Yeah so I got a way better score on my Dylan midterm rewrite--went from 88 to 96!!! After agonizing on it for so long and having to pull an all-nighter because I chose to start from scratch with it, this is very welcome news. My TA loves me so much, it's not even funny. Just kidding, it is. He write things like "lovely" and "amazing" in the margins (he also writes things like "cliche" and "awkward" but lets overlook that for the time being) and then on the back he says that the paper was "a vision." No joke, he wrote that. Then he goes, "really, wow." haha! I have recently come to the realization that I am really good at being teacher's pet. I always have been, my whole entire life. I was not one of those genius kids who does bad in school as a kid but later on turns out to be a nobel prize winner. Instead, my first grade teacher told me i would be famous some day, and my senior year english teacher ssaid that students like me keep her teaching. There is a big difference, you see, but I have yet to determine how it will play out in terms of overall brilliance. haha. Anyway this is the kind of ego-building crap I am up against. No wonder I'm such a terrible person who writes blogs about her good grades. But what I'm trying to prove, I hope, is not that I am some brilliant writer, because I read the essay over again and it was still pretty not that good in my opinion, but rather that I am a nerdy teacher's pet who goes to office hours and wins over her TAs, in an academic sense anyway, and not a romantic one, unfortunately.

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.

If you look at the kinds of posts I have been posting the last couple weeks, you will get a good idea of how busy I have been. I have thus far managed to not get very stressed and overwhelmed, which I am proud of, and I hope I can continue that. But man, I am so tired. It just doesn't end, not even for one day, you know? not even on weekends. not even on my birthday. gotta keep on trucking. The only thing that bothers me is that now that I'm really a lit major, I feel like I spend too much time reading about life and not enough time actually living it. It's a strange thing though, because it's not like while I am reading I cease to exist. Reading itself is an experience that is part of real life. But sometimes, for obvious reasons, it doesn't feel like it. I cannot be content to simply read and apreciate other people's work. Reading has always been for me a kind of research. If I like something, I make a mental note to do something like that someday (not just like it, but something like it). If I don't like something, I lose respect for the writer and promise myself never to write anything like it. What I'm trying to say is that I read a lot now under the assumption that someday it will be someone else who is reading me. This assumption is what makes it OK forme to spend so much of my life reading. It's what gives my education, at least for the time being, a purpose. I do not plan to always be reading, but for now, it is the best thing I can think of to do. And maybe that's why I don't get too stressed these days.

On an almost related note, A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf is amaaaaaaazing. I'm not even kidding you, I feel so enlightened. I feel so inspired. I feel so ashamed. Here is the feeling I was trying to describe a few days ago about that mountain goats song:

... the beauty of the world which is soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.

uuuuuadfjghbrgiuruuuuughkjsdfngkafg I am such a failure.

For your consideration

(rothberg especially)

"That warm winter night in Tuscon. My reading was scheduled for the six-thirty slot by the University of Arizona. A few hundred people showed up-- old more than young, mostly brown. I liked my "them," in any case, for coming to listen, postponing their dinners. In the middle of a paragraph, a young man stood up to gather his papers, then retreated up the aisle, pushed open the door at the back of the auditorium. In the trapezoid of lobby light thus revealed, I could see a crowd was forming for the eight o'clock reading--a lesbian poet. Then the door closed, silently sealing the present. I continued reading but wondered to myself, Why couldn't I get the lesbians for an evening? And the lesbian poet serenade my Mexican-American audience? Wouldn't that be truer to the point of literature?"

...

"I think the new writer should not assume that there are going to be readers of her work. There are many writers of value today who are barely read and may turn to video games for their living. On the other hand, there are writers, in our nonliterate culture, who manage to seduce some portion of the reading world or, at least, Oprah Winfrey. In short, the writer should be strong. But to those who are crazed by the enterprize, and need to write, as they need to pee or eat or sleep, my advice will not console them or help them get published or read."

-Richard Rodriguez

Hand that pen over to ME, poetaster!

How can someone with such a passion for reading end up being such an excruciatingly slow reader? I will never be able to accept it. Of all the things I hate about myself, this ranks very high. I see now that it can only end in my ruin. Or at least it would, had I not at least one other hand to play.

The good news is that my workshop group really liked my essay about working at Logan's Roadhouse. The bad news is that my next assignment is to sit somewhere for 3 hours and write about what goes on there, but I can't think of anywhere to sit. Suggestions? And no, I can't use a coffee shop.

Oh where is my inflammatory writ?
I wrote it and I was not inflamed one bit!

The one person I am capable of loving despite my jealousy for his talent:

Chaucer, Milton, and JK Rowling

I have this complex where in order to write any sort of paper or essay, I have to be in "the zone." I actually call it that. I actually say to my roommate, "I can't write it right now, I'm not in the zone." It's pretty retarded. But the thing is that the zone never chooses to grace me with its presence until right before the deadline. Like the stupid essay I have been putting off for my study abroad application. It only has to be 2 pages long and I had all of break to do it, but I couldn't bring myself to sit down and type it up till just now, tonight. My first paragraph ended up being actually pretty good (the rest is boring stuff they want to know about academics and crap), cause I was in the zone. The first paragraph from last time I attempted to write it was complete and total crap. I was ashamed to go back and read it. I wanted to kill whoever had written it. Thus are the hazards of attempting to write outside the zone. Anyway it's almost done now, and therefore so is my application and I am pretty happy about that!

word of the day: taxonomy

I just spent a pretty long time tagging my old blogs. I have a lot of posts about music and a lot of posts about complaining. I feel ok about the former but ashamed of the later. I guess I have something to work on. Anyway I had just been thinking to myself how satisfying tags (or "labels," according to Blogger) are, how they let you divide your thoughts into categories and make everything nice and seperate but also linked. And it was kind of funny, cause then I decided to check on the asthmatic kitty sidebar and was greeted by a new
essay that was partly about the very same idea, only much more thougtful, wise, and well-written. Sigh, I suck.

Thieving.

I stole Josh's idea. The one where he listens to a song on repeat and then draws a picture to go with it. Only I wrote pictures instead. Not exactly the highest quality stuff, but it's good practice.

oh how the rain
sounds as loud as a lover's words
and now and again
she's afraid when the sun returns

ich schreibe auf deutsch

Today my german teacher asked me if I was a writing major. I said maybe. She said it shows in my essays, even though they are in German and full of grammatical errors. That pretty much made my day. I can't wait till she reads the one I just turned in about going to see Sufjan Stevens.

I write about Sufjan Stevens waaaaaaay too much in this blog. If he is ever bored one day and googles his name and this comes up, I will be severely ashamed of myself. Sufjan, if you are reading this, I'm sorry, I really am.

But it's too late to turn back now, so I supose I may as well share my thoughts on volume 5 of songs for christmas: I don't really know how I feel about the original songs, and this volume has the highest ratio of them. They are good of course, but kind of rough-draft sounding, like the Avalanche of christmas songs. Also, they don't seem to capture the spirit of Christmas as much as, say, "We're Going to the Country" or "Put the Lights on the Tree." Also he is actually pretty explicit in some of them about like, some relationship that seems to have gone wrong around Christmas time? And this makes me sad because I don't like to think of Sufjan having girlfriends. But it doesn't really matter about those songs, because OH MY GOD, the simple piano solos in between each one are the most beautiful and magnificent things I have heard in a long time, and they make me remember childhood scenes and feelings that I haven't remembered or felt for years. As for his version of "Holy Holy Holy"....I honestly have no words. When I heard it yesterday for the first time I could do nothing but literally curl up in a ball under my blanket and smile to myself while picturing children's christmas pageants and mashed potatos. Sufjan, are you still reading? If so, keep in mind that if you ever run out of ideas for original songs, you could probably make a very good living just recording hymns in your beautiful voice for suckers like me to shed a tear or two over.

I am a writer, writer of fictions.

Right now what I would like is a hug. But not from a girl, because of the boob-on-boob action. Awkward.

I can't wait to England because for the first time in my life, I will have an accent. And people will laugh at me for saying weird things like dude, tight, sweet, like woah, fool, and shyeah!

I need to catch up on normal things such as going to the ATM, buying groceries, and cleaning my fish bowl. I think that I will feel more like a human being then.

Oh yeah and I think I passed my linguistics midterm, however I am thinking about it and my paper was possibly crap. Go team.

Also: what are your thought on me being a writing major as opposed to literature?