it's really not fair for the weather to be doing this when my temporality is already fucked up. I just asked my mom when we were going to set the christmas tree up, to which she replied (obviously and post-haste), "it's may." damn you, cold during summer! damn you, confused school breaks! damn you, whatever part of my brain is supposed to figure out what time of year it is based upon factors other than cloud cover and temperature!

last night, jeremy asked me how I was feeling. answer? peeling, tan, tired, and unsure. off-the-cuff then, but true stretched back and through now. major emphasis on unsure, though the peeling isn't very attractive either.

I'm sitting on the pad of my futon, waiting to be moved out. my room is empty save for what needs to go in the truck. I hate moving. hate, hate, hate. okay, so maybe it is like riding a bike, and you get better as it as you go, but what if you really fucking hate your bike?

tried to get my portfolio back from the anderson today, but no go. I didn't actually expect her to be there at eleven in the AM, but I thought she might have 'em outside. failed miserably at seeing kat, too, though I am glad I got to see everyone last night. actually, I'm glad I got to have a couple extra days up here, though it's playing havoc with my temporality, since I feel like I should be going to class. the empty english building is nice, though, as I well know from the night.

and, by the way, how do I have so much nonsense? I calculated, and I realized that the only *stuff* I really need (and that's barring food and soap and clothes and whatnot) can be condensed to (1) orion, (2) whatever notebooks I'm using [currently, two], (3) pencils, (4) book[s] to read. end. that's it. I haven't been carrying my phone at all of late, and it makes me both happy and more conscious of how other people are on them all the bloody time. having the damn thing is enough - why must I also carry it? fmphrah. nonsense, I say.

they're here.

last night, I learned what having kids is like.

alex's birthday, right. so a condo of four twentysomethings now. three of 'em drunk off their asses, unable to even crawl to the bathroom to upchuck tequila in, right. somehow, when I do lug all three of them into separate beds, they all find the wherewithal to get out again and start trying to drink out of the toilets and take more shots. would have been easier if I could've just tranqed 'em all. funny thing is, I would have if I'd had such.

anyway. the point here is not to cry unfair, but rather to relate the dream that happened after. started out in the english building, third floor, so late the sun was coming up already. I was there with kat and we had art projects, ala giant third grade things, on display for poetry that the anderson was supposed to come inspect, only she hadn't yet. talking to kat, debbie came by, I start telling the story of how I got the idea for mine. flash forward to the story itself: I'm in my car and the anderson's with me, in the passenger seat. we're driving along a road in the dark, and while it's in the woods (and the pine trees are huge), the road's like a six-laner in phoenix and there's a huge, huge parking lot at the end. it's raining, and a very dark night. we get to the parking lot and little shacks of single apartments are scattered around, all with cars parked around 'em. now, I don't remember if we go to one in particular, or if we just pull up to a random one, but we go inside. it's a party. there's a guy I dated for a few days (in real life), and I hear his whiny, queeny voice from another room and want to leave, but the anderson goes slow and the guy, upon being told that I'm there, comes shrieking out. he's drunk, and can't wait to unzip his pants for me. I know he wants to have sex, but I don't want to let him even though I'm carrying over from real life that I'm horny as hell. I get the anderson to leave and we get back in the car and drive into the dark and the rain and the forest. if much happens after that, I don't remember it.

I'm fairly certain I know what some things mean.

also, I got a little drunk before anyone else did and sobered before they were drunk, and learned that to music when I'm drunk I don't keep my clothes on. then again, all I need is, say, three shots to lose inhibitions, and I can sober quickly and be drunk-fun on them. end.

quotables / the shipping news

"he held out his arms. no mistaking what he meant. transfixed, she hardly breathed. one flicker of movement, and he'd be all over her, pulling her clothes up, wrenching the brown stockings and pressing her down on the stones with the shore flies crawling on bare skin, quoyle, entering her, ramming his great chin into the side of her neck. and afterwards some silent agreement, some sore complicity, betrayal. she burst out. ... 'do you know how he died? my husband? I'll tell you. he's in the sea. he's down at the bottom. I never come beside the sea without thinking - 'herold's there.'' ... she slid down the rock, safe now, protected by grief. quoyle stood away, hands dangling, looking at her."
(bril. simply.)

"wavey ran to get away, then for the sake of running, and at last because there was nothing else to do. it would look undecided to change her pace, as though she did not know what she wanted. it seemed always that she had to keep on performing pointless acts."
(I want to write like this)

"'all of a sudden, something behind him. a hairy devil jumped down the hole like a hockey puck ... red eyes. says to me father ... 'be back for you ... after I washes me pots and pans.' father ... ran forty miles.' ... 'my wife,' bawled quoyle, 'is dead.' ... 'I know that,' said tert card. 'that's not news.'"
(best drunk dialogues ever)

"'edna says the only reason he didn't get her was because she was under the copy desk looking for paper clips when the shooting started. remember how there was never enough paper clips? quoyle, they shot at mercalia on the freeway last week. show you how crazy the scene is, I made a joke about living in california, about LA style. fucking bullet holes through her windshield. missed her by inches. she's scared to death and I'm making jokes. it hit me after edna called what a fucking miserable crazy place we're in. there's no place you can go no more without getting shot or burned or beat. and I was laughing.' and quoyle thought he heard his friend crying on the other side of the continent. or maybe he was laughing again."
(she covers so. fucking. much. ground in this book)

"he'd call him up that night. tell him. what? that he could gut a cod while he talked about advertising space and printing costs? that he was wondering if love came in other colors than the basic black of none and the red heat of obsession?"
(colors. she's very colorful.)

quotables / the sweet hereafter

"and then there were those folks who wanted to believe that the accident was not really an accident, that it was somehow caused, and that, therefore, someone was to blame. was it dolores's fault? a lot of people thought so. or was it the fault of the state of new york for not replacing the guardrail out there on the marlowe road? was it the fault of the town highway department for having dug a sandpit and let it fill with water? what about the seat belts that had tied so many of the children into their seats while the rear half of the bus filled with icy water? was it the governor's fault, then, for having generated legislation that required seat belts? who caused the accident anyhow? who can we blame?"
(just like it)

"...some bungling corrupt state agency or some multinational corporation that's cost-accounted the difference between a ten-cent bolt and a million-dollar out-of-court settlement and has decided to sacrifice a few lives for the difference. they do that, work the bottom line; I've seen it play out over and over again, until you start to wonder about the human species. they calculate ahead of time what it will cost them to assure safety versus what they're liekly to be forced to settle for damages when the missing bolt sends the bus over a cliff, and they simply choose the cheaper optoin. and it's up to people like me to make it cheaper to build the bus with that extra bolt, or add the extra yard of guardrail, or drain the quarry. that's the only check you've got against them. that's the only way you can ensure moral responsibility in this society. make it cheaper."
(scary. also, this guy's voice is very lawyerly, very different than the other chars. nice diversity)

"it just wasn't right - to be alive, to have had what people assured you was a close call, and then go out and hire a lawyer; it wasn't right."
(different voice. all his characters are very morally definable. also, this is how I felt after our crash in ohio)

"at that moment, I hated my parents more than I ever had. I hated them for all that had gone before - daddy for what he knew and had done, and mom for what she didn't know and hadn't done - but I also hated them for this new thing, this awful lawsuit. ...why couldn't they just stand up like good people and say to mr. stephens, 'no, forget the lawsuit. we'll get by somehow on our own. it's too harmful to too many people. goodbye, mr. stephens. take your law practice back to new york city, where people like to sue each other.'"
(good. true.)

"they were all sitting in the living room watching television together, like a good american family - it was the simpsons, which was the one show the whole bunch of them thought was funny. me, I can't stand that show; it's insulting."
(this is just for me. glad someone [even a fictional someone] gets it, too)

quotables / beloved

"but maybe a man was nothing but a man ... they encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely that was, they studied your scars and tribulations, after which they did what he had done: ran her children out and tore up the house."
(defeatist? disillusioned? important for writing a simi.char)

"'a man ain't nothing but a man,' said baby suggs. 'but a son? well now, that's somebody.'"
(I suck at writing parents)

"what she called the nastiness of life was the shock she received upon learning that nobody stopped playing checkers just because the pieces included her children."
(great language)

"as though a handful of myrtle stuck in the handle of a pressing iron propped against the door in a whitewoman's kitchen could make it hers. as though mint sprig in the mouth changed the breath as well as its odor."
(everything in 3rdP has to do something for char)

there was a thunderstorm today. it made me want to Write Shit. specifically, I stood in my window (in. not behind. not in front of. in.) and thought, "lawdy hey, it's thunderstorming, and I want to Write in that Dang-Nifty Journal I gots." verbatim. so, here it is, several hours later.