Reading:

First of all, it's great and I love everything about my classes and my flatmates and my room (except the closet, god damn the closet!). I like the city, the unmappable streets, the sidewalks that try their best to make me fall, the rain and the wind and the struggle to just survive here. But.

Sometimes, especially when I hear such exciting and heartbreaking news as I've just heard (one item horrible, one sweet and lovely) I wish I were back at home doing, what I would have been doing this time last year. I wish I could just drop everything, give up on discifering chapter 7 of Ulysses, skip out on my reading groups, and just go home and hug everyone until my arms go numb. I want to sit for hours on an old couch and rehash every little feeling and opinion they've had in the past four weeks that I might have missed out on. I just want to be there for them all, in such a way that I can't accomplish via telephone.

But then (okay, I'm of three minds, and they're all a little bit confused because of this), I'm kind of glad not to be there, to be missing out on the drama. It's kind of nice to be on the outside looking in at all of these happenings. I'm like Stephen Dedalus, without the asshole personality and the sexism. (It's been rather a Joyce-saturated few weeks here, to be honest, which doesn't really help matters.) It gives me some perspective.

It doesn't do any good to think like that, though. The best I can do is build up my long distance bill and just keep on keeping on, focus on the happy things going on here, the possibilities that the next few days will bring. And really, when the only comfort I can offer is an open ear, that's all I can tell you kids to do, too.

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