new edition of red skies now completely up, including my spring mix cd for 2007 and an article i wrote about the crane wife.

"'spring opening up,' he said, 'and nobody in this house so much as putting down a line of poetry.'"

-- jessamyn west, the friendly persuasion

- ghostbusters ii
- pirates of the caribbean
- the matrix revolutions
- stargate
- shrek (according to kayleigh)
- the incredibles
- kill bill

recap of today:

this morning i was tipped a quarter for telling a good joke about orgies after improv shows and how they couldn't be planned for. i exited on a high note. then i came back and it sort of ruined it.

"i'm german, so we just play with revolvers."

-- guy in french class

i was supposed spend the evening writing an essay for philosophy and finishing my new music article, as well as studying for english lit. the first two things got done, but somewhere between talking about evil ducks, bubble rooms (with good cake), and salman rushdie with ashley and claire and really not wanting to subject myself to more alexander pope trauma i got lost and gave up after about ten minutes and continued to re-read 1984. within about twenty pages my eyes were getting tired so i spent the next hour or so sprawled out on the bed listening to madonna on my ipod.

march ends next week. how odd.

mustn't imagine that there will be any days like yesterday for a while, march is truly the cruelest month and the weather will disappoint, but when we're together there are always lovely breezes. keep an eye on that, it may be important.

so we got our taste of spring and i drove home in the warm night listening to saturday looks good to me like a certain august night last year. it felt good; easily the best day of spring break, a spring break that may be the last time i'm at home for a week in the foreseeable future. as mary said, we're at that age. i need to get into the idea of moving up and moving out, getting employed and getting out there, spending a summer away but not in the way i'd originally intended. my creative writing professor, a published novelist, spotted us in methuen and went out of his way to tell me the story i read last friday was good. kayleigh says i need the ego boost; to become convinced that people actually care about what i have to say being the goal. maybe i'm on the way.

tonight as it got dark and colder i kept my window open because it won't be warm again before i head back to salem on sunday. i kept my lights off (i suppose I'm more wary now after knowing how lit up this room is at night, the only place on the street), enjoying the last of light and listening to 'evening falls,' recalling a conversation about relationships from before break: 'why can't i just marry enya and be done with all of this forever?'

it was warm enough last night to stand outside comfortably in the empty streets around my house at two in the morning. my window was the only one in the neighbourhood with a light on, as i imagine it often is. when i was going to bed an hour or so later, it was probably the only room in the region where "san diego zoo" by the 6ths could be heard playing over and over again at that or any hour.

i was out there walking up and down the closest streets and hills of my childhood while talking with lizzie on the phone about my future-- hers too, living together is going to entwine them somewhat. i could talk about the street and the significance of walking up and down it and standing on the rocks near the flagpole and feeling like christine on a significantly warmer june night coming up on a year ago. wondering about the houses around and their lives, then today's suburban bitching and helicopters in the sky searching for a body in the river, fifty minutes or so of conversation between patty, myself, and the guy from next door, reminiscent again of last summer. he said his security lights were going off in the early morning and i would have been walking by then but not at the hour he said and not on the right side of his house. the figure i must have been out there, trying to give advice on things i can't comprehend and dispensing motivational platitudes. i looked up at my own window and expected to see myself there-- i've spent so much time in there, i must have left something behind.

conversations like that are revelatory in nature, though. you find yourself saying things you wouldn't normally say and talking about other people you've revealed things to; sentences go awry and ideas get bogged down by unnecessary words...clocks speed up, or seem to.

and we're making big decisions.

i finished beautiful losers for the second time today and it makes me sad that i'm not living in quebec in the 1960's. again. it's been spring lately, even though there are still patches of snow on the ground. almost seventy tomorrow, then it fades away again with the rain. i'm supposed to meet up with kayleigh-- chase away the sedentary ghosts of school vacations that lounge about in second story windows.

i was on the phone with lizzie earlier and she mentioned that richard jeni had killed himself yesterday, and after quoting some of my favourite lines of his in one of those moments of i know who that is over the phone, my thoughts drifted back to that night a couple of years ago when i was supposed to go to boston.

either kaleigh or kate had randomly called me up and asked if i wanted to go, we had no idea where but the three of us were going to make a night of it, or so we thought. i don't remember if this is the night kaleigh called me from the adult video store to tell me how some movie with a title like "the fascist inquisition" had reminded her of me (oddly enough, because of my marxist leanings), but it would have been around the same time. i think it was spring and i think it was warm, and i remember waiting outside for a really long time on the deck, enjoying the night air and staring at my neighbour's upstairs window and thinking about how interesting it would be if a ghost were to pass by, then thinking about writing a story about that window.

incidentally, i was just looking for a text file of the beginning of that story that i wrote. i didn't find it, but i did stumble across something else that i thought lost forever: a portion of the document i used to keep song ideas and fragments in. i read through the whole thing and that dredged up a few things i'll probably write about soon.

anyway, eventually they came (something interesting had delayed them, if i recall) in kate's car and we drove to kaleigh's in the dracut night to think about what we wanted to do, and we ended up just staying at her place for a while, watching tv and talking. i remember thinking about how much i'd missed nights at kaleigh's, like when we were a little younger watching saving private ryan and trying to stop the cat from climbing out the window, how we'd make a day of it without thinking at all and those two parallel couches would feel like a second home. at one point we were watching hbo and richard jeni was on, i remember that distinctly: probably the last time i watched a special of his.

i took a few separate short naps today while jolie holland's springtime can kill you played softly from the big speakers in my room. i'm not going to be living here much longer.

"but at last i had a chance to rest, after that long period of strain. i was tired and watned to sleep. i felt that when i woke up the next morning, i would start anew. i would breathe fresh air, and start a day of entirely new experiences. it reminded me of the feelings i used to have when i was younger, like after a big test, or the night after a major school event. i'd always looked forward to waking up the next morning, when a fresh breeze would come to sweep through me, cleansing me. and when i opened my eyes at dawn, i'd feel a glow, a radiant white pearl. i hoped, i nearly prayed, for that to happen again. that night, i believed with the same purity and innocence."

-- banana yoshimoto, "dreaming of kimchee"

so when i tell you that i love you don't test my love
accept my love
don't test my love
'cause maybe i don't love you all that much.

-- dan bern, "jerusalem"

i don't want to be told how amazing i am, because it's always followed by a 'but.' i'd rather simply be adequate if it meant you wouldn't think i was too good to be true. as long as you'd still have me, i don't have to reach the highest water mark. i can be exactly what you need me to be and a little more when necessary, without overwhelming you or changing your life or views or making you believe again or assisting in a transition. i'm not so special as that.

scene: four people are walking from central campus, directly into the wind and its dangerous "chill." a police siren sounds.

me: i hope you're coming to arrest the weather!

laura: i don't think they could do that. it would be interesting to see if it turned into a police chase, though. they'd try to catch the wind.

me: i think there's a song about that.

everyone else: ...

there are times i regret not having listened to what i was told about the uselessness of having regrets. the fact that i'm phrasing it that way probably proves that i didn't get the point anyway, but it does make you think. there are proverbial silver linings and it'd be better to focus on what good there is today instead of the bad that drove you to where you are now. all of this comes out in conversations sometimes, in moments tinged with nostalgia or musings on how the people who have hurt us most also pushed us in the direction where we would eventually find our closest friends.

walking with kayleigh today, it was about as cold as march has any business being and tomorrow is only going to be colder; later, walking from the radio show with sophia, we could feel the wind picking up and the temperature dropping and the wind chill warnings-- all the promise of spring slipping away.

a long week still to come.

when i stepped out into the rain this morning, it struck me that it was not a winter rain, though there were still some scattered spots of snow. it was cool, not cold, windy but not biting. the beginning of spring rain's productive career, i'd like to think. the lack of bitter cold meant that i didn't mind getting wet and the walk between campuses, the inevitable puddles and trying to find the best routes through the use of guesswork and entertaining jumps.

i saw someone sending a letter yesterday and realised that i haven't seen anyone do that in quite a while. i haven't done it myself in about a year, even though i consider letter-writing to be an admirable, intimate institution that should be continued at all costs. it's just that those blue boxes are everywhere and i don't even notice most of the time.

today consisted of the rain, phone tag with elizabeth between classes, italian wedding soup, then back to the room where i've been since, happily dry and slightly tired from this week's uncharacteristic late nights. i read the rime of the ancient mariner and slept for a couple of hours while i thought about how little i have in common with the people i live with. they were and still are sitting in the living room area playing some militaristic fucking video game and hurling homophobic insults when digital death comes knocking at their screen. last weekend my 'i need to get out of here' feelings, in regard to next year, started picking up more and more, and the week since hasn't given me any reason to doubt my sincerity.