week old organs of roses rejecting life. It's a theme in this room. Katie's been dying to sleep till spring, casting incantations for summer, and skipping work to go watch the basketball game. Only six more weeks of classes after this one, she reminded me. But I don't like to count the days here. Who would count eternity in days? Besides, it's not eighth grade. The year when I could tell you how many days there were till summer vacation, starting from before Halloween.
I'm in midst of midterm, take home. Trying to hang onto one thing before it gets washed away by descending pressure of everything else. And why can't I just enjoy the pleasurable pressure of the moment? Doesn't seem fair that to ensure healthy fare to dine on later have to consume time growing good plans. I have no clue what I want to do this summer. Scattered wide from your side, it's a terrifying large world. All want sometimes is to curl under covers with a book and company. The blues are covers. Going undercover, get cut off from parts of identity. Buried beneath sheets, shield self but also lose sight of what I want. The dark disguises desires and hides hopes, projects, thoughts hanging beyond the blankets of the comfortable.
Thursday, I stepped outside of comfort and got cut up. Beat up at St. A's. Still bearing bruises, intellectual, and scars, emotional. Too thin-skinned. One blow to writing reminded why my fear's not unjustified, that the delight of dancing outside oneself has drawbacks. Besides the two papers, midterm, and summer applications, may be why I haven't felt like posting. Posted a no trespassing order, put up a fence, and retreated into some kind of isolation past couple days. As isolated as can be with two room mates, poetry readings (Maurice Manning Friday was fantastic!), lectures, classes, torture of Freshman Show, bar night, and a hoedown, with hay. While surrounded still partly walled self off (and I wonder why I'm lonely.) The harsh hurt of criticism undid me and couldn't afford to show anything risky, anything they didn't know. Underneath, I dissolved. Derailed, I collided with my Old Faithful, Self-Doubt. From the crash I got amnesia. I lost my memory of myself in the moment of impact. Forgot the second A+ Annabel gave me for Valentine's Day and my Milton paper. The joy from the comment "You have really (underlined) advanced, Samantha" did not belong to this Samantha. It was emptied of meaning, or I was no longer the owner. Hard to see self as continuous and not contingent on one frame of the cinema reel.
Sometimes I feel too short. Reaching for concepts swimming above my head as they stream from Iser, my reader responsive hero who came to lecture yesterday, I cannot catch them. Laid low, bogged down by bodily and boring, I lack the strength for pull ups or chin-ups to get my head above the bar and into elite circles of consciousness. There are walls my mind won't expand beyond to contain all that I glimpse standing on tip-toe. But beauty is a consolation. The orange caress of light warm on the law school. Occurs to me language may be a way to stretch, to lay out, to categorize and encompass concepts that float away if I don't lasso and pin them in with words. Words that slip slide out from under understanding as soon as I think I've got a firm hold on the reigns. Words that confuse communication, deceive oneself, the other, and deprive of dangerous naked knowledge of own purposes. Nothing but that infinite chain of signifiers stretching on and on. Words promise nothing but to lose me in semantic mazes. Still the best tools I know for own imperfect understanding. Language coming from the other in self, this talking cure on paper only makes me more fragmented. But better to be divided, to have one half watching, with words and approaching the limit of understanding. Ne pleure pas petite sirene. It's this silly Francis Cabrel song Mr. Carpenter gave our class. Don't cry little mermaid. Ton histoire commence à peine. It's getting harder to believe, but it's still true. It's still the beginning. Enjoying licking language, a lump of new-born bear cub like myself, into some shape.
