9.24.2001

and how it goes. gone for the weekend and having returned, i can say that the things that bothered me before are not so bothersome anymore. i have bought books to try to explore things in my life further. jon and i have spent time alone and time talking in the car, time chatting and singing along with the radio, time making fun of dale chihuly just because that's the sort of thing we like to do. we're feeling like we once did again. we're feeling like we're nineteen again, ready to elope any second. in fact, last night, for the first time in a while, i dreamt about jon. we were discussing something - maybe going on vacation - and he said, "and after that, we'll get married." that would be our third time getting married. which i'm okay with. i think we should get married again and again and again. getting married tells him i love him enough to want to do it for the rest of my life. doing it over and over says that i love him enough to actually do it for the rest of my life.

now that i've returned, i have a whole google of new things to bother me. like school started last week, and it's continuing this week, and my classes are terribly dull, and i hate the fifty bagillion kids i go to school with, and columbus is filthy, and it is raining, and it is getting cold - all of which leads me to question what the hell i'm doing here. why bother with school? the degree will not help me. i wanted to learn about art history, but really, at what cost? i am mildly interested in all of my subjects, but there is homework and there are students and teachers that get in my way. school prolongs my life, prolongs the time it takes to read something or learn something, all under the guise that i am learning this fully and completely, more than if i had merely spent some time with some experts and read a few books, for one reason - the fact that i am tested on it and expected to write papers explaining what i know. and shouldn't i be busy working on my first novel? getting it out of my head, where it is buried, unearthing it and making it beautiful? shouldn't i be busy commenting on the nature of fall and how i love it and how nostalgia fills me up and breathes me leaves burning and wet ground and cold seeping in slyly and pumpkins for sale by roadsides? shouldn't this all be poured into the computer, like the thoughts in my head, and explained as prose and ejected finally as a manuscript and folded nicely into manila envelopes and sent around the world to beg for help in editing it and making the public see it to satisfy my own egotism, to reconcile my narcissism (that i speak so often of) with my urges to create something? shouldn't i be busy proving myself to the world and not some silly college of arts? wouldn't i rather be working towards my true future, than some idea i've got stuck in my head about careers and the ability to attain jobs? shouldn't i at least be attending a school without walls, or majoring in creative writing, then? should i spend all this time learning about the eighteenth century in european art, knowing full well that i will not remember it and that it is not all that interesting anyhow? wouldn't i rather spend my time focused on the nineteenth century? shouldn’t i be instead reading rolling stone, holed up in some coffee shop, drinking coffee? shouldn't i be downing whiskey and smoking packs of cigarettes a day and typing furiously like some old beatnik man? shouldn't i be staying up late with my thoughts coming out of my head and writing awards flying towards me in time? shouldn't i at least be focused on my writing, on improving it, and making my prose work well? shouldn't i be forming writers groups and doing research in the library and experiencing something more to write about? should i perhaps be showering in preparation for my first class rather than sitting here wondering which wall to lean on, which direction to point myself, and knowing full well that i will not attempt any of it until i have suffered through school and taught myself something besides how to count the number of times the teaching assistant says, "um"?

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