturday night. Not quite the Sager of last year, even with Jamie accidentally visiting, but i think that's a good thing. pool all during the party (i people-watched from behind the cue ball) was just chill enough for me. borrowed eve's shirt. i should play more pool. become a shark.

n0r1: (3:40 AM) you stilll up? Lauren Tobias: (3:44 AM) oh yeah, baby -- and kickin'! yeeeeeeeehaaaaawwww!!!!! Lauren Tobias: (3:45 AM) yeah, i'm awake Lauren Tobias: (3:45 AM) you? n0r1: (3:45 AM) sounds like a party :-) n0r1: (3:45 AM) flagging. n0r1: (3:45 AM) here's what i need,, unless i already have it: Lauren Tobias: (3:45 AM) i just chugged some Mountain Dew. My DAC is .12% right now n0r1: (3:45 AM) i need a comparison between the runs with the 3 different types of phonemic representation: book, newphone1, and newphone2, with breakdowns into types of irregulars and totals &c. Lauren Tobias: (3:47 AM) Sorry, I guess that stands for Dew Alcohol Content. Which doesn't make tooo much sense, though....

-- oh, i remember baskin-robbins ice cream, ripping his orange shirt and then going to jo-ann fabrics to buy the matching thread to mend it, and buttons for good measure, aaron driving, then chocolate chip cookie dough the highlight of my afternoon -- i remember ein deutsches requiem appallingly in english that morning in a church -- i remember becky and luke talking -- i remember eve mocking my rash; nat'n mocking my mayonnaise -- i remember aaron going back for the pan i bought and left at genuardi's so my bread could be perfect --

Lauren Tobias: (3:49 AM) Well, I guess that means you want ME to do the analysis... n0r1: (3:49 AM) i gotta ask you n0r1: (3:49 AM) i'm sorry n0r1: (3:53 AM) can you? pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease? n0r1: (3:53 AM) i might make you cookies and bring them to you Lauren Tobias: (3:54 AM) I ate so many fucking oreos today. I don't need any cookies. n0r1: (3:54 AM) thanks for hte cheesecake, btw, it was fabulous n0r1: (3:54 AM) i want your recipe and a springform pan Lauren Tobias: (3:56 AM) Recipe's off the internet. Do a google search for something like "Chocolate raspberry cheesecake", and the correct recipe is the one requiring 18 cookies and 4 packages of cream cheese. n0r1: (3:56 AM) 4 packages????? n0r1: (3:56 AM) wow Lauren Tobias: (3:57 AM) yeah, if you eat the entire cake, you die

i found a cache of limerence. or rather, present aspect, i have found. now i am going to it, leaving the rest of this data analysis to the morning. i wish i understood this better. i wish i had time to play mozart, bach b minor mass (which drew me down the hall in parrish this afternoon to mari's room), modern music with 2001, all of which i'm doing, and to learn about this fully. i wish i had time to integrate it all. it would be truly surprising if sound were not capable of suggesting colour, if colours could not give the idea of the melody, if sound and colour were not adequate to express ideas. years to put it all into a thesis; i don't know how you're trying in four.

three words: atem. limerence. sleep.

Wednesday, March 28, 2001, 5:56 PM

scrap the ling major. (i have yet to tell them this.) push through some UW credit (greek, french lit, ling), take artificial intelligence, psycholinguistics, write a thesis. breadth instead of monomaniacy. some worth to this academia bullshit. maybe, says this tiny destructive all-encompassing synaesthetic voice in my head that's been keening for years, maybe, write a thesis from not only mahler to trance but on to chomsky and elman. ambient psycholinguistic connectionism: a postmodern account of systems of language.

ontology is recapitulating phylogeny right now in my head, or perhaps it's in that hidden layer between the voices of a bach fugue where my hot buttered soul lives (in the barn next year with ross, apparently)--just as my fins disappeared in the womb, i've gone through palestrina's counterpoint lessons in music eleven and from mona, through beethven and eroica, and on to romanticism now in fourteen, at which point, stepping in perfectly on cue (or rather, presciently timing a joint in the sun lab one night), enter the ambient century: from mahler to trance and martin, filling me with electronica and logical continations. and continuations. i'm not sure i believe it yet--it's hard to tell what i believe; depends on whom it affects and how, and what it might mean in the future (the Third Viennese School?)--and M. Electronica might not convince me, but ultimately if i scream perhaps we can sample it and call it Ambience? i'm still reading, but i might be falling. how do you tell what is [music] and what isn't? ...