Loose Cans

Here it is. Somewhat cut (only 5000 words; counting the 5 pages I cut, 7000), and still too damn long, says prof. I need to chop off another 2000 fucking words. I like Sam's idea. No more use pronouns.

Gah.

Bollocks. Leaving for JFK in 20 minutes and rushing around trying to ready everything. This'll be me last post from the states. Wish me luck.

Two days ago, coming back from the pizza place, I heard a Donegal accent walking down 82nd st. All I heard were the words "so it is," but that was enough. It was time to go back.

(Sam and Seema, you may stop fucking tittering now).

On the other hand, the last few days have been a haul, which is why I haven't posted much (though nor have any of you commented, which always worries me, because when you don't comment, I can only conclude that it's because you've all died). I'm sick as hell all of a sudden; this cold just walloped me the other night and it's driving me nuts (Joke: "Why've you got that steering wheel down your pants?" "Arr, it's driving me nuts!"). I've also written 18 pages worth of a 10-page paper on HM, from which I managed to cut five solid pages, which I will probably post before I leave today, because christ knows we've fuckall worth of internet back at Halls, and which, distressingly, is still three pages and 2000 words over the 3000-word limit. And I refuse to cut anything else, God damn it. Frankly, I haven't time: I have the essay for Romanticism and Revolutions to start today. This will mostly be written on the plane. Roz suggests I ask the flight attendants for quotes. I'm hoping I get a seat next to Paul Muldoon or something. Maybe he'd help.

Furthermore, as most of you know, two hours and 50 minutes after I touch down, Herr Frisch flies in from Paris. Making resettling SO much easier--actually he will, now that I think about it: he can help carry groceries. He wants me to wait around at the airport for him, and I probably will, just because instructing people on how to take public transportation from the airport to Halls is an absolute nightmare. I hope Dublin airport has a spot where I can plug in a laptop. Moreover, I hope it, like most modern airports, has a Airport wifi station. That would be nice. Because God knows I don't have any bloody sources for this essay. Oy. Sweet merciful jaysus. I catch the Supershuttle at 3:45. The plane's at 7:30. Anyone know the rules on Duty-Free in U.S. airports?

I feel like this is precisely the break I needed. A breath of air, a chance to regroup, consider my situation from a good distance, and figure out just what it is I'm doing there. Because I was never going to figure it out as I was doing it, no one ever does. I'm glad to be going back to where I live.

Rosalind Dineen, thou wonderful, wonderful wench. Choirs of angels bear thy train.

This Madonna in clever disguise of an Englishwoman, who is unfortunately not reading this, but nevertheless may someday, has just saved my life, having staged a clandestine mission, at great peril to life and limb, to pluck from the T.A. office bulletin board at Trinity the essay titles for both Theatre AND Romanticism, without which I would have been more fucked than gay black jew at a Klan rally, retype them, and fire them off to me this morning. Now I can write the other essay (once I finish this current one; so far I'm on page 13 of a 10-page essay). It is a good morning. Even though it's 2:15pm.

I need some pithy quotes about Dr. LaFarge, Mr. DeVito, or anything else.

Come on, people, this paper's not going to write itself, you know!

For months now, I've been trying to put into words exactly how I feel about Dublin, but I've never quite got it spot-on. But God damn it, nothing pisses me off more than when someone else gets to the right words before I do:

"Dublin is a curious city. It is a city which is full of the good things but somehow one is too busy thinking about things like bread and tea, peace and a place to sleep where the rain dripping in does not give one the dream of the Titanic."

Consider this of course in the context of a cash-strapped, melodramatic, young veteran in 1946 or so. But the mood rings on down the decades: that it would all be so much more fun if it weren't so intractably Real.

Been fighting with the internet for the past hour, trying to find, among the 50-odd spectacularly useless E-databases that TCD has put at my disposal (Lexis-Nexis fucking EUROPEAN edition, thank you), one which will be able to dredge up that delicious W Magazine article from a few years ago in which it was declared that the official drink of choice at HM was Red Bull, the official accessory a violin, and the official class hero Chomsky. I can't find it anywhere. There isn't a chance in hell that any of you blogonauts out there kept it? Or remember anything about it? I'd love to work it in. Actually I have worked it in. I'd love not to have to take it out, simply because I couldn't locate the fucking source.

It's Prairie Home Companion! Oh, man, I had been wondering what I'd been missing. Everyone go tune in now to 820 AM.

No, but seriously. You can't imagine what it was like to hear, out of nowhere, "And now, from our Minnesota member station..." and I was like, TURN IT UP! TURN IT UP! And then Garrison Keillor's voice comes over the radio and I swear I almost cried. It's one of my earliest memories: listening to Prairie Home Companion saturday nights at 6 while my father stood in the kitchen with an apron on, making dinner and yowling "My Lover Was a Logger" along with Garrison Keillor: "My lover was a logger/Not just a common bum/For no one but a logger/Stirs his coffee with his thumb." It's one of those full memories, where we remember sight, sound, and smell.

I'm all choked up.

And now he's singing the Powdermilk Biscuits song: "Heavens! They're tasty! And expeditious!"

Just like blog, no?

Christ, my back aches like hell. I forgot what it's like to sit in this chair for six hours and never get up. Argh.

Did you know that during the day, you actually shrink? Your spine contracts, and then at night, when you're horizontal, it expands again? Let this be a lesson to you all. You can never nap enough.