Never Underestimate the Power of a Top Hat, or, Lisa From 3 to 5

So...the last few days have been devoid of posts because I finally hit on the solution to reaching some kind of success rate in this business of graduate school. To wit, read everything and take notes, then read it again...and take more notes...and read it and your notes again and take further notes if need be! It paid off, because lights are shining in the darkness on Freud and Lacan, but between that, re-reading the 900 wonderful pages of John Sutherland's annotated Vanity Fair Oxford edition, and similar readings, and future papers...I warn my readers to not expect regular posts too often.

But, since orientation, I have had some terrific lectures, a great precept group meeting where I learned to share my insights more openly (for even when I'm wrong, which is most of the time now, I get closer to being write through listening to others...everyone in my group is helping me understand better), and moved towards better senses of argument tracking and precision of language.

I also had two different nights out.

Thursday, I went to Old Town with Peter, Alex, Erik, Jess, Ashley, Julie, and Jamie to see the Second City. Before that we had a dinner at an Irish pub called Corcoran's across the street, which served the best corned beef I've had outside Musso & Frank. Turned out to be Guinness's 250th anniversary, so we got samples, glasses, noisemakers, and cardboard top hats...looking at mine right now next to my Emerson diploma. I wore that hat the rest of the night and had a fantastic time...the Second City was hilarious, especially the second half of their show, with an improvised sketch about a private eye, a parody of the Hall of Presidents at Disney, and a plea to adopt normal black children instead of Asians and Africans...and my group talked all night and laughed and wandered the streets and rode El trains and Metras...it was a nice way to unwind.

Last night, Karen Slovin gave a dinner party at her apartment upstairs. She made a fantastic pasta, I tossed a salad, Peter baked brownies (finally got to try them...delicious!), and twelve people or so congregated around a crowded food table despite the roomy living room and drank a LOT of red wine. Victorian meal style. On the one hand, I got accused of being something not very nice at one point in the conversations. On the other hand, I had a blast talking to everyone concerned (including my accuser), and found another person who, like Peter, I feel a bit switched at birth with...Jenny's opinions on religion were almost the same as mind, just with different word choices in expression. I also met Preston and Harold who live on the second floor. Two great guys who study computer science and math...and whose midnight ponderings regarding Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica helped my tired, overfed body realize it needed sleep. (No disrespect when I say I came to college to escape mathematics.) Should have worn the top hat...

I have to wrap up, for today will be my last non-work-centered day of the year, and it will be spent at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival and another potluck dinner. BUT...yesterday I had a small lunch with Lisa, proprietress of Color Me Veggie, in town for a wedding this weekend. She and I are on remarkably similar roads...dealing with personal issues and professional doubts, but a lot sunnier than before. At least she looked and felt sunnier, and I know I feel sunnier these days...and though we'd spent two months together in L.A., then met in Boardman, and now again in Chicago...a hard life...it was hard to let go when we gave each other a good-bye embrace. She would love what I'm doing now. Especially with the modern poets.

But Lisa is part of my present which reaches back into the past. Always there and wonderful...but right now, I've got the future on my mind.

And now, to be or not to bop...

I also had two