Current mood:	calm
Current music:	I Feel Just Like A Child, by Devendra Banhart

"Tried to fight the creeping sense of dread with temporal things. Most of the time I guess I felt alright."

As per usual, there is a Mountain Goats line that can perfectly sum up what I'm feeling at any given moment. For the past few days, it's felt like I've been sleep walking. Just drifting through the day, frequently doubling over to cough up some phlegm and occasionally feeling aware enough to participate in a conversation. I tried to bring up the phenomenon of feeling so bipolar to a few people, but I failed utterly at expressing the strangeness of occasionally getting these manic bursts and managing to laugh before slipping back into silence, and at provoking some sort of relief in myself through talking about it.

And finally on Wednesday I managed to wake up. I arranged to meet Mark Lader by the river and as I was strolling through the graveyard I stopped by Thea Lynn Henderson-Boyer's grave. I've always loved that grave for how beautiful and mysterious it is, and I noticed that the big green corroded metal dragonfly that used to adorn it has disappeared. Seeing this gave me such a pang! Afterwards I walked down to the beach and the water was extremely dark and the tide had come in so far that most of the sand was covered. For some reason seeing this felt like a punch in the stomach, in a good way, and I spent the next fifteen minutes dancing around and laughing gleefully while watching the waves.

A hilarious moment arose later when I went to the Great Room to eat dinner. When I sat down, Richard Hell tried to steal a french fry off of my plate. I uttered an animalistic growl and swiftly slapped his hand. Then I picked the fallen french fry up off my chair and slowly ate it while glaring at him. He looked so incredulous, and all of the other people sitting at the table burst out laughing. After a few moments I started to chuckle as well and offered him a fry, but apparently the moment had been too emasculating so he declined.

YangYi stopped by my suite later in the evening and we ended up going on a long walk. He and I discussed foreign films while sitting in a tree, and then ended up exploring and found out that we could crawl into the cellar of Trinity Church. It felt pretty wonderful to peek around that dirty little area and examine the religious graffiti. YangYi said that it reminded him of catacombs and I told him about touring through the necropolis underneath the Vatican a few years ago. We also spent a while just laying down in the grass, while he explained why he loves ferns and I explained why I love cypress trees.

Thursday was a Ladies Night Out-esque type thing, and I went to see the movie He's Just Not That Into You with Kelly, Kt, Margo, Kat, and a few other girls. I ended up being confused and even a bit enraged by the film. I'm generally okay with ludicrous romantic comedies, but this one was ludicrous while lauding itself as being true to life. I kept thinking, "Really? Waiting by the phone for days without feeling that you can initiate a phone call? Analyzing every action by the opposite sex, to the extent of saying things like 'At the end of the date he hugged me for 3.5 seconds before saying goodbye, so the fact that it lasted for more than 1.75 seconds means he's seriously interested!' Is that behavior truly representative?" And according to everyone I asked afterwards, it is. How depressing. Someone ventured the flattering suggestion that perhaps I'm just too evolved to behave that way, but that's definitely not it. I simply feel that there was something important that I didn't get. I just felt angry, especially by the ending. HJNTIY advertises itself as being full of hard hitting truths, but after doling out all this great advice for women to ground themselves in reality, it completely reversed its supposed message and essentially concluded, "Actually, it's okay to be obsessive and over-analytical and histrionic because all that really means is that you haven't given up hope."

Yesterday I also spent a while perusing some of the profiles on a gay online dating site, and came to the disappointing conclusion that most lesbians have bad taste in music. Come on people, Tegan and Sara do not represent the epitome of gay culture.

I need to finish up a paper before I go out tonight, so signing out now.