silly love songs.

I'm always reading something, always escaping. Right now, I'm in the middle of the North Pole with Frankenstein and his creature. Last night, I was in Paris with Giovanni and David. The night before that, I was driving across America with Carol and Therese.

I'm reading about two books a week right now. And despite the fact that I am escaping my real problems, I have an excuse because it's all in the name of schoolwork.

There's something to be said for escaping in the pages of books.

In a way, you want so bad to be a part of the little self-contained worlds that you make the worlds a part of your own. I feel like every character I've ever loved is some part of me, yet, despite all of the morals and lessons these characters have learned, I'm still so lost.

I just want my own personal James Baldwin, who can make things right again.

tha's it and tha's all.

TERROR

love is a growing up.

I am filled with this vast empty pit of loneliness. It's something I am not used to, having believed all my life that I am independent and having been told just last night that I've never been good tied down. But it's about time I stop lying to myself.

I am alone.

And I have never felt more like it before. I'm so used to having someone's arm to squeeze, or having someone who I can call when someone says something stupid that I can't stop laughing at, or even having someone whose hair I can play with as we drive down the highway.

Yet I think of all these things, and I can't stop thinking me, me, me. What am I missing? What do I need to make me happy? Not, what can I do to make sure that whoever I'm with is just as happy? How can I make that person smile?

Which is exactly why I need to feel alone, I suppose. While I do think it is reasonable to wonder what makes me happy, I don't think it's reasonable to always be thinking what others can do to get me there. I think the questions I need to ask myself are more like, why do I hate myself so much that I can't spend a night alone in my dorm room without feeling the need to beg someone to hang out with me? Why do I get so angry with Rebecca when she ditches me? Shouldn't I be able to be by myself for one, maybe two nights without having a breakdown?

I have a lot of things to figure out. I have a long way to go before I can feel what I see others feeling constantly-- that they belong to someone, and they don't care. Because they'll do whatever it takes to make sure they smile.

More questions flood over me: am I even capable of that emotion? Have I been so spoiled that I may never be happy with anyone? Or is it just what Nika said, that it's not true that no one will put up with me like he did? That I just need some time to figure out why I'm even worth anyone spending any time on me at all?

I just wish I could feel like I was the same girl I was two years ago, when life was perfect and simple. So perfect and simple that I was able to acknowledge it, even at the time.

No joyless forms shall regulate our living calendar.

In some other life, I must have been a Romantic poet.

Last Wednesday during English, my professor started talking about Wordsworth and his cottage in Northern England (the Lake District, to be exact). I began to imagine the green hills topped in dew and the rainbows peaking out between white clouds. I felt my heart begin to pound as I recalled the quiet country villages that I stayed in seven years ago. Seven years? Has it been seven years already?

And while I'm pretty sure about going to Stratford this summer, I feel the country pulling on my heartstrings, begging me to wander over the green hilltops and ponder my place in the world among nature and God (if he exists, along with other supernatural powers) and my fellow human beings.

While I came back to reality and began reading along with my professor, I realized that I write in much the same way as Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy. It sort of scared me. How can you be so far away from something and have it still be such a part of you? Like my Southern childhood or the two weeks I spent in Northern England, not realizing how complete I felt at so young an age. I'm thinking about that tiny town in England, I'm thinking about that grocery store, I'm thinking about tea time, I'm thinking of how out of place I really must be here.

Perhaps I've gone on too long. It's just that I am torn by nostalgia for a place I hardly remember. And I'm realizing I may never feel quite right until I can recreate that time and place.

have you forgotten?

I really need new friends.

Either that, or I want my old ones back.

at second glance.

Los Angeles gets better with time. And yet it isn't like a fine wine. It's not age that makes it better. Aging in Los Angeles is quickly smothered in Botox and bottled hair dye. But as you get to know the difference between east and west and you incorporate Pico into your mental geography, things start to look a little brighter.

There's the Upright Citizens' Brigade, Canter's, Santa Monica, Wildflour pizza, the cheap end of Melrose, shopping in Pasadena, little cafes sprinkled between dirty office towers, world-class art museums, the La Brea tarpits, restaurants that serve s'mores, the Venice canals, drum circles, movie premieres, and, apparently, disco skating rinks.

I don't think I will ever say that I feel more at home in Los Angeles than in San Francisco, but something tells me that everything is going to be all right.

pensive.

Should I go to NYU for a semester next Spring?

The possibility is strongly in New York's favor.

Then again, $15,000 is hard to come by.

I don't know. John says I can write a column for the newspaper from The Big Apple, which would be interesting. We will see.