Wherever you go, there you are

I'd have to say that I'm really enjoying my winter break. It's been really nice to have such a determined, not-busy schedule for once; I still work every day, but I can't complain. It won't be the same for the spring semester (yikes, class at 7:30 am Tuesdays and Thursdays!), so I'm trying to get this string of laziness out of my system before school starts again. I worked really hard last semester, but I should have worked harder at time maintenance; I think I do pretty well in school, on an academic level, and my professors seemed to be quite happy with me by the time finals were over, but I need to work on getting my ass out of bed in the morning and taking care of myself. I spent many days and nights in a haze, simply trying to finish each day as it came and I really became anti-social; I still am, of course. I can't really explain it, but I've always been a rather shy, self-sufficient person, and I enjoy my privacy and solitude. I think I've always been an observer, or at least in a position of some observation to some extent, and I really like taking things one on one; I don't think a lot of people understand that about me, but I have the feeling that I'm lucky enough to have good friends that appreciate that about me. I hope I can pay them back in kind for their good nature and for tolerating (and perhaps loving) my strange self; however, I realize that this observational mode I seem to reside in relies heavily on distancing myself, intentionally or unitentionally. Sometimes I'm rather oblivious to this distancing and I automatically exclude myself from groups, discussions, whatever have you. It's so strange. *See? I told you all I'd eventually be a hermit*

Strange or not, I enjoy this distance sometimes; sometimes it makes me connect more with characters and places in books. For example, as I was reading Madame Sarah Grand's The Heavenly Twins for my lit seminar, whenever I encountered chapters with the woman Evadne, I often thought of Sarah. In the book, Evadne is an incredibly smart, well-read woman for 1890's Victorian England, and she has the privilege of studying medical books (from her family's library) through which she has learned the biology of venereal disease and how it spread so quickly during the time. In other words, she had access to knowledge that the typical Victorian woman was shielded from, and she used this to protect herself. Evadne is rather incredible for a woman of her time, but this knowledge did seem to frustrate her quite frequently, especially when other people remained ignorant of that knowledge and eventually became victims of VD. Now, before you start gagging at the subject of VD, hear me out. Evadne reminded me much of Sarah because Sarah is quite possibly the most intelligent person I know and she for sure ain't ignorant of problems; she reads and reads, bless her, and I've had the pleasure of spending many hours with her over cigarettes and coffee learning from her and about her. However, I also see much of the same frustration in her as Evadne, and I wish I had the answer to that frustration. I wish I had a shitload of money, as I'm sure that it could fix a lot of things right now, but it isn't the long-term answer to anything...and I hate spending money.

...and now for something completely different

I love collecting random things, and lately I've come to believe that there is a secret life to stuff. I hold secret communes with books, post it notes, leaves, the coffee-maker at work, pens and paperclips, or even my dishes when they are drying on the rack; all of these seemingly ordinary, wierd or not-wierd objects have something to say, I think. There's gotta be so much energy, cosmic or not, infused in the objects that we live with, right? Either that or I've got the closest thing to a fetish for office supplies.

<3