Still didn’t get any sleep.

Drank pitchers and pitchers of water. Played around with HMM3. I’m so sleepless I’ve made another pile of consecutive entries on this damn blog, pushing everyone else below the fold. I’m so vain.

Films watched, in order:

Full Metal Jacket
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Are You Being Served? The Movie
A Clockwork Orange

—

I just realized I gotta finance my summer somehow. Book project? Part-time job? Sell the unused bits of my soul? Strip?

Borrow again?

Pain in the arse. Oh wait, no longer International Beer Day. Pain in the ass.

I’m not usually one for planning ahead or even believing in planning ahead, but it’s like 3.30 am and I haven’t been sleeping and I just got happy. After six months here I’d tentatively decided that I didn’t want to stay in school as long as Ph.D., but I’ve been getting worried about that: what if I get out there and can’t find my place still, and everything goes to shit?

Then I realized: I’ve still got deferrments! I can still go to New York in fall, 2005, without lifting another finger, if my life isn’t looking like I want it to by then! And if I do lift a finger, I can probably even score a better financing package.

But of course eyedoewanna getta Ph.D. anymore. Maybe.

Who cares. For once, I’m ecstatic that I planned ahead. Life is cool.

—

“My head’s on straight. My girlfriend’s beautiful. Looks pretty good to me.”

—

Shit, I gotta get some sleep.

D’oh. Caught by the phone again.

I’m gonna watch a film.

I’m thinking… Full Metal Jacket.

Worrrrrrrrrrrd.

Been a lot between us
And I guess there’s more to come
We’ve been doing something right
But sometimes it goes wrong
We’ve been through places
And we won’t be back again
We’ve been through faces
But I guess that never ends
I don’t know what’s goin on

Been a lot between us
And I guess there’s more to come
We’ve been doing something right
But sometimes it goes wrong
We were never scared of light
But the shadows that it throws

—

It’s early yet… Off to the races, kids!

Go, go, go!

I’m working on my third and final term paper. I have a topic and a plan and a ‘ready to proceed.’ The only thing that I don’t have is time. It becomes increasingly clear that I will not be done by Friday. So I capitulate. I have asked for an extension.

The Bastards:

They have beaten me. Oh well. It’s St. Patrick’s day. I am green and ready for a Father Jack.

—

Welcome, optein.

—

Right now I really, really want to ‘remember something fondly’ and dwell on it for a little while. But I can’t come up with anything so I’ve bought an orange juice and stuck it with some VSOP and waved to some guy called ‘Lyons’ across the room.

He’s the only one so far today that I know.

Yesterday I saw everybody here.

Everybody.

And I talked to every last damn one of them for a very damn long time.

Damn Long Time.

—

VSOP.

At half past two in the morning, I haven’t had a drop of drink; I’m sitting in the basement by angry vending machines with a stack of unstapled paper (I broke my stapler in a fit of productivity) and people are coming past me in their underwear to buy pretzels and soda.

I’m tired enough and saturated enough that I don’t understand anything in print just now, including this. Baba Yaga wants your sexy pants.

—

I haven’t kept up on email. I haven’t kept up on work. I haven’t kept up on family and friends. I haven’t kept up. This quarter has taken too much. Too much.

She asked me not too long ago why I came to graduate school. I don’t know why. Same reason I do everything: I’m always hoping it will be better than the last thing, which I didn’t like very much. It never is.

—

There aren’t just two kinds of people in the world, glass half empty, glass half full, blah, blah. There’s also a third: it doesn’t matter whether it’s half empty or half full because it’s probably methyl alcohol rather than water, meaning that if you drink it, you’ll go blind and maybe die, but of course there’s only one way to find out and if you stay in this desert heat any longer without a drink, you’re gonna die anyway.

Sometimes I think this third kind is me.

—

But I’m not unhappy. I’m in a pretty good mood the last few days. I have been lucky in Chicago, in spite of my confusion about life. And in another few days, I’ll be on the road. God, it’s been a long time. I wonder if I can even remember how to drive. Maybe I’ll just run into things and hurt myself.

Perhaps more importantly, it’ll give us a chance to drink together, hike together, and play with legos together.

—

I have to go to bed. I have to get up early and start work on another mammoth paper.

That sucks.

I saw Victoria today and she gave me all kinds of encouragement to take an incomplete and finish up my papers when I’ve got more time next quarter, with the research hours and all. I dunno.

—

I really miss twenty-four hour convenience stores and the ability to sneak over late and buy a brew or something. The only thing here are these damn vending machines and these idiots who keep turning up in their underwear. I feel so overdressed.

And sitting here with stacks of paper and a laptop, too!

Everyone keeps reading my shirt.

It’s been a long day.

Gin.

I was working on a paper in a medium-sized study room filled with quiet people. My significant other had just left and I was beginning to regret having papers to work on, or at least having been as dedicated to them as I seem to be tonight. I was beginning to get that same sense of ennui…

…but as I sat here typing and growing increasingly frustrated at my lot, from somewhere outside in the darkness I heard someone whistling. I slowed my typing to listen…

The whistling stopped. But not before I heard Albinoni’s Adagio.

I still have a lot of work to do, but I think I will collect my things in a few minutes and leave for home. I can do the same work there, at this point. The work has to be done, but it doesn’t have to be done here.

Four months today.

Where are you, my old friends?

I am always alone here in the evenings, on the weekends.

There isn’t much air in this place, in this box, in this little enclave, though the echoes of a hundred foreign footsteps are everywhere behind me. I wonder how they can continue so long? None of them understand; none of them can know; none of them know why; none of them are here.

Neither am I, blue as I am, white as I am. I went all the way down the staircase and didn’t find another door; it leads nowhere, just like me, and together we are a wandering pair; lower and lower, deeper and deeper. We have a kind of shared purpose; if only there were lights, I’d stay. I’d stay. If only I could avoid this box, I’d breathe again. I am alone.

I am alone.

I wonder. I wonder. I wonder. Perhaps next I’ll go higher.

Please don’t

fear me.

I didn’t write so very much. But I did do an exceedingly large amount of research. Therefore, the day was not wasted. I have exhausted my mental capital, my fake functionality, my end-quarter mind. I have walked home in the dark. I am numb. Maybe I am dead.

I am going to withdraw into the 4th floor womb, swim in Alandia and soft blue light, and forget what I can. Bis spaeter, world. Maybe you will go away while I’m not looking.

Tomorrow: papers.
Day after tomorrow: papers.
Day after that: papers.
Day after that: papers.
And that: papers.

—

There is nothing in me, there is nothing outside of me. There is nothing.

None of the pieces of life belong to it; when you look too hard, they disappear.

I saw a man and a boy together, and across most of Sunday morning, a girl: small, bewildered, crying. If I were a god and not a man, I would have taken her — to put her out of her misery, and out of his.

I’m only a man.

Happy birthday to my sis, who deserves to be happy.

To the rest of the world, to the rest of you: I don’t understand you. I don’t understand any of you. I’m not even the same species as you. You make no sense to me. I am from a different world and a different genetic heritage. All I ever wanted was to love all of you, but all any of you ever gave me was your indifference and the opportunity to make a profit and to build a career.

I have no use for a profit. I have no use for a career.

I have no use for anything I can recognize or for anything I can get my hands on.

—

Hemmingway said that for every hundred pages he wrote, ninety-nine were shit. For every hundred I write, only sixty-six are shit. Therefore, I am a better writer than Hemmingway, or at least a more efficient writer than Hemmingway. For those of you who hate Hemmingway: oh well. You hate everything.

I love Hemmingway.

—

One paper down, two to go. I will be done with a second by sometime Monday.

—

Three things touched me more than anything else ever in my life:

1. The Northern Exposure episode called Nothing’s Perfect.
2. Learning that I was my grandfather’s favorite.
3. Young people spontaneously singing Lean On Me in a park at night in DC after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Strange, because I am not a patriot and I didn’t think the attacks were particularly undeserved.

—

Somewhere tonight, a mother cat is slowly dying.

—

Somewhere tonight, a twenty-something man is sitting in a small university bar wondering what he will do next and whether it will matter to him more than what he is doing now.

—

Somewhere tonight, Iraqi families, Spanish families and Afghani families, among others, are cursing the war on terror.

—

Somewhere tonight, Nikki Sixx and Axl Rose aren’t dead yet.

—

Somewhere tonight, Bob Marley is.

I was asleep in the library. I was dreaming again. I woke up. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as unhappy in my life as just now, coming to the groggy realization that I am in Chicago, in the library, alone and with papers to work on.

Suddenly I regret almost everything I’ve done since New Year’s Day, 1995. Or maybe since winter quarter, 1992. Or even since the summer of 1986. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be in Chicago. I regret applying to this school (or any schools), I regret the money I’ve spent here, the nights I’ve been alone here, the compromises I’ve made here, the people I’ve met here, the place that I live here, the things that I’ve done here.

I regret eBay and I regret FX and I regret MCP and I regret Caldera and I regret TMI and I regret About and I regret TMC and I regret the road trips and I regret the camera work and I regret the list of girlfriends and I regret the car and the computers and the cat and the bus stops and the shows and the metro library and the bottles of St. Provo Girl and the fish and the grey days in my apartment on the dumpster couch eating frozen vegan food and everything, everything, everything.

I hate this. I don’t know where I am or who I am or why I am here or how I got here. I want to go home but I haven’t been home in decades and there is no home anywhere to go to. Everyone I ever cared about is either dead or gone.

I fucked up. Somewhere along the way, I fucked up.

This is more serious than a couple of summers ago, when I didn’t talk to anyone for two months and spent every night on the corner of Harris Ave. under the street lamp listining to Mazzy Star, smoking pack after pack and drinking vodka. I don’t know what it means. Maybe I just need to wake up a little more. I’ll hope.

I regret having come to this place today. I regret having fallen asleep in the library.

Something has to give.

“There’s no there there, son. Stop telling yourself tales. I mean look at you, all covered in stains, threw away your hat, unshaven, sulking. You look like hell.

“My advice to you? You’re a writer. So write.”

—

There is a lot to think about.

I don’t know where today will take me.

I am not satisfied with who I have become recently. It will not do.

I haven’t forgotten.

Duchesse De Borgonne: Best Beer Ever.

(By my calculation.

all that matters. To any of you.)

There are places I’ll remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I’ve loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more
In my life I love you more