What the hell have I been doing for the last week, you may ask. Or you may not, it doesn't make a difference to me. I have alternately been procrastinating and panicking about my busy-ness and lack of time. So what else is new. Suffering Color Photography limbo, as my online-ordered supplies haven't arrived yet (those bastards) and I came to class wholly unprepared today. Yay! Pissing off the teacher on the second week of class. Lucky for me I rule. Unfortunately, one of the new girls who transferred to Drexel this term rules a little bit more than I do. She is just horribly talented and educated and just picks everything up so damn fast. I take these few minutes to freak out in writing. Thank you. *bows, exits stage left*

Late yesterday and for a large part of today, I had a line of a song stuck in my head. It was a Jewel song...the line is 'I'm sorry my heart breaking ruined your day.'

Really, I'm just sorry that I ruined your day.

Nothing short of a fire will get me out of this house, tonight.

From my first exhilerating taste of art history 103, we returned here immediately to begin preparing lunch. An hour and a half later, I bolted out the door with my keys, my ID, and a shoulder bag containing two legal pads, a ziplock bowl of hot cheese soup, and a spoon. I wore jeans and a white tank top, and ran to class.

Three hours after that, soup given to hungry boyfriend, I returned home in the rain. Yes...in the rain and cold, for that matter. White tank-top, mind you. Four or five blocks between my last class and my front door. And I was only harassed twice.

First, sweatpants and a cashmere sweather. Two corn muffins and a huge latte mug of tea after that...Nothing short of a fire will get me out of this house, tonight. Photo assignments or not.

We're going to do a walking tour of Tam's evening.

5:15--Leave apartment, walk to the el station.
5:25--Get off the el at 13th st. Walk to Mid City Camera at 13th and Walnut.
5:35--Guy at Mid City attempts to sell me some paper of the wrong contrast type using the ever-effective "It's better than nothing" argument.
6:05--Purchase a box of the correct type of paper at Webb-Taylor(was that it? I can't remember) above 12th and Race.
6:15--reach 8th st music at 10th and Arch to find it closed.
6:25--ReachStaples and proceed to buy some nice heavy school supplies.
7:00--Finally reach Pearl, the intended destination at 5th and South streets.
7:25--Stand in line as a very scary guy with a gold front tooth attempted repeatedly to make conversation with me, despite my increasingly obvious inclination not to talk to strangers.
7:35--Finally escape Pearl. Assume I will be home by 8pm.
7:55--Reach el station at 8th street. Wait ten minutes for a train.
8:20--Home at last, where I attempt to blog despite the constant distraction of door opening and closing noises in my empty house.
8:45--Take Amy's comment about being home alone here seriously, for the first time. Turn on some loud music.

The first day of class no longer holds for me the intense anticipation and apprehension that it once did. For that matter, I already know three or four of the professors in whose classes I will be, this term, and I like them all well. As I prepared to walk the extra two minutes to campus for my first class this morning, all I truly had to wonder about was just how expensive this term would be, in relation to supplies. In supplies, not bad at all, really. Color film, color paper, a bit of board. Textbooks are to be half borrowed and half bought. I have a locker (gasp) on the photo department's floor in which I can keep tanks, reels, paper, tightly packaged snack food, etc. Yes...I have not much to fear, with the possible exception of large amounts of work in my theater production, world musics, and photojournalism classes. Ah well.

For the past couple of days I've been floating in a kind of limbo...I read a really great book, hung some things on my walls, put some things on shelves, and reorganized the kitchen. But...that's all. My days have been filled with little else. Well, I did pretty much decide on a song to sing for acapella auditions in about two weeks, but even that isn't certain. I only know that I am in a peaceful place right now that can be attentively joyful to the hour of direct sunlight I have in my room.

This week has been a great reclaiming...or perhaps just a claiming. On Monday, I spent the day with my housemate, Amy. We first moved all of the dining room furniture into the living room, then I vacuumed the floor, then she mopped. When the floor had dried, we moved all of the dining room furniture and all of the living room furniture into the dining room, which was no easy task. Vacuumed the living room, mopped. When that was dry, we put all the furniture into its proper rooms and then arranged everything so that it was pleasant and space-efficient. The boys were impressed.

Yesterday, I decided to take the kitchen. I began by cleaning the highest cabinets. I then wanted to work on the kitchen floor (an absolute abomination), but I would have had to vacuum and Amy was sleeping, so I settled myself for scraping the caked grease off of the stove. It took me about an hour and 45 minutes to get it clean and had obviously not been cleaned properly in years. Then the countertops and the lower cabinets. Finally, after Amy'd gotten up, the floor. Shop vac-ed rigorously. Then once over with water and a scrub brush, then once over with just water, and then finally once with a lemony disinfectant. It could probably use a fourth mopping, but damned if I'm doing it anytime soon. The kitchen is actually serviceable and pleasant. I cleared off the table that had dwelt sinisterly in the corner of the kitchen, turned it, and moved it just a few feet to where it could actually be used as a kitchen table. Bring in the chairs we had selected from the dining-room surplus, and you have an actual kitchen. It is, apparently, shockingly beautiful. I spent most of my day there, today, baking and reading. Aaaah.

So perhaps these places were never mine. But they have not been anyone's for some time, and now they are ours. Clean.

I might not eat off of the floors, but I would at least have to think about it.

My hands were full of kittens. Tiny kittens who resembled, more than anything, small cats. They didn't have the disproportionately huge heads and eyes of kittens, but were rather perfectly formed, adult-shaped, baby cats. I could hold seven or eight in my cupped hands, and they came in many colors. There were calico splotched kittens, tortoise marked kittens, but especially there were pure white ones and uniformly dark grey ones. My two bigger cats from home let me carry them on my hips like babies. They let me rub their bellies as I carry them around.

I used my right hand to pick a kitten out of my left hand, raised it to my lips and swallowed it whole. There was no sensation of fur or of eating, just the knowledge that I had consumed a kitten. I ate another and another. My sister asked me if the white ones weren't disgusting, and I told her that no, they weren't.

But we had a train to catch. "Mom, what time is the train?"
"5:20"
"What time is it now?"
"Not time to go yet."

Check my watch...it is 5:20..."Mom, it is definitely time to go..." but she has gone. My dad stands nearby, looking sad. I know he is lonely. "Dad, where is mom?"
"She left with your car. You have to pack our things into her car and we will follow her."
Frustration. I do not want to drive her minivan for such a long trip. I run to the house, passing Peter Mulvey on the way. He speaks into something...trying to get good acoustics in these tunnels.

I run through the house, somehow familiar with the strange place and strange furniture, but realize that it is useless. And I don't want to pack again. I go back outside to my father. "Dad, I'm going to catch the next train...it isn't for a long time." I leave with him a dark grey kitten, which grows to a large cat. He hugs it and smiles...seems almost happy.


But, my dad hates cats.

I examined weather.com this morning. Rain...thunderstorms...sunrise and sunset. Hmmm. Sunrise: 6:42. Sunset: 7:08. Interesting. The autumnal equinox is theoretically the 20th or the 21st, I always forget, bad pagan that I am, so I check when the sunrise and sunset are for those days. I expect them to split the difference and match at 6:53 for both sunrise and sunset, but this is not the case. 6:47 sunrise and 7:00 sunset. Yes, indeed. On the "equinox," the day is still expected to be 26 minutes longer than the night. By the estimations of the people at weather.com, it looks like the day and night will actually be equal right around the 26th of September, at which point sunrise and sunset will both be around 6:52 (am and pm respectively).

Really. How are all my wild sex-rites supposed to work if I can't get a good equinox around here.

Damn summer and my car for making me lazy and out of shape. Damn fall for containing the birthdays of too many guys. Damn me for throwing out the shipping box. Damn the humidity. Damn housemates that are never around. Damn people who won't read the faq and still insist they know everything. Damn people who won't read the faq but insist on making the questions just a bit more frequently asked. Damn unidentified materials lurking behind sheetrock.

Damn mice.

It's like a bathtub filling up with pudding.

Thick and opaque, the silence fills the space between us, seeping into every niche but somehow only fortifying our defenses. We alternately glare at and ignore each other. I lie very still, wrapped in a blanket, half hoping he'd forget I exist, half knowing I'd probably die if he did. At any time we could open the drain, rinse, and start fresh, but we don't. Who am I kidding. I am the one who turns to the wall.

My wrists lay limply on the keyboard drawer. I have never seen so much dirt under my fingernails without having landscaped. I have been carrying things for a week...not the same things, but always carrying things. My things...other peoples' things...

Moving week here at school has greatly exceeded my wildest expectations, and that in many ways. I surprise myself by being relatively easy to move: my life consists of about 2.5 carloads. A couple of my friends suffer serious setbacks in their new apartment, as the construction and remodeling have so far taken three days more than expected, and the place cannot yet be inhabited. For the time being, they sleep on the floor in their old apartment which remains in the possession of friends. At the same time, the number of friends that turned out to help them move their many belongings more than matched their wishes.

From lifting, carrying, balancing, pushing, pulling, opening, and stacking, I am not so much hurt...not yet, anyway. More than that, I feel a heaviness and fatigue in every muscle. Like I said, something about my wildest expectations.

Settling in. Surrounded by boxes and bags and other strange packages...I'll be back when I'm a bit more organized and I have some posters covering these nasty walls. :)

A few minutes ago, I got up to lessen the intensity of the arctic blast that aims at my desk chair. I got up, as I said, and was met with a view that has become increasingly familiar to me, though this began as a place I had never intended to get used to. I saw the sunset from my window, across the intersection.

I can't remember ever seeing a sunset in the house I spent my childhood in. In the house in which I grew up, the sun never set in my window...it only rose, while from my dorm room window I saw the sunrise over the other wing of the building and watched its reflection set in a hi-rise a few blocks away. The sunset here creeps in, orange, from the right. It breaks through windows and lace in the living room, making patterns on the wall, and leaves bright pink stripes in my room.

Sunset over west Philadelphia, with it's fifteen story buildings and hospitals dotting the horizon makes it seem very near. But that's not true: there is a lot of future over there.

more like this...

As I perused sidebar StillLife, I happened upon his link to this article and decided to make it a project. I will attempt to learn to write and speak in E Prime, and the project will continue until further notice. This and the preceeding two sentences have been my first exercise. Thank you.

So so sleepy...must still shower and put clean sheets on the bed...all packed...pretty much...



aaaaaaaah.

So so much going on. Yesterday, I wrote a long rant about how stupid boys are, but when I'd finished, I realized that I'd only needed to write about it...definitely didn't need to publish it.

Also, a lot of reminiscences of April, or specifically, one weekend in April. First off, two emails in my mailbox. One containing this message and the second from someone I met that weekend. To clarify: Lisa is putting out some new songs, and Rabi might come to the beach with me and Kat. Kat will be home in just a few days, and I'm absolutely holding my breath for it.

On top of all that excitement, I'm theoretically moving in the next week, so I've been packing everything up. I was originally planning to spend today cleaning, but since I can't get ahold of anyone who lives in my new house, I haven't been able to go over there. Bastards...all of them. :)

Oh, and it's raining in my downstairs neighbor's closet.