when you walk by, randy as a goat; sleeping on the pavement but she'd be warm in your coat
Earlier tonight I started watching Camille Claudel, but I had to pause it and take a nap after an hour as I'd had a big dinner of Hamburger Helper. I slept for a couple of hours and had a dream, of which I only remember the following fragment:
I was in a fairly old home, in a room that seemed to be a study or library, with dark green walls and mahogany shelves full of leatherbound books. Anthony* was in the next room. I walked over to a far corner, in a sparse section of wall between a doorway (without a door, just the frame) and window (with closed venetian blinds). This section was painted blue and it seemed like this part of the house was empty or abandoned. A white cat with large gray spots sat on top of a set of three yellow-painted wooden steps propped flush against the wall and it occurred to me that I should pay attention to remember this dream when I woke up. To the right of the yellow steps was a doorway set about a foot above the ground, bordered in dark wood like a picture frame and a couple of feet high at most; what I could see of the other side looked like the mossy ground of a forest. I wondered how I would be able to fit inside.
So on the Friday before last, I officially severed ties with him. Really, for awhile, the only reason I still associated with him at all was the fact that I needed him to finish his scenes in my video, considering all the offensive, disrespectful, and just plain cruel and manipulative shit he's pulled. And when he refused to shoot that last scene, it was the absolute last straw; there was really no further reason whatsoever for me to speak to him in any context. During the following week I'd been giving him a very wide berth on the couple of times I saw him with our mutual friends; it had gotten so it wasn't even enough not to speak to him, I couldn't physically be in his presence. Even his best friends, who are also my friends, think he's treated me horribly. The man was like a narcotic to me: and when you're an alcoholic, you don't go to an open bar. I don't get addicted to substances, only young men. This was not the first time I've had to quit cold-turkey.
So I'd been telling our mutual friends all week that I couldn't talk to him or be around him any more, then on Friday, before I went out to socialize, I figured I might as well do the honorable thing and leave him a message making him aware of that, so he wouldn't hear it secondhand like some sort of schoolgirl gossip. I expected to get his voicemail, but he actually answered that time. I told him I had expected to get his voicemail and I'd just called to tell him I couldn't speak to him any more. He made some glib remarks about how it was somehow self-defeating to call him to tell him I wasn't talking to him any more, just not taking it seriously at all, as if he'd completely forgotten how pissed we were at each other a week before. I tersely said I just wanted him to know that we no longer had to acknowledge each other socially any more; the last thing he said to me was, "talk to you later." I saw him at the bus stop the next day, where we made brief eye contact, shortly after which he shuffled off: perhaps just to alert a friend of ours that the bus was coming or perhaps because he was too avoidant to even stand a few yards away from me. The last I ever saw of him was getting on the Bee-Line to White Plains with Ray. I hope I never have to see him again.
In other news, I finished my senior project video. It's 55 minutes long (egads!) and I practically lived in the video lab last week trying to finish it: a stretch of eight hours without leaving the VA building one day became 12 hours the next, then 16, then a full 24. But despite that, I haven't graduated yet. The only thing standing between me and my Bachelor of Arts would be two signatures. I was so busy finishing typing up my senior thesis that I missed running into my project sponsor and she wasn't in on Friday (the due date); also, only last week I realized I also had to have a "second reader" for my thesis and it was far too late to find one. So I'll have to talk to the registrar this week to see what I can do, if it would be acceptable to turn it in early next semester or whether I wouldn't be able to turn it in next semester without paying that semester's tuition (and my parents have said outright that they couldn't afford to pay any more tuition, which probably means they don't feel like it as they've always been cheap with me and they want to spend their money on vacations during their upcoming retirement).
I'm going to start calling about apartments this week and get my resume online. I'll probably look for an apartment around Port Chester because it would be easier to move my shit there than Brooklyn or Queens, where I'd initially wanted to move. I feel awfully pessimistic about finding work; I worry that I'll be stuck in menial labor for several months as I have almost no paid work experience and I'm not a college graduate, not to mention most places aren't really hiring around this time of year.
I was in a fairly old home, in a room that seemed to be a study or library, with dark green walls and mahogany shelves full of leatherbound books. Anthony* was in the next room. I walked over to a far corner, in a sparse section of wall between a doorway (without a door, just the frame) and window (with closed venetian blinds). This section was painted blue and it seemed like this part of the house was empty or abandoned. A white cat with large gray spots sat on top of a set of three yellow-painted wooden steps propped flush against the wall and it occurred to me that I should pay attention to remember this dream when I woke up. To the right of the yellow steps was a doorway set about a foot above the ground, bordered in dark wood like a picture frame and a couple of feet high at most; what I could see of the other side looked like the mossy ground of a forest. I wondered how I would be able to fit inside.
So on the Friday before last, I officially severed ties with him. Really, for awhile, the only reason I still associated with him at all was the fact that I needed him to finish his scenes in my video, considering all the offensive, disrespectful, and just plain cruel and manipulative shit he's pulled. And when he refused to shoot that last scene, it was the absolute last straw; there was really no further reason whatsoever for me to speak to him in any context. During the following week I'd been giving him a very wide berth on the couple of times I saw him with our mutual friends; it had gotten so it wasn't even enough not to speak to him, I couldn't physically be in his presence. Even his best friends, who are also my friends, think he's treated me horribly. The man was like a narcotic to me: and when you're an alcoholic, you don't go to an open bar. I don't get addicted to substances, only young men. This was not the first time I've had to quit cold-turkey.
So I'd been telling our mutual friends all week that I couldn't talk to him or be around him any more, then on Friday, before I went out to socialize, I figured I might as well do the honorable thing and leave him a message making him aware of that, so he wouldn't hear it secondhand like some sort of schoolgirl gossip. I expected to get his voicemail, but he actually answered that time. I told him I had expected to get his voicemail and I'd just called to tell him I couldn't speak to him any more. He made some glib remarks about how it was somehow self-defeating to call him to tell him I wasn't talking to him any more, just not taking it seriously at all, as if he'd completely forgotten how pissed we were at each other a week before. I tersely said I just wanted him to know that we no longer had to acknowledge each other socially any more; the last thing he said to me was, "talk to you later." I saw him at the bus stop the next day, where we made brief eye contact, shortly after which he shuffled off: perhaps just to alert a friend of ours that the bus was coming or perhaps because he was too avoidant to even stand a few yards away from me. The last I ever saw of him was getting on the Bee-Line to White Plains with Ray. I hope I never have to see him again.
In other news, I finished my senior project video. It's 55 minutes long (egads!) and I practically lived in the video lab last week trying to finish it: a stretch of eight hours without leaving the VA building one day became 12 hours the next, then 16, then a full 24. But despite that, I haven't graduated yet. The only thing standing between me and my Bachelor of Arts would be two signatures. I was so busy finishing typing up my senior thesis that I missed running into my project sponsor and she wasn't in on Friday (the due date); also, only last week I realized I also had to have a "second reader" for my thesis and it was far too late to find one. So I'll have to talk to the registrar this week to see what I can do, if it would be acceptable to turn it in early next semester or whether I wouldn't be able to turn it in next semester without paying that semester's tuition (and my parents have said outright that they couldn't afford to pay any more tuition, which probably means they don't feel like it as they've always been cheap with me and they want to spend their money on vacations during their upcoming retirement).
I'm going to start calling about apartments this week and get my resume online. I'll probably look for an apartment around Port Chester because it would be easier to move my shit there than Brooklyn or Queens, where I'd initially wanted to move. I feel awfully pessimistic about finding work; I worry that I'll be stuck in menial labor for several months as I have almost no paid work experience and I'm not a college graduate, not to mention most places aren't really hiring around this time of year.