06 October 2002 - 2:36 p.m.

Sigh.

If I had not come to Hollins, I would have always wondered what it would be like. And now I know.

I'm not going to embark on a sustained whiny entry, so I will just state the painfully - in every sense of the word - obvious: Gus is not here. At least, not for more than three days, which are somehow harder than the thirty that fall in between visits. It's like I'm following the handbook for the relationship retarded: "Step one: find the best guy out there. Step two: move far away from him."

I know, in the long run, it's the best thing. I could write something worth publishing here. Though I sure didn't this weekend. It's sort of like witches and psychics who fall and love and lose their powers. So I'm doing what I'm here to do, and if I weren't here - well, love won't pay the rent, and while I like "I Got You Babe," I'm not really prepared to live it. But I cried so much this weekend that I feel like a squeezed out jelly-donut. I've never been one for denying myself things I enjoy, and this takes the metaphorical cake.

Tomorrow things will be better - tomorrow, we watch The Leopard Man! But today I can still feel "goodbye" echoing in my throat, and tonight I go to bed alone.

This week, my workshop critiques could well be on the harsh side - so be it. It's all about survival, and if that means I have to tear apart some undergraduate sci-fi and then wax nostalgiac reading the book of essays Aitch gave me last year to get myself through the afternoon, well, so be it.

Which reminds me. If you happen to be an aitch-ee-en just reading this to keep up with your aitch-ay-tee-see-aitch, very well, welcome aboard, but at least make the distinction between the writers of poems about 60s movie stars and the writers of essays about 16th-century philsophers. I mean, really.

What I'm wearing:

What I'm reading:

What I'm doing after this: