I'm taking orgo and physics 200

which is probably too hard. Supposed to have taken AP Physics as a tonic first. But the professor's better than the other levels. Besides the class below is run like a disorganized cross between Hogwarts with points awarded to each house and some strange game show. They have buzzers in class. So physics 200 it is. Damn physics. Damn inertia. Too hard to break out. Strange though because there are forces acting. And I'm acting but acting like they don't move this free body. So much energy needed to accelerate sometimes. Really hard to move thoughts in a new direction or a new orbit. But getting easier all the time as the gravity and levity of the theater, newspaper and people here attract.

I'm living with a Republican.

A registered Republican. Political discussions about global wars are probably not the best way to promote in-suite peace. But, help me. Education apparently isn't enough. Pride and prejudice rule. Prejudice against even organs of information, the Times, that known liberal rag of the liberal news media not to be trusted. Prejudice against Democrats corrupting the family, taking our hard earned money, caring too much for foreigners, and not protecting our country by sacrificing others and others' rights (don't think about our patriotic inactive own.) They'll take our money for silly things like primary care medicine, dentists, drug rehabilitation and perscription for elderly and poor people. There'll always be homeless people so funding homeless shelters, section eight housing, job training programs, and mental health services is just a waste. France and Germany were always out to get us, those elitist European snobs, so what if they don't like us now. We have our coalition of the willing. And every one in Guantonamo Bay is a terrorist, they'd destroy us in a second if they could (don't stop to wonder why), they need, deserve to be dealt with outside of Geneva Convention rules. They're not human. Are we?

Country music

is more charming than country manners. And it's growing on me. Maybe. It's my roommate's favorite. The reason she got a single last year, probably. Otherwise the room (or "rum" if you're an alchie whose excuse for slurring sounds is she's from Massachusetts) is quite ship shape. Lexington looks over my desk. I look out on the morning light over the fourth floor view perpendicular (or "porpendichlore" if you're a math T.A. proficient in the foreign language of math, not Enlish) to the dawn over the front yard river. John Cusak's defiant above the bed. He holds In Your Eyes over his and mine and my head. My side of the room's black and white with a bit of infared warmth of the first blush of Wave Hill trees saying hello to spring. The only colors are my quilt named Nantucket by Bed, Bath, and Beyond and eighteen oragami cranes a birthday present from Veronica last year. The folded paper flaps in the wind and the shadows entertain the philosophers of this cave. After putting up the companion cranes of my room last year and this, Cranium and Ichabod and Rosie the Riveter, I knew I was home.

First classes filled with glasses wearing attentive pre-meds and physics majors. Taking my physic tonic will go down smoothly. Tastes alright so far as the professor seems pretty spectacular. He's already ordered people to lie down in the aisles if they want to sleep. Chairs are commodities, at least the first day. Orgo was steadier, less headier to begin, but will be better now the organization's over. Looks like I'll be living up Science Hill three days a week.

In other news, stopped by the Daily News tonight. Toured and ran into other HM's, of course. The walls are plastered with old papers dating way back, records of scandals and triumphs and few Harvard-Yale wins. There's a board room gothic and guarded by the portrait of former editor and founder of Time. Building's interior just as beautiful as on set in Gilmore Girls. Maybe I will write.

I am the biggest English nerd at Yale,

even bigger by a whole hour than the freshman with the inch thick specs and the Thomas Friedman book carved up by fifty color-coated label tags. I got to registration three hours early and it was only me and Jane Austen sitting outside the registration room. Ran over from Yale College registration in Stiles dining hall that sleepyheaded, pajama=panting sophmores stumbled into and out of back to their beds. But not me. Because English sections are a life and death matter. Last year I'd made the classic freshman mistake of showing up exactly at noon, on time, was stuck on a line out the door and got the crap section with a T.A. Fought and hoped and wished way into Wes Davis and the best collection of classmates I've ever English had. Wasn't leaving it up to luck this year. And now I'm in the one English 125, Major English Poets section of nine of a supposedly freshman seminar closed to freshman. Upperclassmen only for Annabel Patterson and a class of early English birds. Terribly, terribly excited. Class with a classy professor and a room full of people for whom English is everything. Classes start tomorrow and I'm a bit hyped up and nervy and happy.

I'm auditionning for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Don't laugh. I can't think calmly of Friday 1:40 pm. An earthquake of the stomach might split me in two mid-monolouge, but then I'll be dialouge. And the shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

May all your days be gold my child,

sings Sparklehorse. Today was golden. Nature's last of the summer, first green of the semester is gold and glowing in my cheeks and cheekiness. As dawn goes down to day, camp Yale to classes at Yale, nothing gold can stay. But it's better than being so much frozen margarita immortality, greek gods. The holy grail's not meant to be found. We watched the Last Crusade and I'm appropriating Indiana Jones' theme song for my own and all the courtyard that could here it blasting from the oompaloompa size speakers.

We went to the beach today. Driving in the car, driver insisting he knew where we were the entire time as we tooled around winding residential roads in east haven, betrayed by mapquest recommending a route over the Ferry Street bridge that's been under construction for a year and a half. When finally got to Lighthouse Point with blue sky and puffy clouds picture perfect behind the charming New England lighthouse, a storm blew in from the east. The landlocked Tenneseean proclaimed we'd found the ocean when it was only the sound and the fury of everyone else expounding the differences between a bay, a river and an ocean. We set up towels and on cue drops of rain promptly began to fall. But we'd come to swim. (And don't worry there was no sight of thunder.) So we did. Dunking and splashing and mermaiding on the waves. Then tallest ones under the fake palm trees, beside the serpent's squirting mouth, and beneath the buckets filling with water to tip topple from great heights onto heads, ours the closest to the top, of all the kids running around the park. Return to roots was complete as pumped legs above tree tops, swinging feet from beach sand to burial in the sky. I dug my toes into the clouds before dropping down to prepare for an upswing. I'm still riding on an upswing. Rode it and spicy Indian dinner and perhaps a margarita made with ice and a blender and decent tequilla through an evening and an eventful birthday party. Who knew there were such sketchy boys and such nice ones, which may be more dangerous. And how and why I was rescued from the corner, trying to recycle bad karma, actually standing in the box for bottles, only by my saviours of suitemates, is a story of true loyalty and loveliness and wit to be retold another time. When I don't have registration at 8:30 a.m. to be followed by three hours of camping out in the English building for a British professor's section that better be best. By the glow of the screen and mostly full moon, golden goodnight.

It's back.

And it won't go away. There's vomit in the right stall of the bathroom. Thought these days were over. Dustbuster wielding, vomit drama disappearing with last year's suite.

You know you're in college when

the first night you step out of the shower at four in the morning to find some half naked boy in boxers in your bathroom. Beer breath even knew my name if not better than to lean way out the window. Took a minute to remember from first half fresh year his initals standing in as a an excuse for one. E.J.

in the middle of the barbecue a band bursts out of nowhere and blares boola boola. Then starts chanting "bulldogs, arf, bulldogs, bow wow wow..." and the brass blazes into the brain as the drum beats down all thought.

the person on the machine next to you at the gym is not reading Seventeen but Kierkegaard.