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January 2003

January 31, 2003

A poignant set of lyrics from what I was listening to in my car:

ELO - "Eldorado Overture" from the album Eldorado

The dreamer, the unwoken fool,
In dreams, no pain will kiss the brow.
The love of ages fills the head.
The days that linger there in prey of
emptiness, of burned out dreams.
The minutes calling through the
years.
The universal dreamer rises up above
his earthly burden.
Journey to the dead of night.
High on a hill in Eldorado.

Posted at 9:49 PM

January 30, 2003

Heather, Chris, Laura, and Kristina joined me at 'the Boy' tonight for our weekly get-together (Misty joined us just before we left shortly after Midnight, but we only had just enough time to say "Hello," chat briefly, and get some hugs before leaving). I had been waiting for almost an hour when the core group arrived, and I was feeling fairly depressed. This latest wave of depression has been very powerful, and I've been really hit hard by it. Even though I was less depressed than I have been during the rest of the week, I was still dragging. Sure, I was a bit more upbeat because I knew I'd see my friends - and I was - but it wasn't enough to cancel out the pain.

When everyone was there and around me, ... well .. I was fine. I was content. I even had moments of happiness. It was what I live for. Now that I'm back at the Arts Center, though, it's gone. It was ebbing through the whole drive back here. Once the contact was gone, the happiness trailed away, like the water gradually evaporating off of your body as you leave the comforting waters of the pool behind.

I've been asked why I think a boyfriend would make a difference to me when having friends doesn't seem to do it. I always hate that question because it seems to suggest that I don't appreciate my friends or that they don't mean a lot to me and make me feel happier in a very powerful way. The truth is that they make me very happy - when I'm around them and even a lot of time when they're not around ... but the happy energy just runs out. A boyfriend, for one thing, would be around a lot more often. The happiness would be more prevailant. Also, the happiness would be far more intense. I don't think that it's a slight to my friends to say that the sheer bliss somebody gets from someone they love deeply exceeds the love and happiness they get from their friends. That's just the glory of being in love. And a boyfriend would just have a more lasting impression, even when he wasn't there. As much as I love my friends and think of them, even getting moments of happiness just from thinking about my time with them, it's not the same as when you're in love and that person is constantly on your mind, constantly making you giddy with happiness, constantly making you think of the last time your were together and the next time you will be together again - it's just a powerful, constant feeling. I've felt it. I know.

So a boyfriend would indeed make a difference, based on my experience, much like my friends but in a much more omnipresent way. I can't expect my friends to be around all of the time. Maybe I couldn't expect that from a boyfriend, either. Maybe I expect things that could never happen anyhow - it's not like I have a boyfriend or even have any hope of having a boyfriend, and maybe even having a boyfriend won't be enough to really make me happy. Maybe I'm just too far gone, and I can't ever find happiness, simple as that should be. Maybe I'm just fucked and nothing will make a difference. But I want to hold out a sliver of lasting hope that dreams come true. Because really, that's all I've actually got.

Posted at 1:03 AM

January 29, 2003

I haven't been more than moderately interested in anything to do with this novel I've been reading for class, The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. It just tries to be insightful and symbolic and optimistic but it simply fails and remains contrived and stupid. Even with that said, however, I found one brief passage that was worth the read because it managed to express something that I've generally been unable to convey, namely the depth of pain I feel in my depression. Here's the passage:

"There is no point in treating a depressed person as though she were just sad, saying There now, hang on, you'll get over it. Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer."

True, that.

Posted at 11:51 PM

January 28, 2003

KIll me now, before I get bitter and hateful.

Posted at 9:09 PM

January 27, 2003

So cold. So alone.

Everywhere around me are beautiful and intelligent guys - smiling, joking, carefree, and hopeful. They have everything, can be everything, and see a future. They don't know pain; they don't know years of solitude; they haven't been destroyed by the ones they love, haven't been betrayed or abused or used. They still trust, still believe in themselves and their loved ones, still think that bad things don't happen to good people. They may never grow to hate living, and I can only hope that's the case.

There is nothing here - no warmth, no compassion, no comfort ... no one to hold, no one to feel, no one to care. Empty. A void filled with ghosts and phantoms of the past and future - spectres of pain and fear, illusions of hope and joy.

I don't know why I even try any more. It will always be this way - the future seems already to be written - fate is a fickle friend, and the gods are sadistic.

So cold. So alone.
Exist to die.

Posted at 10:25 PM

January 26, 2003

I don't know if I'm reading slower or if time is passing faster, Either way, I'm just not getting stuff completed as radipdly as I have to for my classes. I've never bee a fast reader, and I am quite deliberate (and even slow) about writing anything and rechecking it a number of times, but I've managed to keep pace with things before without too much of a problem, even if others seem to get done faster and easier than me.

But this semester, early as it is to make sweeping judgements, is proving to be terribly hard to keep up, and I've had only time around classwork for a quick surf of the web and maybe a couple chapters from the online stories I follow. It sucks.

So life, as usual, is just spiffy.

Posted at 7:19 PM

January 25, 2003

Well, I know a whole lot more about Tecumseh than I ever knew before (although you would be surprised how much I actually did know) now that I've read the first half of the book about him for my OHio History class. It was interesting, but it dragged on, and it took me most of the day to read it. Which is okay, I guess, but I had hoped to read all (or most) of another book in addition to this today. All part of the fun stuff for next week's classes.

The highlight of the day has been that even though I'm still stuffed up with my head c old, my headache has mostly gone away. At most, it is a dull pain throughout my whole head, but nothing like the major pain I was going through for a few days there. That's a good sign that my caffeinne withdrawal is wearing off. A few more days and I might actually have no pain at all. What a bargain.

Sadly, that's the highlight (and extent) of my day. I have no life. How sad is that?

Posted at 9:56 PM

January 24, 2003

Somehow, I made it through this week. I have been keeping up with classwork, but just barely, and I have all sorts of stuff to do this weekend (read two novels, doing 3 Reading Journal entries for one; read two textbook chapters; edit and critique 14 short stories, write some poems for my workshop; annotate 4 short stories, and ... something I know I'm forgetting ...). So it's just fun, fun, fun, everywhere I go.

But at least I'm keeping up. The hope is to get ahead just a bit, even if just like 3 or 4 days ahead, but right now I'm wondering when I'll get to that point.

I guess I shouldn't complain. At least I'm caught up, right? But what about time to just fuck around and maybe play a computer game or take a walk. THere's really no extra time right now as I try to keep up and nudge ahead just a bit, and that has dangerous possibilities down the road if I get too stressed. It's inevitible; I'll get stressed before the end of the semester (and almost certainly more than once), and I'll have to have time to just do nothing (or at least something impractical like a game or reading a book for pleasure (imagine that!)).

Anyhow, I'm just still feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the coursework I have. Hopefully the feeling will pass.

Posted at 8:48 PM

January 23, 2003

After a frenzy of revising, writing, and then eventually printing off enough copies for everyone in the workshop, I made it to my Fiction Workshop with only a couple of minutes to spare and a whole day behind me in the process. The story is definitely much better, although much different in the closing moments. It also ended up being by far the largest story in this round of workshopping (by twice as much as anyone else). For me, it wasn't huge at all, but it is much more expansive than what anyone else brought.

As pleased as I was with the way the story came together, however, I was morosely depressed today. The whole feeling of isolation and emptiness that often hits me when I'm depressed has been overwhelming, and I almost just gave up everything I needed to get done so that I could just curl up into a ball in bed for a few weeks and try to shut out the horror of life. Somehow I managed to persevere, but the feeling was still with me all through the evening, even as I went to Big Boy for the weekly get-together with my friends.

I had seriously considered just leaving early and saying I was tired and had headaches and a stuffy nose (all true), but I ended up stgaying 'til past Midnight and was once again rewarded by the good company. I'm not going to be doing cartwheels anytime soon, but I feel much less doomed than I was before sharing time with everyone.

Laura and Kristina, Heather and Eric, Manny, and finally Chris showed up (although Eric left early to spend time with his little brother). It was just a normal evening full of our usual batch of unpredictable conversation (including talk of modeling nude for Chris to sketch, stories about guys wearing tutus, describing the various aspects of a 1937 German silent movie called Berlin, plans on forming a support group for depression, getting public internships, explaining our cut-backs (I've stopped all intake of caffeinne, Manny is going on the patch, ...), condemning innefectual professors, talking about grad school, and talking Manny into eating and swallowing 6 Saltine crackers in 60 seconds (no small feat, if you've never tried it (and Manny actually did it, with no time to spare)). So it was just another normal evening for us.

But that sort of weird normalcy is just what I needed. These people keep me sane - they keep me alive - and it's the best thing I have going for me in the world.

Posted at 1:21 AM

January 22, 2003

Blah.

As if the headaches and runny nose weren't annoying enough, I'm still coming up empty on the story ideas. Well, that's not exactly true. I've had great ideas, but nothing that would work in the small confines of the page limit I'm allowed.

So I've decided to do a major revision of Out of the Frying Pan. I have been meaning to do certain revisions for a long time but have continued to put it off. None of those were individually big, but they would have cleaned things up nicely. Those items will be revised, but I also have decided to rewrite the ending.

When I originally wrote the story, I had a much different, and much darker, ending in mind. When the time came to write it, I just saw too many problems with that original ending, so I changed it to be a bit more predictable and storybook-like. That ending has never felt quite right, either, but I've never seen how to find the right balance. Now, after deciding to use this story for my workshop and having though about revisions, I think I may have come across a way to use my original idea and have it work to satisfaction.

Unfortunately, I've been dragging through everything else and haven't gotten any changes done yet, so tomorrow will suck a bit since I have to make the changes quickly so that I can turn in copies for everybody in the workshop by tomorrow evening. <cringe>

But at least I have an idea, and that's better than I( was for a while.

Posted at 8:43 PM

January 21, 2003

As yesterday's Journal entry suggests, things haven't been great for me the past few days. First and foremost, I have a head cold and my nose is running like a sieve. This is quite surely a result of the fact that one of my two studios here at the Arts Center has pretty much no heat at all, and I'm shaking with cold even under a heavy comforter. My other studio is comfortable, so I've been spending more time in there, but the studio that is cold contains my kitchen, my phone, and my internet connection, as well as 19 channels on the TV as opposed to only 6 in the other studio (partly due to the direction the building faces and partly due to the TV that is being used). So I'm stuck, to some extent, because I have to spend a certain amount of time in the room that is frigidly cold. That has now made me sick (not to mention horribly inconvenienced).

At the same time,I made a decision to try to take control of my Pepsi consumption. I am really out of control with how much I drink, and the combination of the caffienne screwing with my metabolism and the calories adding up far too quickly has been driving my weight up. So being the compulsive sort of person that I am, I have not only given up Pepsi but all caffienne. Rather than just go cold turkey, I switched to Sprite (no caffiene and 2/3 of the calories, plus I tend to drink less of it). If I can keep this up, it will have a great long-term effect on me, but in the short-term it's got me hurting. I have lasting headaches that won't leave, I'm weak, I get lightheaded ... all sorts of fun stuff. Part of it is the caffienne withndrawal; I expect that. Part of the issue, though, is a blood pressure thing. Without the caffienne as a stimulant for bloodflow, my blood pressure is up again (it's a hereditary problem in my family (lucky me)). So this and the head cold, together, have left me pretty miserable.

Of course it doesn't end there. I've been feeling lonely and depressed again, and that hasn't helped. Sure, it's sort of expected that I'd fall into depression along with the caffienne withdrawal, but the crying added with the runny nose and full sinuses has just become a frightening mess.

Posted at 12:49 AM

January 20, 2003

Crap.

Posted at 8:25 PM

January 19, 2003

I have read so many stories and novels and written so many required writings for classes on the computer that I think my eyes are going to fall out. It could be worse; I could still have a lot more to do before classes resume on Tuesday.

Oh, shit ... that's right ... I do have a lot more to do before Tuesday.

Yeah. I have to write a new short story and I am completely locked up. I come up with an idea and it just goes nowhere. It's driving me nuts. I have to write a few new poems, too, and that's not bothering me aas much. In fact, I have a couple of the poems started, with clear ideas where I want them to go. But the story - eeeessh! - I'm not sure what to do.

The problem here is size. I need a story that's quite short (because of page limits set for the assignment) but complete, so I can't even write a chapter for a longer story. Anything I think of that is workable will just simply be too long, and the shorter ideas just end up being crap, more like just a vignette than an actual story.

So tomorrow is all about brainstorming and (hopefully) writing. Wish me luck.

Posted at 11:40 PM

January 18, 2003

Ugh! So much homework for the first weekend into school!

I have been reading and writing all day and will be doing so all tomorrow and even Monday (and parts of Tuesday, I'll bet, too). It takes a bit of effort ot get ahead and all, but this is ridiculous!

I'm quite tired, even though I slept quite a while last night, and I have a lingering headache that's probably a hold-over from two nights of being around constant smokers. For a while, today, I even felt like it was "Fuck Paul" day because of the negative encounters I had with Christiana and Tom in the building as well as a few problematic e.mails from companies that are being much-less-than-helpful. But that "fucked" attitude passed quickly, even though I'm no happier with any of those problems than I was at the time. But I'm still tired - probably even moreso than earlier today.

But hopefully tomorrow will look up some. I should get a lot of my homework done and be on a better track. And there'll be new episodes of a bunch of tv shows, including a new Simpsons, that will give me things to make me happy, even if only momentarily. That will still leave me with a bunch of wrtiting left to do, but that'll be okay (I guess). It's just a lot to jump into.

Posted at 12:19 AM

January 17, 2003

Well today has been quite a full day. Even after the cheering up I received last night, I spent much of the day, today, depressed. I had deciced to join Heather and Eric's German Film class to watch Nosferatu, the original vampire movie (silent movie) in the Gish Film Theatre on campus. Kristina and Chris joined us as well, and while I hadn't been anything but moody prior to arriving, I just felt at peace as soon as I was together with my friends.

The movie itself was great. I have seen most, but never all, of the movie in the past, and it was a real treat to see it on a proper screen and everything. When we all left, we chatted for a little while and decided that we should watch Shadow of the Vampire, a movie from a couple of years ago about the making of this movie that posited that the actor who played Count Orlok, the vampire, was not really an actor but was indeed a vampire.

We had all been invited last night to join Heather and Eric for the movie and then follow along to Chris and Heather's place to spend time with Heather's brother, Graham, who would be arriving when we got back, and to have some dinner and conversation togther. We added the movie to the list of things to do, and we were off.

Once Graham arrived, after we had been in the apartment for a while, chatting and playing with the cat, we went out to grab the video and some dinner (Taco Bell, something I haven't had in quite a long time). Wwatched the movie while we ate at the apartment, and laoghed through most of the film. It was incredibly campy, in its own way, but the cinematography was simply magnificent, working along with great sets and excellent acting to create a perfect replica of the original film while it told its modern version of the tale. It was incredibly entertaining. Graham may have missed some of the value of the film since he hadn't arrived early enough to watch Nosferatu with us and had never seen it before, but he is incredibly intelligent and seemed to take it all right in, regardless.

We had a break early in the movie (for about an hour) when Laura arrived. We talked for a while and shared more anecdotes about what was going on in our lives, some situations seeming almost unreal considering how dramatic the circumstances (and which are not really my place to share with you here on a publicly-accessible website). By the time Laura left and we got back to the movie, it was getting a bit late and Chris left to join Misty to see two really good bands in Toledo at Frankie's. I had considered going (which is something I usually wouldn't even consider attending lately because Frankie's is incredibly small and shoulder-to-shoulkder with people, and is usually a bit too much for me to deal with with getting anxious and claustrophobic), and while I was still interested, I wanted to see the last of the movie, and I wanted to just hang out for w while longer.

We talked for a while, Eric joining us after a time. We had a sad moment when we realized that Heather's rat, who has been in rapidly declining health for a few months, had died. But Heather took it well, having been expecting this for a while, and we all tried to focus upon other subjects to make things more comforatble.

We had to leave just before midnight since Heather and Eric had to work in the dorms (and Graham would be spending time with them at work), so we all took off to where we needed to be, and that was it. It was a great night though (dead rats aside), and it once again managed to keep me sane and stable for another night after a day of being depressed and far less than stable.

Graham, by the way, was really quite adorable all night. As I've mentioned before in this Journal, he's very atrractive and is incredibly intelligent and interesting, so I found myslef trying to talk with him at different points and just staring at him at other points. It's all sort of pathetically pointless on my part, really, since Graham is about half my age, hundreds of miles away most of the time, and about a million miles out of my league, and even just a friendship would be almost completely unlikely, but what can I say - it's just nice to be around him - just like it's nice to be around my whole new circle of friends. It just makes me feel good. I may whine and moan about wanting a boyfriend (and I do want one, damnit), but having some close friends that I get to see regularly goes a long way toward easing my loneliness. Now the time I'm not with them ... that is somewhat problematic ... but all I can do is take what I can get and just try to make that be enough. Somehow.

Posted at 2:13 AM

January 16, 2003

Tonight we resumed the Thursday night get-togethers at Big Boy. I don't know about everyone else, but I've been getting progressively more depressed as the week has gone on, and I desperately needed this bonding time. We had a great crew gathered, and it looks like we may see a good gathering of people all semester long.

Manny has returned to school after a semester off, and he is much more enthusiastic and determined than we've ever seen him. He's as fun to be around as ever, and he went to the poetry reading with me before we headed over to 'the Boy.' We were the first to arrive, but Heather and Chris showed up only a short time later. Chris will actually be able to be around all night for these Thursdays (barring a pending project needing to be worked upon). Last semester we never saw Chris until at least 10 PM because he was on clean-up of the ceramics studio, but he doesn't have a ceramics class this semester so he is free. Laura and Kristina joined us, along with Laura's boyfriend John and two of their friends, and Eric showed up soon thereafter. Misty also arrived, and although she spent a lot of time with her circle of friends in another part of the restaurant, she was around quite a bit as well. All told it was quite a gathering, and we all had much to share seeing as we each have new classes and anecdotes to discuss. Heather is in a class with Eric and also in a class with Kristina and in a class with Chris, but otherwise we will all only see each other on Thursday nights and on occasions that we make arrangements for some social gathering otherwise. For me, that means that the Thursday evening conversations will be more important than ever at maintaining my sanity.

I know a large number of people in my first class, Contemporary Fiction, from other classes, but I'm not close enough to any of them to do more than say "Hi" or use their name in conversation. Pat, who I grew to appreicate in my Beat Lit. class last semester, is in this class, but so are a number of know-it-alls who I've had in a number of other classes and who make discussions of books sometimes very unfruitful. There is one guy, named Brian, who is in this class who I think is simply too attractive for words. I've had a couple of classes with him before and appreciat5ed him from afar, but I've never talked to him. In fact, I've never heard him talk at all. He's quite quiet, and that actaully adds to his attractiveness in my book (at least in his case). But he's just someone to appreciate, I think - just like a wonderful piece of art. It would be a complete shock if he and I ever even held a conversation, let alone anything more.

My second class, History of Ohio, is huge but has no people at all that I know. My third class, the Poetry Workshop, has a few people I know (once again pretty much just by name) but also has Brian, a cool guy I know who is simply one of the most knowledgeable people about movies I have ever met. He is also a very talented poet, writer, and filmmaker, and he and I share a similar cynicsm and wit that has allowed us to get along well in the few classes we've had togther over the last couple of years. Brian is really the only person I know well enough to talk with in any of my classes because my fourth class, the Fiction Workshop, is full of a number of people I once again recognize and know by name but really don't converse with. It's great to know Brian and have a class with him (he graduates at the end of this semester, so this is my last chance to enjoy his wit), but it blows to have nobody else in my classes that I can relate to or talk with.

Tonight really picked up my spirits and made me feel like I wasn't alone. We talked about all sorts of things, as usual, but it was just so comfortable and comforting that I was able to push off all of my depression, even if only for tonight.

It's a real gift, I tell you.

Posted Written at 1:34 AM

January 15, 2003

Apparently CBS has been trying to find a real-life, rural family to move to Bev-er-lie in a reality-tv version of "The Beverly Hillbillies." Based upon this revelation, I now have lost most of my remaining faith in the future of the human race.

Posted at 8:32 PM

January 14, 2003

Well, yesterday and today have shown me what's in store for the semester, and things aren't quite as stressful and busy as I had feared. There will indeed be a great deal of reading, but not more than I have most semesters with all of my Englsih classes. There will actually be a good deal more formal, critical papers than I had expected (but nothing extensive), and quite a bit less poems and stories than I had expected.

I suppose I should be relieved that I'll have less anxiety about developing enough story ideas that are short (10 pages, approximately). Heck, I was even whining about my conce4rns two days ago in this very Journal, but instead I'm disappointed to have so few workshops for poems and stories when that's what the classes are specifically supposed to be for. Instead we'll be doing explications of classsic short stories and peer evaluations (things which we've done in previous classes and which, in my estimation, are complete wastes of time). My plan is to try writing more stories and poems than I'm required to create for the workshops, using select pieces for the workshops but still having more complete works for this site. That's my plan. Hopefully my natuaral tendency to procrastinate won't get in the way.

It looks to be a full semester with a decent amount of work due every week, but it should be manageable. And I can live with that.

Posted at 9:32 PM

January 13, 2003

Happy Anniversary! Happy Anniversary! Happy Anniversary! Ha-a-a-ppy Anniversary!

Okay; most of you will have completely missed that pop culture reference, so I'll fill you in. On one episode of the Flintstones cartoon series, as part of a story about Fred and Wilma's wedding anniversary, Barney and a bunch of friends sing Happy Anniversary in repetition to the tune of the William Tell Overture. Being the weird person that I am, that odd little moment from television history has been playing in my head throughout the day. Why? Well let me tell you.

Today marks the two year anniversary of this website. It may not be much, but it means a lot to me, and on January 13, 2001 I finally got everything together for the initail launch. Now my original plans had been for a January 1st launch so that the site would have dawned along with the new millenium, but it took me a while to iron out some really persisitent bugs in things, and I refused to launch until everything worked right (well, mostly right). Being that it was my first effort at creating a website, there were indeed a lot of problems. So I was a little later at getting everything rolling than I had wanted. That was okay,though, I guess.

Now if you wanted to get particular, I should note that it wasn't until September of 2001 that I moved everything to this domain name (it had previously been hosted through Concentric, my access provider, and shortly thereafter mirrored on Apple's .MAC service). You'll also note that my counter for visits to the site is only accurate since October 2001, when I finally got one working properly through Dreamhost, my current (and incredibly awesome) webhosting service. I did have a lot of the poems and stories up that are here, and I was making daily Journal entries (as you can view in the Archives) much like today (albeit in a markedly different layout and color scheme).

I'm honestly very pleased to see that I've maintained a presence for two years and have had a lot of visitors (heck, some people even come back on a regular basis). I wonder how many people actually still come here that saw the site in the early days, back before I had my own domain name and stuff ... but I wonder a lot of things, so I'll just add that to the list ...

While I'll admit that I have had great hopes about how much traffic the site would see and about how much writing I would post here, things haven't always matched up. Even so, I'm still happy with how well things are going. And on a positive note, I will be adding a lot of new poems and stories over the next year if for no other reason than that I have writing workshops at college that will push me not to procrastinate. That may not be the best reason, but considering the dearth of writing I've created over the past year while I've been away from workshops, I'll take what I can get.

So I guess my main message today is that I honestly hope you all get something valuable from this site. Yes, I have wanted more of a community, and yes, I have wanted more of a sense of creating theDreamworld in the minds of a whole bunch of people, but I will happily stick to my long-expressed feelings about my writings and this site:

I don't seek fame, publication or money, and I won't compromise my ideals; all I even need to be happy is to know that I've connected with just one person to know that it was all worthwhile.

I hope some of you feel the connection; that's all I really need.

Posted at 1:36 AM

January 12, 2003

Today has been my last day before classes resume for Spring semester, and I have taken things easy. I would like to say that I've had fun and feel energized to go to classes tomorrow, but I've been tired, achy, and headachy all day, and it has dulled most of the day. Sure, I enjoyed doing so well at Civilization III as I played today. Sure, I enjoyedFuturama and the Simpsons as well as Malcolm in the Middle, and even laughed out loud a number of times. Heck, I haven't even really had the kind of depressing, sad thoughts that have plauged me the last few days, but I feel like shit nonetheless.

I actually made a point of sleeping for over eight hours and just taking my time to eat and clean up in the morning because I felt much the same yesterday as I do today, and I had hoped to just take it easy and get rid of the aches and such. It could be a touch of cold or something, but I think it's more likely that it's pre-class anxiety.

I am indeed nervous about this semester. I am quite sure that I'll enjoy all of my classes based on what I'm taking, but I'll be doing a lot of reading and writing. The writing is what scares me most since I'll be back to real writing - creative writing of poetry and fiction rather than the formal critical paper crap that has dominated my last two semesters (although I will still have to do those critical papers as well for two of my classes in addition to writing poems and stories every week for workshops). I love to write, and I have lots of ideas, but I get stressed to produce writing in a give3n time period, and I will definitely be put to the test this semester.

I know that I will be required to write a minimum of three new poems a wekk (and almost certainly more) that are original and different. That will tax me a bit, but I can handle that. It's the fiction I worry about. Short stories for me aren't exactly short, and they therefore take a bit of time to write. And continuing stories aren't generally respected because of the way the workshops are structured. Now if I could do a bunch of chapters and get them workshopped, I would be really hyped. I could write on Hope, Need & Fear or any of the various novella or novel-length stories I have waiting inside my head to get put to paper. That would be great. Too bad it's not the way of things.

So instead I will have to come up with one or more short stories per week that are complete in themselves and have fresh, different ideas. That's okay, and it will lead to a lot of new writings finally getting posted here to the site, but I'm just disappointed that I won't be working on something longer (and I am concerned about how readily I'll be able to come up with completely new stand-alone stories every week). I guess we'll just have to see how it all goes.

I will have only one professor that I know this semester, and while I have heard good things about everyone I will have, I will have to adjust to new people.

Maybe I'm making more of all of this than I need to make of it (or more than is rtational to make of it). That wouldn't be a big surprise considering how flaky I can be about stuff like this, but I'm anxious about this first week of the new semester just the same. Who knows - maybe this semester will be a really good time.

Posted at 10:40 PM

January 11, 2003

Today has been an emotionally sucky day, and it hasn't bode well for my stability at starting the new semester at college on Monday. Having had my wierd, debilitating emotional breakdown two years ago, I am somewhat wary of my mental state when my depression gets this extreme, and I'm somewhat concerned that I'm this upset when I'm not even under any of the stresses that come from my classwork. I wish I was more at peace and calm, but I'm not, and it's worrying me.

Of course, I'm probably just sort of an emotional hypochondriac, but I don't feel any better knowing that it may be something that inconsequential. All I want is just to feel content (well, I really want to feel happy, but I've learned to expect and accept less than what I really want just so that I can have enough to get by). Being content doesn't seem to be in the cards, though.

I'm tired; I physically ache; I have a headache; and I'm irritable (sounds like PMS, but that can'r be it). Today is worse for these things all around than any of the past days of the year so far, but I've been pretty beat down all week. If I hadn't kept myself so busy all week, I don't know what would have happened.

In fact, I have been so busy that I haven't uploaded the Journal entries for three days, and I haven't responded to e.mails either. I apologize to you few faithful readers out there who have been left hanging, but I have been in a bad place emotionally, and haven't done what had been necessary (for those who don't know, I have two different studios here at the Arts Center, both in the same hall but quite far apart, and only one room has a phone and my DSL connection. Consequently, I can use my laptop in either room, but websurfing, e.mail, and uploading Journal entries has to be done in a different room than where I sleep, dress, or often type Journal entries. So my emotioanl distress kept me from setting things up in the other room, and I'm sorry to be such a slacker these last few days).

I'm hoping that tomorrow will be light and relaxing, being as its my last day before classes resume. You'll see what the case may be when I write tomorrow's Journal entry, but for now I'm just trying to be hopeful.

Posted at 7:59 PM

January 10, 2003

jI had a nice evening with friends tonight, and andd it was a well-needed distraction from all of my worries and sadness of the past few days. Having been to the Toledo Museum of Art with Drake last week, I had been telling Chris about a lot of the pieces displayed, many of which were part of the permament museum collection but whcih I had never seen and others which were great glass pieces that haven't been displayed for a while but which I have been telling Chris about for months. Chris was excited about what I had seen and decided to visit tonight with Heather. They picked me up to tag along, and we had a great time.

On Friday's the museum does what they call "It's Friday", keeping the museum open until 10 PM and having various musical and theatrical performaces. Tonight had selections of opera in the Grand Hall, some jazz in the Peristyle Lobby, and a talk about Renaissance France that is part of a continuing series. We had a lot more time than I had had with Drake, so we saw all sorts of things that I had missed last week. Chris was like a kid in a candy shop, wide-eyed and enchanted with so many things, and it made me happy just to watch him and share his enthusiasm.

After we left the museum, we took separate cars down to Bowling Green to spend time with Sarah while she was in town still. She and Eric had been making bean soup in anticipation of our arrival, and we ate a little while after we earrived and had talked for a while. Jeremy, Eric's roommate, joined us after a while, and we talked and talked for hours on end. I didn't end up leaving until 4 AM, and while I feel that I might have overstayed my welcome a bit, I really needed the comfort and distraction, and it got me through the night without thinking about my worries.

It's good to have friends.

Posted Written at 5:10 AM

January 9, 2003

My mother came for a visit today. I thoroughly enjoy seeing my grandmother on these visits, but my mother is less of a sure thing. Most of the time my mother will say or do things that will upset me somehow, leaving me sad or angry (and often both) for days and days after she has been long gone and almost certainly forgotten to even give a damn about anything she said (and likely forgotten about me as well, for that matter). Today was no exception.

We were eating lunch at the Olive Garden when she asked if I ever saw my friend that used to be a waiter at that particular location. Now this had been eleven years ago, and what my mother didn't know at the time (or now, for that matter) was that Ken, the waiter, had been my boyfriend whenhe had been serving us. My mother, today, inadvertently (at least I assume it was inadvertent) threw me into a serious episode of flashbacks and emotional turmoil that has been messing with me all day.

Ken was my first boyfriend, and he was as sweet as a guy could be. We started out being very intimiate, and Ken almost immediately became very taken with me. I was a little more reserved in our relationship - not because I didn't really like Ken or because I didn't find a tremendous amount of satisfaction from our relationship, but because of two incredibly stupid factors. First was the fact that Ken was my first exposure to gay love and gay sex, and I was at an age where I really needed to explore and understand who I was, particularly after having spent so long denying my sexuality. That led me not to have a wandering eye, but it did lead me to be less inclined to establish a committed relationship. Looking back now, I feel like I was a really horrible person to not commit. I never cheated on Ken, but I did separate from him on and off to date two other people. Ken was always there when I came back, but I just didn't appreciate how special that was at the time.

There was one other thing that kept me from being as focused on our relationship as I should have (or as committed as Ken was), and that was Erik, my long-time friend friend and roommate of the time. Don't ask me why,because that's a whole, lengthy story in itself, but I was very taken by Erik and would have done anything to be closer to him. My whole relationship (as a friend) with Erik was frought with complications and failed expectations, yet at the time I would (and did) do just about anything for him. Well, he didn't like Ken and didn't want him around. He didn't even want me dating Ken. Partly due to my insecurities, partly due to my desire to experiment some more, but largely due to Erik's desires, I wouldn't commit to Ken.

When I left Toledo to become a manager for Kinko's, Ken and I weren't together (I had been dating Brian for a while), but we were still very good friends. We kept in touch and visited for a while. In a starnge turn of events, Ken and I both moved to Chicago for jobs some time later. We had still been keeping in touch, and since we were both in the same city again we started spending time togther. That led to dating again, but I was now even more afraid of comittment that I had even been. Ken had always been somewhat clingy and wanted to be together constantly (which I truly appreciate now), but it just ended up pushing mke away when I was uncertain and unconfidant about where it could all lead. As a result, Ken and I kept getting together but just as friends, not dating.

After a few months, Ken introduced me to his new boyfirend. I didn't like the new guy and had a bad feeling about him, but I could honestly see that Ken was very happy, and I was truly happy for him. We continued to get together (the three of us) occasionally, but it wasn't quite the same. When I moved back to Toledo, I expected that Ken and I would continue to be friends for life, but I found that when I really needed him as a friend (when I had just lost everything because of getting screwed over by my business partner and was very down and depressed), I found out that Ken wouldn't be talking to me any more becasue his boyfriend didn't want me to be part of Ken's life. I don't know if this was jealousy or a fear of losing Ken to an old boyfriend, but it hurt that Ken didn't stand up for me and my friendship. It was only fair, though, because he had done exactly what I had done years earlier when Erik had told me that he didn't like Ken. Apparenytly karma does balance out in the end.

So my mother brought all of this back up, and everything rusehd through my mind along with images of us together at various places in various points in our lives together. I have always missed Ken, and I have many times (more than you would be able to understand) felt that I am alone now becasue I threw away my one chance at true happiness simply because I was spineless and unable to commit. And today was just as real and painful as when I first learned that Ken wouldn't be a part of my life any more (this ken, by the way, is a different Ken that my dear friend Ken Rice, who died eight and a half years ago and is the subject of a few poems on this site).

So that was disturbing and continues to be disturbing. The other big item was disturbing in a very different way, and I am still trying to figure out how I'm dealing with it.

My mother, very casually as if telling me that she was going to get a haircut, told me some of their itinerary for an upcoming visit to Florida. Part of the itinerary is looking for a house as a new permanent yeart-round home. This was news to me (although my mother acted as though I was fully aware of these plans). The fact that my mother and father may soon be moving to Florida is no problem for me whatsoever. I will be upset that my grandmother will be so far away, however, and there are other issues with this which are personally problematic.

If and when my parents find a new home, they will sell the house in Sandusky (which is actually my grandmother's house, but my parents moved into her second floor after selling my childhood home a month after I went to college (and the move into my grandmother's house was their idea, not my grandmother's). I had resented my parents selling the house I grew up in, butthe place had so many bad memories that it wasn't hard to let go. My grandmother's house, on the other hand, is full of a great number of my happiest memories. For years I have felt as if there is not anyplace that I can call home (you'll notice on this site I never call the Arts Center home) because a home to me is a place where you feel safe, secure, and loved. My grandmother's place is the closest I have to a physical place like that (this website is the next best thing to that), and I am very disturbed by the idea of losing all connection to that place.

The house issue is more complicated than that, however, becasue my mother had told me (about two years ago) that the house was to be left to me as part of the inheritance/estate when my grandmother and parents had died. It didn't mean much since it would be quite a while before they were all old enough to be gone, and it wasn't a big issue since it wasn't close enough to school to be useful to me, but it was a comforting thing to know that eventually it would be my own place and my own comfort zone. Maybe it seems selfish of me to feel like I'm being screwed here, but I do. It's nothing new to have my parents (individually or together) renege on a promise (and often even completely deny having ever made the promise in the forst place), but it still sucks - just as much now as it did when I was 4 ... or 5 ... or 9 ... or 12 ... or 18 ... or 21 ...

So the whole day has been very upsetting. I watched Spiderman and the Powerpuff Girls Movie with Christiana tonight, but it was just a brief distraction from everything. Depression really sucks. At least that's my take on it.

Posted Written at 1:21 AM

January 8, 2003

Chris and Heather invited me to join them for dinner at their place tonight, and I was quite grateful for the chance to spend time with them. The last week haas been an up-and-down of mood swings, and I've had an underlying feeling of depression even when I've been spending time with people or doing some task that keeps me constantly preoccupied. The moments when I have a moment to think or relax are potential pitfalls since I seem to just get swallowed up by sad feelings, so I've been doing everything I can to avoid any such free time (ironic when you consider that this is supposed to be something of a vacation for me from my normal class routine).

This depression has been very disconcerting - even more than normal. Usually I am just sad and lonely and somewhat without hope for the future. On occasion I even have something of a death wish where I just wish my life would just be over so that I didn't have to be sad and lonely any more (although this shouldn't necessarily be confused with being suicidal, which would imply that I was actively contemplating how to kill myself - this is, instead, just a wish for the end to come without any active role from me (which, I suppose, is both cowardly and lazy of me since I can't just take care of it myself)). There has been a different feeling about all of my depression lately, though, and today in particular.

As I was driving down to Bowling Green to join Chris and Heather, I had an overwhelming sense of impending doom. I know that sounds incredibly over-dramatic, and I really don't mean it to sound that way, but I don't know how else to express it. I have never had any sort of precognitive sense or anything, but I just had this undeniable sense of something bad coming - maybe troubling or maybe depressing, but just bad in whatever way you look at it. I have no idea where this was coming from, what it might point to, or if it was just a paranoid reaction caused by my growing depression and anxiety - I just know that it really shook me up.

I tried to put it behind me since I honestly wanted to enjoy the evening with my freinds, and they had been kind enough to go to the trouble of fixing a special meal for me that it would just have been wrong to be my oftentimes freakishly depressed self. And it was good that I tried to make the most of the evening because I left at the end of the night feeling much more at peace with myself than I would have expected.
We were all a bit subdued: I was a bit out of it, as I've already explained; Chris was tired from having worked in the glass blowing studio in Toledo all day; and Heather was tired from having gone nuts with deep-cleaning their apartment for the whole day. Even so, we shared some light conversation, looked at some slides Chris had taken of his dog and his glass works, ate dinner, and watched a holiday cartoon called "The Snowman" that I had never seen before (it was really quite wonderful in its simplicity and placidity). Dinner had been particularly nice, a light fare of whole artichokes, French bread, and Brie and Double-Glouchester cheeses <Yum!>. Chris gave me the ceramic bowl he had made and given me aas a Christmas present (having now photographed it for his portfolio), and Heather gave me a copy of the Powerpuff Girls Movie and a nearly life-sized blow-up Mojo Jojo. It was a pretty spiffy evening.

And I drove back here feeling much better. I didn't forget about my wierd premonition from earlier this evening nor did my depression go away completely, but I was content for quite a while and am nicely relaxed as I am ready to head to bed. In an imperfect world such as ours, this isn't an all-together bad way to close an evening.

Posted Written at 2:07 AM

January 7, 2003

... ohhhh .... oh yeah ... oh, baby ... oh yeah ... oh it's so big!! ... yeah, give it to me ...

I want - no I desperately need - one of these new Apple Powerbooks. A full 17" monitor, only 1" thin, ultra-powerful video card with 64MB VRAM, CD-RW/DVD-RW, and both Airport Extreme and Bluetooth (plus more speed and powerful features than you can imagine). I've been drooling over this baby all day since it was announced at Macworld Expo, and I am simply in awe. This sort of thing almost makes life worth living.

But alas, I'm far too poor to just blow a few thousand bucks when I have a perfectly viable Powerbook right now (with a 15.4" monitor and decent speed and features). Fortunately, I had some prearranged distractions to keep me from fantasizing all day about what can never be.

I had rented videos yesterday (a rare occurance for me because I try to limit the extra expenses that don't fit into my budget) as a treat for Christiana (and myself, too). Christiana was out of the counrty when the live-action Scooby Doo movie came out. Since Christiana is a huge Scooby Doo fan, I offered to rent the video once she had settled into her room. Tonight was the first real chance she's had all week since she got back.

So we watched Scooby Doo. It was cute. Some aspects of the movie were cheesy and slow, but even those moments felt very nostalgic in relation to the original cartoon. For true fans of the old cartoon, this was quite amusing and fun. At the end of the video was a whole set of out-takes, and while the movie itself was fine, the whole thing would have been distinctly better if all (well, most) of the out-takes had been left in.

After Scooby Doo, we watched The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, the Jodie Foster (produced and directed) movie starring Keiran Culkin, Jodie Foster, and Vincent Dinofrio, among others. This movie was at times a bit slow-moving, but the overall effect was quite impressive. As a whole, the movie is truly astounding, and if you pay careful attention to background details you can see an even greater depth to the characters and events. It's not a movie for everyone, and it is certainly on the artistic side of movie-making (which doesn't usually lead to widespread popularity). I would heartily recommend it, however (and besides, it has Keiran Culkin, who is a decent actor and a real cutie (at least as I see it)).

So the movies were a good distraction and entertaining as well, but as I'm sitting here tapping away at the keys on my Powerbook, I'm dreaming about the newer, bigger Powerbook that's now shipping from the Apple warehouses.

Ooooo baby ... I want one.

Posted at 12:04 AM

January 6, 2003

Check out this bullshit:

Don't ask' author: Draft trumps gay ban
by Tom Musbach

After two Democratic congressmen proposed this week a reinstatement of the national draft for military service, the primary architect of the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy said it should be scrapped in the event of a draft.

The idea of restarting the draft, proposed by Reps. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., and John Conyers, D-Mich., generated much publicity, as the Bush administration is considering a possible war with Iraq. The two congressman suggested they will ask the U.S. House of Representatives to consider the proposal as early as next week.

Mandating military service among young Americans, however, would conflict with the "don't ask" ban against openly gay and lesbian personnel.

Charles Moskos, the influential military sociologist who helped craft the ban, said it should be abolished if the draft is re-enacted, because mandatory service represents a "higher virtue" than the privacy considerations of heterosexual soldiers.

In remarks Wednesday to researchers at the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military, Moskos added that a draft could turn "don't ask, don't tell" into a loophole.

" You can't use a gay ban with a draft because that would make it too easy for people to get out," he said.

The likelihood of bringing back the draft is practically nil, many critics say, especially with the proposal's lack of support from the Republican leadership in the House.

David Smith, communications director for the Human Rights Campaign, said the draft idea was "not politically viable," and the military's gay ban should be abolished on its own lack of merit.

" Moskos should reconsider the ('don't ask') policy regardless of the draft," Smith added.

In a New York Times editorial, Rep. Rangel admitted that his proposal is essentially anti-war, as he voted against giving President Bush authority to attack Iraq.

" I believe that if those calling for war knew that their children were likely to be required to serve -- and to be placed in harm's way -- there would be more caution and a greater willingness to work with the international community in dealing with Iraq," Rangel wrote.

Now if you haven't already guessed it, I'm no fan of war or the miltary, and I don't have much support for the military in general. However - I find it completely wrong that gay men and women are denied the right to serve in the military (openly) if they want to do so. Some people really want to serve their country, and some want the benefits of training, education, and discipline that come from being in the armed services. So I'm not a fan of the "Don't ask; don't tell" policy because it leads most gays not to join the military at all, and leaves those who do join with the constant fear of being discovered (and the numbers of discharges for homosexulaity has gone up since enactment of the "Don't ask; don't tell" policy).

As much as I'd like to see this useless policy dropped, I find it repugnant that it would be suggested that doing so would only be appropriate if a draft were enacted to go to war. Unlike what these Republican bastards in the above article would have you believe, this is a slap in the face to gay people which simply says, "Hey - we don't want you around us, and we'll do everything we can to make sure you can't have the pride or the benefits that might come from being in the military. And then when we go to war, we'll draft your ass and put you in the front rows to blow you faggot as up. Oh, and before I forget, once the war is done, we'll go back to the "Don't ask; don't tell" policy or something else so that we don't have you around us." Am I overdramatizing this? I don't think so.

Historically, the U.S. military refused to allow African-Americans into the military until, in certain wars, they needed extra bodies to fight. Once in the war effort, African-American units were often sent into the most dangerous areas and on the most dangerous missions because they were considered expendable. After many of these wars these same black veterans were told to go packing because "their kind" weren't allowed in the military any more (once again). It is only relatively recently that the military has been welcoming and respectful to blacks (and the levels of equality are still questionable). Women were often treated in a similar fashion and still have much inequality to overcome in the military ranks. Is there any reason to think that gays will be treated any differently? The reality is that they will probably be in as bad or even a worse situation because their rights are not constitutioanlly guaranteed and they do not have the popular acceptance and public support that is felt by women and blacks (even as imperfect as the acceptance and support for those people may be).

My own feeling is that the chances of a draft are remote, and if a draft would be instituted in the U.S. it would lead to widespread protests and resistance, but I feel strongly that gays should remember this offensive aqttitude toward them even if the draft never comes to pass. This is simply untenable. These attitudes must stop, and they must stop now.

Posted at 10:38 PM

January 5, 2003

"We are the music-makers ... and we are the dreamers of the dreams." - Willy Wonka

I'm watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory on tv as I write, and I thought I'd share that quote. It's one of my favorites, and it is decidedly appropriate for this website.

Today was a great last day with Drake before he headed back home. We got a little later start than we had expected due to little snafu with meeting up with each other, but we got together and had breakfast again at Al Smith's Place (where we had breakfast yestersay as well). We headed back to the Arts Center with the original idea to go to one of a number of museums of events that were choices for the day, but we opted instead to just come inside to my studios and talk again for the remaining few hours before Drake would need to leave.

It was a good choice because we both ended up bringing up topics that were rather personal to each of us, and I am quite sure we would never have discussed things as openly as we did if we had gone to any of those public places or events that we had originally discussed. I think we both gained some personal insights that had eluded us before, and even though we didn't solve any huge problems we did each come out with things to think about.

That has been the lasting value of this weekend and of all of the conversations I've had with Drake - both this weekend and during all of our previous conversations - we both somehow have an understanding of each other and we both gain new perspectives and new feedback from each other where we often have few people with whom to even tell our problems aloud in the first place. As the old cliché goes, this is indeed the beginning of a beautiful friendship. I wish this weekend visit had lasted longer, quite honestly, but I just know that there are many more such visits yet to come.

Posted at 8:58 PM

January 4, 2003

Day Two of the Drake weekend has wrapped up with me just about falling asleep in front of Drake. We got together this morning for lunch and then drove down to Bowling Green for a walking tour of my college campus. Drake seemed to like the campus, and we chatted about a few different things there. Afterward we returned to Toledo for a quick visit to the Toledo Museum of Art, a visit that was quick because the museum closed only a bit more than an hour after we got there. We were a bit rushed and didn't see even half of the exhibits, but we had a good time comparing tastes, sharing knowledge and anecdotes about various artists, and joking about certain paintings or subjects that reminded us of something else amusing. Possibly one of the more bizzare moments was me realizing that the denizens of a very old Dutch painting of a village in winter included people playing golf on the frozen lake that the village met. It was oddly out of place but unquestionably golf. Strange.

We actually had some very intersting conversations about artwork (and about the odd sizes of the penises on the Etruscan men on painted vases), but our time was indeed cut short and we needed to decide what to do next. We decided, after a quick sight-seeing tour of downtown Toledo, to go back to the Arts Center and talk for a while. Once again, our conversation ranged across a strange array of topics. Don't get the wrong impression when I say that, because I really enjoyed our talks and found them very stimulating and thoughtful, but the fact that the subjects of our talks kept changing from onee thing to the next with barely any connections (and sometimes no connections at all).

By the time Drake and I went to dinner at Jing Chuan Chinese we were quite comfortable with each other. We joked about a bunch of things while at the restaurant, had a bizzare little competition of obscure trivia, watched on as two guys at a nearby table (cute, college-aged guys) gave us subtle clues that they were more than just friends (if the loving looks weren't enough, the rubbing of their legs against each other under the table was a dead give-away), and had a tasty light dinner.

It was still not too late when we left the restaurant, so we went ot a nearby coffee shop to sip coffee (and tea for me) while we chatted some more, this time about our families and our childhoods. This was certainly just about our most serious conversation to date, and it was quite illuminating for both of us, I think.

When we eventually left to get Drake back to his hotel, we were fully into talking about everything that came to mind. We chatted for a while more at his hotel room, discussing music, teaching, and teen rebellion (while listening to some kick-ass music), and I began to struggle to keep my eyes open as time went on. I wanted very badly to keep talking, but my body defiantly wanted sleep. So Drake finally sent me on my way for the evening, and here I am now, not quite alert but not fully ready for sleep. But I'm pretty close to being able to fall right to sleep.

So it's off to bed before our last day of Drake's visit. It's all passing so quickly.

Posted at 2:46 AM

January 3, 2003

Drake arrived today, allowing us the first chance to actually meet face-to-face in the whole few months that we've been getting to know each other. He'll be here all weekend, and if tonight was any indication, we'll wind up talking about all sorts of wierd stuff.

The hotel managed to screw up Drake's reservation such that racther than being really close to the Arts Center he was instead just about as far away from my studios as you can be and still be in metro-Toledo. No big problem, really, since Toledo isn't really a huge city in the first place, but it was still just a wierd snafu we would never have expected. By the time I picked up Drake, we were both quite hungry and anxious to sit down to chat. I took Drake back across town to J. Alexanders for a yummy meal, and we proceeded to talk for hours. In fact, we lost track of time as we were sipping coffee (Drake) and Sprite (me) after dinner, and we found that we'd been there for over three and a half hours.

We talked about a bunch of things: family, education, child abuse, gay rights, intelligence, driving, interior decorating, food, friends, kids ... stuff. Our longest conversation revolved around language. We discussed a few different topics about language to limited degrees, but we had a lasting discussion (debate, really) about the concious alteration and subversion of language by kids, teenagers, and young adults. Drake was adamant that adolescents made a concious decision to subvert the language as a challenge to adluts and authority figures. I contended that while there may be certain adolescents who did such things conciously, that most kids simply spoke like other kids, due to a combination of peer pressure, emulation of popular kids, and just "seeming cool" or "with it." Drake contended that making a decision to "be cool" or succumbing to peer pressure was in itself a conciosu decision and therefore meant that the subversion of the language was therefore done conciosuly, but I believed (and still believe) that it is specious logic to say that because kids try to be cool equates to them conciosuly subverting the English language - there is no correlary connection. But we're both bull-headed, so we ended up just going around and around on that topic for a long, long time.

By the time we finally left the restaurant, I wasn't sure what would be open (or how long), so I brough Drake back to the Arts Center to talk for a while longer. We spent a good half hour or more on my basic tour of the building, and Drake was as awed by the building as I have always been. It is great architecture and craftwork in every aspect of the building, but some people just don't notice or care. Drake did, and that was nice to see.

We spoke about the Arts Center for a little while but managed to wander once again from topic to topic across a wide range of things. By the time it was going on two in the morning I decided that I should get Drake back to the hotel so that we could sleep and get a good start in the morning. Now that I'm back at the Arts Center I'm tired but envigorated, looking forward to the rest of the weekend with my new friend.

Posted at 2:37 AM

January 2, 2003

Snow. Lots ... and lots ... of snow.

It started falling before noon and kept coming until after 6 PM. It was slick stuff, too, and I was driving in it from 12:30 'til almost 3 PM. It was just ugly.

I'm a big fan of snow for its beauty and for playing in it and even for the walking with snow falling lightly on your head ans shoulders. But I wish it wouldn't fall on the streets. It's just a mess. It has snowed here for ages, yet the city and state are never able to clean the stuff up well or with any speed. And even though many people have lived here all of their lives, they still don't know how to drive in the stuff. Granted, people in Ohio are better than people in Maryland or other such states where significant snowfall shuts down everything, but you'd think that Ohio would have a handle on this after so many years to work things out. So even though I love snow in many ways, I often dread it simply because it makes driving a real hassle (and I love to drive, so it's frustrating not to be able to totally enjoy it).

Chris and I had talked last night about getting together tonight for dinner or a movie, but when he called me at nearly 7 PM after having been driving from work in Toledo to his apartment in Bowling Green for a total of three hours (on what is normally just a half hour trip), I knew that there was no way that we would be going anywhere - either of us. So that was sort of disappointing, but hopefully we'll be able to get together soon.

In the meantime, there's still snow. Inches and inches of snow. Everywhere. and more to come. If I didn't have to drive anywhere, this would be great. But alas ... it's never that simple.

Posted at 9:07 PM

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