Happy Birthday

Ben! Bon anniversaire. Beautiful year. Wishing you the world and these things.

I just spent my first four hours working in the shop. Built boring multiples of stud walls but techies are pretty cool. Unluckily, I forgot screw guns and I didn't learn to get along that one semester in 12th grade on crew. Sheer will will help. I will conquer this. As Darcy resolves.

A second wonderful unexpected visitor came this week. Conversation, the second half and the possessor of pride and prejudice, a reluctant but good sport watcher and a same name were all appreciated very much. And in the morning, around three, three Sam's were collected in A-1 pizzeria. A Con-artist, a Worthy friend, and a first sound of the Oasis song and Osborne play Don't Look Back in Anger partially accidently assembled to eat garlic bread, drink coffee, and discuss literature and the liturgy of nineteen and a college student. Now I need to nap to go out like a light to never never land and Friday parties.

The Fog of War

is the least boring documentary I have seen (perhaps except for that one doc about Vik Muniz, the least boring film about art ever made). I went to see The Fog of War this evening screening for International Relations and expected to fall asleep after a non-stop, no lay overs under the covers day done on the amount of sleep one gets after digging oneself out of the hole that is the confusing darkness of physics and orgo problem sets. The seats in Sheffield Sterling Stratsomething are movie theater comfortable and the lights were off. But I was riveted from Rosie the Riveter of WWII through the troops wading in Vietnam. And always bombs falling and Mac the knife, Robert McNamara, talking, taking, and evading responsibility. The danger and death and delicacy of the world was intimidating as I hugged me knees, wanted Java, and watched. Felt so small looking up at this larger than life face reflect and face up to past decisions. Talking about it walking home feeling safe in the streets beneath gothic architecture pretending to preserve us from this century, we wondered what to take away from the film. All that was agreed were some of the lessons spelled out on the screen. Empathize with your enemy. Rationality will not save us. There's something beyong one's self. Maximize efficiency. You can never change human nature. Never say never. If you've never seen the movie, see it. If you have, see it again. Let me know when you're watching it, I'll come.

I think I'm on an intellectual high.

I've found the right classes and fallen for them, tripped upwards, and landed in a handstand with my hair falling in my face and my feet firmly in heady atmosphere. I'm walking on air. I'm upside down. All the blood rushes to my head. I think faster and stay on my toes for Patterson's questions and physics professor's lecture interrogations to random seat number maybe mine.

I think I'm finally set on a schedule. I'll wear a routine Monday to Friday and tread down the already stooped steps of SSS and Science Hill to Linsly-Chit. Chaucer was phenomenal this morning. Between brilliant professor, an intimidatingly bright boy, and a General Prologue to critiquing yet finding good in individuals, the hour and fifteen of class passed too quickly.

After five days of shop till you drop academics, stressing about seminars and trying to find a fourth class, I've found five. "Shopping" period means more classes and crisscrossing campus, blue book in hand, standing in the back of lectures and evaluating the professor, the tone, the topic and whether it's reasonable or feasable to go from Sterling Chemistry Lab down to Luce Hall up to Sloane Physics Lab and back to Sterling with barely a break for a bite between 9:30 and 5. But I'm not doing that. I'm taking Physics and Orgo of course. English 125, Major English Poets for the major. And Intro to International Relations for what I need to know about the world and don't and a sweet seminar called Comparative Political Economies with eight people and an excited professor. I also don't have to wake till 11:30 Tuesday and Thursdays. Today I sat in the Stiles dining hall sipping tea and a scone relaxedly re-reading before English. Tonight off to finish problem sets before it turns too much into tomorrow morning.

Life is ridiculous,

I won't complain. Good thing I watched Dawson's Creek so at least I'm better prepared for plot twists and melodramatic bits. However, this dose of education has unfortunate chronic side effects. Perhaps I've congenital defects nurtured but not planted by bad shows. Nonetheless Dawson's and the mockery that is reality's version of t.v. is my morality. Play is the cold to catch. A hacking romantic longing, a whooping flippancy forever cropping up in what should be serious dialouge, and consumption with expectation of romance I suffer. And now after years of pre-teen patient waiting and watching, reality delivers t.v. type story lines. Perhaps I have a natural propensity to read my life and feel and write it in the style of the WB at it's best worst. Still, it's amazing how simply in pure plot to what degree life imitates... television. Life imitate an overblown, Tuesday night, teen drama where the characters speak with Vanity Fair language and glace with unsubtle desire or blatant ire at eachother? You doubt me. But from Jack's revelation in high school to Joey's freshman year call to Dawson from the bathroom to letting go to discovering she will make her own decisions and is ready to be the girl who goes to Paris. I'm ready to be the girl who goes to Paris or to Yale this year.

I'm ready by myself but not without help from home and here's home and heroes. Which is why, when one has wonderful friends who would do anything for one or even ones that just care enough to visit, one should be more careful. And allow the boring fact that much of this is fiction or the only truth I know. It's something seperate from journalistic reporting. More like a ranting, a railing, leaning on feeling, observing not strictly reasoning, prosing purposefully and inevitably tainted by a tongue of terrible character. Please see both the pilgrim and the poet. In particular, this past week I meant to attack a political party and instead attacked a good friend. I apologize. While there are important global issues, there are also local feelings that were neglected and are important to me.