"What I want is to be told that this is solid and that it means something"

It's starting to feel like spring. Sunny & warm(er) than its been for months. I'm getting restless. Craving things I'm not actually sure I want, just sure that I want something. Amy & I leave for Europe in two and a half weeks. Time goes by. There's still so much to be done--essays to write, preparations to be made. All I want (well, not all) is seventy degrees & sun dresses; long, long hair again. A stack of books I keep meaning to read. Vodka & lemonade. Simple stuff.

This week I saw both Jane Goodall & Ruth Padel, the great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin speak. Both were amazing--these phenomenal, captivating, spirited older women who have done such interesting, important things. Goodall was quieter, passionate but even-tempered. Wiser, somehow. Padel--witty, acerbic, her poetry brilliant. I never really think of science as being beautiful--I never really think of science at all--but it's true; her friend was right. The attention to detail; the precision required, it's all the same. It is vital you teach that in schools, vital you engage children with it, vital for lots of reasons. She's up for Professor of Poetry, Padel, and I signed up to volunteer the day of the elections. It could be quite interesting--the people you'd see.

My fiction tutorial takes place in my tutor's study, and this week we were interrupted by a phone call, and a quite intimate one at that. Her mother is in the hospital, suffering from dementia, on her "last lap" as my tutor put it, and sitting there, staring fixedly out the window, wanting to seem invisible as she talked to various doctors, I had to blink back tears, fight away thoughts of my own grandmother and a similiar situation. "I'm so sorry," I said when she got off the phone, but what else do you say? There's no place for commiseration, really. She took a breath, picked up my story, dived back in. Compartmentalize. You compartmentalize. I used to be quite good at that. These days, less and less.

There has been a lot of 'future' talk as of late--planning for senior year, planning for graduate school, planning even for after that. I have to remind myself to stay in the present, to not constantly compare myself to my mother, to what she had accomplished at my age. 21 and about to graduate from Yale, about to marry my father. A year later, juggling Columbia & a waitressing position at a shit Howard Johnson's in the Village. Then five years in Greece under the military junta, not seeing her parents for five years, just phone calls at Christmas. A doctorate after that; lots of things after that. Though maybe no one gets the future they think they'll have. It's never perfect, is it?

Still. There are things I want to do, lots of things. I want to have my own adventures. My own accomplishments. I already do, I know, but there are fears I need to overcome. "Submit," my tutor keeps telling me. "Send things out. You're good. You can be published." And yet I don't--not to anything besides Oxford & Sarah Lawrence literary magazines--because I'm not sure how good I actually am. I stumbled upon my tutor's blog, and she wrote about me--called me a rising star. Of course it doesn't matter what anyone says, if I don't actually do these things. Take risks. I'm learning, really.

I've been eating too much crap lately. Now I'm leaning towards early mornings, fruit & yogurt, meandering walks. I guess that's what happens when you live on pizza & oatmeal, late nights & later mornings. Your body starts to rebel. I bank on the fact that really, I've always been small & thin, but even so, I could do with a change. Even now though, it's hard to fight against that troublesome instinct to cut back entirely when I feel things getting out of hand. "You are not the same girl then as you were now. That's a good thing"--Amy, of course.

Katie & I had a long heart-to-heart a few days ago. I'm really glad I'm living where I'm living; of the people that I get to share this experience with.

"You've got to own your own days & name them, each one of them, every one of them, or else the years go right by & none of them belong to you" --That might be my new goal.

Went on a search for a swingset last Saturday, when, like today, the weather was beautiful. Was unsuccessful on that front, but spent a lovely hour wandering around Jericho, which I had yet to explore. I'm looking forward to roaming Oxford & London in the days before and after my European adventures.

What else has happened? A pancake party for 'pancake day' last Tuesday--English and American style; tea with Roxy; Revolutionary Road with Rand, which I enjoyed, though it doesn't exactly make you long for Connecticut--I kept explaining to people afterwards, that really, it's not like that, I promise. Taboo & wine with the Williams boys; dinner tomorrow with the Williams girls. Drinks last night with the Williams boys. Emma's birthday party today. Balls next term. I need to find an actual gown. My hair is now dark red & I'm in the middle of Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin. Bath on Friday. London the week after that.

Drink, work, sleep. Bask in the sun. Flirtatiousness & debauchery. Life is as usual.


My next entry will not be so long--or after so much of an absence. Really. Promise.