04 IX 2001 - 21:57 - de_ludo2

All right. Maybe it's not my impossibly large sleep deficit (can "large" be applied to a sleep deficit? in what does one measure sleep?) that's making me mess up on Spanketeer's diary, because I was just at Adam's diary, and I found myself having the same problem - except this time, for some reason, instead of hitting "back," or the button that serves as it - yes, you know what I mean, don't pretend that that was too convoluted for you, I refuse to go to the lowest common denominator and I refuse to stop moving my hands as I speak - yes I'm gay, yes I have way too many nesting clause/interjection type things, yes you don't know what I'm talking about -so? Anyway, as I was saying, I was hitting the back-ish button in the diary of A. (by the way, if you read this, thanks for signing my guestbook) and I for some reason kept going to the most recent entry. So yeah. Maybe it's not my sleep habits after all.

As is usual when I'm writing these entries, I have homework that I want to avoid. I have my first quizzes of the year in Latin and science tomorrow. And right now local time is 11 PM (yes, it takes me an hour to write an entry... and that's just for two paragraphs - yes, I work slowly, and Jesus God I'm going to die if I don't get that stupid essay written about "word choice" so that I can turn it in and not be on my English teacher's bad side for the rest of the year- not that I didn't do that by writing the incomprehensible poem about China that I wrote when I was tired) and I will need to go to bed soon but not before I write my essay which will mean about 1 AM because I am good with the procrastination. Today seems to be a kind of rant-ish day.

So in the background Chinese TV (well, around 9PM it was) has this weird floaty music, and it's funny to me (hey, I'm linked to that cultural tradition only tenuously. I live, breathe, love Western imperalist music. So sue me- it floats my boat.) And I just want to say: The Three Gorges and Narmada Valley projects are wrong, wrong, wrong. Thank you very much.

And: mwarren: "auditions are always good experiences?" In fantasyland, maybe. That's another thing that warrants a triple repetition: auditions are never, never, never good experiences. Oh, you might learn from them, and you might even learn why you're the worst player this side of the Mississippi (never fear, A.; A.-co. who doesn't practice holds that distinction), but almost invariably the shakes hurt you somehow. And if you don't get the shakes or some other form of anxiety, it's official: I don't like you. I just found out that I've been playing Elgar wrong, this passage in the fourth movement, and now I have to fix it (hey, borogoves, you may be the only person who knows what I'm talking about!)

Cheers to: L. and M. for being the consistently decent guys at my school that I've met. I'm not consistently decent, most other guys aren't, at least in my experience: moments of rudeness and brutality are probably hidden from me, but for now I'd like to thank you-all for being islands of sanity among the wreckage.

Another year of Jeremy will have passed in five more days. That means that I will officially have been playing cello for eleven years, and unofficially playing for twelve. It's easy to keep track, since I started-ish on my birthday. Watch for the attempts on my life (as irate neighbors mutter between gritted teeth, "this cannot go on...")

All right. I really am going to write my essay. But before I go, a little "gift"-

dragon rising

i am a lady
wrapped in fine silken robes,
am brush on paper
make pictures transformed to careful words�
am the dragon taking flight
through soft, kite-caressing wind�
i�m a mirror, cracked,
scattered tea-leaves spread here spread there, a patchwork quilt
twisted red white blue�
i am plum trees bloomed
with a rice-crop in:
i�m that bowl of staple rice
simmered long with white bamboo�
bowl and foundry too
smelting rebellion-steel too soon�
the heartrending landscape on white scrolls-
i�m tradition bound to bronze,
the boatman river-rower,
the ageless country farmer,
the city man grown rich on stocks,
the pig under the roof:
am running stream, mountain, plain,
am silk screen rent in two�
sleeper waked from too-long slumber
to collect that now due�
am rising to bright sun
am firework and pageantry.

So that wasn't great. Again, it was an assignment = I wrote it at 1 AM and was not running up to full speed. As long as I keep doing this, I can keep using it as an excuse. The assignment was to write a poem in metaphors and make the number of lines and syllables somehow appropriate - go on, tell me what my poem is about, and why the number of lines and syllables is meaningful. I double dare you, because I need to go and I can't write any more and - no looking back! Email me with your answers, folks; I'll probably post the explanation, along with some answers to the questions my teacher asked me, later. And: I'm thinking about my poetica-collab and Ampersand entries. Honest, I am.

invidia, invidiae, f. jealousy, envy

J

*you know, they closed the PC computer lab at my school to open student use, and although I don't like those PCs, I dislike the Macs even more... apparently, the hackers finally bugged them too much? who knows? but i can't use the computers there any more... screw consistency: notice my lovely irregular capitalization skills? y'like?