i tapped my own head; it was glass, an inverted bowl. anne sexton.

not that it was beautiful,

but that, in the end, there was

a certain sense of order there; 

something worth learning 

in that narrow diary of my mind,

in the commonplaces of the asylum

where the cracked mirror 

or my own selfish death

outstared me.

and if i tried

to give you something else

something outside of myself,

you would not know

that the worst of anyone

can be, finally,

an accident of hope.

i tapped on my own head; 

it was glass, an inverted bowl.

it is a small thing

to rage in your own bowl

from anne sexton’s “for john, who begs me not to enquire further.”

american fiction, not so good. american poetry, very good. female writers, not so good. female poets, very good. there’s a pattern and i shall find it and probably forget to tell you about it. 

goethe has fallen to the wayside, i’ll have to pick it up again. but like i said before (or did i), goethe is like shakespeare and it’s poetry all over again. it makes my insides slippery. that’s why i need novels; oh i did finish the watchmen graphic novel on friday. it was good. i had made all these big plans to go watch the movie by myself but just fell asleep after finishing the book. before i went to sleep though, i earnestly prayed to god that i would have no dreams about the doctor and his new girlfriend and i didn’t! instead, in my dream i buy the secretary at my work a bowl of chili. i ask her if its good and when she turns to me, her face is my grandmother’s — and i see her like the photographic resurrection that nabokov writes about in lolita — and it was a blessing. 

i found a picture of the girl he is dating. i am not crazy, he dropped her name and the school she went to and i put these two together and googled her. he should have known i was going to do that. anyways, guess what? she is not pretty. do i say this to be mean? to be spiteful? no, not really — though there are small but equal parts of both in my heart. but more, more than that i am really shocked he would date a not pretty girl, vain and egotistical as he is. could he possibly be maturing? here’s a link to her picture. haha, just kidding, that’d been funny though. 

i dropped the cfo and the frenchman. couldn’t be around them after seeing the doctor a handful of times. no more distractions. my dealings with them remind me of marco polo’s response to genghis khan in calvino’s “invisible cities”:

“there is still one of which you never speak.”

marco polo bowed his head.

“venice,” the khan said.

marco smiled. “what else do you believe i have been talking to you about?”

i got rejected from all 4 writing programs i applied to (iowa, cornell, brown and indiana). i am keeping their letters safe so i can read them out loud when i win the academy award for best writer, a category which they will set up just in my honor. i wear my failures proudly. i want to develop the talent for being alone. am thinking seriously about applying to law school.