I've only seen "Lost In Translation" twice—and both times, just as the end music kicked in and the film faded out, I've cried.

I'm still not entirely sure why—Sofia Coppola just sets up my emotional cards and knocks them down, I suppose.

But at least this time—the second time—I had a little kitty cat there to sense my distress even before I knew what had come over me, who came over to cuddle me just as I began to cry.

The tenor of my life right now feels like May—last May, 10 years ago May, or any ol' May in between. Just May, i.e. goodness.

New friends and old friends meeting, cats and dogs living together, blood raining from the skies, new music, random attacks of creativity, cool nights with the promise of spring...

Come what may, man.

While searching for an old Christmas list just now, I found this July 2004 blurb divining one of the roots of my sophomore-year malaise:
"I don't expect everyone here to be a social observer like me, nor do I expect everyone to be self-aware and honest—but I've just been struck by the lack of self-awareness, the consumerism, and the abuse of sex and alcohol that students here expect will bring them 'fun.' I'm not a Puritan by any means, nor a prohibitionist—but I've just been disappointed by the flashy lack of substance in a lot of the people who go here. They may be well-traveled, rich, and diverse, but intellectually not many people seem to think like I do."

That pretty much sums it up, I think. I used to focus on this a lot, to the point where I deliberately isolated myself at times.

Was my assessment realistic? I think so. But was it a problem? Yes.

In the years since, I've learned to just deal with it.

But this is what really made me decide to write the comic—because one day this summer, in an unprompted, unprecedented burst of candor, he expressed his own quiet, raging despair about Ail U. in an almost identical manner.

I marveled, and took comfort from that.

Because I never want to reach a point in my contentment where I forget what I observed in my time here. Here's the truth: Those who are depressed, for better or for worse, often see things for what they are in a way that other people can't. And that insight is precious.

If ever, thoughout the course of this, you wonder why writing it has become so important to me—that's why. Because I think it may finally give me a way to show that I'm not just the odd one out, that my observations meant something and reflected something peculiar to this environment.

Because, on some level, this is redemption. For us both.

And, you know, a kick-ass, needs-to-be-told story.

"People need to know that I bought this. No one even knows that I exist!"
"My juice only flows with the qualities I want when I do as I am 'called' to do. It's a deep and true thing."

As I told Ethan once, you can't touch me.

Not for a while, anyway.

"'No reason to get excited,' the thief he kindly spoke. 'There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate. So let us not talk falsely now—the hour's getting late.'"

For once in my life, I did something useful.

I'm feeling triumphant.

Everything else kind of melted away yesterday.

On the way home today, I thought, y'know, I've really come a long way.

Could I have been this forthright, this straightforward, this honest and this in touch before? Could I have undertaken a project anything like this before? 'Shea right.

I mean, I'm still working on it. And it's going to be a hard fight to get the thing written and drawn. But I got the interview. Sat and drank gin & tonics and just talked for something like three hours. Maybe more listening than talking.

But just getting the questions out there and getting them answered was...remarkable.

I'm remarkable, sometimes.

I have to say, people's continued questions about what I'm doing with my life altogether too often reveal their own insecurities.
"So what are you doing right now?" is not a new question, nor is it an interesting one. The course of my life post-graduation has no direct bearing upon what you do with the rest of your undergraduate years or your year off or anything else. It's just what I happen to feel like doing.

When people ask me what I'm doing, they're so often asking the equivalent of, "What should I do to ensure commercial viability in the ever-changing, intimidating field of journalism?" Or, alternately, giving me a thinly veiled, "Psh, why didn't you move to ____ like ____ and do ____? Don't you want to be successful?"

Well of course I want to be successful.

Here's what I have to tell you: Live your own life. Expand your conversation skills beyond questions about college majors, activities and immediate post-graduation plans, and then maybe we'll talk. But if you've never worked an honest day in your life and you're asking me what the working life is like, just forget it—I can't explain it to someone who's never lived it.

Then there's this question: "So what are you doing next year?"

Are you just writing this year off as a loss or something? Or are you just not thinking about the meaning of the questions you ask?

What would you say if I told you I were staying here another year? What if I decided to stay for another five years? Would you be disappointed?

OK, say you're disappointed. Focus on that feeling, that disappointment. Turn it around in your mind—what does this disappointment stem from? Is it because I have "so much potential"? Is it because you care about me and want the best for me? Is it because you hate to see me "struggling" or "wasting my potential like this"?

Or is it because you're afraid you'll "end up" like me?

Take a look at the jobs I have listed. I'm not exactly wasting my potential, nor am I struggling. I've gotten promoted twice this fall. I'm easily going somewhere with this.

And if you're concerned about "ending up" like me, get over it—every second I'm choosing to live this life. Read that again: It's my life. My choice to live it. Mine.

You can be part of what I've got going on now, or you can continue to ask me thoughtless questions about my future.

The day after the revolution dawned sunny and warm.

Perfect.

Viva la revolución, baby.

I think my subconscious doesn't know how to categorize purely academic crushes (i.e. incredible, yet incredibly platonic, interest in an individual who's intellectually stimulating), so in my dreams it gives them romantic overtones. It's weird how my subconscious adheres to stalker theory, even as my conscious mind knows it's perfectly okay to be interested in someone without romance being involved.

Last night I stayed up rather late compulsively reading David Kalstein's Prodigy: A Novel, a fictional story about a high school, Stansbury, full of medically engineered (of a sort) supergenius kids, set in 2036. This comes on the heels of my near-compulsive reading of the latest Harry Potter book last week.

So this morning, I had a dream that essentially combined the two schools. Here's what I remember.

As in both the Harry Potter book and Prodigy, chaos was rampant in the halls of the school. It was the beginning of the school day, and into the teacher's lounge came the latest Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, panting and dragging something heavy. Addressing Professor McGonagall, he asked, in a somewhat wry British accent, "So what do we do when a student dies, anyway? Do we just put him in a box and send him on home, then?"

The scene cut then to the professor's memory of the deceased student he just found lying in a corridor, awkwardly crumpled on the floor with his arm extended...and a raccoon snapping and tugging at it.

I guess the raccoon was someone's (the student's?) familiar.

What I do with my spare time:

My AIM buddy list is populated by strangers. Has been for a long time, really, but I didn't notice until I moved to a new interface and saw it all anew. Sometimes you get so used to the way things look that you just can't see them for what they are.

The new program, Adium, has a mechanism whereby you can give people aliases—e.g. substitute their real names for whatever screenname they've handpicked for themselves. DeadAIM has the same thing, but I just never felt like using it. But this time I figured it might look better somehow—sharper—if I had all the real names up there, all in a row.

So I fixed 'em all up with aliases for their real names, and it was great. Everyone had a name—I could reassure myself that there were real people somewhere behind that row of away messages.

But it didn't feel right. As it turns out, real names make the buddy list feel lonely. I don't talk to most of these people—and when their real names are up there, it's like they're mocking me. "Yeah, you know my name, but you don't know me." And it's true; I don't know them.

So I changed them back. Forget aliases. When the names on the list are screennames, rather than real names, it's as though y'all are exciting characters fighting the drama of life alongside me, rather than old friends whose attentions have waned...

Heh. Ronnie asked me if I was planning to go back to the MSA reunion again this summer. I had to tell him no.

Last summer, you see, I swore I wasn't going back for at least another five years. So I'm almost certainly not going to go this year.

And I find myself wanting to add caveats to that like "Well, if enough people I know go, I might" or "If I can get a ride, I might." If you notice, I can't even say it straight: "I'm not going to go this year." I have to add on modifiers and subtext. It's hard to let this ritual fall aside.

But I need to stop going for a while, 'cause so few people I know still come that it's ultimately getting too painful and embarrassing for me to go back right now.

Why painful? Well, I think it could be a grand adventure again if I had a few good friends to go with—but it seems so unlikely that that's going to happen. It's painful waiting for old friends to show up. And it feels embarrassing just imagining sitting there on the hill, watching these kids who are six years younger than me dance and revel. I don't get anything out of it anymore besides suspicious and [what feel like] pitying looks from the RAs.

Why keep putting myself in a situation I know will make me doubt myself?

It was okay last year, 'cause I met my younger brother's friends and felt like I had at least a tenuous place. But this year? I'd rather sit back that evening and dim my memories with drinks, rather than with new disappointment.

I continue pressing the MSA lever for far too little reinforcement, y'know? It was great once, but it just doesn't bring the crack anymore. ;)

"Started lookin' out for myself today..."
"I came down here to tell you...it rains in heaven all day long."

I didn't do this week's Illo Friday drawing yet, but I did draw a pig.

Was sick in bed for most of the past 24 hours. In that time, I ached and coughed and tossed and turned. I slept for about half an hour at a time, and dreamed about many things—most of which had to do with wars, not being able to speak English, being Jewish/Arab/Chinese and being forced to learn English in an internment camp, clutching scraps of blanket to myself (my blanket was alternately too hot or falling off), more wars, missing a flight and getting lost in the dirty depths of the airport, missing classes, tests, and the newspaper...

Such nightmares!