Dark Snow

Tuesday I came back from skiing. Wednesday I went to see the Black Swan (Park Street, and not at all alone). We had burritos at Felipe's before the movie. I think it may have been the first rated-R movie I've seen in a theater.

(weird, they have a site).

I had to take the red line to the Porter Sq to catch the commuter rail home.
But I was very riled up from the movie, I guess. I'm impressionable, or hyper empathetic, or something. But my eyebrows where doing the same thing that Natalie Portman's were doing in the movie, and I missed the first subway, got on the 2nd one, realized it was green to BC, got off, walked back to Park Street, found the redline, got to the commuter rail...but was 7 minutes late. Used the pay phone for the first time in my life because my cellphone was broken, and called my dad to pick me up. Kicked a few sizable holes in the snowbank because I was angry with myself. Because how immature to get upset to an extent  that it impedes your functioning from emotions that aren't even really yours? plus I felt bad for asking Papa a ride at 1 am.

and CUT

I'm home!
making up for lost sleep and lost wasting-time time.
The conversations the last two weeks of college were only about finals and next semester classes, and unlike when I was back home, I couldn't come 'home' and talk about something else.
Adrienne pulled two all-nighters. During her last fysem class she was so sleep deprived that it was either fall asleep every five seconds (first half of class) or giggle at everything (second half of class). someone asked if she was high later. I had the following conversation with her (she was half asleep, I guess)
her-I'm twitching
me-where?
her-my back is twitching
me-happens, my eye twitches sometimes
her-but I'm asleep
me-you're asleep and we are having a conversation?
her-you're not real.
me-okay.
her-I mean, I don't mind if you're real, but you're not real.

she didn't exactly recall having this conversation later.

also, I got a haircut. There was an in between stage that was done over Thanksgiving by my dad, but it looked weird (as Andres said when he first saw it: hair, gone, 80's, 90's, somewhere in between). Innka cut it, she is awesome. Then she and my dad discussed the topology of my hair.
eah, my hair has topology.

Flickering Cold

It snowed on Saturday, and I recall hearing people making goat sounds outside my window. The power went out for the third time this year after dark. A bunch of us were at the Campus Center (crafting...). The generator was working, but the lights in the hall were firing off in succession. It seemed like...either a very strange disco with no dancing, or else people should have been panicking and running to bomb shelters, with sirens in the background. Instead, calm.
Yesterday I made latkes and went to Redhook with Margaret.
The evening was strange and Hannah, Will and I went for a walk. At Blithewood, there was a train passing by the Hudson, very slowly because of the dense fog. There was a movie effect: as if it was the start, and we were being filmed. Cold, silent, the overwhelming rumble of the train reflecting in the bay and hardly silhouetted by the moonlight.
(photo at Blithewood; Sam and Margaret)

Candy Canesssss

Relief (and sugar)!
I got into all the classes I applied for!
Printmaking I, Creative Non-Fiction Workshop, Heath Psychology, Chamber Singing Ensemble.
Still have to sign up for Fysem, but that's next week. I'm excited about the teachers as well the classes.
Thursdays are going to be crazy though:
Printmaking 10:10-1:10,
Non-Fiction 1:30-2:50,
Chamber 4:40-6:40.
But unless I get Fysem on Friday, I will have three-day weekends.

but before that...one essay, three exams, winter break and Citizen Science.

Caffeine

For a second I thought: maybe if I drank less caffeinated drinks they would actually affect me. maybe if I stopped drinking them for a month... and then I was like...wait, tea. never mind. not happening.
and then I realized it wasn't 9 anymore, but 12:30. oops.

sleep sleep sleep

Some Like It Very

I am supposed to find out by 9am tomorrow if I got into the classes I applied for. I've gotten into Creative Non-Fiction Workshop (via portfolio, and it's a pretty sought-after class, so ego boost (except that obviously I'm convinced that it was just luck and that I submitted the only two half-decent things I have ever written. But that's just me being me). One of the pieces I submitted was Anna de Paris, minus the last paragraph). Also going to take Health Psychology. Still waiting on Printmaking and the one-credit Chamber Choir. Fysem professor sign up is later. I keep fighting the urge to constantly check if it has stopped 'pending'. If I get denied, then I have to look for another class, and it's likely it won't be one I wanted to take >.<.
cowboy cookies (Margaret and Cat do it again :))

Last week I watched a couple movies with Cat and Margaret, Some Like It Hot, with Marilyn Monroe at Weis. I had also wanted to see Heathers ever since I had gotten snippets of it on TV. Since I wasn't supposed to have the cable plugged in, I kept taking out the wire when I heard my father's footsteps, and didn't actually know anything other than that I wanted to see it by the time it was over.
It was kinda conflicting, but also SO strange, and 80's.
I think it was Very.

and I cut both Cat's and Margarete's hair, successfully :)

Two more music concerts: another contemporaneous concert last week. It was a cross-over genre one, and I left during intermission because of work. Yesterday's concert was better: pieces by Bard composers (including Andres). It was two hours long, and so so worth the time. One of the last ones had the pianist use both the keys and the string. She opened the instrument up to be used like a harp. Plucked a string and went up and down playing it, changing the pitch. When I was lying in bed but not yet asleep, had dissonant (violin and viola?) playing in my head, but it stopped once I became more conscious of it.

really though, I want to cuddle.

Sweet Sounds, Tooth and Brothers

I went to a concert at 3-5 by the Bard Conservatory Orchestra.
They played Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet, Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, Martinu's Oboe Concerto and Gershwin's Catfish Row.
The beginning of Firebird literally gave me goosebumps.
The concert was fantastic, especially the first two pieces.
Andres was one of the people who helped with composition.
I'm not sure what that means, actually.
There was also a very minimal amount of snow falling as we left the concert. Not enough to think about sledding, but still, it has hit 0°'s.
(upside-down cranberry muffins from a couple days ago, guess who made them (thank you Margaret and Cat :))
____________________________________________________________________

Thanksgiving was very short. I didn't see as much as I would have liked to of my family or my friends. I arrived at 8, ate, and then went to bed.
First day back I went on the roof (we are getting a new one, the old one was leaking), walked in the forest by my house. In the evening I went to Eloosha's for the beginning of the annual Thanksgiving craziness. Went to bed around 3:30 am, but I fell asleep earlier.
Last year I stayed up until 8:30 am.
Making breakfast in the morning is fun. Eloosha fried queso blanco and toasted massive amounts of bagels.
We went to the Harvard Museum of Natural History. I had seen the taxidermy before, but had never looked at the glass flower exhibit. The entire museum was packed.
Dried bats are strange. There was one fruit bat with little tubes coming out of its nose. It was smiling. Mouth full of teeth. There were quite a few different kinds, and they made me think of strange faeries. Transparent wings and tiny furry faces, crucified but still staring intently, hung by the sloths and ant-eaters, frozen above the hedgehogs. Not scary, just strange.
Some of us walked around Harvard later. Went to Cafe Pamplona, drank strange latte's and talked about literature that is released postmortem, admired the pink streaked sky, enjoyed each others company.
At night we celebrated Yulka's dad's birthday, serenading him with parodies of songs we have heard a million times.
Bed: 4:30am.
We played volleyball/football (em..soccer) from noon until it started to get a little darker, and Sasha made a black and white silent film of people going down a hill in sleeping bags, moving like worms down the slope, inching over each other and struggling to move without limbs. 'Twas funny :)

It was strange to be back. I forgot that Eloosha has the ability to judge my mood/tiredness level based on how speed/elaborateness of my speech.
But being back was also not as... glory-filled as I imagined. I kept having thoughts of aging, imagining all of us middle-aged. And I felt that I was missing something, probably time. I want to see everybody again in a proper time span.

I got a letter from Osya a couple days ago, which made my day :)
It had a lot of little drawings (one doodle from Sima), a paper airplane, and an origami cup, which contained little bits of paper with descriptor words on it, like "awesome" and "artist".
can you see why I miss them?

Raindrop Corpses

Tuesday evening before Thanksgiving was strange. Most people had left, including my roommate. When I looked across the quad towards Tewks, population about 100 and usually light up until early in the morning, it was all dark except for Will's room (which was really weird to know). We have been taking a nice chair back and forth with the adjoining dorm, Wolff. We had it for a few months and then it was taken from us. After a bit of back and forth, Tuesday night we took it back and attached it to our dorm using a bike lock.
I rode the back of Andres's bike because it has pegs, which was fun.
took my psych exam Wednesday morning.
idk, it was just kinda slow and strange and cozy/intimate with how few people there were on campus and in the dorm.
got a ride to MA and hit a time warp (aka Eames checked the traffic ahead of time)
but it only took two hours to get there.
(pillow cookies made last night by Rosette and Margaret :), hot chocolate not from icky packets also by Margaret)
____________________________________________________________________
Three people slept in Adrienne and my dorm room tonight, since Will joined us after being regularly sexiled for the past forever (he has been sleeping on a tile floor in Lily's room). Seriously though, not cool to be kicked out of your own room with such a religious regularity. The girl has a room too! But they never use it.
I went upstairs at 4:20am to find Adrienne, Angela, Rosette and Hannah watching a movie. Jeff and Chris on their computers in the hallway. Bed around 5am? woke up at 9:30ma. slept from 1-5pm. And now it's past 3 am. gah. Went to a senior project today. It was a rather strange play about this guy who sees a picture of a Zulu man in a magazine and feels all this white guilt. Then goes to his apartment in an attempt to choreograph/dance out the expression of that man. But he ends up locking himself up a very long time, getting agoraphobia, audio and visual hallucinations, and paranoia. Basically his schizophrenia is illustrated through his artistic expression, or the other way around. The ending is him dancing/getting pushed in dance ways by light/day characters. He also had this super peppy girlfriend (the necessary 'separation' character, since she leaves him) and a friend who won't let him go, but is on the other side of the door in the end when he goes paranoid. There was occasional really weird poetry as well (all I remember was something about raindrop corpses). Angela and Hannah played their violins for it, which is why we all went. The music and dancing was good. The acting varied.

ahhh sleeppp....schedulllllle...

Done!

with my art history paper! wooot :)
and it ended up being long enough, which is exciting because that's usually my problem.
sweet.
(yeahyeahyeah!)

(still have calc hw due today and psych exam wed...but still ^^)

off to the printer.







and also, my brother is actually absurd

translation:

Who does he look like, with three eyes?

dialogue between Shimon and my dad (Shimon starts):

-- Who does he resemble, with three eyes?
-- I don't know.
-- Find out.
-- Have you seen him?
-- No.
-- Maybe, he doesn't exist?
-- No, not at all.
-- Which means I can't remember.
-- Yes, but who does he resemble?

Basment Reality

Watched The Dajeeling Limited
Which is good if you are looking for a non-romantic comedy after a bad day or something.
Too many people think that Adrien Brody is attractive. Hippsterness/Bard kicking in.
him and his glasses.

and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Based off the comic (and it's made to be like a comic, kinda, which is cool).
Michael Cera playing the same character he always does.
and she makes me want to dye my hair. she so cool.



I tried to participate in a couple psych studies (I have to do two for psych class), and I got credit but my data won't be used because I'm not a native speaker. Which somehow I didn't know? which leaves me with no native language-I'm quite sure my reading speed in Russian is nowhere near fast enough to qualify.

And there was advising day/dinner with my adviser and other advisees, but I was so on edge that I couldn't eat. Because I don't like choosing classes and thinking ahead, and also it was just a really weird combination of people.

I missed Body Fest and the ISO culture show (International student organization) because im doing work. Three Miracles St Zenobius vs Primavera (Botticelli, the first one I saw at the Met. when I went to the city).
One of three grades I get for art history (midterm, research paper, final, BOOM). It's kinda funny doing research and then realizing that three of the books you are using are by the same author. oops.
So other than eating yummy food with Kat and Margaret and watching movies, the most exciting thing I've done is hang my laundry. Though I did go to an info thing on some projects in Nepal and Nicaragua (education/sustainability).
Nepali food that they made themselves (once again, invited by one of my Nepali floor mates, always a good idea to go)
good food + good company=good break from work.

(and yeah, there's Quidditch stuff in the basement. I haven't see the new Harry Potter, but then, I've only seen the first one, and that was a while ago).

Shower Refugees

"Hello Obreshkove and Wolff Residents!

I wanted to update you on the current hot water problems in your halls.....By tomorrow night, your hot water should be back to normal; I will keep you updated if there is a delay in the repairs...

Warm regards,
Ashley"

Angela talked to the Sierra (PC of Borne) so some of us showered there today. I washed my hair yesterday (but it was a hassle...soaking it in the sink, shampooing it, getting that ect...). You forget how nice hot water is until you don't have it anymore. It was funny being in another dorm.

a) The dorm is backwards from ours. (since the new toasters come in pairs, Wolff is the one that is connected to us and mirroring us). So it's really strange in there. Borne also has singles, unlike us (all doubles). And the bathrooms are a little dirtier.
b)I automatically went up to my floor to shower, and everybody else did the same. Habit, and since the place is essentially the same...
c) It was awkward being there since none of the residents knew. Eames's roommate went to the bathroom across from the one I was in as I was leaving and didn't notice that there was an intruder. Eames was typing on his computer and also didn't notice. I'm so stealthy.

(photo: family trip to Cozumel, Mexico this summer. Water. And.. we could be refugees that came by boat?)

The good of the bad.

High Fidelity with Will on Thursday, finally. took forever. my fault.

Friday:
Psych-we had a different teacher because ours was at some neuro conference. fancy. She showed us two vids (how to be happy and why are we happy). I fail, a little...

Then there was a belated celebration of lights (Devali) because of issues reserving Manor for it. It was interesting because there were people celebrating it from all over (Adrinne Jack and I were convinced to go by our dorm-mates from Nepal, Suyog and Abeshek). But one of the girls giving the presentation was from Sri Lanka, so her version of the holiday/how long it lasted/what was done/why it is celebrated was different. It covers three religions (Hinduism, Jainism and Sikhism), so the variety is unsurprising, I guess? But I didn't know at all. Also-Indian food. mmm.
Hannah and Rosette went to an acoustic folk jam which they enjoyed.
(idk how I feel about folk)

Today I went to Montgomery Place with Will since it was warm. It always feels like it is the last day of warmth, since it should have stopped being warm by now, the sun sets so early. We found edible crab apples. The herb garden from last time is ripped up, which meant that the greenhouse behind it was noticeable, with all its weird cacti and flowering plants. Also got to go on the other side of the fence of another garden there. I thought that there was no gate to the garden, but part of the fence swings open and there was an apple orchard. There are so many rotting apples there, but we found a few edible ones,
What a waste.
It also explains why it smelled so strongly of apples last time.

almost done with the Inferno (read 18-33 today) which leaves one canto to go, but it isn't due next class. It doesn't say when it's due on the syllabus...the mystery of the missing canto. Looked at the course list for classes today too... No hot water today in the dorm or the adjoining one. Not pleasant to shower in. A lot of people skipped showering/went to another dorm.

and I want fruit that isn't mealy apples or strangely unappealing bananas from Klien. We had Hannah's last grapefruit today.

Lectures

Last Thursday Margaret, Hannah and I went to a lecture by Deborah Tennen. Sadly, she said she had considered going to Bard, but when her parents brought her to visit, the first person they saw was some guy walking around with a bottle of wine, and her parents were like, no no no no no. Oh Bard. -.o;
This was the first time she had been here since that fateful day.
Her lecture was frustratingly SO much better than the symposium lectures that all freshman have to go to. It makes sense, I suppose, for her to be a good speaker; she was talking about linguistics and communication. However, why do all our other speakers suck? Also, I totally found out about the lecture only because my calc professor helped organize it (granted, there were bright yellow posters up, but there are so many posters up...and lots of them inform of things that are of little interest). I was so energized by the end of the lecture, because it was so good. The topic was interesting, and she was also able to well balance factual information with antidotes. It was interesting that, while her research was clearly directly related to psychology, she is not at all a psychologist, and made really no claims to analyze the 'why' behind the 'what'.

The last symposium lecture we had to go to was done by some renown Dante person who works at Columbia, but she was so unprepared and disorganized, and not a good speaker and gah. She had a good idea behind what she was saying, but it took a while for her to squeeze it out in some comprehensible manner, and, since she was reading an essay she had already written, she sometimes had to stop and translate what she had just read into language that was actually aimed at our (1st year of college) audience, and also she kept saying things in Latin, most of us don't know any Latin...

I'm going to keep looking out for optional lectures. I know there is also a series of Science ones, (this is part of a Women in Science lecture series)

Sick and...

sick, made bread, pumpkin loaf and pasta with Cat and Margaret (and Sam) and then watched V for Vendetta at Weis since it was the 5th of November, dorm food night yesterday (vegetarian chili and twice baked potatoes), Hannah was super nice and fed me grapefruit and boiled me water for tea, we were all up last night when the time changed from 2am to 1am, going to make pumpkin pancakes today with Margaret and Cat, sick, need to drink more tea with honey and trying to make sure I don't get people sick.

Then it was, Now it is...

Metro North->subway->walk->Met->walk->Imperial Theater (Billy Eliot)->taxi->Hotel Riverside Studios->(food/back to hotel)->subway->PennStation- Amtrack->Rhinecliff-> Angela's Car (thank you!)->dorm (essay writing)->Smog->dorm (hot chocolate)

This weekend I went to NYC.
Metropolitan Museum of Art for my art history class (a lot of will power went into not getting distracted by all the other art that was there).
I walked to see Billy Eliot with my Moscow relatives (Mother's brother and his family). I didn't see them before the show, unfortunately. And unsurprisingly, everybody was too jet-lagged for conversation, and after the show I was tired as well. But at least I saw them :)
The show was good, though it has about 500 endings. I liked the kid who played Billy,
first off: okay, kids clearly are practicing like crazy at such a young age...so I looked him up.
http://www.playbill.com/features/article/140414-Understanding-Broadway-The-Replacement
http://www.broadway.com/shows/billy-elliot/buzz/153133/billy-elliots-jacob-clemente-on-living-his-dream-role-at-13/
Also, he comes from a mining family, so really, he is Billy.
2nd: gah...I'm 18 and haven't done anything. -.-

I stayed the night in a sufficiently sketchy hotel. I had to go through three doors to get to the elevator (the type that you had to open the door to get into it, but the actual elevator part didn't stop so...stairs) and the tiling was all misaligned. My room was about half the size of my dorm room, and it had a sink in it. There was a bathroom to either side of me, the drain was crooked and the paint was pealing off of the wooden toilet seat.
It was great. In the morning I went desperately scrounging for food, since I didn't eat much at all on Saturday (to the extent that I dreamt about food) and then realized that my key had the wrong address on it, but was saved by my uncle who had the correct address.
But the lady at the front desk was nice and gave me clear instructions as to how to get to Penn Station, though of course I took the subway in the wrong direction the first time around, I always do that. I love how the subway is like human tetris, and I helped a lady carry a baby carriage with her kid in it down the stairs to get to the actual Amtrack/everything else station, bought my ticket, and talked to Yulka until my train started boarding.
Angela Hannah and Rosette picked me up from the station, though I had originally planned to walk (but that would have taken like...two and a half hours. Plus my backpack, plus tiredness, plus work plus it gets dark early).

Margaret, her friend Jen and I went to Smog, because the surrealist training circus (Bard Club) was going to perform, but we didn't find them. We came too early so we waited at Stargon for a bit, shivering and admiring the stars.
Then we went back and at first the music was just loud, we stood outside until the bands were switching, so we went inside to warm up. Outside and inside the garage was the usual mixture of drunk people and smoke, with characters like Edward Spoon hands and The Girl with Blue Hair who wanted people to buy their way to her keg in the woods, Batman and Robin and neon. Straight girls making out and smoke coming out from the garage door when it got opened. Titus Andronicus started playing (much better than whatever was going on before) and the crowd got energized, cramming in tight and random couples making out (straight girls and people that don't know each-other), Josh playing an elaborate joke by pretending that he didn't know Margaret or anything about her, girls contemplating 'taking it slow' on drinking when they already stank of alcohol, some girl sensually touching my arm and people bumping into each other and the...moshpity part of the garage growing larger. The singer hung upside down from the metal poles on the ceiling (rafters? sorta.) for the last song and then we left.

Hot chocolate made from dark chocolate and milk and powder, to warm up our feet from the numb state that they were at.

Just came back from playing piano at Blum. I'm glad Hannah asked me to go. Dinner soon?

Seasonal Birthdays

The Culinary: So much seasonal baking going on! Three birthdays this week (Susa and Sam on Monday, Margaret today). These are pumpkin cupcakes Margaret, Cat and I made. There was also an apple cake a week or so ago, an icebox cake and currently chocolate pumpkin cheesecake bars and a LOT of pumpkin puree (one pumpkin worth, to be exact), not-yet-toasted seeds and some stir-fry. Also, Margaret's brother and his girlfriend came, and they are teaching us to make bread. yum.









General: I got a new skirt this week, and helped carve a pumpkin. Also, Susa's mom sent her Halloween candy, so now we are all dying from too much sugar. The pumkin below was done by Dylan, who is a PC in one of the toasters. Also finally fixed my bike :), with help from Eames, who I took L&T with and is part of the bike co-op. It had so many things wrong with it. First the tube was flat in the back one. Which he had already tried to replace before but it had popped. And then upon trying to pump up the front one turned out that my tire was so frayed that it wouldn't hold in the front tube which then nearly popped. But now it functions, is a bit cleaner (not perfect but at least ride-able).

Dream: I had a dream and in it...Adrienne and Chris were studying on Adrienne's bed and I was on mine, and Angela came in and we fought about work study forms. (I don't know why, probably because I haven't filled mine out and she's the authority figure here)
And then I went to a college with a lot of kids from my high-school, and we were at the beginning of sophomore year and excited to be choosing were to live in terms of dorms, and all ended up on the same side of one building, by a big cozy dining area with wood paneling that looked a tiny bit like Manor. Meera and NiNi and her siblings were in it mostly.
And then Anna from Paris did this..dance? on a horse, with a whip. And the morning was Islamic themed, but I couldn't tell the difference and other people were upset. And my family was there and the food was cold.
But this is the best part:
I was reading an autobiography. I was reading the words and it was in English but translated.
The woman writing it was raised by a male gay couple in Luxenberg at a time when it was weak (either in power, or it was in strife). I knew they were Jewish because they made her wear a yamakah, it was green and she didn't find it comfortable. They were divorced now, but she was telling a story of their youth, when they were young professors, how they would take the maple-tree pods and put them on apples in the fall, giving them wings. There was a photo in the book, endless yellow leaves and endless apples.
http://icons-ecast.wunderground.com/data/wximagenew/p/polishprincess/5.jpg

When I woke up I realized apples and maple seed pods are not from the same season, which upset me because I wanted to go out the give apples wings.

Family Sunday

My family came on Sunday. I showed them all the cute spots on campus. It was a really nice, sunny day. I showed them Blithewood and took them down from there closer to the Hudson. And then to the Community garden to show Sima how things grow (he's gotten confused: he used to think everything grows on trees, including ravioli, and then he decided everything was machine made, and now he just doubts everything), but most of the plants have been cleared away, but there are still strawberries and mint and squash. I took them to Stargon, even though I knew that Папа would climb it, but it's so cool it was worth my teenage embarrassment. We went to a diner for lunch, which was my idea and a bad idea, since none of us can actually much deep fried food. And then we sat on the swings.
They told me to go to the American Symphony Orchestra concert with my friends and left.

and now I miss them because I realize even more now how cute my brothers are, how nice and caring my parents are and just mergenshpeilbot, mloop and strob-garrrr.

the concert was really good, though Botstein looked kinda stiff when he conducted. Hannah Rosette and I were let in because we are students, but a bunch of people had to leave due to lack of seats. We got standing spots in the VERY back at the VERY top. The first piece was by a Bard student, Conor Brown, which was pretty invigorating (David Krakauer clarinet solo), and the second by Rachmaninoff, which was a bit boring at times. We left during the intermission and missed a Beethoven.

Friday of my hell week.

Friday I had my last exam. I really didn't want my Friday just to be an exam. I took a nap for an hour, ate, and then went with Margaret and Hannah to Montgomery Place.
We ate an apple between the three of us, it was so sweet. (St. Augustine, you stole pears incorrectly, which is why you felt bad later. You take one and savor it and it is splendid).
We smelled the roses and picked sage inside a little garden. We admired a frog in a pond in another little notch in the estate. Then we came out to the sprawl of landscape that flowed into the Hudson and watched the sun creep behind the Catskills. We held colorful leaves to the sun and looked at the light streaming through.

We took a different way back than the way we had gone. After going up and down the river that ended in a lake and started in a waterfall trying to find a place to dryly walk hop across, we took off our shoes and socks and waded through. The first five seconds it was cold and then we couldn't feel our feet and it was fine.
Once we were back at the dorm we kept going on the intertia of our initial craziness. We ran to the Green Onion (Bards food store) and got some potatoes and tomatoes and eggs. We took apples and milk and bread from Klien and then made soup (potatoes, tomatoes, bullion cubes, caramelized onion in olive oil, yellow split peas) and a weird stirfry (egg, garlic, salt, white rice) and ate it with bread and cheddar cheese. We were so full. And chai-tea with milk and sugar.
yes. so satisfying.
Then we watched The Boondock Saints. Lots of guns and Irish accents and badassness. Pretty funny, but Hannah didn't like the violence, I would tell her when the bloody parts were over and she could watch it again. Margaret had seen it before and I had seen the sequel which just referenced the first one and thus I had understood nothing.

and That was the Friday of my hell week.

dream? I had a dream in which I recounted to Yulka a dream I had had the night before, in which people with magic powers were trying to kill me. it was scary. I remember a field and wire and a cave and a vague Harry Potter reference.

Walk It Off, then Buckle In Tight.

Friday I took an hour and a half long walk with Andres, starting at about 11:30.
First we bumped into Donnie, who, when drunk, thinks we are both really really cool people, and is apparently happy every time I say hi to him because I remember who he is (such a flattering drunk, though he's usually sweet anyway. He's usually pretty composed, as he explained to Sam, who had met him for the first time), but then he was smoking someones girly cigarette, something like...menthol and strawberry flavored. After about 6 hugs each from him, we walked off campus, off were there was no light except for what was reflecting from the clouds, silhouetting the trees. The road merged with the horizon into gray. It was a relief just to know that I was off campus. I came back and talked briefly with Hannah and Will. Briefly was probably actually another hour and half.
At that time in the morning, everything slows down and becomes hazy, the yellow light in the common room buzzing and I feel removed from myself, unsatisfied with being attached to an earthbound body and conversations seem empty (like a dried up well). But it's a good feeling.

Yesterday I was super productive. Because I have art history midterm tuesday, fysem paper due Wednesday, calc midterm thursday and psych exam friday. So I have to be super productive. But I decided ahead of time how much work I would do and that I would stop working at 10 so that I would actually have a Saturday.
Angela got a bunch of us to go to some Asian/Latin food/dance thing. The food was mostly gone when we came. And there was very little dancing. But we took a LOT of fortune cookies, and stood outside under a lamp opening them (and adding "in bed" to the end). And then we watched "Whip It" which Margaret brought from home, us being teenage girls.

Today has been less productive. But I will do work! work work work. Go over my practice math midterm and finish flashcards for art history. and read three more chapters in St. Augustine.

the campus smells like camp fire, probably from leaves being burned. so good.

Right now I just feel rushed and still lingering on the feeling from Friday.

Botstein is Currently at Hannaford.

As I have been yelled across the hallway by Hannah, who got it from by text Rosette, who was driven with Margaret by Angela to Hannaford in the first place.

Fall Break (secretly its just Canadian Thanksgiving)

Mama was laughing at me because I started hording unpublishables and putting them into a suitcase. Lentils, oatmeal, brown rice, honey, nuts... The suitcase was 50 lbs. Its pathetic.
But so good.

It was Val's birthday so I stayed at her house from Sat-Sun. A lot of people came down. Katya from Brown, Eloosha from Yale and Kostya all the way from McGill...and then Yulka and Leonid are in the area anyway, and the rest not in college yet. played charades and set and taboo and talked and cuddled :)


Yosef took over my room. So I kicked him out, but I guess
for the two weeks of winter break. I get to live with Sima or in the basement. He also got a guitar as a late birthday present. So now he has three instruments (piano, sax and guitar). That's another thing I brought with me: some notes. And a couple books. And warm clothing. And regular clothing. So much stuff. And I rested.

We walked around North End on Monday and on Tuesday I watched Sima do gymnastics before going to Jack's house to get driven back to Bard.

Easy Come, Easy Go (where the wind blows matters to me)

loop bus from Bard to Poughkeepsie, train from there to Grand Central, walk from there to Port Authority, wait for the bus. The bus comes an hour late because Peter Pan sucks, and then arrive an additional hour later because of traffic. So end up at South Station at 2am.
but home!

Wearing the handwarmers Мама got me :)

http://xkcd.com/802/

because its xkcd. and it has a map of the internet that includes the Russian segment of life journal where my mom resides.

Yesterday we all crowded in Weis Cinema to watch Botstein (our pres.)
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/361087/october-05-2010/leon-botstein
Their personalities don't really work together. Also, Botstein was clearly aware that we were watching, which is why he used smoking as an example. He's a character.

I took a nap today and had a dream were I had transferred to UMass Amherst. I was exhausted, my parents were visiting, I had a ton of work to do, Rosette and Jeff were cuddling on the bed across from me, because for some reason instead of having rooms we all lived in a large hallway. I really wanted to cry. I was also thinking in my dream of the dream I had last night, which was also bugging me (the dream included some party and running around on top of a car and taking some hallucinogenic drug that looked like food-dyed coconut shreds, but I woke up before it really kicked in. I was running from something, but I feel like it could almost have been some metaphorical stress). I was also worried about losing some scholarship (worth 20,000) that I had gotten from UMass, because I hadn't gone there directly.

Interpretation: I talked to Timmy recently, and he's applying to colleges now, Will mentioned a sophomore in his class who was transferring to UMass, plus that was the final two places I was deciding between were Bard and UMass Amherst. Drugs are normal in my dreams, so nothing there. And I'm tired and worry about money and about the Rosette-Jeff thing. There.

I'm a bit sick. It hurts to swallow. fun fun.
But I'm going home soon! I need it. <3

Lipton Rasberry Iced Tea is the last thing I drank.

The Symposium (that we have to go to for FYSEM) was really bad today. They could have just given us the title (World Canons) and not added anything, since they basically repeated the same thing as the title: there are other canons. We know, not that novel an idea. Yes all the books we are reading are by dead white men. Yes those are not the only books in the world.

I finally got my swipe key! I lost it like...7 weeks ago! Adrienne has been an angel! And I found my ID in my bag that was at Security, WOOT! successful day.

Saturday we watched Casa Blanca. But we have a really intimidatingly long list of movies. This is the first page & a half.
I hung up my marker, and keep on having to add more paper.

Also, we have a new dorm-mate. It was really random, he just came in and Ethan was like "this is my new roommate" to Margaret and Susa. Not sure when he's moving in, but I knew what he looked like before I had any reason to. Tall, skinny, pale with dark hair. I called him B-boy in my mind because he has a "B" tattooed on his right arm. But now he has a normal name (Jake).I think he's cool, personally. But then again, I haven't actually talked to him? So can't say for sure. Hopefully he isn't here just because he wants to be closer to Tewks, misusing our dorm.

Last Thursday I went dancing Argentinian Tango. It is not at all like the standard ballroom tango I know, but it was fun anyway. I danced with a girl who also did ballroom (she was assisting in teaching). And in the end we danced a bit of Cha-Cha :)

I just had a 2nd dinner with Chris, Luca and Maximilien at DTR, which is a very strange people combo. We talked about architecture for a bit. And I took some of Max's pudding in exchange for cracker jacks. First dinner with Margaret and Donnie, who I had not talked to in a while, but he had been wearing a koala hat yesterday. Can't question a guy who wears a koala hat.

and clearly my brain is dieing off and I should go sleep.

"You cruel, heartless..." etc. etc. etc.

It is Saturday!
Still one day left to the weekend!
And I get to go back home next week, which is exciting :)
for now i get to read the Aeneid, which isn't as exciting.

I just came back from making cookies with Margaret and Cat.
And last night I ended up smoking hookah (apricot tobacco).
Went to bed at 3:30 am. Woke up around 11. sanity.

Also, I was curious as to the whole "syncing" process, how long it took, and looked it up. Apparently an urban legend. Good to know.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=do-women-who-live-together-menstruate-together

What else...I darned my tall sock today. Such an eventful day.

short list friday.

There lice going around for a while. None in my dorm, but in a lot of the other dorms on this side of campus. Paranoia.

schedule for the day:
went to bed at 2 am. Woke up at 9, went to class. Came back, fell asleep at 12:30 in the afternoon, woke up at 5:30, went down and helped make lasagna, ate lasagna, called home, watched Community*, walked to Stargon and then had tea.
So I slept for 12 hours today.

*Five of us sitting on my bed watching Community. yes.
Last time it was Margaret and Cat. This time Jack and Hannah joined us.
partay

Rosette came back from the city (she was at a "Fun" concert). Two of her Long Island friends are over. They just came back upstairs from smoking hookah at the entrance of our dorm.
http://stash.norml.org/bard-tops-cannabis-college-list
Out of the list, these are some of the school I applied to (so 4/10 school I applied to made the list...)

(last year’s ranking in parenthesis)

1. Bard College, NY (2)

3. University of Vermont, Burlington (3)

9. Eugene Lang College, NY (new)

13. Skidmore College, NY (14)

Though I think they were just smoking tobacco.
But now they are def. going downstairs with a joint so yeah.

also: last night I drew a spaghetti squash still-life. massively exciting.

Last weekend I...

Went apple picking with Audrey (mentor) and Margaret and Hannah. The rest of the dorm was either asleep or working, it was 12 in the afternoon. Then Rosette came down and helped caramelize and candy the apples.
(photo: Margaret)

In the evening Rosette made pasta and zucchini Parmesan. I haven't seen so many of us in the dorm together at once.
And then she made pie. Basically she went cooking crazy. :)

Sunday night (technically Monday morning) Hannah and I procrastinated from doing hw by reading poetry. Then we wrote one by passing the computer back and forth.

Spinning and Spinning
(or A New Discourse on the Poetics of Procrastination)

The day relapses into evening and now she says
how come I’m not asleep? my brain is absolutely asleep.
Absolutely. And curled up, cold, under a pale moon, sailing
to a faraway land, like Max from “Where the Wild Things Are,”
away and away. She sighs and wishes
that she was a small child and it was appropriate to not
feel obliged to sit up for late-night wrangling, to worry about,
in the back of her head, the constant worry worry about about
Gertrude Stein and irony and semantics.
because there is too much sarcasm and not enough sincerity and that’s what
she said. That’s WHAT SHE SAID!!!

She said that she didn’t, and then she started hypothesizing that.
Oh, that hypothesis. Yes. She tangled herself in
the sweetness of familiar self-annoyance and music,
constant, irritable music of constant, irritable uncertainties—
uncertainties about will be and what is even,
so much so that her thoughts were like small strange birds perched
on an exposed electric wire.
Easily scattered, they were,
more easily shocked up into the air and falling down like
warm and fluffy snowflakes. No—suspended
and drifting like pale stars, they were.
And it’s just she, but actually me.
not here, because of its uselessness and long pointless words.

Someone told her, finally, said, Just wait—
wait for it, because at some point
it’s all going to start spinning.

having people see poems is always embarrassing, but I'll live :)

Wake up in the evenin' feeling like P-Diddy...

I hear an alarm go off. It's maybe like...9pm.
I go into Jeff's and Jack's room.
Jack is staring at Jeff.
Jeff is asleep.
I come up to Jeff and shove him in the side.
He wakes up and shuts off his alarm.
Ten minutes later I come in to their room and Jeff is asleep.
I ask Jack if I should wake him up. He says Jeff said not to wake him up. I leave.
Two hours later Rosette wakes Jeff up. He
doesn't remember telling Jack not to wake him up. I think Jeff is just always asleep. Forever and
ever asleep.

The picture is of dinner. Hannah, Margaret and I are very tired of Klien (dining commons). Actually, everybody is very tired of Klien. It's not always bad. But today I ended up having a little bit of pasta, soy milk and a banana for lunch. That's not lunch. But everything else was disgusting. The omelet we made had tomatoes, parmesan, pepper from the community garden, salt, milk and black pepper. Rice I bought awhile ago, thankfully it still exists. We also had a salad of pepper/tomato and Greek yogurt. And then we fried apples we had picked with brown sugar and butter. Dollop of sour-cream on top and mmmmm .