"peel your own image from the mirror."
found on nina berman.com
There is no moment so transcendent that writing cannot put it in chains.
What has gone on? Nothing. The long dark teatime of the soul. I loved the snow when it was round, but then I went out and the wind was ferocious. It hissed and bit. So I just cleared the walk and steps then came inside to huddle in bed.
I have decided what I will write for my thesis. I am using Yates' book Revolutionary Road, Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent, Sachs' The End of Poverty, and Ehrenbach's Nickel & Dimed. If I am going to write a senior thesis I suppose I might as well believe what I'm writing, if I have had the luxury of time to ruminate on the amatter.
My dad keeps me in on days like this because the wind might blow the luck out of my eyes and freeze the tip of my nose. I cleaned my room, took in the mail, and puttered around. I watched unsettling things on YouTube. One is a boy who is either very troubled or an acting prodigy, I wish I knew. The other is an animation that Chris says almost got Robert Smigel blacklisted, which is subversive and neat.
My uncle from Vermont called. He was upset that he couldn't go out and work on the ambulance because the roads there are impassible. I cannot begin to comprehend his and my father's work ethic. Someday, I fear after my father dies, I will understand it. Right now I can only see this side of the curtain. My uncle believes I will change the world, or that I can. He is a very practical sort of guy as you might imagine, so I really don't know what value he sees in my dimly evident talents.
My mother is out. She goes out at odd hours and comes home, I guess, but can't say for sure. Sometimes she says she's staying with a friend. I don't know what that means. The only friend I know she has is down the block, and her car is gone.
Do you know how disquieting that is? Some nights I'll wake up hungy, and bump into her on the folded-out convertible couch in the dark livingroom.
I hate school. Economics is thoroughly logical and I feel like Mr. Sferrazza is just dusting off conclusions I could have come to on my own. Psychology is abhorrent. Ms. Meltzer is a lumpy woman with her hair in a ratty bun whose teaching methodology is to read the text to us, with intermittent pauses to grouse at her uninterested class. The class itself is full of idiots: Good students that act the fool to get cheap laughs. I slide down in my seat. Then there are the genuine idiots, like the starry-eyed sophomores asking what heterosexuality is, and the younger daughter who got shitfaced on the senior trip. I'm not proud to be there. I also want to drop Latin. I can only do this if the doctor writes a note indicating the necessity of my dropping Latin. It is, of course, unnecessary. But I feel I am entitled to these things.
It was Valentine's Day which has no weight in my mental calendar. The days that do are shadowy things hiding in March and April. I spent Saint Valentine's Day loveless. I mean I can't process things like that right now. I mean I don't know if I will ever have that kind of faculty. Lately I've been spending a lot of time thinking about not existing and it makes me very happy. I'll never have time to get all my reading done anyway.
I want to walk outside and disappear into the wind.