Revelations and Celebrations...and Happy Halloween!

So, now I’m 25. And my birthday was one of the greatest I ever had, despite, or maybe because of, the teaching of a moral lesson. In the constant, unplanned fluttering from place to place, I somehow lost my camera. Either it fell out or got stolen. This did not bother me. I was annoyed, yes, but of all my possessions it was my least favorite, least essential one. My mom and Marc love to take pictures. Not me. It’s sort of like how I don’t want to see the Harry Potter movies…when I read a book, when I read what I write, as I do in this new diary, the memory rushes back to my head with pristine sharpness. When I have a picture to look at, the memory is blurred. For instance, yes, I am very glad I have pictures of my two trips to Italy and Europe, but the scenes I have documented evidence of are not as clear as the memories which go with them. I do not have pictures of the sun setting in a near-purple sky over Pompeii or the zigzagging lights of the walk to Sorrento’s beach, or another sunset over Perugia, or the texture of the fried fish I ate in Venice, or the stark poetic echoes of Scott, James, Mark, and I walking through Santa Croce square in a near-deserted state…or, for that matter, Carlee Tressel in black on the boat on Lake Michigan. But do I forget these things? I remember them better, sad to say, than the Thanksgiving week in Rome we have so many pictures of. That proves something…

My time is running out and I still have said nothing about my actual birthday. Peter, Erik, Jessica, Ashley, and I went to the Field Museum, which is an architectural copy of the British Museum, and we saw more mummies than I’ve ever witnessed assembled in one place in my life, diamonds which took five years to carve and a 6,000-carat topaz, and dinosaurs. Lots of them. Which inspired serious quoting from Jurassic Park. Then I introduced everyone to the Jazz Record Mart, where I acquired some Art Tatum and Fred Hersch, Erik got the most hilarious Isaac Hayes album ever (just for the cover…Juicy Fruit (Disco Freak)), and Karen and Bill met us…Karen was afraid of overspending. A last-minute rearranging of plans led us to dinner at Ed Debevic’s, where Bill wrote me a poem, the waitress was as sassy as ever, and I ate a gravy-smothered meat loaf and mashed potatoes of pure American goodness…I had not consumed meat loaf since time out of mind, and I had Oreo shakes and the world’s smallest sundae. And I celebrated with eight wonderful people after Alex and Julie got there. And I saw all of Chicago. And I was happy to be alive. (And Cleo From 5 to 7 was charming.)



October 27, 2009

Today began as a most unusual day. Prompted by strange dreams, possibly inspired by a very productive therapy session with Dr. Klaiman, I awoke in a fit of frenzy but still was willing and able to have a great workout…and to pass the morning with no worries about Marx. And further note to self…I shall never be drinking straight Starbucks again. Never. We went through Culture of Victorian War with Elaine playing a dirty trick on us, revealing that some of the letters by an “Ensign Pepper” were actually the products of a clever female novelist who also wrote East Lynne. Then came Core, where people kept materializing at various times and all the Jewish or classical-looking women looked the same with their hair tied up in buns, i.e. Mika and Abigail, still in black from the funeral she went to…I imagine…and looking strangely tragic. Jennifer Wild lectured on Cleo From 5 to 7 and was nice enough, but about 25 times she brought up a topic and then said she didn’t have time to cover it. Consequently, we ran out of time.

Jess and Ashley gave me a handsome recipe book, and then we walked to the Classics office where I received a birthday present which more than made up for the lost camera: my lack of nervousness, dedication, and positive thinking paid off in a B/B+.

I did it!

And the only comment Abigail wrote that I’ve looked at already is that this was great progress over the last paper. I am on my way as a master’s student, all thanks to Marx and two redheads. Thus I celebrated long and loud tonight at Karen and Stuart’s, where I ended up with….three birthday cakes. I had consumed protein and vegetables in healthy but low quantities before, so I was ready for Karen and her friend Rachel (who dates Russell, who reminds me of the saintly Mr. Tabb, and Rachel looks like a female Michael, so they are obviously a match made in Heaven, just like Karen and Stuart, and God do I wish Karen had a clone or a younger sister) and their chocolate candy corn cake and pumpkin cake, and Mike’s apple cake, all topped with homemade vanilla ice cream from Adam, and Mika and the other Adam (Snyder) were there as well…how was I blessed with so many friends like Karen who thanks ME for coming to her apartment, and Bill who comes out on Monday even though he has the flu? I ate four slices of cake but I didn’t care…I could not have asked for a better birthday, especially a two-day celebration ending in Celebrity and Telephone Oracle, the latter of which saw me expunge my high school fantasy and sent Stuart and I on the road to hell as a result.

So last big bit of news. Saturday Peter, Karen, and I will host the MAPH Halloween Party. Our apartment will be the dance floor and keg, hers the wine and quiet. Julie was very grateful. And I followed that meeting with an extraordinary essay by Elaine Scarry which is going to give me a lot to chew on come the morrow. But for now, six hours of sleep, compensating with nearly eight tomorrow.



October 28, 2009

So much has happened the last few days which I need to add…

Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South was a disappointment. Certainly ambitious and sincere, but on the one hand, she is not prepared for a full-scale assault on capitalist rhetoric, and on the other hand, Volume Two, which goes on for over two hundred pages, would have sent Kal-El Bogdanove screaming for the hills of San Fernando as the love plot turns on a simple misunderstanding which could have been cleared up in one word. Maybe Mary Barton or Wives and Daughters would have been better. Otherwise, I could see myself interested in this if I had to read it. Pleasure, blah.

“The Structure of War” is fascinating as for the first time ever suggesting a plausible alternative to conflict besides inflicting irreversible pain on bodies which represent the real version of an immaterial, false construct. Scarry’s opening, which I must read again tomorrow morning before class, makes so much more sense.

And I am very proud, very proud, of my work on the paper…it is one of the greatest breakthroughs of my intellectual life. To take the new methods of learning I have devised and reshape them for my usual style is a victory I shall not be forgetting the lesson of any time soon.



The air is disconcerting. I don’t like that it isn’t November and I already require a winter coat. Even with some extra meat on the bones, this is a sad state to be in.

Today was passed in quiet. After a lot of time with many friends, I was rather solitary and spent my time studying and trying to study around the Milosz lecture. Milosz was a fine poet, but I found that Kat’s great complaint about me applies to literary analysis as well. Milosz can be so achingly sincere that when he turns ironic, I am still taking him at face value.

Ate very little today after last night’s gluttony dessert festival. I’m typing this while listening to Peter read Brecht aloud…or is it Benjamin? I can’t tell.

French cinema. I didn’t get specific about Cleo From 5 to 7 but it is a beautiful film about female self-identity…I can see why Lisa liked it. Achingly sweet, intertextual in very clever ways (Michel Legrand as the pianist), political, funny, very, very honest, and Corrine Marchand is superb as Cleo. Funny thing…surrounded by a crowd of women at lunch yesterday we were talking about Audrey Hepburn and no one noticed the presence of Villalonga. Film snob coming out here. Stolen Kisses was a different kind of film. Of the three other Truffauts, despite its location in the Doinel sequence it’s closest to Shoot the Piano Player, the romance being mixed with an offbeat take on private-eye movies. The scenes with the dentist and the conversation about Hitler are fantastic, and Claude Jade is adorable. (Can see why Truffaut settled down with her for a while.) Jean-Pierre Leaud looks like Jason Schwartzman and Truffaut mixed their DNA. Great comic actor.

I got the text for my presentation on Friday. Was rather annoyed by the lack of a copy machine in the Harper Commons. Well, life was not made to please me. Hopefully I can fit a bunch of stuff in the backpack tomorrow. Going to post on Cleo and dust off the old B.A. Took a lot of excellent notes for Friday around eating pizza and finding a brownie recipe to make for Karen. Pizza delicious. Body feels excellent. Made a CTI mix for the Halloween party. Did I write that already? I don’t remember, but I’m tired. Damn tired. Let’s get 7 ½ hours of sleep tonight and work tomorrow for play on the weekend. There’s a plan.



October 29, 2009

I love Abigail Zitin. Let me make sure I have that perfectly clear. I’m not in love with her, far from it…she might have been my type in alternate circumstances, but she has a boyfriend, and I’m not attracted to her by merit of our particular relationship alone. BUT, I realized today I love her the way I would love an older sister, a lesser degree of how I feel about Beth. Today, we met in Stuart Hall to talk about my presentation and ended up spending an hour of her challenging me, disorienting me, winning in an intellectual wrestling match I was proud to lose. She identified a continuing problem: I keep wanting to impose my own version of what is going on in the text on top of what is going on in the text, which is the MAIN POINT. My attitudes toward Marx, Lacan, and Kincaid were all colored by personal feelings and an inability to admit I just don’t know something, an inability Abigail basically is giving me permission to have. It’s weird. I know I shouldn’t be afraid, but I still think I’m not supposed to be wrong. All I wanted was to show I could grasp the material, but Abigail told me I don’t need to try so hard. If there was ever advice more antithetical to my nature, but it’s from her, so I’ll try.

Funny thing: Mark Hopwood came up to us out of the blue and apologized to me for our falling out of touch. He IS a heck of a guy. I tried to call Mr. Lariccia but failed. Owe him one, and Kal, and Jonathan, and Lisa, and Matt, and Pat…damn my workload sometimes!

Today I ate too much. After the party, it will be time to kick-start the pre-Thanksgiving mindfulness. But after a lunch where I sat outside and ate a cold sandwich, culminating in the shivers, Peter and I tore through an entire chicken with potatoes, peppers, and a miniature cranberry sauce can. And we spent the whole night in great conversation about Shakespeare, German theorists, and Sidney Lumet. The Germans were much drier than David, but he tried to illustrate Barthes with a long example drawn from August Wilson which kinda-sorta didn’t prove anything. Barthes, on the other hand, would have been proud.

I wrote a fine little post on the intertextuality of Cleo From 5 to 7, did some nice work on the presentation for tomorrow after my talk with Abigail, contributed to a rousing discussion on Russell by way of Scarry in the narrative of wartime suffering (none of this in order, by the way), and read Strachey on Shakespeare, proving that reading Strachey on anything is always the way to go. Have to rest up so I can fine-tune the Barthes tomorrow…and be ready for Saturday’s haunted little children.



October 30, 2009


I had a nice healthy breakfast and lunch sandwiched around me balancing out all of my classwork, the Barthes getting fine-tuned after reading everybody’s posts and some extra research accomplished for my two other papers. Then came the actual presentation. My goal was to lay a bunch of groundwork and then get to the point where I could say, satisfying Abigail, that I knew nothing. I never got there because my early questions raised so many talking points and comments from Abigail that much of my talk was done haphazardly. I felt a little sad, and very tired, but Abigail praised my work as finely pedagogical. She even accepted a compliment from me along yesterday’s entry’s lines! Then during social hour, I stayed away from cheese and obviously fatty foods, enjoyed some wine…

Peter complained last night that his arm hurt. When he woke up with tremendous pain, he went to the medical center and was thankfully diagnosed with a sprain, so they gave him vicodin. He needed more. Alex suggested we pick it up and go to dinner. Erik, Ashley, and I came along, even though I really wanted to go home to drop off my bags and I was still talking to everyone. Then things began to get amended. I picked up some milk and soda to take home, thinking we would catch the bus. I thought wrong. So now I felt somewhat tipsy, very tired in the middle of a long, long week, and ultimately I walked home six blocks in the wind alone carrying everything. I didn’t have any fun and I didn’t get as much work done as I could have and I ate even though I wasn’t hungry…I feel guilty, too, because I weigh less than I did when I left home.

But I got halfway through an essay for Victorian War, a long one, before deciding to go to bed and finish tomorrow, and I realized…I was happy again. I had a great weekend ahead of me. I am succeeding here and I am proving my maturity, but I refuse to believe it.

God forgive me.

And grant me the serenity to change what I can and accept what I cannot.



October 31, 2009

Halloween…and God, working in mysterious ways, answered my prayer.

I went on a very long route of logic as to why I get so depressed, in this case, and every case, and something hit me…I want to be considered mature and successful, and my role models for that are my parents. They always seemed to be in control of every given scenario (to quote Watterson) and I have tried to live a life where I can plan out things and be ready for contingencies, make things happen the way I think they should. But life being what it is, there are always bumps, gaps, Barthesian edges, which we never expect. However, because I didn’t count on them and can’t always think on my feet well enough—or simply don’t understand how I could have been wrong—I feel like any disturbances in the order are my fault. Any failure to live up to my standards is entirely on me.

And since I never give anyone more credit than I give myself…since I look up to people and consider them my betters…I feel everything which happens is not only my fault, but they know it, and I am hurting them or causing them to blame me, so my life sinks into tailspin.

Dad is frustrated with me. How is it, he asks, that everyone in the world sees what a fine person I’ve become and I don’t?

It’s time for me to start trying to get around this. I am lucky to have some wonderful friends who truly care about me.

It all comes back to my pride. I don’t want to admit I’m wrong, confess my fears of being seen to be less than the image I have, less than the standard I set…so I crouch in fear and misery. But I need to make myself see that the man I am is good enough for the world.

He’s certainly good enough for the people I know.

So today, Mom was very loving with me, and Dad…what will I do when they’re gone? It’s time for me to get more self-reliant. This will help. I shall offer my mental strength and trust to God, and from this point on…move on…



I didn’t mention that yesterday, I psyched myself up for the presentation by listening to two songs which for me exemplified the pleasure of the text in a continuous loop: Bobby “Blue” Bland’s “Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City” and Jay-Z’s “Heart of the City.” What a combo.

Today I ate lots of fiber and acquired a Halloween costume: ultra small-and-tight Nautica underwear to which George Bernard Shaw and Jane Austen are on my nipples, William Shakespeare and Henry James are on my buttocks, and Anthony Trollope covers the John Thomas.

I AM THE PLEASURE OF THE TEXT.

And it will be a Halloween to remember…



October 31, 2009, The Day After…

The MAPH Halloween party was beyond description. I shall try to describe it.

So there’s about 70 people in your apartment, and Karen’s apartment, with a keg in your kitchen and snacks spread out in various places and plenty of alcohol everywhere you turn, and I mean alcohol, a case of Charles Shaw and rum and vodka and whiskey and Scotch and a punch Karen made which was excellent to begin with and kept getting things added to it all night. I lost count of how many Joe’s O’s I ate, but it was a significant number. I also drank a lot of wine and punch and beer playing Flipcup, where I executed a double-flip.

Costumes: Peter was a hunter, Karen Slovin an environmentalist, Karen Singerman with Adam and Mika as Firefly characters, Emma as Carmen Sandiego, Alex as Barney Smithson, Ashley as Alice (WELL DONE), A.J. as Roger Sterling (WELL DONE), Mike as Bruce Lee, Patrick as Popeye, Amelia and Andy as Bernadette Peters and Steve Martin in The Jerk, Julie as Magritte’s man with an apple, Jess as Rosie the Riveter, Erik as Elisabeth von R. (WELL DONE), Anna as a sunflower poking up from the garbage can, Bailey as Elle Woods, Matt as a frat boy, Melissa as the Death of Fun, Bill as Quailman, Bryan as a pig, Tom as the OED, Amanda as Bret Michaels, Stephen as The Ramones...

I’m forgetting a LOT OF STUFF.

Because, factoring in Daylight Savings Time, I was up until 3 a.m. after Karen went to bed early and Peter needed to get away and walk Ashley home and a certain person collapsed into a vomiting drunken heap in my hallway and threw up on one set of towels while I gave Kaelin the other set of towels and there were all these people whom Drew and Julie and Liz seemed to know but I didn’t know at all, and my apartment was overflowing with LIFE HAPPENING ALL AROUND as we basically cut loose from the worries of the days and weeks and I had no idea what was happening at the end even though I was sober the whole time, and this time I was…

And at 3 a.m. cleaning up, I had a small conversation with Emma, who with Alex stayed until the end, and we talked about BBC and Trollope and wanting to serve others and I said “Where have you been all my life?” and she said “In college” and we’re both laughing. Gave me a moment to go to bed happy on.

Great party.