I Must Keep Telling Myself This

I don't have to be perfect. I don't have to fix everything. It's not for me to keep all the people I love sane. It's hard enough to keep myself sane. I can feel my mind slowly turning to glass; there is something waiting so smash it. Work, sleep, that's what's for me. Save the poetry in life for later. And when it's all over we'll have our last hurrah.

But I can't save it for later!

Excerpt From a Late-Night Letter to an Old Friend

There are so many things in my brain trying to get out. Which shall go first? I don't know. I guess I decide however the spirit moves me. But sometimes I don't know how the spirit is moving me. Or I don't let it move me right away but stop and think it over. Maybe I'm going crazy. I don't know. Or maybe I'm just returning to normal. Things are getting insanely busy, and I don't know what to do with myself if I'm not insanely busy. My mind thinks increasingly poetically. Ah, yes. This feels good. It's been so long since my brain has felt like this. Reed tries to kill the poetic part of my brain so that the academic part can be unfettered. But no! Can't have that! I won't let that happen! I need both parts. Both halves. I can't be all academia and rationality. Maybe that's why I weekly play with the line between reason and madness, rationality and intoxication, control and uncontrol. Or maybe I always do that. Maybe my weekends are when I try and pin down just where the hell that damned line is. How much control can I retain when I'm drunk? How rational can I be even while ingesting something that suppresses rationality? That's what I ask myself deep down when I drink. How reasonable can I be about something that is so easy to lose control over? It's a test of my will. And my will has not failed. But a theory cannot ever be proven with positive evidence; it can only be disproved with evidence to the contrary. So I must keep testing, questioning. I try to question so many things. But I can't question them all. There are so many things that I can't even remember. My brain seems able to handle only one thing at once lately. Life slips through my fingers. I must write it all down, chronicle it, before it's lost forever. I try and pin my experiences to certain events. It used to work. But now those events seem all out of order; chronology no longer works because time is so fucked up here. We lose not only hours or days, we lose months. Did I not just meet Darrow at my floor's dorm meeting? Did I not just do the very first homework assignment for Logic? Did I not just go to the Kronos Quartet concert last weekend? No. All of those things are so far away. They are ancient memory, though it was just the beginning of the semester. So much changes in such a short time. But shouldn't I be done with such drastic change? Even the years when things change rapidly for everyone went more slowly than time does now. Every day the world is new, and you have such short time to learn its ways so that you can survive it. There are only two weeks of classes left. They are an eternity, and yet they will pass in half the blink of an eye. And soon after that it will be time to take down this little world that I've know. This room where so much has happened; where there exists everything I've known since I came here and became new. I'll have to pack it all away and store it. I cannot just leave it and come back to it later. And that thought scares the shit out of me. Is there anything beyond that packing up? I can't see past it. The summer is a big fucking blank. I can see past that, dimly, to next year. Ah, next year when I will live in a house (the German House), spring semester when I will be secluded in lab three days a week and hopefully one non-science class to three science classes will be enough to keep me from killing off half my brain again, fall semester when I'm in danger of forsaking the welcoming familiarity that is Bio for the cold marble halls of Philosophy. But all that is merely dream, one possibility for what could come to pass. There are other possibilities licking as a flame at the edges of my subconscious. But I don't want to think about those. I barely want to think about things that could be happening now. Sometimes when I think about life, I want nothing more than fuck myself up into a drugged stupor so that I don't have to think about it. But that would be the irresponsible way out. And I don't have to do that anyway because I'm getting so scatterbrained that I don't think about many things at once. I numb my own brain even without substances. But I suppose not ever getting a full night's sleep is close enough to being on substances. God, sometimes I feel like such a fuck-up, like I can't do anything right. And sometimes I feel like I can't get my shit together. My mind gets so diffused. Usually when that happens, I straighten up my room and organize everything I possibly can and then my brain feels organized enough to function properly. But lately I can't seem to even do that. I leave old mail sitting on my desk, I let dishes accumulate as well. I leave towels and skirts slung over the footboard of my bed. I leave my clothes on the floor, toss my books around, drop my bag on the floor, toss papers into random spots, shove shoes under the bed, let the dust aggregate into bunnies on the floor. And I know I don't want it that way, but I'm so detached that I barely realize that my room is messier than I've let it get all year. I barely realize what's going on other than what I'm doing at the moment. What, you mean I have a Hum paper due next weekend that I have to finish before Saturday, or even before Friday because my aunt is coming to visit and I have a concert that same weekend? What, you mean I have to lead conference in my music class this week? What, you mean I have logic homework due just a week after our last exam? What, you mean I have a Bio midterm in a week and it could possibly kick my ass if I don't get said ass going on the studying? Jesus Christ on a pony, I'm a mess.

I Am Officially an Idiot

Grr. How did I not notice earlier that the time I picked for my history class conflicts with the time I picked for my Intro Comp lab? At least I caught that before trying to register. But I can't pick a different time for that lab, because the other two times still conflict with something. There is another time for that history class, but it's at *cringe* nine a.m. But surely I can handle one nine a.m. class? That will be the only one I'll have all year, and the class should be interesting enough that I'll want to get my ass out of bed that early. And I'll have plenty of time for a nap later in the day, right?

I just suddenly got a burst of energy shortly before going through my schedule again. Oh, it's going to be a long night, and a long Monday after that.

While I was asleep Sunday morning I had the thought that my world is getting smaller and coming to resemble a crenated blood cell, all shrunken with projections sticking out. It looks rather star-like. I could get into all sorts of intricate comparisons, but I'll spare everyone the pain.

Right. Back to my schedule.

Death on a Stick

I can't concentrate on work. Damn it. I can't do anything remotely productive at the moment. My brain refuses to function properly. How the fuck am I going to get through the week this way? Hell if I know. I might have to be taking a lot of walks this week. "In restless walks she prowls the night." Glah.

I fuckin' got up for Nathalia's Hum lecture this morning. After having gone to sleep at four thirty. What a dumbass I am. The plan was to go to lecture and talk to Nathalia afterwards, as she's my adviser and I needed my PIN to register for classes. But I couldn't go then, really because her office hours don't actually start until 10:30, and it was only ten when I went. So I e-mailed her to ask for my PIN, but she insisted that I come in to talk about what classes I want to take. I'd already had that all straightened out, so I went in and said, "This is how it is," and that was that. I got my PIN, and I went home to register. But I ended up having to drop one of the classes I had been planning to take. That's because the math class I wanted to take (and kind of need to eventually) is worth two units for some odd reason. I can't believe a 50-minute lab is worth an entire fucking unit. I have three- and four-hour labs for sciences, and I don't get any extra credit for that! Grr. I have to do laundry tomorrow, but it's going to have to wait until the evening. That's because I need to be in the MRC from 2-4 to keep it open for random prospies that might possibly drop in. I would have time after that to come home and do laundry, except that, oh, I have to go to chorus rehearsal at four thirty! Thanks, Ginny, for mentioning that earlier. Grr. In other news? I don't know. Oh, jesus, I have to lead my music conference tomorrow. I should probably figure out what the fuck we're going to talk about. Hopefully the others will have some ideas. I hope the readings were thought-provoking enough. And I don't think I'll run out of things to say after tomorrow. No, there should be stuff to talk about. Particularly the Eighth Quartet, which is rather major. Grr. I need to go over the stuff I gave them to read. I hope I can do this. And I hope I can pull a paper out of it as well. I also need to write a Hum paper, but that's due this weekend. I think the music paper is due next week, or something. But for the Hum paper I have to finish reading The Golden Ass first, as that is what I'll be writing about. And I need to finish the paper before Friday, because my aunt is visiting this weekend, and then there's the concert on Sunday, and Bio midterm on Monday. And that is going to be a bitch. It's Steve Arch's exam, which I've heard will be hard. But I've also heard that he reuses questions. I plan to start studying an old exam as soon as possible. Oh, and there's the logic homework due Thursday. That's it, I'm dead. Glah. Next week will be a dream in comparison to this one. Damn.

I dropped a glass bottle outside and picked up all the pieces. I did have some help from some random guy passing by. But I cut myself a couple times. Not badly, but one still hurts.

I should get back to work. Or, well, get to work. I wasn't really working to begin with immediately prior to starting this entry.