took lisa to talk art, the wednesday eve affair in which a poet and fiction student read...i am so sick, eyes runny, lungs frothy, passages under pressure...it was weird, yes, but isn't it always...mark liked his photos, which came out rather well i think. he is an easy model, a model model i guess...monarchy in minor key was read by steve, and this guy read a story about euthanasia, which was quite good, except for the fact that the wife had brain cancer and brain damage, i didn't really get why that was so important, except to emphasize the generosity and nobleness of the speaker. am i just awful or what.

but at some point in the story i remembered - oh yes, he was stealing his office supplies and was caught watching adult cartoons when he was fired. i remembered how last summer when i had a colposcopy and it went wrong, how i went back to work afterwards, sat in my chair and called my mom, it was not even 5pm, and then i noticed that i was bleeding all over my chair. . yuk. god, it's a black chair, luckily, because it was gushing out of me. and now someone else is sitting in it. little do they know. we're all so blood phobic these days. i watched "night and fog" by resnais and cayrol yesterday, in claudia's seminar "reality wounded" (no not reality torn, that's the name of lee ann broown's baby, daughter of t torn), and in the film the soldiers, the allies i guess, they pick up the skulls and bodies of victims in concentration camps and bury them in mass graves, and all i could think was if they did that now they'd be wearing pastic gloves. i was amazed by the mountain of hair shorn off the women. we're supposedly watching "shoah" next week, claudia's giving birth (or inducing it) tomorrow, and i will teach, take finnegan to the cat sitter, run by the wkshp for my materials, drive my ass to the podunk airport, and take a few planes to buffalo. going to a wedding on saturday. friday i am going to my old dentist, i hope, the one who used to live down the street from me when i grew up, whose wife taught me how to ice skate. and then i might take a bus to rochester to meet up with red, who i haven't seen since august. she had all these grand plans for us to meet up meet her new girl vivian, an artist, anyway i think she now realizes we are not going to have a threesome, but it will be really cool to see her, esp since i just talked to my dad and i am not looking forward to being in my parents house with no car surrounded by snow and suburbia and tvs and stifling mindsets ug ug ug so getting out would be so welcome. have much work to do, writing and reading but can't do it in that tiny flimsy house, only sulk and fume adolecently, well if anything it will jolt the juice back into me, the fury, the passion, the original flare.

hope y'all are hanging in there. i'm sick and down and out. no paycheck or loan check until friday. and when i came home, my cat puked, and then shat, and i accidentally knocked over a plate of basil seedlings that were sprouting, all over my counter and floor and dishes, and god i'm a mess. so i need to sleep. g'night, sweet nocturnal stars, may i see you in my dreams.