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Avoiding William Blake My computer ate my journal entry. No, seriously, I just wrote an entire entry, and somehow, poof. So here I am, trying to recreate it, because I love you that much. No, I really do. Honestly. I love you. You, right there. Yes, you. Okay. I should be writing a paper called Blake's Views on Abolition and Childhood: An Analysis of "The Little Black Boy", and I have in fact written three pages (of ten) and done a bunch of research, but it's not due til Wednesday and I have some sort of stupid mental block about papers and cannot seem to start them early and for some reason seem to really enjoy skating the wild edge of the last minute so here I am, babbling to you, instead of quoting Harold fucking Bloom and David Erdman and spouting off about things like "lack of corporeal hope" and "imbuing words with an undertone of cynicism and bitterness." I've been thinking a lot lately about friends I don't talk to anymore. They fall into two categories, I guess - those I've chosen to sever contact with and those I seem to have drifted away from. There are really only two in the first category, but there are many more in the second - and I miss them all. There are a few specific people in the second category, former show choir kids I drifted away from when they went off to college. One I reconnected with during the alumni show this year, and we had a great time, and even though we don't talk regularly I know that part of that connection we shared while doing shows together is still there. Another I haven't talked to regularly for four years, but I still miss them very much, and wonder if somewhere within us the connection we once had still exists? I think about emailing this person and life seems to get in the way. I need to make that a priority. Greg and I had a flurry of planning for Ireland and now seem to be in a holding pattern. We have places to stay every night but the last night, and we're making a decision about that night in the next couple of days. We're going to Dublin, Galway, the Beara Peninsula, Kinsale, Cashel, Dundalk, and then somewhere near the airport the last night. We have the car and the plane tickets and we're going to meet up with some Irish Usual Suspects. I'm thinking about what I'm going to pack (too often) and what bags to take and if we should get some Euros before we go and will the smokiness be horrible in all the restaurants and what if it rains all the time and how much I hope it is as beautiful as it is in my dreams. Steve and I saw The Last Five Years at the Philadelphia Theatre Company and it was heartbreakingly beautiful and I am obsessed with the CD. I am also listening to Audra McDonald over and over and over. Greg and I finally watched the full director's cut of The Fellowship of the Ring and it was so freaking gorgeous all over again and at the very beginning as Cate Blanchett started to narrate the story of the One Ring I said Peter Jackson is a genius and Greg cracked up because the screen was still black at that point. I have sent away my very first political campaign donation, and obviously chosen the candidate I'm endorsing for the 2004 elections. I'd like my country back too, Dr. Dean. And I'd like it back with clean air and water and wildlife refuges and a job for my brother and retirement money for my parents and the ability to make my own choices about my own body and a balanced budget and background checks on gun purchases everywhere and more money spent rebuilding our country rather than the ones we bomb. I'd like Vermont in all fifty states. I'd like to know why there isn't a national uproar over the Patriot Act II, and why we aren't all fighting for "freedom, the First Amendment and, yes, baseball." We believe Howard Dean wants those things too, and therefore he has our support, both financially and politically. My birthday's in eight days. Thirty is almost over and thirty-one will begin. Bring it on, thirty-one. I've got acupuncture and a solid stable of people who love me. Emotionally, I'm hoping thirty-one will be a bit cheerier than thirty has been. I'll be celebrating with three kinds of fondue and a whole lot of that love, and of course Birthday Week (thank you, Pamie, for changing birthdays everywhere) officially begins Tuesday. My mother, as expected, has rejected my entire wish list and given me the wink wink, nudge nudge over the pregnancy books. (I honestly don't know why she asks me what I want for every holiday; she always pronounces it "boring" and comes up with her own great ideas. I guess this is one of those mother-daughter song and dances we must go through for tradition's sake.) Greg is calling this "Melissa gift-giving extravaganza" since my birthday is next Monday, followed by graduation on May 16th and our first anniversary (already?) on June 8th. (I bought him an extremely cool anniversary gift which of course I cannot tell you about since he reads this; email me if you want to know.) I'm beginning to feel like graduation is a non-event (again) because I sort of forgot it when buying the Ireland plane tickets and we leave at 5 o'clock graduation day, so no celebratory dinner or anything, and because I only get three tickets so my friends can't come as planned. So we'll go and I'll hear my name and that part will seriously rock, and we'll go to Ireland that night, and I guess I'm just being a big complainy baby, aren't I? So I'll shut up about that now. Erin got engaged! Congratulations! Okay. I think I've avoided Willy B. long enough. Back to the paper for me. Wish me luck. |
