It’s very lovely outside right now, the weather soft with distant tinges of summer, yet not erupting with the sort of unbearable heat we all hide from and pray to the shade to abolish. I wrote Joe an e-mail today; it’s been a long time since we’ve talked.

Hullo Joe!

Well, sweets, your heart must know how I’ve been missing you lately? Isn’t it funny how our lives have found themselves apart from where we used to be? Just the way everything is constantly evolving through subtle intervals of unexpected change amazes me. When weeks pass they seem to want to become something more formative than days. They seem to become different nuances of me, each influenced by circumstance, some fulfilling and some depriving, but all in all existing. I think that’s the important part of everything - that it’s existing. Because when existence and beauty can no longer suffice the soul than we’re all on the verge of a depredation.

This letter to you is the first thing I’ve written in a week. School has been devouring me like no other current beast. Sometimes I sit and ponder with that pensive

jen-nature and in the midst of something relatively profound, I’ll think damn school! And I’ll wish for summer like it was and not as a season but as a life. It’s coming though, you know. It’s May and it’s June and it’s the sun and all of it’s forthcoming.

I’m very sorry to have missed this Saturday. I wanted to see you play very much and I also was hoping to catch Ira. But I was gone from 8 to 8 this Saturday on a complicated school project that would take decades to describe. I will tell you this: I was in some tiny impoverished towns in eastern Oklahoma, and there were gorgeous trees leaning over into lush gardens all over the place. In this one town, it had just rained and the green was completely saturated with a surreal brightness. We passed a street that was housed with the most destitute homes. It was like life had left and here were these monstrous trees just wrapping color around the world. When I get more time, I think I’m going to write a story about the whole eerie nature of everything.

Are you doing well, lovely? I’m sure you’re being a doll like always and charming yourself into some wonderful gigs and writing your way into Hemingway.

Hahah. What degree of Hemingway are you at now, do you think? Are you very much leaning towards the young poet Hemingway, the middle adventurer Hemingway, or the gray Hemingway with his many wives all left and his African jungle? That was a silly question, I suppose. It’s almost bordering clever though, and I expect some sort of beautiful answer. I’ve written a couple poems lately. They’re at the bottom of the e-mail. As for stories, well that is a sad thought indeed. I’m working on one now that is so still deep inside me that it’s not going anywhere. Perhaps I’m waiting for my poets pen to turn it to shape and give to airy nothings a local habitation and a name. (Shakespeare, you know darling.)

Well besides this big mess of responsibility and dullness I seem to be sinking in, my life is fairing rather graciously and I will not predict a deluge yet. Let me know how you’re doing, and when you reply back, I will send you that essay I mentioned. I’m a bit apprehensive about sending you something entirely and honestly about yourself, but I think it will be ok if you’re open to reading it.

I love you always Joe, take care of yourself.

Jen

The story I mentioned in the e-mail got worked on today. I can’t feel any satisfaction with writing though, because I did a very lazy job and only wrote a few descriptions and some dialogue, when I know I could have summoned some more. But the entire day has been one of those lazy indulgences in indolence. I guess I’ve been listening to the lure of the sirens today, because I haven’t gotten a single thing done and I still have a mess of work to do. I talked to Dave earlier, but am quite distraught because I said I’d call him back, but he wasn’t in his room, he was over in someone else’s room (his roomy pissed him off) and so I said “What’s the number over there?” And he told me and I thought I could remember it, but I didn’t. So I never called him back, but I felt very much like talking.

Really, I want to see Brendan right now. He said yesterday he wanted to do something today, but the poor little dear is exhausted. I called earlier and our conversation (in it’s thirty second entirety) went something like this:

Jen: Allo’ friend!

Brendan: (moaning)

Jen: Did I wake you up?

Brendan: (groaning) No, well, yea kind of.. No. You didn’t.

Jen: I’M SO SORRY!! GO BACK TO SLEEP!

Brendan: No, I want to talk. I’ve just gotten like an hour of sleep over the past year of my life. (starts to fall asleep)

Jen: Go back to bed and get some wonderful slumber. (hangs up)

I swear, Brendan is by far the most intelligent person I know who has such a lack of common sense that he’s moron-ized into a state of stupidity. He never sleeps, he’s a fool for it too. I keep telling him he’s going to die from sleep depravation one of these days and I’m going to cry monsoons at his funeral. Damn kid.

It’s quite hard to be a mom and a friend all at the same time. If these silly friends of mine would just partake in the essentials of life. (Such as eating and sleeping.) Just consider for a moment how much the quality of the world as a whole would be enhanced if we all slept and ate properly. Why it would be falling into near perfection. Everyone hates perfection anyway.

I think right now, what I’m most feeling like is the ocean. Or maybe a walk. I’m feel really reclusive like I should be sitting somewhere simplistic reading a book. I read outside for an hour today, but the bugs were devouring me.

Books I’m reading right now:

Out of Africa (still, after about three months... I guess it’s just on hold for the moment)

David Copperfield (almost done with this one)

Wise Blood ( very close to being finished with this one, but I have to be in the right mood)

Green Hills of Africa (about a hundred pages away from this one.. sort of has to be read at the correct time as well, but if you wait too long to pick back up everything fades into a monotony of similarity and you can’t remember what you’ve read. You’re apt to read half the book again)

Franny and Zooey (Read this today, I’m probably a little more than half through... excellent so far and a great expander for the vocabulary. I’ve looked up many words so far.)

The Memoirs of Cleopatra (hmm.. 900 page book, made it through the first 200 like that, but then I think a whole love of irrelevancy came into the chapters and bored me. )

Some other books on Ancient Egypt

A Smithsonian magazine lacoeur

Some Greek mythology

Some poetry

A book on the beats

------- Actually, just today I’ve been in the mood to read the Poisionwood Bible. Hmm. Weird. I think I have some kind of African theme going with all these jungle books.

And with that detailed account of all my current reading endeavors, I think I shall hop to the grass and take my kitty along and we shall sit together in very literate poses, resembling two savants deeply engrossed in the pages of knowledge.