Ponderings.

I left my journal downstairs and am too lazy to get it. Oh, summer, what have you done to me? Just like how I drove around the parking lot today to find a better spot at the gym: inefficient energy conservation tactics.

Have been thinking lately about:

Death: how it happens, that it happens. A close friend's cousin died over the summer. Another close friend's dog just died (not the same, I know, but). My mother keeps talking about a friend who has an inoperable brain tumor. I watched The Fountain last night, completely unprepared for the questions it asks. I keep thinking about how I'm not ready for anyone I know to die. I keep realizing that this makes me naive and -- in an important way -- completely immature. Somewhere buried and psychological, I'm living a delusion where no one is mortal. I'm ignoring the end of the story. It's a morbid preoccupation, I know, but I used to think about death so much as a kid (a habit that seems to be genetic? my third-grade brother keeps mentioning his "fear of death" -- what a weird sibling similarity). And now I'm puzzled by my attitude toward it, or rather . . . my non-attitude.

Kids: I used to hate it when my parents told me that I'd understand something when I got older. I never believed them, always thought that people could mature in different ways, so why would I necessarily mature their way? But now I keep wanting to use that line on my brother. "You'll understand when you get older." It's just giving up, really. A cop-out when words don't do justice to the wisdom you want to impart. I really want to explain what I mean to him, to somehow find a way to use his language to express exactly what I mean. It should be possible, right? I think it should, it should, but then I see his eyes glaze over, and I know the game's up.

Baggage: How I Met Your Mother did this great episode about emotional baggage, complete with real suitcases that appeared whenever a character revealed his hang-ups. I can't stop thinking about it. I don't know why. I think it's because I keep trying to diagnose everyone I know, and part of me realizes how blind and/or arrogant I am to assume that I could know what makes even my closest friends tick.

Other disjointed thoughts -- not yet developed into anything substantive. The dregs of my attention-deficient mind. I should turn my laptop off, curl up with Mrs. Dalloway, and call it a night, but I feel oddly pensive. And kind of anxious. Not sure why.

[Edit @ 2:15 a.m.

Understand the weird fluttery feeling now. It's actually because of Mrs. Dalloway. I picked the book up and instantly felt like I was about to collapse of self-doubt. Oh, Clarissa. Oh, Peter Walsh.]

Writing: thoughts.

I had lunch with one of my favorite professors today, at a pretty popular Latin American café about five minutes walking distance from campus. She always asks me about my future in English, and I never know what to say to her: graduate school is so difficult (and not lucrative), but fiction writing isn't anything to hang your hat on--but maybe if I went to law school first and learned how to fend for myself in this big bad world and then went for my MFA?

Future's wide open. What I want most of all is to be published: She told me about her first published story, then about her slow journey upward--publication in The Kenyon Review, then being contacted by some random publisher to do a collection of short stories, then being reviewed in The New York Times, etc. etc. If only talent were so guaranteed, but more and more I really do think it's all just a matter of taste and whether or not someone important has the same aesthetic sense as you.

So maybe what I really need to do is develop my aesthetic, which is to say: develop myself. (It always comes back to this.) Do some experimenting. I admire my professor for her fearlessness--she told me about sending a snarky letter to an editor that hadn't gotten back to her about her work (only to find an acceptance letter in her mailbox that same day), but I'm far too timid for my own good.

I know right now exactly what sort of story I want to write (think: the emotional restraint of "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead," with the same undertone of disgust/calculated insouciance--taking my cues from Stars), but I don't know if I could pull it off. It'd be a perverse little thing, but that's how I like them.

God that was strange to see you again:
Introduced by a friend of a friend,
Smiled and said "Yes I think we've met before."
In that instant it started to pour.
Captured a taxi despite all the rain,
We drove in silence across Pont Champlain.
And all of the time you thought I was sad,
I was trying to remember your name.

♫ "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead" (Stars, Set Yourself On Fire)