Warning: Monster Post
(If I were on Livejournal I'd be slapped with an lj-cut order, but that's because LJ is full of annoying rules and wise-ass dictators.)

"The poetics of Neruda consisted in 'walking around', seeing his ghost in windowpanes, making love in sweaty beds, gazing at his shoes, and eating artichokes."
- Carlos Fuentes, from the introduction to Rodo's Ariel

Bernice is lying on her stomach in the middle of the floor, studying Bioethics, and I just got off the phone with my mum whose birthday is next week. Speaking of which, I had wonderful time with Helen some days ago, picking out birthday cards. You (not ambiguously directed at anyone, like you) will get one in a few weeks, I promise, designed precisely for your moment.
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Perhaps you've been wondering how people talk here? I finally asked a guy with very blonde hair and very brown eyebrows at Sustained Dialogue (which is where people sit around talking about why talking about racial/cultural issues won't solve a thing), because the accent is neither Southern nor Northern. In fact, I think I may have confused it with the surfer-dude accents of Finding Nemo and Totally Spies. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, check this out and pay attention to a shaggy-haired character called Wade. But it sounds overdone when I listen now, so could it be faux Mid-East Coast accent? Prof. Lefkowitz has given me a headache, which is, of course, his job.
Friday morning, and we squash onto the bus. The guy at the wheel is clearly a student. He squints out of the window, spinning, then freezes. "SHIT GUYS, there's a cop. GET BEHIND THE WHITE LINE. NOW!" I pack myself a little tighter, pushing an elbow deep into someone's stomach, pretending I thought it was a backpack. And later in the day we rattle like the last peas from a can wheeling past a truck too long to take corners safely, full of supplies for the Rolling Stones gig.
Annie changes the world each day, as I realised at the Hurricane Katrina HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) benefit concert. We curled up in chairs and talked Japan, spelling bees and red hair, waiting for it to start, and powwowed about cupcake and movie plans for Norris.
Back home, I might have strangled my RA for EVERYSINGLEamazing I have heard, but not here, where it is perfectly standard to wave your enthusiasm like a banner, be it religious anti-organization or anti-abortion rights. The latter made me furious, driving all over campus with huge, graphic images of mangled babies on their trucks, having children hand out their fliers. If you actually tried the links on these fliers, how dubious and misleading their message! But the fact that they are here for us to rampantly disagree with has its own strange goodness.
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Thursday night saw Bernice's high school teacher and three students from Cali camped out in our dorm, semi-enjoying the drama of being stuck in Virginian nowhere, because their car had been towed. They scrambled to the police station and I took the girls to our TV room. I hope they had fun, anyway, and they must have because that should always be the case when you road-trip into starriness.
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I wanted to go away for Fall break. I really did. Maybe it's Kerouacian belief that has me think I haven't experienced America until I am in the middle of flatlands with an engine. But readings envelope me and leave me really annoyed with life in general. I lie. I like my readings. Even if Rodo is a crazyass freak.
This weekend gave me time to take in downtown with Helen as well as the Cuban goodness of Mono Loco, a tea bazaar and the Pav where a blues band was playing, as well as Corpse Bride for Emilyn's birthday and driving in blissfully perfect weather. The sun drums on your face but the heat has lifted and is replaced with brisk coolness. It is quite upsetting to find that I have outgrown both Counting Crows and Disney in one fell swoop. It made no sense to me when the skeletons started to sing, but when a little boy lifted his arms and said, "Grandpa?" it made all the sense in the world.
I keep running into people at O Hill, and I'm beginning to like that.