Straight No Chaser

More is Less

because ten days seemed like too many.

i really didn't accomplish any of what i meant to before updating again. i still have too much work, and in fact the only reason i've got a minute now is because i'm in the writing center, where i couldn't be working on that infernal paper even if i wanted to. i have no idea how it stretched itself out to fill the entirety of my weekend. it was one of two, both fifteen-pagers, and the first one flew by as if it were a journal entry or a bad sonnet. the second one, though. the second one has been sitting stagnant on my computer monitor for the better part of three days. it's due at one. it will get finished. that it's not already is entirely my own stupid fault.

marcus is not better. well, he is, marginally. marginally. today should be a good day, for us, but probably not a very healthy one for him. he fell asleep at the wheel last night, again, on his way to (not home from but to) some sort of whatever at courtney's house, and for once he had a flash of brilliance that told him it was time for bed. when he called, afterward, i wanted to throw the phone at the wall. just, thank god he's going home this week, where his dad will hopefuly jerk a much-needed knot in his tail, and where the streets are wide and safe. but he went to bed early last night, one-thirtyish, and he got his six hours of sleep, and circumstances permitting, we're going to take a break tonight. together.

there was a sonnet. second in a series of three, or that's the intention. the first was a complaint about how he's killing himself trying to do too much, how without some measure of harmony all his music is just noise. then came this one, which started out as something different; i wanted to write him something to read at night, on those rare occasions when he does, in fact, sleep--something soothing and personal, with soft colors and music. but the whole first octet did exactly the opposite, as evidenced by its first four lines:

"You sing yourself the cruelest lullabies.
The blade-sharp, bloodied notes take noisome flight,
erupt from humming larynx, rend and rise,
relentlessly profane your starless night."

...there was more. it got worse before it got better, and one generally does not make blood references in what is supposed to be a sort-of lullaby. the end was good, i liked the end; i worked in something about purple skies, which is this huge orgasmic metaphor for him, something about musical elevation, the merging of his physical ear and his ephemeral spirit (he liked that line, it was his favorite), and then i finished it off with the usual offer--"i'm here, i'll rock you to sleep"--in some nearly exact but iambic variation on those words. and so it did what i wanted, at the end, but the beginning was angry and out of control, because i'm angry at him for being out of control. and that's why it's going to have to be the second of three, because there needs to be one with nary a catch, one that just says "i love you, you deserve some rest; here are the colors and sounds i know you enjoy, and nothing about how hard you're failing at living as an automatron."

but the point is, he wants me to read it aloud tonight, and i want to oblige. he's gotten used to the quick, breathy way i enunciate things that are supposed to be thoughtful and deliberate. he hated it at first, and then he teased me a lot for it, and then i guess he came to terms with the fact that that's just how my physiology works. my mouth and my everything else, my entire body, all the parts are just offshoots of an easily stimulated and fast-acting mind.

the weekend was hard. besides those papers, i wound up sick, somehow, on saturday. there was a shakespeare thing i was supposed to do that night; i'd already purchased a ticket for cymbeline, which i didn't want to see but had to, because it's the only thing left before thanksgiving break. i didn't go on saturday night because of the paper and the sick, but i figured i'd drive to the playhouse to pick up my ticket anyway. class requirement. so i went yesterday and the woman at the door was extremely bitchy; she apparently knows my professor, and is apparently familiar wtih the fact that we all have to attend a performance this semester, and she threatened to write her a note saying i didn't actually see the play. goddddd i hate people like that. people who insist on exercising their influence over things that are completely not their business. i was double-parked and still needed to puke, so i let it go, but she has been an offensive flare in my mind ever since.

being aaron is fun, both because it confuses the masses and because it means i get to watch my own name pop up, every time a message from the original aaron comes through. my name looks and sounds like a piece of felt. hunter green felt. a little wallet-sized rectangle.

i registered for strange's other class, next semester, because i'm not ready for her to leave my life, yet. i've always been prone to crushes like this; generally i'm not that interested in human behavior, but once in a while i find a role model, and my daily life becomes a nonstop study of hers. miss hart in elementary school. shana at summer camp. ms. adamson in high school, and so on. there hadn't been any, since marcus, because the intensity of feeling for him sort of precludes being that fascinated by anyone else, but now there's this, and i swear to god, i want to be her. not a published poet or a spelman professor, necessarily, but i want her range of experiences, her way with words, her poise and her unhurried passion. we had our fiction conference last week, and it's very humbling having someone i admire that much critiquing my writing; unlike spencer (who was very encouraging but a bit too dizzy to really take seriously), strange is amazingly analytical and catches the subtleties i expect everyone to miss, she treats every student like a published author, the respect is amazing--which is not to say she's one to coddle, because she isn't; the first thing she said when i walked into her office was "you're going to die under a molten hot pile of adverbs." i think maybe she's a genius.

the fiction part of the class came and went with hardly a ripple. i didn't learn much, and wasn't expecting to. poetry, though, is destroying my life and my writerly confidence. i was excited to come up with a poem topic that wasn't marcus, and then i totally shamed myself by turning in a piece that followed (precisely) multiple formats i've never liked. there was one stanza i liked.

"Swollen bulbs lengthen nights. Sleepless, I count muscle spasms instead of sheep, picture my twin afflictions: white-hot, pulsing like novas, sure to detonate before morning. I imagine a deafening explosion, whistling chasms where my cheeks were."

line breaks in there somewhere.

it's a bit later now, and i've handed in my paper, delivered an impromptu but surprisingly successful oral presentation, and am now going to squirm through the entire hour before i go see my girlfriend. and then, we'll see, maybe i'll update again sometime before 2006.