I recommend pleasant.

Elwood P. Dowd: I'd just put Ed Hickey into a taxi. Ed had been mixing his rye with his gin, and I just felt that he needed conveying. Well, anyway, I was walking down along the street and I heard this voice saying, "Good evening, Mr. Dowd." Well, I turned around and here was this big six-foot rabbit leaning up against a lamp-post. Well, I thought nothing of that because when you've lived in a town as long as I've lived in this one, you get used to the fact that everybody knows your name. And naturally I went over to chat with him. And he said to me... he said, "Ed Hickey was a little spiffed this evening, or could I be mistaken?" Well, of course, he was not mistaken. I think the world and all of Ed, but he was spiffed. Well, we talked like that for awhile and then I said to him, I said, "You have the advantage on me. You know my name and I don't know yours." And, and right back at me he said, "What name do you like?" Well, I didn't even have to think twice about that. Harvey's always been my favorite name. So I said to him, I said, "Harvey." And, uh, this is the interesting thing about the whole thing: He said, "What a coincidence. My name happens to be Harvey."

James Stewart circa 1950, I'm all yours.

If I could ever meet an Elwood P. Dowd, a Bill Samson, a Joe Gillis, or even a Joe Bradley, I wouldn't think twice about it. That was my problem as a kid, I watched too many old movies. There's an argument flopping around that says girls around my age are living in a romantic delusion because they watched too many Disney princesses live happily ever after. First of all, Walt Disney didn't create happily ever after, but I won't go there. My fantasy is different. For me, it was the noir couples. Even Fred and Ginger, George & Gracie, to speak nothing of Carey Grant and whoever he wanted.

Since I was old enough to discern it, banter has been what makes me melt. I can't help it. I grew up around vaudeville pranksters and their descendants. And then I found Ethel in third grade, then Katherine and Bette. They all blew me away. They weren't giggling into their cleavage, they were keeping the tempo. They were sexy because they were sharp. And whenever they interacted with men, it was like fireworks. And it wasn't just the women, the men knew how to fuel the fire. Flirting doesn't happen like that anymore.

For instance, in Double Indemnity, when Phyllis says "I was just fixing some iced tea. Would you like a glass?", Walter Neff says "Sure, unless you've got a bottle of beer that's not working."

When I say it, arbitrary college date says "Nah babe, I'm cool" and proceeds to smoke a bowl or bitch about Kierkegaard or check his facebook.

Flirting these days is whack, yo! Seriously. I look around and I see nothin' but tricks and hos. There's not a shadow of class. Some playa can just roll up and be like "damn grrrl, u fine" and she might damn well end up sleeping with him three jager bombs later and whaddaya gonna do, it's 2007 ya pansy! Get with it.

But I can't. That's my delusion. Because I prefer something with a horn section and cheek to cheek to something with phat beatz and ass to crotch. Because I want to grab someone by their tie and kiss them. Because I still get a little woozy when I see a fedora. Because, sue me, I want a crescendo, not a tornado.

For sanity purposes I'm going to assume that any guy I meet who has the wit, sophistication and style of the 40s is gay. Although I'd love to be convinced otherwise.

Forget about the reluctant Eve who prefers tangerines to apples. Give me some yarn and I'll give it some spin.

Oh, college. What other time in your life can you shamelessly begin your day by singing not just any duet, but "A Whole New World" with the guy in the neighboring shower stall (far from Pyramus and Thisbe, I assure you) and end it on a spirited discussion with a 50-something-year-old woman with a Ph.D. regarding the possibility of the soul being 5/16 of an inch too big for your body?

We're finally reading House of Leaves and I can barely contain myself. Reading that book isn't a light affair. It puts your mind in a different space with eerie echoes and manipulations of light and forever question marks winding inward. Some of my notes are:

*the manipulation of boundaries with drugs
*concept entering my head. how many corridors do you have? meaning how open-minded?
*pieces of writing as buildings. passages. passageways.
*communal thinking is better. webs. bricks.
*ear to shell to labyrinth
*reliance on echoes for our sense of space

That's enough for now. I don't know if I have anything left to spill.

Yours truly, Liberty Drunk

Guess who didn't get the newspaper gig or the German syntax apprenticeship? Guess who counted her chickens before they hatched? Guess who ate an entire bag of grapes today in one sitting?

If they ever come up with a swashbuckling school, I think one of the courses should be laughing, then jumping off something.

It's almost two in the morning. I had one bottled coffee drink that's mostly milk anyway and now I'm all wired. Maybe it's a placebo effect. Maybe I'm just excited because I looked up around seventy-five words in my German dictionary this fine evening. Maybe it's that I'm too excited to sleep because I know how amazing tomorrow will be (and each tomorrow thereafter!). Maybe it's that eightball of coke I did with the security monitor earlier before we all watched V for Vendetta on 8x rewind.


... Nah.


Anyway, I'm in a strange mood. My English class is changing the way I think. Come to think of it, all of my classes are. I know that sounds like such a cliché thing to say about college, but it's such a rapid, dramatic explosion. In my English (lit & media theory) class we're talking about time and space as an endless stream of data, and we're discussing the ways in which we dissect it and how each of those separations are a form of mediation. Time divided into 24s and 60s and yesterdays and next years. 26 letters in the alphabet, ABCDEFG in the musical scale. Time before the invention of the clock. Time before handwriting and history. What is it we're trying to convey from one person to another through literature? What are we trying to immediately access? The body as a medium for the spirit. Culture and ideology as forms of mediation. Our words are overpopulated with other people's intentions. The phonebook as literature. The medium, like the window, is both a conduit and an obstacle (!) and when we read are we looking at or looking through? Technology and spirit as two sides of the same coin, something I was pretty reluctant to admit. I love it!

And the man with the talons playing the cymbalon. And the muttering loons and the poetry on the sidewalk and the moonshadows and young ideas and smiles cutting through fog.

I'm ready to go dream now. Goodnight.

We like to praise birds for flying. But how much of it is actually flying, and how much of it is just sort of coasting from the previous flap?

It's Sunday morning and the sky is gawgeous. I started classes a week ago and I still haven't gotten around to writing about my teachers. So, here goes:

Linguistics: Professor Harold von Syntax. He seems nice enough, and I don't have any serious problems, it's just when I do the reading I can see how amazing this stuff is and he's a little less firecracker than I would have hoped. He's kind of mouse-like, and the closest he gets to pure enthusiasm is a sort of shrill nervousness. He is short with very dark, very short hair. He clears his throat often and wears crisp shirts. He seems like a momma's boy, like any second Mrs. von Syntax will come out, spit on her thumb and start wiping his cheek, telling him he's got schmutz. And he'll say mother, will you stop? That's not schmutz, that's facial hair! And she'll say Harry, mein Liebschen*, who are you kidding, you're not old enough to grow facial hair.

And then directly after that I have Deutsch, with Nina Merolle, who's aces in my book. My first German teacher is someone I'll never truly get over, but she was older, a lot more nurturing, and very, how you say, Americanized. Prof. Merolle is about twenty-six I'd say, very spry, hilarious, and so German she makes me feel like for an hour a day I'm there again. It's great! She has that unexpected directness that I love about the German folk, so there are no awkward, superficial formalities about anything. If you're wrong, she doesn't grab the spoon and the applesauce, she just says "Falsch!" loudly and clearly, and with a big grin. There are other German mannerisms I've missed since I was last in the land of beer and schnitzel, but it's almost difficult to pick them apart and describe them, so I shan't, for now.

Then Peace and Conflict studies with Prof. Giovannini. She's Italian, very emotional, lots of hand gestures and very brilliant. She worked with the UN in Lebanon and Palestine, so she has plenty to say, if the class would stop wasting 1/3 of the class with their ego stroking, trying to prove that they belong there. I have a feeling this class is going to be incredible.

Finally, my English seminar on media theory. Small class of about fifteen or twenty students, with a teacher whose brain is like a bottle of champagne that's spilling all over the room. She's wide-eyed, always wearing straight knee length dresses, and she is really good at turning your ideas inside out. She makes it so we're constantly a little disoriented and dizzy, which has so far proven to be a great environment for coming up with odd ideas about literature. More on her later. These introductions feel so forced, but I need a framework for later details. She's an excited and exciting teacher.

I also started taking piano lessons with Heather, this 27-year-old jazz composer who lives about fifteen blocks away. It's a really pretty walk to her house, and my fingers love the exercise. Right now I'm at the basics: learning the scales of C, G & D. Then learning those same basic chords and their inversions, and also a little bit of learning to read sheet music. Heather is great. She answered the door in fishnets and a vintage dress, and she had Radiohead posters and strange little knick-knacks all over her studio. I'm gonna do whatever it takes to support my $50 a week habit.

I've got a lot of reading to do, but I'll be sure to update after my first archery club meeting on Wednesday.



*changed to accommodate newer, more Teutonic last name

Too bad you can't buy a voodoo globe so that you could make the earth spin real fast and freak everybody out.

Jennifer has inspired me to create one of these high-fallutin' "weblogs" to chronicle my oh-so-invaluable "college experience," as they say.

So here goes. Today I have to do many-a-thing:

-Apply for a job as a gallery attendant at the Pacific Art Museum/Film Archive
-Apply for a research apprenticeship on a Germanic syntax project
-Apply for a position as an Arts & Entertainment reporter for the independent student newspaper The Daily Californian

Then at some point I'll have to knock back a few glasses of wine until I feel ready to enjoy the three-hour tedium that is my online alcohol education course. Just kidding, folks! It'll definitely have to be ecstasy.

At any rate, things are really beautiful here. I'm slowly and with ebbing resentment getting used to not seeing any familiar faces. Yesterday I hiked up to the botanical garden and wandered around. I saw a ten-foot-tall cactus, which won my heart. It needs a sombrero, though. Around sunset the fog rolls in over the hills and I get all giddy about it.

What else, what else. I auditioned for a play called Continuous City that looks really incredible and I got a callback. I want to be involved so terribly but I'm worried it will take up too much of my schedule, what with my grueling studies and german syntax research and art gallery assisting and entertainment reporting and archery and all. That's right folks, archery. The first meeting is September fifth. By my twenty-first birthday, I'll be a force to be reckoned with.

That's all for now. I'll take some pictures around town for the curious eyes among you. For now, here's something to ruminate on: