what's with today today?

coffee is running through my body and i can feel it in my stomach.  it's almost one o'clock and still no one has come into work yet. i got here at 10:03.  my eyes are starting to cross from looking at this screen for so long, dawn tells me for every 10 minutes you look at a computer screen you should look at something far away for a minute.  i might start doing that but that's so many minutes...

yesterday i silkscreened some shirts for supa dupa the band, they were little sucking candies with supa dupa written across in bubbly letters.  they came out pretty poorly but it was so good to get my inks out again, they had been hidden at the front desk since may.  i had to snoop around for them because someone stashed them behind a box of sport death hoodies.  i got out my lacquer thinner too and while barry was cleaning a screen i grabbed a new screen and stuck on some stencils.  it's taken me two years to start up again.  two years.  i have stencils i cut in high school that i never put on screens.  they're all stuck up with push pins on the empty walls in my room as a subtle reminder.  too bad i don't actually live there yet to take the hint.  but three stencils are on for a three color print of 8 forties in a row.  maybe i'll print some tonight for kicks.  

i have to move out of mccormick tonight.  that's so much more stuff i have to pack into my room.  maybe i'll build myself some furniture.  all the 2x4s i carried over from lobby 13 at the start of the summer have been swiped by the janitors, and i have no nails although i can grab some from my lab while no one is watching, which they won't be, as no one is even here yet.  

the Cantab

the Cantab is a small club at the edge of the heart of Central Square in which a particular poetry slam team practices performs and picks on the audience when it isn't clapping loud enough

the Cantab poetry slam team is going to nationals next week. did you know there were poetry slam nationals? did you know there were poetry slams? now i do, i can go to them every wednesday. i'll bet i can even order drinks if i wanted to. the first hour and a half is an open mic, populated by locals who all seem to know each others' poems word for word and cheer and make jokes about each other into the microphone that everyone got but i didn't get. there's a lot of you poems and some me poems and them poems too, and then there is a very loooooonnnnnnggggg cigarette break before the team moves in for the kill until just past 11 pm.

the team was an unsuspecting mix of a pretty white girl, an older and sophisticated looking bald black man with a well-kept goatee, a skinny white dude in a v-neck tee shirt, a huge black guy decked out in the finest street garb, and a small, quiet, powerful looking gal who spoke softly but yelled when it mattered. their poems didn't all hit home but for the most part they were great. i shivered, i laughed, i felt out of place, i watched the kids in the corner as they mouthed to words to every poem the skinny dude performed.

some memorable lines, or some semblance of them:

tonight, stupid people are making love.

i want you to lick your lips so you can taste where i came, and went.

(during this poem one of the open mic poets in the back started shouting "AAHHHHHHHHH" and when it was over she announced loudly "i feel GROOOSSSS!")

for anyone who has ever shampooed their hair...

the flattened pennies of your nipples are staring at me!

the singing beach

the sand in manchester squeaks when you drag your feet across it.  it sounds like wet sneakers on a tile floor but it feels great.  the grains of sand are really large (i mean for grains of sand) as if they never got tumbled enough to become fine.  when you walk across the wet sand you sort of sink into it, especially when the waves roll in.  and there are waves! 

i sat on a rock with john for a while watching the little waves crash and waiting for them to get high enough to reach us, which they did.  i heard a little kid a ways off shout: "now this is freedom...AMERICAAAA!" 

john and i went to beta when we got back. we didn't eat dinner until we were too hungry to even look at each other, and we agreed not to talk until we had food in us.  but that did not last, john kept banging the jar of pasta sauce on the metal countertop and in my face and the hungrier i got the sadder i felt about my girls leaving, until the only things on my mind were food and wtp.  we poured some drinks and had a toast to my girls and i lost it.  i bawled.  i never bawl.  it was awful, i kept seeing ingrid's face get all scrunched up and teary, and i kept going over in my mind the note rae had written to me in my little book, and thinking about not saying goodbye to andrea and lacey, and seeing ingrid's face again, and every time i stopped crying john would ask me about my girls and i'd cry some more.  but i don't think this was the only thing on my mind anymore, perhaps the jar-banging and hunger and alcohol sent me past the edge, but the edge was resting on so much stress and frustration at not making much of my summer...

it's a few hours later now.  i spent today patching up john pants and then patching up mine.   i turned leggings into patches and the rest of the leggings into shorts.  played some scategories with the other tutors and lounged around.  i feel better.  i have two pairs of pants more than i did before.  spoke to brooke, made some plans for next semester.  i really hope everything works out with the studio setup we talked about.  i'm starting to get excited and scared for my classes, i don't even know what i'm taking anymore.  john said he can't wait till school starts, brooke said she can.  i just can't wait for it to end.

alas

everyone is gone!!!!

all 20 of the girls left, one by two by four from 5 am until now, and it's just us again, with a lot of garbage and leftover food.  cakey and sarah bodyslammed me in bed at 5 when they had to leave, and madeline and renata came by too, but andrea and margaret and lacey never came by.  it's so sad that the floor is so empty. ingrid cried and cried, and made everyone else cry, and rae's parents were so adorable, and charlotte's mom speaks in the same funny way as she does.  morgan's little sister looks older than her and liz's mom has a nice accent, and shelby's boy came by to surprise her, and vanessa's little brother volunteered to carry her tennis racket for her.  claire said i'll see you soon when she left, and rosa took her foam crane with her, dana had a body-bag shaped duffel and christie left so quietly...

and now it's almost the end, the 2.671 lab looks like kristina's bedroom, and she has been living out of her suitcase since wtp began.  we have to catalog and organize and read surveys and spend the rest of the money on our meal cards, and clean up all the garbage and leftover food and such, but i'm sad, and i'm glad and i can't wait to get back to normal, and ride my bike, and go to manchester, which i'm doing in an hour....  

the rain in spain falls mainly on me

thunderstorm so big two of the girls ran outside in two-piece suits

and jumped into the moat with six of the girls who were fully clothed.

john said lightning was hitting the houses where he lived and rain was

coming through the roof.  my only bra is soaked through and i rang 

out my shirt for ten minutes.  kristina left puddles wherever she walked

and cakey sat under the roof of the kresge theater to get drenched with

roof-water.  then the sun came out.

i passed up a trip to coney island for the siren festival to help my girls

with a kinetic sculpture project.  they don't understand anything except

the requirements and the fact that they are being criticized from high up.

i feel like i've wasted my time, and that when they have an embarrassing 

amount of work to show tomorrow, i will be embarrassed too.  it's been

hard to keep my cool when i know that nothing is being absorbed and 

it's all floating away into the atmosphere, i put a lot into it too.  

i went to the sandcastle contest at revere beach yesterday, and i finally

drew something i was fond of.  it's been a while.  i spoke to brooke last 

night and she said the more she draws the more she hates drawing, 

which is true for both of us unfortunately.  i switched to my old sketchbook

which is nice, although the only difference is that i can flip to the end 

instead of just the beginning.  i brought some sand back from the beach,

it's on my futon.

dabbling in dubious dedication

wtp is well underway and my eyelids are drooping.  the last things i drew were gears, and before that they were mess-ups.  i haven't finished (or started) the thought and memory cover (bilumi) and the more i draw poor-looking thumbnails for it, the more i've been screwing up my other drawings.  i've been more and more antsy about people noticing that i'm drawing them, or about people looking at my messed-up pages and less and less ready to draw whatever is there to see.  my eyes are tired.

there is a dance party above my head in 609.  it happened last night as well.  4 of my girls forgot to check in tonight. i booked my flight to san francisco but not back.  i bought a lollipop with taurine, guarana, ginseng and b-vitamins because it's so funny.  i walked to the museum of science and back, they have live monkeys there i'd never known about. 

birth of a nation

there are 30 boats parked in the charles just outside my window 

from mccormick.  they are surrounding the barge on which the 

boston pops will be performing, off of which the fireworks will 

be shooting, etc.  there are barbeques everywhere, and the liquor

stores are open even though every other store is closed.  the 

american guy won the hot dog eating contest again this year, 

apparently it had to go into overtime with a sudden death 5 

hot dog challenge.  

two of the wtp girls are wearing matching red white and blue, and 

i've seen a ton of flag tshirts on my way from boston to central 

square.  all in all it looks okay, it drizzled for a while this morning 

and the sky is a pretty reliable grey, but the fireworks should be 

awesome.  i can't wait to get to the senior house roof to see them.  

so i scanned in some drawings, i haven't been drawing too often 

since wtp started sadly, but here are a few.