this is great. this is so excellent. i've realized that i can stretch my keyboard over to my bed, and so i'm sitting here, not looking at the screen at all, with my keyboard on my lap on top of my blue flannel cased pillow, and it fels funny... to be so far away from the screen, from the actual results of what i'm typing. it's almost as if i'm not really typing at all, just sort of clattering out on the keys in a random arrangement. for the first week of workshop, nat suggested we do something like this. turn off our screens and freewrite. that was interesting for me as well... it wasn't like frewriting when you can see the screen. somehow it's much more like getting a sense of what your thoughts actually are, if you can just manage to catch your fingers up to thoughts. although i guess that never really happens...

today was a good day. i've been having so many good days lately. part of it was that i woke up really late. like around 11:45... it felt so good to just sleep. and then i woke up and ary and jeroen were in the other room making plans for tonight's feast, and i'd been having a dream with jeroen in it... probably because i'd heard his voice. funny how dreams do that. it was a dream about contact improv, i think, dancing... like in class the other day, when we were having our last jam and even though i couldn't use my ankle i still had a wonderful dance experience. i felt like people took really good care of me, making sure to dance with me in a safe way,

...well, it's like two hours later. everyone else came home and now it's time for me to go to sleep, because i have a final tomorrow. it'll be so nice to have that all over.

today really was wonderful, though, for so many reasons. changing into my pajamas just now in the bathroom, i stopped to look at myself in the mirror and think about the photographs we took today, me and maya, of ourselves naked. i've been doing all these things lately that seem so college-y somehow, and i guess what i mean by that is that they seem so much like these memories in the making, like these stories i'll want to tell people later. oh yes, when i was in college i sat on the roof and smoked cigars with my friends, and i got dressed up for dinner parties, and i took nude photographs with people... i guess that what it really is is that after a semester of feeling like life was just what i was planning to do in the future, now i'm finally just living. it's great. it's also funny that now is the time when i'm writing in my journal more. what does that mean?

does it fit in with my theory about how i'm not really living unless i'm writing? is it that now i've got things to write about? is it the lack of stress over the past few days? is it the fact that before i was too confused about my life to know what to say about it? i'm not sure... probably some combination of all of those.

in any case, it felt so good today to feel the breeze on my skin through the window. it was such nice weather in a funny way. the humidity was condensing into barely visible driplets... later, when it was dark, we could see them glittering in the headlights of the shuttle like dust, like tiny flecks of snow. it was breathing and misting, but not raining quite, and still fairly warm out. and the earth smelled good, smelled like rain.

i'll be interested to see how the photos came out. i don't have that much experience with seeing myself naked other than in the mirror, and even that doesn't happen all the time.

(i do, though, have this great photo of myself from the waist up wearing nothing but two strategically placed chocolate chip cookies. we were naked... i don't know why, but we were, and eating cookies, and i was laughing and allegra took a picture. it's really cute... caught mid laugh with these cookies and breasts. "cookies and breasts. some of the best things ever," says allegra.)

these photos, though... i'm not planning to put them on the web anytime soon, i don't think. i don't feel like my page is really about that sort of literally naked honesty, although in theory i sort of respect it. i don't know. i'm not really sure what this webpage is about. i guess right now it's instinct more than anything. i feel like that's always been how i go about art and design... i just do what feels right, what looks right, and of course those tastes are influenced by all sorts of outside things, but at some level they're also my own personal things. so all i know is that, right now, having this webpage feels right. writing in this journal feels right. i don't have any sort of logical explanation for it, and i think that i'm okay with that. i could come up with all sorts of bullshit answers as to why i do this, and maybe they wouldn't be entirely shit, there'd probably be some truth to many of them. but really, the truth feels like there's no one reason. there's lots of reasons, and none of them is completely right or completely wrong...

one of those reasons occurred to me when i went to see doug block's movie, homepage, a couple weeks ago. he mentioned something afterwards like, i think everyone goes on the web looking for something, even if they don't know what it is at the time. and at that point, it felt like one of the things that had led me to this webpage was the opportunity to define myself completely on my own terms at a time when i really wasn't sure where i wanted to be going in the context of my relationship. i don't think that's the major motivation anymore. now i'm not sure what it is. partly a sense of commitment, a sense of obligation. like now that i've started it, i have to keep going. but that's not all it is, by any means. i've never really gone in for that whole line of reasoning, and like to think of myself as a person who does things because i find them interesting and important, not just because i feel like i have to do them. so i'm not sure what deep subconscious need the web is now filling in me, if any. maybe i'll figure it out in a couple months.

ah, anyway, it's time to hop in bed and sleep for a bit before getting up and studying geology before my final. then i really will be done, except for packing... i'm finding myself more and more not wanting to go home. i miss my family, my town, every once in a while, but overwhelmingly i'm just not wanting to leave all my friends here. i feel like i don't have that many meaningful connections in dekalb anymore. it'll be good to see allison again, definitely, but i'm going to miss these people so much. tim and talia will probably come visit for a day or so if they do their cross-country road trip, which will be great. i wish all my friends could come visit me at home...

yes. bedtime. i'll maybe write later about the incredible indonesian dinner... my mouth still watering thinking about it...