amazon is probably going to put me on some weird list. in the same order, i just bought quotations from chairman mao tse-tung and aquinas's shorter summa: saint thomas's own concise version of his summa theologica. my bailiwick is expansive.

i've been writing here for a year as of today.

summer has been invading our april for the last couple of days-- too hot, long languourous afternoons, and a pleasant evening glow.

so, yesterday lizzie and i got an apartment. it's funny because right before the guy called we were in the middle of an all-out despair-a-thon over our prospects; it turns out we beat our deadline by two days and got the best of all possible places while doing it -- the language of candide saturates the speech of nearly everyone i know these days -- add the wonderful times i've been having with laura and the perfect april week this has been (heavy winds and rain giving way to sunshine and warmth at the end) and you have what mary calls 'an awesome week.' during the panic moments of the post-class afternoon yesterday, i somehow came up with what i'm sure is a wholly unoriginal dictum: 'life favours those in constant motion.' i said it to myself over and over as an exercise in calm as we bolted out to drive by certain prospective places, and within hours we had, with the power of knowing the right people, succeeded in finding a place to live. it should be ready by may day (though we aren't moving in until after finals) and i have rarely been more excited about life itself.

world war one killed idealism,
stabbed it, left it drowning in wet violence
in the mud of the trenches;
i read the poetry of the era:
so many splinters of tragedy
dated "april."

part of what should be an ongoing series--

--context: in discussing goods, someone keeps using cookies as an example.

what i should have said: "given the free choice, one could start to like cookies too much, and the particular good of cookies could be identified with the universal good, which, according to aquinas, is god-- would one then lose sight of the divine essence and become wretched, being rendered, in effect, some sort of...cookie monster?"

see also: "cookie monster searches deep within himself and asks: is me really monster?" by andy f. bryan.

late last night when the storm was still on laura and i were looking out the window in her living room down on the parking lot and the floody puddles that were collecting there. the wind coming off the marsh was moving the surface of the water like genesis in the dark of night pierced by the lights out there, and in the light you can see the drops-- those are the two ways to see the drops, falling through the light or falling into the collecting basins of slight depressions in the pavement.

it's a rainy sunday and i just made a list and little calendar of all the things i need to do between now and the end of the semester, which is now only a few short weeks away. lizzie and i looked at another apartment yesterday: it was small but small in the good way, with a slight ocean view and what seems like a great view of any oncoming storm clouds, but kayleigh told me there were surprisingly few thunderstorms in salem last summer. there are always too few thunderstorms. we have a few other places to look at but we're going to decide soon before the market dries up, if that's even a reasonable fear. ideally, we'll be signing a lease within the week. between that, the job i need to secure soon, and everything else, life seems to be catching up with me.

i used to have this fear that i would somehow be behind nearly constantly, and that i wouldn't know what to do socially while everyone else was zipping right along as if by some unseen force that i simply didn't have access to that drove them in the right direction; to comfort myself i came up with this theory that society sort of moves you through a combination of natural reason and peer pressure, because everyone got their license to drive at around the same time, and first-apartment related anxiety is endemic right now. "things tend to work out" as a lifelong ethos is, i know, a feeble middle class dream of security and entitlement, but that's how everything has happened for me so far. in darker moments i imagine the bottom falling out, but life hasn't had dark moments lately.

time passed exceptionally slowly this morning: i did the waking up then drifting off to dreamy sunday morning sleep thing at least twelve times between eleven and noon but it felt like hours of dream activity to the point where i was convinced that the clock was malfunctioning. my dreams foretold crazy weather over the next week, alternately seventies or single digits, and some particularly playful accuweather graphic artists.

last night laura and i were chatting about the absurdities of catholicism and the flamboyance of that catholic tv personality of yesteryear, fulton j. sheen (better known to us as "cape guy"), when we chanced upon the catholic cable channel and saw the beginning of a show called "family rosary crusade." all i could think was, damn, way to sum up your religion in three words.

i drifted off last night without meaning to, after a day that had seemed to take forever because it was a day that had been spent at home. i woke up at two or so with that sweetly confounded feeling of wondering which day it is.

noticed on friday morning that they're starting the landscaping at school, trying to wrest some life from the winter-dead earth. that's one thing the place has going for it: it approaches beauty in the spring. like last year when we walked to the last few plays of the season looking for flowers; like last year when there was a thunderstorm coming on and i walked over to the benches above the tennis courts and sat to read to the lighthouse until the rain was about to start. after that i went back to my room in bowditch, the room that wouldn't be my room much longer, and sat there with the shades lowered to darken the place even more. i listened to the rain.

laura and i went out friday night and it was the first time i had been on a real date in the sense i tend to think of a date in quite some time. it was cold out, too cold for the season, but that's something we'll all have to be used to for the coming weeks-- besides, it didn't matter. the night was in some ways a symphony of our eccentricities, but that's one of the reasons we go so well together. already so many memorable moments in so short a time.

so, right, i'm home for easter (well, an early easter dinner before i return to school) but the day means almost nothing. my ethnically catholic family used to actually try to place some meaning behind the day, maybe even go to church every few years, something, but today it just feels mechanical and that no longer depresses me. i'm not even sure why i came home at all.

it's the spring that the summer longed for, counterproductive as that is. nothing with this year has turned out quite the way i imagined it. my feelings on that vary; sometimes it's harrowing and sometimes the unexpected things have been good, better than what i thought would happen. i suppose every time has its assigned elements and we can't expect everyone to feel the same way about each other just because the season is here again. things change, but let's all be happy anyway and from this day forward i'll keep the bittersweet level at a minimum.

"friends are lost-- more all the time, it's sad to think about it. all those long conversations in vanished kitchens when for an evening we achieved a perfect understanding that, no matter what happened, we were true comrades and our affection would endure, and now our friendship is gone to pieces and i can't account for it. why don't i see you anymore? did i disappoint you? did you call me one night to say you were in trouble and hear a tone in my voice that made you say you were just fine?"

-- garrison keillor, lake wobegon days