I think Candice's recent return to her blog has inspired this return to mine. (Well, that and the fact that the whole "caveman dialogue involving hilariously out of place modern concepts" thing has been up there so long that it's starting to look really dumb to me.) I still check my college group's blog once a day, and click through the links where we have all of our personal blogs listed. Nobody ever updates. I mean, maybe once every two or three months. And mostly that just makes me think, "AWW, come on guys!" But I only rarely think that maybe I should post to save the group blog from blogdeath, and I know that mostly I get cantankerous about non-postage because I love the crap out of those people. So even if no one posts, I still visit. And if I notice what isn't there, it only reminds me of what is.

And really, I don't have too much to post. I passed my last round of orals maybe two weeks ago, which gets me closer to being done-- but "closer" is not "done." And, mostly, what I want more than anything is to move on.

I think about moving back to the bay area a lot. Like, a lot. And Sara and Emily are out of town and I miss them.

And I'm still just sad. Like, crying randomly on the bus and every time I'm in the shower sad. Which is a huge downer to put on a blog, but I'm just being honest. Now that my exam is done, I spend a lot of time in my shower. I like to sit down and curl up in a towel in the corner of the tub for a few minutes afterward, too. I don't know why-- it's just nice. The room's warm, and the humming of the heat lamp is comforting, and everything is just white space. I don't even know what I think about most of the time in there. The other day I had been listening to the Glee cast's version of "Teenage Dream" at the gym, so in the shower I imagined what it would look like if Darren Criss showed up at my door, perhaps looking for one of my neighbors and knocking at the wrong apartment:

Darren Criss: Hi...:::trying to peer into my apartment to find whoever he was actually coming to see:::

Me: [casually] Hi Darren Criss. Can I help you with something?

Darren Criss: You know who I am?

Me: Sure. I just listened to your song while I was brushing my teeth. Nice work.

Darren Criss: Thanks.

Me: No problem.


This, incidentally, has nothing on the conversations that I have with Robert Downey Jr. or Hugh Laurie while I am on the bus. (And with whom I am just as calm and measured as I am with imaginary Darren Criss. This often prompts imaginary RDJ and imaginary HL to compliment me on my self-possession in their presence; it's something that most of their other fans-- who are girlish and mortal- lack.)

Though, I guess sometimes it's more serious. I have conversations with people that I actually have known. Mostly the same ones, just over and over.


I had a few hours of consolation last week when we did Whitman and William Carlos Williams in my writing class, but that didn't last long. Probably because it's hard to share the experience of WCW Day in English 4w with other people and get them to truly *understand* the herculean achievement of it all. Who's got two thumbs and can launch a syllabus that takes students carefully through an analysis of different poetic traditions, genres, and formal concerns for two weeks before dropping William Carlos Williams on them, thereby enabling them to discuss "The Red Wheel Barrow," one of the most famously succinct poems in the English language (a mere four stanzas, eight lines...sixteen words!) for nearly an hour and fifteen minutes? This chick. (Pointing to self with thumbs.)

But so much does depend upon that red wheel barrow, and what I feel in the shower, and all of the hypothetical conversations that I rehearse in my head.

I'm sure all of the thinking does matter, and that maybe if I just let myself keep doing it, it will eventually go away.