10:42 a.m. x 2009-11-18

currently listening to: "the last race" by jack nitzsche

nabokov is treating me wonderfully. A on rabbit, run paper. am endeavoring to complete poisonwood bible paper relatively immediately so that i might clear my schedule for "prufrock" paper plus the other one, the ten page one for the novel which my professor thinks i ought to expand out from this one i just did - rabbit, run as a feminist critique. that takes some acrobatics. it may be worth expanding. i'm just gushing on "prufrock" so some cold objectivity should be good for me. i am feeling really dizzy and nervous. i think it would do me well to lie down this afternoon, right after class, maybe. i am getting too nervous. if i'm going to nap as often as i have been, i should bump it back to allow myself a chance to get tired again prior to four and five. having trouble talking to people, as i percieve it, more than usual - a close good friend is descending sharply, with vim and abandon, into alcoholism. i am embarrassed to a point about not detecting it, because it's college and the kids drink, and she belongs to a society that happens to be particularly avid about it. my own attitude colors it significantly: i can be working and have a drink. it is rare enough for me to be able to do that that i generally salute others when i see them imbibing, then another friend came to me rattled and near-tears saying, she's drunk every time i see her. and fuck, she is! and now not coming to class, about to turn twenty-one, doing the outright poorest in an unspectacular (content-wise) workshop class. and a better writer than others, certainly, not a bad brain, a sweet girl - can empathize, is fun - i care about her a great deal. it is even more sad when her best friend is considered alongside all this - that girl's a fucking fruitcake whose IQ has a remarkable cup size. really not a sense of priority or quality or much of an interest in seeming interesting, which is discouraging in a creative writing class. everything she produces sounds like an after-school special. and SHE'S doing fine. she would! but i don't think she quite has the sense to even detect what's going on with her best friend. i'm afraid. gretchen is writing to her and i think that can do something. i think just knowing that other people care will do something. this girl isn't dead inside yet, but she's obviously aspiring to it. tanking in a class with this professor, once you've gotten as far as a second workshop, is a clear indication to him of suicidal impulses, so it's not as if it's lost on the rest of us.

lexi visit monday. we go home tuesday, i remain there a week. prior to this is intensive cat-sitting and bonding with a new friend. someone i have known but now we are friends - the english society president, with whom i used to have a psychotically tense relationship because i am so staunch, business-oriented, intrusively charismatic when it comes to dealing with groups such as our club (what glib self-criticism - meanwhile i come off like a flaming prick for these reasons and others), and it is her club, she calls it "my club," she can be trite and infuriating and infantile and stampy. but bottom line: she gets things done. i help. we get them accomplished together. we both care. together we've done a great deal and she treats me like that - we have bonded and are genuine friends, she respects me and her gestures make me excuse all that other stuff. i treat her like a president. she treats me like a secretary. they are both vital things to this society functioning. it is a great deal - i am very happy. i do so much that i enjoy so much. my resume/CV thrills me to look at - that sense of accomplishment has been nonexistant in my life before this.

english society secretary.
founder and copy editor of student-run journal of literary criticism.
copy editing intern for nationally distributed literary journal.
bookbinder for regionally significant small press.
chapbook copy editor and designer.
was copy editor, am now managing editor for student literary journal.
maintains something to the tune of a 3.9 major GPA.

plus i get to write and read for class, write and read for myself, research journals, practice practice, do what i love. i am staggered by the variety of brilliant opportunities i have, by the belief that fiction professor, poetry professor, lit professor and my boss at the small press have in me as an employee, as a writer, as a student - ah! and my friends! my gretchen! mary! scott! matt! lauren! emily! bill! so many just here at school! and then lexi! akasha! amanda! clare! kara! ken! FOREVER!

and oh my goodness, cat-sitting!

if anybody should ask i'm going to a seminar
pieces of the moon
JOBJOBJOB
interviewinterviewinterview
sensitive heart, you're doomed from the start
(& etc)