quelqu'un m'a dit

So I've neglected this blog. What happened was my boyfriend and I broke up about a month ago, and I immediately fell right back into the arms of my 8-year-old blog at livejournal, whose entries I can protect so that they're only visible to certain site users. If you have a livejournal or want to create one (it's free), I have an entry up at my journal where you can ask me to add you and I usually will if it seems like you're a real person (link me to your blog or facebook or something to prove it). That is, if anyone is so desperate for my emotional news. Oh, the link: http://www.kaylyssa.livejournal.com/

I also went to Belize to visit my sister and brother-in-law, and it was amazing! I wrote an article for school where I tried to describe the soul of Belize mainly through the James Bus Line which I am kind of infatuated with. I feel passionately for a lot of inanimate things today don't I? My parents have said they will send me for another visit over Christmas. I'm already looking forward to it.

I moved into my new house all alone, and I'm in the process of unpacking/decorating which takes a really long time when I am trying to finish a double major and also working part-time and also trying to get to the gym regularly, and trying to eat, and trying to bathe myself, it adds up. But single life has left me with some semblance of free time, which I had none of before, and which I appreciate dearly.

France is fast-approaching! I will definitely use this blog to describe my experience there. I can't wait! My spoken French is so terribly bad! I am going to feel mortified for a month straight! Yess! I am also going to wear a dress every day and write beautiful poems in English and French, and go on alone-adventures, and maybe even smoke a pack of French cigarettes for the hell of it.

It's time for me to go to work now, sorry again for goin AWOL sryyyy

Or that!

I have one hour until I go into work. I wanted to go home and sit in a chair during my break but as I exited the building my last class was in, and saw my car goldenly before me in its perfect 7:58 a.m. parking space, I lost my nerve. I came to the coffee shop and ordered a grande soy latte for which I paid 4 stupid dollars and waited 7 awkward minutes. Now I am sitting on a computer IN the coffee shop among a row of students and computers along a wall. People have to walk by me to go into or out of the library, which is connected to the coffee shop. It is pretty awkward. That's okay. Everyone can know that I update my blog.

Today in newswriting class I watched youtube videos of hippies and wrote dreamy things in my notebook. I listened to Janis Joplin and Jefferson Airplane. I am going to write a creative nonfiction poem. I got an A+ on the first assignment we turned in, but I'm not so sure about the article about my sister. I thought we'd have a chance to rewrite and we don't! My professor said "to me, everything is a draft." I guess. I wanted more time on it.

Remember when our moms and dads were young hippies? I want us to remember.

In Media Law, I got colder and colder as the class went on. I put on my coat. I buttoned my coat. Finally, I put up my hood like a criminal. I shook my feet around, kicking the person in front of me a few times. Instead of doodling a lot, I tore off all my nails. I have a system of cracking, peeling, and tearing my nails that is so nasty. What does it mean if I always have to be doing something with my hands? I wish we didn't know smoking was bad and there were ashtrays in lecture halls. That would make so much sense. I could be calm if it was 1950. If I look at my torn-off nails and the pink stubs of my fingers, I remember Sullivan v. New York Times. I know that this started when I was a kid. Inevitably the conversation would fall to the adults, my dad and whomever, sitting around a big table at a restuarant or in our dining room at home. I would listen intently and pick at my nails. The worst part is that I will fall into a reverie while listening to NPR and driving, and I start picking my nails at a stoplight.

Only 15 minutes have passed. What will I do? I should look at some respectable website like cnn.com so that people walking by will not think I'm full of myself. Or I could take pictures with the webcam.

woman with a greasy part, automatic pan

In class I can't ever stop doodling. It annoys me, I don't even like it. Today I used a different kind of pen, a felt-tipped pen, because I knew that if I doodled it would bleed through the page and cause a disaster. I ended up filling in two of my fingernails, and, of course, smearing the ink all over my face. What is wrong with me? Why can't I just sit there nicely? Now I have to person a booth in the student center with two fingers that look like they got slammed in a door.

I have a test tomorrow and lots of reading to do tonight. This is terrible because I want to go thrift shopping, go to yoga class, watch a movie, cook breakfast for dinner, and do all my laundry. Instead I will read read read, underline and underline, and my hands will blacken even further, and I will get ink on my phone, and on the couch, in fact I will probably doodle on the couch, or on my arms, while trying not to keep reading, reading, reading.

Jane Austen's Love and Friendship. Act IV of L'Ecole Des Femmes. The Merchant of Venice. I could save Shakespeare for the weekend, taking the risk that there won't be a quiz tomorrow since there was one yesterday. It's a high risk. But I like reading Shakespeare on a Sunday.

The "student center," as I called it before, is really a glorified hallway. It's not even called the "student center." The Writing Center is giving out candy and mailing valentine postcards out if anyone wants to write one. We are also accepting break-up letters for a contest. I will person the booth for one hour. I don't think I have any company which is unfortunate since I'm awkward and I don't know anybody. At 12, there will be a line of students going in to the dining hall and maybe they will heckle me as they wait in line. Maybe they will say, "Can I have some candy?" and I will say "Yes." Maybe they will say nothing and I will pretend to organize the items on the table as if they are very important. I don't actually care. I have finally developed a thick skin from being awkwardly 4 years older than everyone else yet having to do the same embarrassing things. Presentations, speeches, personing booths, participation, group work, poetry workshops.

Yesterday I went to cycling class, which I have been going to every Monday. I don't know if it made up for the weekend when I ate different kinds of chips and dip for four hours straight. We were rooting for the Saints in the Superbowl. I had people over and I set out many different kinds of chips and dip. I even had broccoli and hummus. I think I was the most vigorous eater.

What will I do now? I left my study questions at home again so I'm not sure if I should read L'Ecole Des Femmes, plus my brain hasn't woken up. I guess I'll get some coffee and get a head start on Media Law reading. Guess that is what I'll do.

new lease on life

I am in the library trying to read some french literature but I realized I left the study questions at home. I have to go back and get them. I just got this full cup of coffee and now I have to slosh it back to my car.

yesterday I negotiated a house for Brandon and I. we move in next weekend! it's brittany's mom's house which I have dreamed of living in since I first set foot in it. I was house sitting there when Brandon and I first started dating, so we have fond memories of watching tv and talking on the back porch. it is a dream come true. I can't wait to move out of the box I've lived in for four and a half years. birthday doesn't know it but he can't wait to have a big fenced in back yard!

actually I should call my current landlord while I'm at home. it will be like finally dumping the meanest ugliest boyfriend. you suck!! i'm leaving!

Wayne down on me

I haven't been feeling well. I feel like miserable crap yet not sick enough to call out of anything. I'm going to tutor at school in a while. Yesterday a student I helped last semester told me she'd gotten an A on the paper we worked on together. I also felt poorly yesterday and working was fine, so I'll do it again today. Lots of tea is the key.

I sort of kind of went on an internet shopping spree because there was a sale. I got lots of stuff for not too much, and, horribly, ALL OF IT FITS. I say "horribly" because what is to stop me from having internet shopping sprees every day? Nothing. Just kidding I don't have money. But I got French cropped slacks and a French top to wear to France. French meaning "black."

I do want to go to the thrift stores soon because I need some modest things for Belize. My sister sent me a packing list and I'm so excited. Especially since it's warm in Belize, unlike here. I doubt it will be warm here in March. It will never be warm. They're saying we should get another storm around Monday just like the storm last weekend. I hope this doesn't happen. I just want to go outside when I want. Right now it's raining hard and steady, the coldest rain.

Everyone else in the apartment is sleeping curled up in tight balls. Brandon doesn't feel well either but I think he is much sicker than I am today. Poor everybody! Poor world!

un jour c'est toi qui pleureras

EVEN though we had a snow day yesterday I've still been doing homework constantly. I took Birthday on many dangerous walks over white and black ice but we didn't fall down (despite his constant pulling). It snowed some and there was a good layer everywhere, but the main thing was ice. Walking across my driveway felt and sounded like walking across a frozen lake. Crack creak crack

One of my classes assigns us extravant readings, 20 pages, 30 pages, 20 pages, 15 pages, 20 pages, all for one day. So I try to get through that. Then reading in French takes me like 5 minutes per sentence. I probably have a kindergarten reading level if that. I am reading 17th century drama. Whoops. But I try! And I answer a worksheet of French questions in sad broken French which despite everything makes me feel cool.

I interviewed my sister for my advanced newswriting class. It's supposed to be a personality profile but it's obviously going to be about her life in Belize too. She said a lot of things that have been tumbling around in my head since the interview. I think we share a lot of ideals and a basic core philosophy of life, but she's in an environment where she can explore that in-depth and come to some major conclusions. Makes me kind of wish I wasn't wading through media law and Molière and fillin' up my brain with the Man. But I am and I'm glad I am. I look at college as an absorbing process, not a time for conclusions necessarily. I guess I just wish I could go somewhere and think for a long time.

Today I have to be at school all day to go to class, make 3 mini speeches, and attend a meeting (about Nice!). I'm doing all my required speeches for my tutoring job in one day. I'll be glad to have them over with. WELL It's time to start on some homework again.

I can't figure out how to get an alarm to go off on my stupid phone. Oh well. School makes me busy, the two-hour break is always filled with hurried reading, so I'm not writing in here as much as I would have liked.

I always like to find hidden vegan messages in old literature (i.e. Moby Dick, my favorite book), so I was excited to read parts of Gulliver's Travels for brit lit. Swift was writing almost 200 years earlier than Melville, so I give him lots of breaks. It is NOT a "vegan" book under my whimsical definition, but I really enjoyed it anyway. If you haven't read this book, or at least parts 1,2, and 4, you must! Basically he goes to lands where the people are some extreme opposite of himself, and tries to understand them. The first people are inches tall, the next people are ten times his size, and in part four the land is ruled by horses, the only rational creature; while the men are "Yahoos," ape-like, despicable beasts. He doesn't ever break the hierarchy of his world completely, and in every land there are unmovable class systems. But I do think it's interesting his comment on humans and animals, especially in part four with the rational horses. At the end of that part, Gulliver is in such admiration of the horses (the "Houyhnhnms" pronounced "hwin-ims") that he hates himself and humanity altogether.

It was important for Swift to point out the shortcomings of humans, but instead doing this by raising animals to the level of humans, he lowered humans to the level of animal. The Houyhnhnms were even better than Europeans, far surpassing them in morals, ethics, and reason. Yahoos, supposed to illustrate man's animal nature, had no relationships with each other, and no feelings other than the occaisional episode of "spleen" (depression) caused by laziness. BUT even in animals like cows, pigs, elephants, real horses, etc., we see complex social activity, signs of grief, signs of stress, and lasting bonds between those animals or between those animals and us. I don't think he got "animal instinct" or "animal nature" correct at all, and if he had, Part 4 may have been even more "disturbing" to people then and now, since we never want to admit how much of an animal we are.

Swift was on the right track, but being an animal is not a horror or a disgrace. He was right that we are nothing but animals. He was wrong that we should be ashamed of it.