Actual (kind of now inconceivable) elation at something Leithauser said--wow--in last public entry below recalls wryly repeated letters like B period L period... all semester I wanted to say something risque regarding one, but always feared the other'd sight it and get the wrong idea (my English professor, my... friend?, the -n(-way)ie who's hahahaha not getting any! [I hope] (said singsong!!!). I've been reading at a rate of 2 books/day x 27 days, avoiding alcohol after a voicemail atrocity, and am at an elavatedthough standstill. There is nothing to do in South Hadley and I'm confused about languages etc., but nothing acutely. I am going to New York tomorrow at 10:20 a.m. and I am going to be there until Monday and then I have to figure out which classes I'm taking even though I'm currently signed up for American Art and Architecture from Colonial to Nowishness, Art in the Age of the Cathedral, The Second Part of This Year's French, Intro Lit Which I Must Get Out of the Way (and shame on me for skipping ahead and writing a Kafka paper with eleven minutes to spare before the semester's end and not Building Faculty Bonds/caring about the English language for the first few months I can recall), and this biological psych seminar whatnot for distribution. I have minimal interest in l'histoire de l'art at le moment, and am kind of content with just reading Henry James dayafterday. Um, it's unbearably cold. My cheeks are perpetually pink and I'm rather excited about editorial internships to come but for now'd just like some sunshine. What's important is structure, because I've given up for the moment on passion. Hahaha how morbid. We'll see. Lovelovelove.

Art is enough!

I am wavering like I haven't in a while, feeling like the timing's all
off for it could (and will, I'm sure it will) all easily be discounted
as a case of last-minute uncertainty when really it's four monthsworth
of swallowingme doubts all manifesting, surfacing in the form of North
Face fleece upon fleece ordered online when I really wanted to be
picking out another pair of Cole Haan boots and be bohemian
(two entirely unrelated desires. Both burning, but I'm feeling the need
to address my awareness that one doesn't lead to the other. And
I'm so damn defensive from having to rationalize everything always that
I'm even covering all the stupid, nitpicky bases in my own Xanga.
Lowlowlow.). I do this, this is who I am, I am characterized by my
tendency to call that just-glorified shrine of extensive
majorofferings, of god,WritingEnglishCompLitLinguisticsARTHISTORYliving.alldoneright two
weeks before I'm to head to Holyoke and tell them I'd like for them to
take me still. The secret is that I like the shroud of awkward silence
that floats above my newly brunetteness over Belgian waffles at
candlelit breakfasts, stuffy family members recommending some certain
brand of boot waterproofing substance and watching, reallywatchingandwhy? me spoon somuch whipped cream onto my Special Occasion Crystal (again why?)
soup dish. I like that they cringe and say the wrong things and blink
and wonder if I don't believe in God, if I meant what I said, I like
wishing that my hair were even a shade darker to make my eyes icier and
me look less like them, honey sunny blonde and befall-huedturtlenecked,
name-dropping and priest-praising and entirely. oblivious. For me too,
I like bustling things that feel bigger than me, that pull me around
and pull things out of me that I had sensed and seen glimmers of, but
never embraced over pecan rolls split sticky piece-by-piece next to
dullgray traffic jams in emerald wool scarves with Amadeusy everything
being shouted at me from worn-brick streetcorners, below signs with
names of schools I hope now never to attend. When you say them so much,
the words can represent everything and nothing at once, months and
miserable months of your life, breathless seconds spent loading as many
cents as you have onto your printing account, so many sips of English
Breakfast blend and such little enthusiasm over china blue bedding, New
England Charm (red farm houses and BITINGSTIFLING loneliness I've
before called crippling), Matisse prints and offerings I'd rather
decline. Notthistime, Late British Something Banal (I loaded and reloaded
the usually-speedy site so many times but couldn't find an actual
unappealing example. I was met instead with an I'll-make-it-symbolic
this: We're sorry, but this request was taking an unusually long time to complete, and has therefore been stopped.),
maybesomeothertime-slash-not. I don't want just English with
(WHYARETHEYALL) Renaissance-focused "fellow" enthusiasts because I ache for
this language, I want to whiptwistmanipulate it into something, warp
it, sounddevicedefy it into divine heart/Harpersshattering oblivion. I
actually sat in the front left corner of that crowded classroom all
year, yellow flourescent glow pounding down on blonde on hunter-colored
school-issue coat the pages of
Eliot/Keats/Byron/Shakespeare/Browning/god anyone parted
and letting imperfect fingers and allatonceself-importantandsounworthy
lips trace, form, the words the lines near tears, noreally. I want to
forget all that's been calculated, take everything precise and
Should-be Perfect and stuff it in that already-overflowing grayblue
envelope and send it off to some landfill in Orlando, and instead be
taken, be brass-wrapped-lapis dangling, for it not to be too late.

As if sensing my sudden departure-spawned lapses into the very
lachrymosity I spent the whole summer spurning, my grandparents seemed
damnendearing caricatures of themselves late this morning, scurrying
about mounting blue wicker-and-lace wreaths that recall the word homespun
and soothing, simplifying, one heavy leadglass goblet of too-sweet tea
at a time. Burgundy brocade fell in thick folds above the turquoise
sewing stool, and next to cream-colored kidd gloves and cranberry boot
buttons lie the daily devotional she read aloud from, drawling and
daring, “The Lord has given—Sarah, I’m going to say you instead of
thee!” There’s something so blithe, buttery about the first syllable;
Say-ruh, sipping Ceylon, slipping between crisp, sedum-studded sheets,
shellacking maple-footed settees and the heathens perched upon them
with a double coat of gra-cious-nuss. She flipped assuredly to
the right worn pages, rested perpetually cool fingers on my warm,
ink-stained own, and wondered aloud and utterly in earnest how those
fetching Ted Hughes Types I’m eternally taken with will manage to make
any money.

Oh, how I’ll miss these midweek escapes!—relishing
wordly-feeling words from beneath two woven throws, naughtily slicing
off scraps of justkneaded biscuit dough, and a valiant tenor telling me
“You are important and very special; remember that every day and every
night.”

AND YOUR HANDS ... AND KNEES ... FELT COLD AND WET ON THE GRASS TO ME

From “Julian and Maddalo”

So, as
we rode, we talked; and the swift thought,
Winging itself with laughter, lingered not,
But flew from brain to brain,—such glee was ours,  
Charged with light memories of remembered hours,
None slow enough for sadness; till we came
Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame.

-Percy Shelley

To the Glenhaven’send groves we ran hand-in-hand gravel jabbing bluenailed
toes, waterlilies waiting ‘mid: large forest green leaves—among other things—looming,
some about to come true and others too far off to tell. Promise seeped from
every silkshirted sojourn, each cupped handful of faucetwater to slick back
bangs and solve things shortterm, ‘til the next dry disaster and its own
exasperated sigh, from every stubborn last half-inch of cotton that wouldn’t
cling at mid-calf, or at least remain, like the ends of everything these days.
Green’s all what I recall, the half-dead expanses jostled over in envied
automobiles, a blinding flash of bright pink and carbonation, Clearly the first
of first after first. Howmuchtwohundreddollarsis, how the butter melts in the
middle and makes it worth the forty-five-more-minutes-meets-two-hours-from-now,
the frustration that ought to be ineffable hitting hearts after a
Searspurchased chair turns to reveal an intruder—all imparted while ankle-deep
in a kind-of-fenced-in kelly color. Lush sometimes and not always expansive,
defensiveness-tinged beginnings gave way to rusty wrapped palms and dayglo
reptiles, haunted ottomans and imitation ivy, clumpy cardboard cheese and all
that will matter is the presentation. Whirring blades invade downy folds,
shatter sleep and dreams, induce staged sadness we’ll later wish we’d known
wasn’t real then. Later we laugh about Dubai,
knowingly; back then we rallied and rode waves anyway, we braided at the seat
of an unused sewing machine to become like what we wanted, and now we Rallayyyy
and nod and wonder what to wish for.

Cool pastel porches have replaced concrete slabs, seeming sections, and vines
wind above; we always say we’ll do that next time. Once taffyshut teeth meet
hesitantly, unsalted newness relies on the flurry of tight tops that followed
them for streetname-related laughter. Light on the dimpled spring’ssurface,
stacked chairs wobblereaching popcorn-ceilinged ledges, mahogany, baroque lines
imposing, singsong Maria-ing recalled as red, dark blue, wearing sailor
suits—lights that I will harsh coils won’t replace; I will that fluorescent
nothing threatens you.

This
= my Dorm Decor, in a vase, for those of you who find "It's Alsace,
guys!!!" an insufficient description of mon gilt-and-roosters,
mustard-and-burgundyed Vision.

Sarah's Day at the Zoo (This is 100% Verum)

    Relate to me, O Muse, in song, the bayou's daughter,
Charron-born, of whom your legends resonate with charm, whose
wispishness no mortal could unyarn, nor blog capture. And You of the
Cytherean lyre, strike forth against the tautness of the strings until
the air itself cries out for her, she of whom a thousand maidens fell
enamored, and by whom their spotless maidenhood fell maculate. And how
many nights, I ask, did she her xanga barren leave? And for what flower
of womanliness did she dare depart? Whose legs bespread could clasp
upon her gaze for fortnight and weeks more? Sing to me, Calliope, sing
the girl who chained her words together without space!
    Forsooth, a fierce giraffe - tradition relates
Rafiki - long intent on ravaging our Dido, enraptured by her bristling
hair and salty cracker hand-concealed, sallied spirit forth against the
wind (Sicilian Aeolus cherishes his own, or so is said), in turn that
blew his grudging fur harshly afore his hide, and fast on pious
Catherine did descend. Flesh writhing on giraffely flesh, the clouds of
Jove did intercourse until the pregnant sky could restrain their
outraged gravity no longer, and gestation completed.
    Lo! The fertile blue dislodged its selfsame father,
whose bolts once frightened mighty Titans yore. And donned he then the
dappled coat of Boris the giraffe! Aye, to behold the crackling
'lectric surge that girded round his Artiodactyl frame! With savage
hoof did Cronides unpack Rafikian sinews bare upon the hungry soil, and
pious Catherine wept for deliverance and deliverer both. Embraced them
then within the sacred zoo, and crackers fed, and coupled with
intensity. Did she put on his knowledge with his power before the
indifferent neck could let her drop?

YOUR HEART ... FELT GOOD ... IT WAS DRIPPING PITCH AND MADE OF WOOD

It's high time to document this apathyyyy, the Britishisms everywhere, the cutting short of a tiresome-though-well-intended-but-still
outing to talk about Blake, everything. I have half the mind to jet off
to Palm Springs week after next with my freshly-returned-from-France
soulsister to reunite with Zach, who assures me twice daily that at
least one of his five Harvard roomies will be enraptured by my
Eliotobsessed ways, and Miguel, who is going to take Chicago by storm
by means of Freudian analysis and flashy Ferragamo loafers. I do think
this Tuesday's South Carolina Sojourn will do the trick, if I don't
murder my father en route to the Partridge Family's Annual Myrtle Beach
Debauchery/run out of reading material, which isn't about to happen,
damned anxiety of influence, among other anxieties. Then it's back to
grant proposals, and oh no!, no one to discuss sex and poetry (how
redundant) with at 4 a.m. I just realized [JULES WILL BE IN CHINA], so
I'll be watching the sun rise with just a Red Bull (have lost almost
all my taste for tea) and then reading Goethe when I should be
sleeping/working on funding reports/learning Greek, French, Italian,
and if you'd like me to go on, German, Czech.

Erin's house,
that airy mecca of unsalted pretzels and pretty pool liner-induced
serenity, has been the perfect place to escape to--we take long bicycle
rides at dusk then drive around the tiny town I grew up in blasting the
Moulin Rouge soundtrack and basking in the glow of all things Milton. I
am blessed to have a friend who invites me over clad in track pants to
collapse on her bed after delivering a diatribe on the sticky situation
the agency I'm employed by is currently ensnared in, but not before
handing me collected essays turned right to the Addison I've been
needing to read. I can then lazily reopen that never-ending
conversation on aesthetics or not.

Other phrases that
characterise these past few days and to which all conversations,
thoughts, and unfortunately-not-uncontrollable fits of laughter come
back would be The Wordsworthian Poet's Plight, Princeton: That
Venerable Institution!, and BodyElectric, the best new adjective ever.
And so ends my short spree of Oxford Commalessness. I wish it could be
symbolic of overcoming this The Graduate-esque limbolike state, but
know better.

Still, it does help to know your ex-loverrr's stealing from Abercrombie as all this (now that's a stretch) unfolds.

----------

Wannabe-cryptic Insertion of Keats and Maniacal Laughter:

O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell

O SOLITUDE! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,—
Nature’s observatory—whence the dell,
Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.
But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refin’d,
Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.