latin me that, scholar

little georgia, broadway street market, top seat on the bus, tate again, oscar wilde, venison steak, helium balloons, red wine, birthday cake, the other claire, faux accents, perfect lumpy mattress.

listened to james joyce read an excerpt from finnegans wake and followed along on the handwritten manuscript. yeats fairly sings when he reads. seamus heany: mint. illustrated exposition of the rime of the ancient mariner. ancient chinese painting of peonies. the original alice in wonderland and the blocks used to print it. milton's handwriting. the magna carta. this is your day at the library if you're a londoner. my mind is irreparably blown.

in paris it is minus four degrees celsius. it snows without conviction again and half the sky laughs blue and sunshine: take the riddle out of that! catch the flakes before they hit the ground! nothing sticks! finished my book on the métro, spent some quality time on the horn with new york being passed between the bursar and financial aid like a hot potato. groceries. an orange on the desk. hanna gave me blue swedish horse earrings and they don't get caught in my hair, what sage little chargers. also, honey flavored candies that look like jewels.

laura came to chez jeannette last night with h and the ny girls, we drank wine and ordered dessert, what a sunday. i was still shaken after the chunnel, i have to sleep through the underwater part or else my heart will tear out of my throat. box in a tube under the water. almost worse than an elevator. the waiter was too cool for other humans, not big into eye contact: sir, that's been done in this city. please make an effort to do something unique, you've started to bore us. later we found out he couldn't do math, so then i felt like we bonded. in my head.

milk thistle tea with ginger and turmeric. the calendar out, the list of books to read grows longer. poirson brought up paul krugman today in lecture and laughed at me because i lit up like a christmas tree. i have one week in which to prepare an oral presentation of thirty minutes on cognitive capitalism and colonial heritage today. which will leave him two hours to use my pithy presentation as a springboard for ripping me a new asshole, then giving me a verbal pat on the back and dusting his shoulder off. oh, yes, i have become accustomed to how this works.

coming home, the conductor is viscous, taking turns fast enough to wipe out all the 60+ passengers. i stand surreptitiously close to the old woman next to me so that she doesn't topple. some days i feel like i have been put through the metro without the car and just winging along underground with no sense of time or direction. as though my layers peel back and fly down the tunnel like old clothes, old newspaper, used and crumpled and blown away. raw me, moving extraordinarily quickly, towards--

why, thou owest god a death!

tis not due yet!...aire, a trim reckoning! who hath it?
(sorry shakespeare)

minus four and dropping steadily with the night.