I hate physics with a passion... more than that, i hate that no matter how many times i go over things, my mind hits a brick wall whenever i need to make a leap from two known things to one unknown thing- can it really be that my mind does not work this way at all? When i said goodbye to math and algebra at the end of high school, it was with the relief of being released from years of forced hard labour in a prison rock-pit. My whole life, its been one thing i was never able to "figure out" to master, one challenge i've always been nearly helpless against. Not the only thing, to be sure, but a glaring, nagging, frustrating limitation that i do not enjoy going back up against at this stage in life...Grrr..

About nothing....

Its a REAALLLY slow night at the cafe, i should be working on physics, but my brain is so dead.
Ali's looking at dogs, i'm stacking flats of juice...not much happening, this does not make for riveting blogging....but, hey, somebody's gotta do it.

Family Portraits

http://www.scarysquirrel.org/current/lovey/ground/pics.html

So i'm writing this post from my NEW LAPTOP... Yeah, that's right, i have a shiny new item with wireless, a DVD player, twice the speed, twice the memory...OK, so its not completely new, its second hand, and it isn't really that shiny (just kind of black...) and it only set me back $300...that's because my old laptop ( less than 30 days old) got traded in fot it. Don't get me wrong, i was pretty darn excited about my old laptop, especially arriving as it did, utterly unexpected on my birthday with my friends chipping in and all- that was really special. And it served me well. But i have just a LITTLE bit of expendable cash right now, and i couldn't resist trading up. I know, conspicous comsumption is not attractive. I'm not bragging, i'm happy. I have a new toy -it feels much better to type on- it will be with me for much late night paper-writing.
speaking of which- I finished my semiotic analysis of The Canopy...at ten-fifteen this morning. I started around 4 pm yesterday and worked straight through. It was torturous- i couldn't seem to bring my ideas together. I'm not happy with it- it could have been so much better-i was so tired writing parts of it that i'm afraid to take a second look. That's really not something i ever want to put myself through again- not so much the sleepless ordeal ( i sometimes do that for a good book) but the feeling of having to turn in something that was so much less than it could hhave been. GGrrr. No one but myself to blame, and i have to admit, people who could be saying "I told you so" have been spectacularily gracious about it.
You know that new work ethic i was talking about? Still needs some work.

Why i am so happy...

I'm feeling really @**#$!! incredible today. Really, really good. Better than i've felt, well, bearing in mind the subjectivity of "happy" memory, in a long, long time. I feel light- alive- free. I noticed the mostly bare trees in the river valley on the ride to school, and it filled me with the same open air exhileration it used to, instead of the more familiar feeling of muffled longing. Here is the kicker- here is how you know you're in an absurdly good mood- i arrive late, for physics( joy!) and pull my homework off the cameron printer, breath deeply, and exclaim" AHH! The smell of fresh printer ink!" The old Jeremy would have immediately asked to be put down for a statement like that. Fresh printer ink? What the hell? It makes no sense. My evening was bookmarked by two of the most emotionally gruelling phone calls of my life, and the rest spent working on Physics problems til 3 Am, (and boy oh boy, do i love physics! I mean, i'm an English student- why, again, am i doing physics at all?) 3 hours later, i awake, wheezing and hacking like a TB victim, and head off to school for lovely, lovely physics. By all rights, i should be walking around with a frown and a messy, black ink scribble hovering over head, breathing fire, staring holes in people, willing somone to look at me wrong so i can evicerate them ( much, actually, as i have been all week...) But no, i'm bouncing on my feet, loving the cold grey fall air, loving the teeming,multicloured masses on campus, loving the @@##$$$%&!! printer ink! Another one of those things you don't notice till its gone- i feel like a huge, murky oppressive cloud has lifed off me, one that had been crowding the edges of my vision, pressing in with a thousand pointy knives, immobilizing me, sucking my energy, blinding me, sucking me down into dry, dead leaves and dark, sludgy mud, weighed down, tied down, trying to drag myself along while sleep, death, rage, and blackness seeped through my skin and began to saturate me, so that i would soon be unable to move, one with the wet, rotting earth.
Definition by absence- i never thought about it while it was there- it only appears in contrast to how i feel now, today, alive, under clear skies, myself, not something else, free, in this moment, alive NOW.
For those who know something of my situation, i'm not trying to identify the "murky cloud" with any particular person, rather, something with me, some consuming, owning passion, some Gollum-like possesiveness and possession, some clench-fisted, fearful greed, that has hung over me for who knows how long, that i appear to be released from. Maybe i let something go- maybe that was the subtle "turning" of last post.

Or, coming closer down to earth, a " that-turned-out-better-than-could-be-expected" resolution of a long torture may have something to do with it. I may be "easy", but I do "hard" very well when pressed to it, far too well, and i didn't want to go there- i was close. One can only turn the cheek so many times before there's no flesh left to hit, only dry, cold, cruel bone. But I don't have to go there. I don't have to hate a friend. We are, neither of us, so far gone as all that.

Maybe that's why this miserable grey day is all sunshine to me. Why i feel, quite suddenly, more like myself than i have in months. I must really be happy, or something.

Maybe there has been some drama, but this, this was actually surprisingly quiet. Small. An imperceptable turning. The sound of the last snowflake coming to rest on the heavy laden branch. A moment of absolute stillness, of aquiescance, of silent sadness, before the irresistable pull of gravity does its work.

Then i got angry.

Pride is stupid. I have hurt a friend with my reckless words. And the process has suceeded in dragging up ugly bits of me i don't like to look at. This isn't who i want to be...