i really am not sure of what to do with this journal. i like it fine but i just never like having to take the time out to type out a recap of my recent life's events. in any event, a lot has been going on and for once, not that much of it is terrible. :) maybe a list will work for me.

1. i finally put in my notice at work. my last day is the 5th!
2. a bunch of big holidays. my dad's 50th birthday. thanksgiving. christmas. my grandmother had a full hip replacement so i've been spending a lot of time with her. and part of me thinks i really could go into the nursing field. but hmm. only if i could simultaneously do it with another degree.
3. i'm so excited about having free time without working!
4. i've been having lots of vivid dreams. that's not so new, but one i had was so intense that i feel like i can't escape it. madness. a new woman at work is going to ask her aunt to help me analyze it.
5. i'm very glad christmas is over. originally i said i was only going to get gifts for the kids but then i felt sorta bad about that so i got little gifts for everyone in my family. which is a shitload of people, i don't know if i've mentioned that. i hope everyone else had good holidays, too.
6. i've actually been going out like a young person recently, and that's been nice. with fingers crossed, i may actually have an adult new year's too! that would be swell.
7. i'm going to southern california in january, and that'll be swell. i may be going to disneyland but i am definitely going to see andrew burten. part of me wants to go to san diego and all that but i really just have to consider my finances on the whole thing. either way, exciting.

for future plans, it's everything and everything. sacramento of course is trying to court me just as i am trying to pull away. lots of odd nice things have been happening lately. there are still some unfortunate things around me but for the first time in a while i feel the forward progression of the next great task of my life's work.

also, and i realize this is egotistical but so it is, quitting my job has been a nice feeling because of how much everyone seems to care. even if they're pretending, it feels good to feel like i've made an impact on the office. and everyone's really being supportive, so it's been easier to feel less anxious and more excited about transitioning.

i usually do surveys around this time of year but i'll save that for another day not this one. right then, i don't really want to update this livejournal ever again, but i'd like to think of some sort of compromise. if only this were linked to something else.

I have a whole day and a morning left in NJ. Twas nice.

Got an iphone. Fucking love it.

Seeing my high school friends tomorrow morning. I am a tad. . .nervous? (wrong word) and fairly excited.

Terry Brown said the skirt I bought for New Year's is too short. I just realized: I'm 24! I don't have too many short skirt-wearing years, really. I might as well do it now. Pfff.

I don't know to what extent this news has crossed the Atlantic, but, after four or so years of the winner of a nationwide British singing contest winning the accolade of Christmas No. 1, Rage Against the Machine's 1992 single "Killing in the Name" has won it this year. For fear you cannot believe this, and are looking through the sentence for evidence of misreading: Rage Against the Machine are 2009's Christmas No. 1. The song is being played on teen pop stations at 9am in the morning. This is surely the best Christmas ever.

not last night but the night before i went over to bob's. ed was getting his hair cut. i burned a grilled cheese sandwich on the stove. the Tv was on. i don't remember if i left when ed left or a little after. maybe after because i remember bob said he missed me and wanted to "see what happens" and i said "nothing's going to happen" and he said "let's just see" and i said "on the premise that nothing is ever going to happen again, do you still want to be friends?" and he said "i don't know. maybe not." i let out a disappointed sigh in everyone the size of the universe.

yes-ter-day i went to paterson great falls with mike. "ok" i said after we drove the hour north "you should know that ever since i went here once on a class trip i have been unable to find it" "ok" said mike.
we took one turn toward a sign that said historic district and then the waterfall was standing right over our shoulder. we pulled over. "it's the tallest waterfall in new jersey!" i say but that is not saying much. the falls were great and fine but the best part was the spray covered everything in ice. ice blades of grass, handrails, the footing. or the best part was the rainbows, or the best part was the locks on the gate, or the best part was the best part. i can never remember exactly how it went.
we came back to my house with two new movies, teenage frankenstein and day of the triffids. teenage frankenstein began well enough. i burned pierogi on the stove. i am trying to remember to have food in the house. i am trying to remember humans eat food.

The sea at St. Andrews today was magnificent. It was rougher than I've ever seen it. I went down to the pier with Konrad (whose idea the excursion was (that man knows everything about beauty; sublime weather could never escape him)), Josh, Brendan, Martin and, of particular note, Svenja (svenjaliv). Svenja is a friend from Maynooth who came over for three days or so to meet some of her other friends who happen also to live in St. Andrews. It was great to see her after so long. We all met for coffee in Taste (a great Bohemian coffee shop) and then went to the pier, which is a short coastal walk from the town. It was amazing to see, on this walk, the seagulls sitting on the water only to jump up every time a wave threatened to break over their heads. Once, I saw a good two dozen of them in a group, all flying and landing again in a wave, somehow like a sheet being aired. Others were perched on the cliff, gliding just above the surface of the water, or doing various aerial acrobatics. For the millionth time in my life I wished I could fly.

The waves were so rough we were ambivalent spending too much time on the pier. It's rare that a wave is powerful enough (and breaks at the right time) that it can wet you while walking along this very high stone jetty, but when a wave does make it to the top, it often does so with plenty of energy to spare, and we feared it could expend it knocking us down, or at least getting us very wet. But as the end of the pier juts far out into the sea, it's very hard to resist the call to go all the way long. The very end of the pier has some railings, so you can lean over the edge and look down at the waves crashing against the stone wall beneath you. We spent a small amount of time there, getting wet, tempting the waves, and saying "wow" a lot, before going back, blissfully happy and covered in salt.

All my friends are awesome, because none of them baulked at the idea of getting slightly wet. (Even Svenja! And she's a girl!) Also, meeting Svenja was great because, to my surprise, it transpires that I'm slightly missing the Irish accent. I'm really looking forward to going home on Sunday, even though it means leaving this blessed town. (I'm going to play obscene amounts of Gran Turismo.)

When: TOMORROW, DECEMBER 17, 7pm
What: The Great Poe Debate
Where: Boston Public Library's Rabb Lecture Hall

Description:
The Great Poe Debate consists of scholars from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston duking it out over who can claim the right to call their city the home of Edgar Allan Poe! Moderated by NPR's Charlie Pierce and introduced by Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish in a Poe costume, this will be a fun, funny, and educational event! It starts at 7pm in the Rabb Lecture Hall in the Boston Public Library on December 17th.

Here's the website.

Why: I have been a research assistant on project since last spring. I help do actual research on Poe's tumultuous relationship with Boston writers, set up one of the exhibition cases, procured and designed Sam Cornish's Poe outfit, and am in charge of all debate set-up. It's been a lot of work; it'd be awesome to have people come see it!

The debate is kicking off the Poe Exhibition that our Poe team put together; the opening is at 6pm tomorrow in the Cheverus room of the BPL, and that exhibit will be open until March 31. Check out the Poe in Popular Culture exhibit! I helped set up the case!

last night we talked about other people instead of ourselves. i got to tell my story about you in which you are the monster. i start in the middle, progressively lower my eyelashes until the end of the presentation when i look up, eyes wet, and blink: he was a monster. i never tell the beginning of the story where it is my fault you are a monster, where i make you a monster. ch. 1, kissing the prince. it always starts like this.
my secretly loving another/ had nothing to do
with you being lost in the forest

it is hard to tell stories because i hardly have any- the things that have happened were almost always someone elses. it is my father's story, or my mother's, there were three daughters, or there might have been two.
it is hard to tell stories because the transformation is hard. it's like trying to explain to a child how a fish swims using a wooden ruler. it's like trying to hatch a butterfly from a pistachio shell. i am telling you how a thing happened
if fire is sunlight unwinding from the log,
what does this tell us of transformation?

do you like how i did not make this entry about my hands, hanging over head like clouds or a murder of crows? about a beard that i can gather to me like clustered stems of small white flowers, roadside? about where gypsophila grows?
do you like, livejournal, how i want to talk about nothing for hours?

I had a really wonderful dream last night. The guitar orchestra had decided to do an opera, and we were playing one of the concerts. (The first? In CIT? Except the auditorium looked more like a school hall.) The dream started about half an hour before the concert, and I was talking to an old friend from secondary school in the seats for a while. Then I left with Brendan, the director, for a walk. We ended up walking across this huge footbridge which spanned a ford. It was only wide enough for two or three people, and its sides were a ledge, about, perhaps, four inches high, and a wooden rail about four foot high. There were, presumably, vertical pillars every so often, but all I remember is the nearly-four foot of space. I remember this because Brendan and I were talking about suicide, and (or because) it was beginning to transpire that he had thought of it very seriously often before. At one point he lay down, and I, fearing he would roll off the side into the water - which was about forty metres below - lay down beside him, and we continued talking. He did roll off, but I, having expected it, caught him. It was still a bit of a surprise, so I had to make sure I had good grip and leverage before pulling him up, and this left him between worlds for a minute or two. But I pulled him up in the end, and we didn't say anything for a while, because what do you say after your friend has tried to commit suicide?

Anyway, this meant that I missed the first half of the opera. So should Brendan have, by rights, but this is a dream. He somehow made it on time, and the suicide attempt had no repercussions at all in the rest of the dream. I arrived at the end of the first half, then started tuning up and playing a small bit to get the guitar under my fingers. Unfortunately, no-one had turned off the microphones, so this was being heard very loudly throughout the hall.

Then the Second Act. It started with a baritone coming out and doing a bizarre combination of singing and playing the trombone. Later, it became such that there was a flautist, more singers, different sorts of guitar, a violin or two (I think?), and generally a really rich instrumental palette. The soundworld of the piece was American/early jazz/Hotel California, and I was really enjoying it. There was another really weird moment, when we had to play flute with pens (I mean, they were the flutes), but, whatever, it worked somehow. The other guitarist on my stand was Leonard, one of my St. Andrews classmates.

After Act 2, the soprano ran out from backstage to alert us that she couldn't find her top, one that she had thrown off when she was on stage during the performance, or something. All the house lights were off at this point, so the light was very murky, but she was still quite clearly topless and completely unbothered by the fact, expending her energies looking for the top instead. If this were not a dream, it would have been the second time in my life I'd been around a at-least-part-naked girl in a very public place. It's bewildering.

But anyway. It was a very good dream, and I really want to play that opera.. Incidentally, the opera had some sort of prelude for just percussion: maracas, congos, etc. I can't place this temporally, but it was such an interesting idea that I would very much like to turn it into a real piece! I would also like to write the opera.