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walking to class An odd yet harmless trend has come to my attention. It seems to me that every weekend that I have been here at my new place I have fallen asleep on the couch and I'm not sure why. I didn't do that where I used to live and it isn't as though my bedroom is that far away from the couch. I guess that there isn't anything wrong with this habit, but it does still make me wonder. Maybe all of this will change once my sleigh bed is delivered in December. ... This past Sunday my sister saw the Leonid meteor shower, but I didn't. Oh, I was awake at the time, but I was at work and probably doing something mindless. Obviously I regret not seeing them, but I'm surprised at her sudden interest in astronomy. She was also the one who told me about the recent northern lights display that we had here. ... I'm still not sure why Ethan Frome made its way into the course, but I am glad that it did. After the hallucinatory prose of Toni Morrison in her novel Beloved, the literary style of Edith Wharton was very welcomed. It was something that made sense to me. Yes, it isn't a happy story, but it was a story that I understood and believed. People suffering in New England seems to have a long literary tradition to me and is one that I can read. Not only did we have a different style of novel this time, we also broke off into groups for probably the second time this semester. Normally this kind of thing annoys me, but not this time. After doing the count off, I was a member of group six led none other than by Kelly. Okay, I have never mentioned her before, but I certainly noticed her when the semester started. At first I took in the obvious signs. There were the three rings in her eyebrow and the standard flared jeans look that most of the college women seem to follow without question. After that quick scan I had written her off as being a fairly typical college student which is fine. I would listen to what she would say every so often in class, but I never thought to say hello. Today, however, I learned that I was wrong if not too quick in my judgement and wonder if I should have said something to her sooner. I may have not have given her that much attention, but she seemed to know my story. She not only knew my major, but she also knew that I was a graduate student which I think was mentioned once by the professor. The fact that she cared caught me offguard. It was nice and unexpected. Actually something along the same lines happened a few weeks ago. When I walking out of class, another girl from class had stopped me. She just wanted to tell me that she agreed with something that I had said in class and soon we were caught up in a conversation about what kinds of films that we liked. I guess what I am trying to say is that I often wonder if anyone is listening when I talk in class besides the professor. Now I know that people do listen or at the very least Kelly and Natalie do. Well, anyway what I want to say is that Kelly did manage to charm me as we discussed our college career paths and I might make an effort to talk with her some more if I can. She said some things that caught my attention and I have to know more about her. ... Before I headed over to school this morning, I did some more shifting of stuff in my place with my primary target being some of my old artwork. Now stumbling across old papers that I had written years ago is one thing, but to see a drawing that I did is something different in my mind. Yes, words on paper have a definite emotional effect, but charcoal on paper is even stronger for me. Maybe this difference in effect has something to do with the fact that I really don't think of myself as a writer and know that I devoted much more of my undergraduate time to the studio than I did the keyboard. Something about fleshing out an image on a two dimensional surface transcends words. For me it is truly one of the few magical things that exist in this world. Being able to create an image using something as simple as a pencil and paper is so rewarding. Yes, there is a certain amount of frustration involved as well, but the end result is satisfying. Seeing five years worth of that kind of effort this morning was very troubling. Here I was just shoving them into storage and that didn't seem right to me. What I should do is go through them and make some of them more presentable. Art is meant to be seen and being hidden away is sad. Oh, I'm not deluded enough to think that my drawings matter to anyone but myself but they are still a part of me. Damn, that didn't sound right. Then again I never said that I was very good at expressing myself in words. At least I was able to scribble down more than a handful of words today.
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