Sometimes I’m trying to be disciplined about sitting down to read a pile of notes for class, but random thoughts keep coming to mind about random bizniss I have to take care of. Since I’m trying to be all stern with myself, I figure, No leaving the table till a certain number of pages have been read, or until the hour’s up, or whatever. So I’m keeping a to-do list as I remember what needs to get done. Today’s list so far:

Rent check
Call Kat
E-mail Dandrey
Pee
E-mail Maud
Thank-you card to Chery
E-mail Jojo
E-mail Schmio re: mousse & dictionnaire

So you go to Thanksgiving dinner at a friend’s place—as you will; and you meet this guy there—as you will; and then every now and then throughout the night he and you share a look—but then is it a look? or a look?—and then as the party’s breaking up toward the end your hostess says, “OK, everyone make sure you exchange numbers,” so that now you have (and, yeah, everyone else has) his business card—and it’s cool, too, two-color printing on an off-white background, rounded corners—but because, please, you’re a grad student in French literature, you don’t really have a card at the ready to give out to everyone, and you can’t jolly well say, “OK, I’m writing my phone number on people’s palms if anyone wants it,”—because of all that, he doesn’t have your number, making it so the ball, if there is a ball, is in your court; oh, and, oh god, as everyone’s parting, he gives you a great hug, but a great hug, none of this lean-in, ass-in-the-air, pat-pat-on-the-back nonsense, but a rilly great hug g’bye; anyway, so, now what?! If you were Uma Thurman you’d call, probably, but you’re you, the girl who, when he said he was from near Bath, in the U.K., said: “Oh, yeah, Bath, a friend of mine went to uni at Bristol and I went to see her and we went to Bath, and yeah, it’s nice, they have, um, baths.”

Ah, crap.

Somehow it seems like all the leaves fell overnight, so that I look out my window at the park this misty post-rain morning, and it’s all creepy beauty of bare tree silhouettes reaching from the greengray into the white sky.

You know that Ezra Pound poem in the subway about the petals on a wet, black bough? Yeah, that’s a good one.

Meh!!

So today in class while everyone else was discussing Judith Butler, I was inscribing D O N ’ T P A N I C in big, black letters across the top of my notebook.

Why does Judith Butler write like a caricature of a feminist literary theorist? Argh. She makes me want to say: It doesn’t have to be so hard, Judith Butler!

Boy, do I hope Judith Butler doesn’t read this blog.

Neways, then after class I went to the library and ended up spending hours into the evening doing research for my Houellebecq paper. I’d forgotten how much I like researching, and how much I like that feeling before you sit down and write a paper, when you’re still getting all your thoughts together, and it’s all v. exciting, and sometimes it’s all treasure-hunty, like when I found out that not only is there already at least one book of Houellebecq criticism out there, but also it’s at our library, and no one’s checked it out. And ’cause it was just just published, the pages are still crisp, no one’s scribbled in it, there’re no grubby prints, and it’s still got that new-book smell. Yay, school.

Holy Bay City Rollers T-shirt, Batman! Whoa. . .way to receive a mysterious present in the mail—a good one, sans anthrax. Which of you crazy kids is my secret Santa?

. . .and the sun sets, and I draw the curtains, and every now and again passes the lonely sound of a car heading down the empty street. And what I have to show as the weekend wraps itself up with a ribbon, is a pink silk clutch purse full of candy wrappers.

The moment I walked in Schmio’s door Friday night, at midnight no less, she served me up a plate of homemade chocolate mousse. Oh, thank you! Now that’s hospitality. What else is hospitality is having me and McC. lounge about till a quarter to four before saying anything about anyone maybe going home to bed. Hospitality was also the spread at India’s Saturday night, oh my god: avocado salad, a beaut enamel dish of gorgeous yellow polenta, this incredible Portuguese stewy thing, these filo pastry things, a green garlicy thing that was so green and so garlicy. . . my word, but this post is descending into inarticulate salivating. Oh, but wait, and, there were also, um, hello, two kinds of cake. Gulp, gulp, yum.

Crisp is the day.

Um. I was thisclose to Bono tonight. No, really. So: Kat and Cherise and I are standing outside Otto after an A-plus tuck-in (Fifth Avenue at East Eighth, run, do not walk) involving truffles in honey, some sort of stewed apricot thing, very good anchovies, and pistachio, hazelnut stracciatella, and milk chocolate gelati, when Cherise goes, “Oh, look, there’s Bono.” So I turn, y’know, as you will, thinking, Eh, he’s walking across the street, whatever, and, well, well, there he is, directly behind me. Ah-so! So with as much élan as I can gather having now exposed myself as a total stargazer, I turn back round to continue the conversation with the girls. I mean, let’s be real, it wasn’t Bowie or anything. But then as Bono’s going into the restaurant with his peeps, I swear this happened—well, I swear we think this happened-—he turns toward us and says “Thank you.” Wha-haaa? We’re not sure what he was thanking us for, maybe for recognizing him in his stubble and sunglasses? Cherise’s hypothesis is, maybe he thought we said, “We love you, Bono!” Hngh.

Bunch of official things today, done officiously. If only I’d also gone and gotten a new driver’s license. Eh, there’ll always be another day to kill at the DMV.

I decided it was time to have all my credit cards and such documents show my name name, not my nickname—I mean, hey, there’s only so long you can go signing “Insania.” So now I need a new signature, and, after a good half-hour or so of scribbling, I think I’ve come up with a decent one. The bonus is, if you squint at it, it looks like it says “Chawanmushi.”

So I get some reading done at the local B&N—a little Houellebecq, a little InStyle—and then I think, Maybe on the way back home I’ll stop and get some fruit. Seems innocent enough. . . so how come an hour and $18.63 later, belting out “The Boys of Summer” in the rain, I’m lugging home a couple of pears; a hunk of Manchego; another hunk of creamy, dreamy Brie de Meaux; a box of olive oil and sea salt crackers; six English muffins; and a bottle of Fizzy Lizzy cranberry juice?

OutKast has this brilliant song out now called “Hey Ya!” which includes such genius lines as:

Lend me some sugar,
I am yo neighbor!

and

Shake it
Shake it like a Polaroid picture!

The Roseland Ballroom isn’t an ideal place to see a show, ’cause it’s huge and if you’re little you tend to not be able to see the action. Especially if somehow, even though you thought there’d be all these hipster sorts at the White Stripes, you find yourself right smack bang behind a group of beefy thirtysomething Long Islanders in need of a surprise visit from the Queer Eyes. Still, my god, but sometimes a show rocks so hard you just need to stand around with a goofy grin and a wrinkled nose, nodding your head in time to the beat pounding through your body.

It was good when Jack White said, in a silly voice: “Hallo, New York! Hallo, New York!” It was good when Meg White got out from behind the drums to sing “In the Cold, Cold, Night.” It was definitely good when they did the lights so that the backdrop was filled with these massive Jack White and Meg White silhouettes. And then the night took a winning turn when all-of-a-suddenly a space opened up in the crowd, we shuffled over, and it was clear viewing from there on out. That Jack White sure knows his way around a guitar. And Meg White makes me want to get behind a drum kit again.

Yeah. Sometimes what yous needs is a good, rockin rock show.

I got my lit. theory paper back!!!! My grade was an A?- .

Uh?

Still: !!!!!

How to chase the Sunday blues. . .

Lesson 1: Insert iPod into head, sing out loud walking up Avenue A.

Lesson 2: Pumpkin soup with as much cream as you want, tarte tatin straight from the oven, a little Chateauneuf du Pape, smokes.

Lesson 3: “Room on Fire” on constant repeat—“I love this song!” “I love this song!” “But I love this song!!!”

Lesson 4: A rant the way only Maud can do it: “You are so full of shit, just go back to your shit-hole!”

Lesson 5: Sweet languorousness on a red sofa.

Lesson 6: Whisper going down the stairs with a boy. Cab home. Make an international phone call at two in the a.m. to a great friend, sleepy and content as all hell.

Blue skies and a Saturday afternoon in the fall make for sugar-dusted apple cider donuts fresh from the farmers’ market, then home to a sun-filled living room and radiator heat smell.

Today: I saw a tree being shaken in the wind like some massive, invisible hand had it round the neck and was flinging it back and forth; it snowed—just a little, and it was almost wet enough to be rain, but, oh, it was snow; a woman on the subway flicked her young daughter in the neck with her index finger and you could hear it go thuck; I walked past a man on Ninth Street who smelled like burning.

Also: at one point, walking head down so I wouldn’t get speared in the eye by some piece of New York City crap swirling about in the wind, I looked at my feet in my Chuck Taylors, and thought, “My feet are huge! But huge!”

And also: I found a tea place in the Slope that’s open till one in the a.m., which will maybe become my new place to read, away from the TV and the dishes and the laundry and the Lucky and Vanity Fair magazine subscriptions; and right after I got there they stopped playing the silly bongo music on the audio system and went straight into the Shirley Bassey remix album and then selections from the Bright Eyes “Lifted” album, all of which is totally a sign that this place is A-plus.

After two long caffeine- and Petit Ecolier-fueled nights writing a paper on subjective versus objective interpretation, the death of the author, and the autonomous text, what one needs is a bowl of curried cauliflower soup with fresh mint, a dollop of yoghurt, and some buttered multigrain toast on the side. Mm-mm-good.

Can’t blog, suffering homework. Blurgh.

My road to ruin, one 99-cent step at a time. . . . Today’s iTunes Music Store purchase was Hall and Oates’s Private Eyes. ’Cause who doesn’t like a song with bits cut out for clapping? All together now—Pri-va-ate eyes [clap!], they’re watching you [clap clap!]. . . . You see?! You see how addictive??!

So I’m watching VH1’s I Love the ’80s Strikes Back, 1985 edition, and, um, okay, how come I never got the memo on Jem?? Rock star, pink dresses, girl really knows how to work her accessories? Did the show just never make it to Singapore, or was I busy watching Petticoat Junction instead?

Woke up with the alarm, and it was grey and cold, mouth dry, dragged myself out of bed all groggy-like, and it slowly came to me that I’d just been having a dream about the ex-boyfriend in which he said he was seeing someone new, and to which I’d responded, “Oh, yeah?, well, uh, me too, I have a new boyfriend,” eyes darting around, that sort of thing, trying to make up some great new beau. Which is not the best way to get up in the morning. Anyway, so then as I’m brushing my teeth and cursing the ex for still being in my head, I realize that what happened in the dream to make me respond with “Me too, I have a new boyfriend,” was that he’d said: “I have a new boyfriend.” WHOA!! And then there were widened eyes looking back at me in the bathroom mirror, and then there was larfing and larfing all over, and the day began anew.

Over the weekend Kat introduced me Circuit City (so. . . many. . . shiny. . . new. . . electronics. . .), and I got a beaut silver cordless phone, finally. After charging it as directed for the longest fifteen hours ever, my life has changed. Now I can be on the phone *and* be ANYWHERE in the apartment. Whoa. Upstairs? Check. Downstairs? Check. Bed? Yah. Kitchen? Oh, yes. Loo? You’d better believe it. I could be on the phone RIGHT NOW! And it doesn’t even make that zzhha-zzhhaa-zzhhaa interference sound that other, lesser cordless phones do when you’re too far from the base unit. I love you, cordless phone!

Study of literary theory utterly derailed today by inauguration of Hello Kitty badge maker. Oh. my. god. It all started really calmly and innocently with one badge made from a scrap of Astroboy paper I’d been trying not to throw out. Then there was the standing in one spot in my living room, looking around, thinking, What else do I have that needs to be made into a badge? And then the rummaging, and then I found an old wrapper from a bar of Viennese Manner Lemon Cream Filled Wafers. Brill-i-ant. Then the rabid excitement kicked in, I wrestled open a box of saved packaging, nicking a paint chip off my blue wall in the process, mind racing: “There must be more! There! must! be! more!”

Burned tongue on hot bean. Owwee.

So we’re at the Strokes show Thursday night at MSG, me and Jason and Kat and Tom, and there’re all these cute hipster girls and skinny boys all over the place, so how come where we’re sitting there’s just the buzzcut frat guys and the business-school students? And of course the frat boys really just want to smoke pot, even after the green-jacketed security dude comes and hauls one of them away; and of course the business-school students keep saying “Oh, fuck, man, yeah!” right before they sing the guitar riffs: “Nuh-nuh-NUH-nuh, nuh-nuh-NUH-nuh, nuh-nuh-NUH-nuh, nuh-nuh-NUH-nuh. . .” (“Alone Together”), “Nuh-nuh-nuh, nuh-nuh-nuh, nuh-nuh-nuh, nuh-nuh-nuh. . .” (“Take It or Leave It”). But it’s all good, ’cause the hits were hit, the candy-stripe lights were in effect, we got some $5 M&Ms, Front Stroke was a Conor level of drunk, Drum Stroke was rockin it, and I now totally heart Nick the Guitar Stroke.

Midnight at Giorgione: flourless bittersweet chocolate cake with a quiet candle for a late birthday; gorgeous bosc pear stewed in rum and honey; a perfect latte; cheeks warmed by wine; pointy pink shoes; Schmio's red tights; gleaming white cracked tiles; toasty glow from the pizza oven; scarlet lucite hearts on an elastic band.

Then: waiting on the subway platform with Barbie, a hillbilly girl and a hillbilly boy, an Airborne Express package, a pimp, a soldier, fangs and fake blood all around. God bless the F train, I shoulda taken a cab.

Back in the hood, twinkling pinpricks of stars against a perfect blue. Brooklyn, love.