My Grand Idea

I'm thinking I will hibernate until November 25th. How does that sound?

If You Want To Know How Much of A Geek I Am, Read The Following

Watched Manhattan earlier. Finally.

Sometimes I wonder what the hell is wrong with me and why I haven't seen certain films yet.

A quick list:

1. Casablanca
2. Notorious (and almost all of Hitchcock's repetoire, really)
3. Rope (see #2)
4. too many Woody Allen films to name (this makes me a shit cinephile, I know)
5. Lawrence of Arabia
6. any Dreyer
7. any Bresson
8. The Third Man and Touch of Evil (no, seriously, I am a bad person...at least I've seen Citizen Kane)
9. Sunset Boulevard
10. The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep
11. The 400 Blows

I need to stop there, this is too depressing for words.

Guess I know what I'm doing over winter break. Besides working, of course.

Parapets

So...I haven't done this in a while. Not here anyway.

I drank a cup of vanilla tea at midnight so I could write a paper, but I finished writing the paper an hour ago and now I'm still awake. Funny how it works that way: I always crash when I need to work, and I always finish early when I've pumped myself full of caffeine.

Lately, I've been coming to terms with things. A lot of stuff's been going on, but I'm specifically thinking about my creativity, and how it all feels so shot, and maybe the best thing I can do for myself right now is to step back and narrow and stop trying to write poetry and stop trying to write fiction and just be okay with my "film all the time" plan. See how that goes. Because truthfully, the more I try to write and can't do it, the more frustrated I get, and so maybe me and writing need a trial separation. Maybe, if I do that, I'll miss it so much the need and desire and utter fucking want to do it again will smack me in the face like New York wind in February. (Okay, that simile was dumb, but I'm wired, so forgive me.)

This kid in my film class died. Malcolm talked about it today, and I felt nothing. I mean, it's shit, the kid was my age, but I don't know what to say. I didn't know him. Not really. I feel like being unhappy about it would be unproductive and undeserved.

Today, I thought about Dublin football and started crying. I'm kind of in a bad way.

So Much To Talk About, But Not Enough Space

Making bullet-pointed lists is really the only way to go at this stage.

So...since October 1st I:

-nearly had a nervous breakdown
-discovered I really do have the best shoulder to cry on, if only from a distance (you know who you are: thank you)
-started looking into therapy again
-baked a chicken pot pie for the first time (next up: chicken & mushroom, then steak & kidney..or maybe steak & ale? hmmm...)
-went to the gym a lot
-blogged at Sadie Lou a lot
-tried to be a stellar friend, even though I wasn't always feeling 100% myself
-did a few loads of laundry
-cleaned up my room quite a bit
-acquired a mini-fridge large enough to hold all my shopping, and then some
-started my conference work on Guy Maddin, who I'm a bit in love with
-re-subscribed to Netflix so I can procure lots of Guy Maddin films, as well as films for my independent study on the intersection between film & fiction
-thought about politics (both local and national) and cried
-played a lot of Scrabble to take my mind off things (and wound up getting 103 points on a single turn without using all seven of my letters! I suppose there's a first time for everything...)
-procrastinated a lot of my work/relearned how to read a lot of words in a very short amount of time
-finally watched Bande à part, which now makes me conclude the French New Wave was cinematically important, but also kind of boring
-became acutely aware of my film-viewing limitations (I don't like abstract films! sue me!)
-rang Ireland a lot
-tried to figure out ways I could make a lot of money by the end of the school year without resorting to prostitution or drug running
-had late-night tea and formed an anti-pretentious pretentious poetry society called The Joy Luck Club with some like-minded chums
-decided I am, for certain, moving to Ireland after I graduate

Oh, and in a bizarre turn of events, I also found myself an extra in a new movie starring Aidan Quinn. The man is a jokester, let me tell ya. And even though he's from my part of the country, he made me miss Dublin in this indescribable way. I think it was the eyes that did the trick.

There's so much more, but those are the essentials, I guess.

College Politics

I just want to scream until my lungs collapse.

More on this when I can muster the strength to put things into words.