December 2006            

Journal entry from October 10, 2006
Posted Saturday, December 30, 2006 @ 01:18 PM

I have nearly forgotten what it is to write—what it means to be driven to compose by minutia's underbelly—to layer the mundane until it means something, then turn it over to see how it looks from the other side. Suddenly after silent weeks of adjustment to Tuscaloosa (a place that is fast becoming my real home—a place that I may not love as unconditionally as Birmingham, but which I am satisfied to call a backdrop), things are breathing again, no earlier than yesterday. Funny that I can forget again and again that when I quit writing, the silence permeates. To start again merely means a few attempts and a handful of half-successful sentences. But I suppose one could say to a constipated man that to poop, he must merely sit on the toilet and get to work, but I can't imagine that really speeding the process any.

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My year in cities, 2006
Posted Thursday, December 21, 2006 @ 02:08 PM

I'm stealing this from Zach, mostly because my 2006 list is possibly my longest ever. If nothing else, at least we know all that traveling makes an impressive list.

In order of appearance (mostly, I think):

Montgomery, AL
Atlanta, GA****
Greenville, SC*
Frankfurt, Germany
Schwangau, Germany
Munich, Germany
Dachau, Germany
Oberammergau, Germany
Innsbruck, Austria
Venice, Italy
Verona, Italy
Lucerne, Switzerland
Mt. Pilatus, Switzerland
Heidelberg, Germany
Paris, France**
Versailles, France
Le Mans, France*
Tours, France
Loire Valley, France
Chartres, France
Tuscaloosa, AL
Augusta, GA*

*Additional visit.

What does your year in cities like? Throw a list or a link up in the comments.

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Waiting to open the window
Posted Wednesday, December 13, 2006 @ 04:09 PM

I am waiting on my room mate to finish her math exam. I decided since there isn't much Texas paraphernalia to be found for sale in Alabama, a good gift to give her for the holidays would be a trip to the nail salon for pedicures. As I told Sydney last night over an expensive, delicious dinner, one perk that comes with getting dumped is the total inhibition one feels when it comes to spending money on luxurious and unnecessary things.

The golden light of sunset is streaming through my blinds as stripes on the wall—one of my favorite things about my dorm room. I'm listening to "Turn Into" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a song which has become an anthem of change and goodbyes. I listened to it nonstop as school was ending last year (especially on graduation day) and used it in this video. It captures for me the overwhelming nostalgia that comes with the raw moments just after something important has ended, for better or worse. Very few songs are as hopeful and bittersweet, or as cathartic when blasted in the car with windows down. I wouldn't hesitate to call it my favorite song, though I try not to listen to it very often.

Journal #1451 is making slow progress across the country, having visited Tuscaloosa, AL; Phoenix, AZ; and Atlanta, GA. It's currently winding its way through NYC before heading on to Oklahoma. Keep your fingers crossed; I'm still not convinced it will make it to the last stop before getting lost.

Liz, fellow creative writing ASFA grad, long-time friend, and letter-writer, wrote this on one of her journal pages:

I just turned in the final draft of my senior English thesis. It is fitting that this journal should arrive on the heels of such wonderful providence. The end of fall semester never feels like an end, but rather the opening of a window the morning after a long night trapped inside.

I'm still trapped inside until I finish my film exam tomorrow and American lit Friday morning, but I've already started gathering my things and doing my last loads of laundry before the window flies open and I can escape what has been a deplorable first semester. My room mate leaves tomorrow morning, which gives me a whole day and night to myself—something I'd normally enjoy, or else not think very much of, but under the circumstances am dreading. The number of people I can call who are still in town to distract me dwindles as the weekend approaches.

Once I get off campus I hope things will be better. I have a full month of my father's cooking to look forward to.

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That list? It keeps growing.
Posted Tuesday, December 12, 2006 @ 12:34 AM

It currently goes something like this:

- Car breaks down first night on campus.
- Keys locked in car after said breakdown.
- Mononucleosis contracted in the first three months of school.
- Unexpectedly dumped by boyfriend the night before finals begin.

Oh, first semester. What a bittersweet relationship we've had.

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The Floating Opera
Posted Friday, December 08, 2006 @ 01:20 AM

It's hard for me to believe that a semester has come and gone; I have only four exams, all next week, and I'll be half done with my freshman year.

There is a passage in John Barth's The Floating Opera which I think of lately, each time I come here to write:

"It always seemed a fine idea to me to build a showboat with just one big flat open deck on it, and to keep a play going continuously. The boat wouldn't be moored, but would drift up and down the river on the tide, and the audience would sit along both banks. They would catch whatever part of the plot happened to unfold as the boat floated past, and then they'd have to wait until the tide ran back again to catch another snatch of it, if they still happened to be sitting there. To fill in the gaps they'd have to use their imaginations, or ask more attentive neighbors, or hear the word passed along from upriver or downriver. Most times they wouldn't understand what was going on at all, or they'd think they knew, when actually they didn't. Lots of times they'd be able to see the actors, but not hear them. I needn't explain that that's how much of life works: our friends float past; we become involved with them and they float on, and we must rely on hearsay or lose track of them completely; they float back again, and we either renew our friendship—catch up to date—or find that they and we don't comprehend each other any more."

I feel like college has taken me upriver, farther from the bank than I've been in a long time, which is at once exhilarating and flat. The excitement of unwritten moments doesn't counteract the sense of loss as I drift away from the bank, recording almost nothing of my first few months on my own. You've yet to really meet my first college professors, to understand and appreciate my room mate in all her Texan glory, to see a photo of The Boy. The campus which has fast become home remains as foreign to you as the shape of my parents' front yard, but that isn't what matters. Rather, I fear that by not writing—by drifting away from the bank—moments may blur together or slip from memory when I look back at them. Or that when I do float back again, we'll find we don't comprehend each other any more.

There are, I've discovered, great risks in boarding a river boat. But I don't suppose anyone would get anywhere without it.

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