PIANO SOLO
This is going to come out like a confession. This is going to sound like a plea, but I don't think so. I'm in the library right now, and it's exactly the wrong place for somebody to be in this state. Walking by rows and rows of books so quickly, trying to just do my fucking job, because that's all I do these days, is making me sick. Right now the fluorescent lights that fan out behind the computer look like two blue lightning bolts piercing my shoulderblades, or alternately, like wings. It's raining and people are walking identically across the sidewalk as rain pools in a pair of tennis shoes somebody had thrown on top of the library roof. I wish I could take a moment like this to step back and read a Platonic dialogue, the ones that are published in small green books the size of devotionals, but not like this. This is one of the very few times that I admit that I have needed to write something, because my head is scary. My head is full of dialogues and self-accusations, but I still have the foresight to think, "Wait, since I'm dropping off this misplaced copy of Moby Dick on the cleanup cart, I have time to check in the science section for that book they need in the Rare Books Collection," while I can only describe the rest of me as saying the following: "no no no no no no no no." If I don't find a book that I'm looking for, I clutch my keys in my hand and grind them together. I have the foresight to figure out that I am in fact going to get a call from my parents tonight, and that they're going to check this and want to know how I'm doing, that they'll compare this against my other posts for proper grammar and punctuation, not to mention number of typos and allusory references to rock songs. This is the mood I'm in: if somebody tells me to get off this computer and get back to work, I'm going to leave. If somebody makes a cutting remark about my clothes or sense of humor or the way I'm holding my pen, I'm going to cry and then leave. If anybody asks me what's wrong, I'm going to tear at my hair, cry, and leave. This is manic: wanting to cover up everything you've ever done with grand assurances and pleas and words, and getting disgusted by those words as you say them, and wanting to cover them up with more. There is no intuition. There is no way I'm going to make it until eight o'clock, and no telling how I'm going to feel when I get home and finally have to stop bitching about everything.

SEESAW, MISTER ADMIRAL
I keep on going back and forth on the idea of a tattoo (which, in and of itself, seems to predicate my not-getting-a-tattoo). For one thing, all of the people who talk about tattoos on body modification websites refer to them as "body art," which just freaks me way out. Something about that overly new-wavey thing just pisses me off-- that or it makes me doubt whether the design I would choose to get (a typewriter) would be at all artful. Or whether "body art" is only meant to include full-body face tattoos of Monet paintings.

Oh well, time to go buy underwear with Emily. Ta!

Before I forget, I'm going to start hyping you about the upcoming Vale and Year show on August 11th at the Shadow Lounge. I mean, I'm going to be there. No, I mean, get ready for some hardcore pre-show hype. Next time. When Emily isn't assaulting me with questions like, "Are you ready now? Now? . . . . . Now? Now now now?"

HOORAY
People who know any of the college campuses in Pittsburgh are familiar with the guy who sells books out of cut-up iMac boxes every month or every few weeks. All of his signs are handmade and he takes all of the huge boxes with him on the bus, for goodness' sake. Emily and I have seen him sleeping in the entryway to Baker Hall, a pile of newspapers under his head. Apparently he also takes catnaps at the library. Eli has said that he thinks all of the books are rescued from dumpsters or libraries, but it's hard to say. Anyway, today I bought a copy of The World According to Garp, The Complete Stories of Colette, Live or Die, and The Sirens of Titan. The following note was in the back cover of the latter: "Love - pp. 159-63, 213-14; S Stephenson - 203; PHARISEE - 239; The Stone - 123; The Pain - 125; SALO'S FIRST APPEARANCE - 138; IRONY - 164; Hooray - 178.

This makes me want to document the characters of Pittsburgh, and there are a few. Book guy is one of my favorites. It's the constant appearance of people and things like this that made me want to live in a city in the first place. I guess the rhythm of surprising things in the country is a lot more laidback than it is here, for obvious reasons. Sometimes there are genuine surprises: half of a robin's egg, wild roses growing over a hammer in front of the toolshed, foxes, floods, a piece of magnetic tape from a Cyndi Lauper cassette strewn over a quarter-mile and up a hill. But I like the possibility for these things in Pittsburgh a lot more. A few of the things I've found or seen in the last month or so: a muddy pair of children's mittens tacked to a telephone pole across from the 61C, pink paper hearts in the CFA building, a photocopy of a cartoon dog next to the copiers in the library, an apartment building in Squirrel Hill with the lights in the rooms facing the street forming an X.

GOT MY HEAD CHECKED BY A JUMBO JET
As much as I've enjoyed my job at the library (well, parts of it, at least), it's going to be over soon. I've decided that I really can't keep up three jobs during the school year, especially with all of the other extras I'll be doing for the English department this year. (It's going to be hard to be "the new Emily Green," but I'm sure going to try. Except for that part about yelling, "Give us a kiss, you sexy beast!" during student readings. I think I'll leave that part to Adam and Carolyn. And yes, I really got a kick out of being (mistakenly) called a librarian by all of the pre-college kids looking for plays and sheet music, although who would have thought that "librarian" would ever have been a hip status job akin to working in a record store, cafe, or bookstore?

Potential changes before the start of the school year: hair dyed dark brown, a typewriter tattoo, handmade skirts, new chuck taylor converse, and a mouth full of shiny white teeth. Also, high heels, geometric substitute teacher blouses, white utility belts, and NO ASYMETRICAL HAIRCUTS. THE DAY I GET AN ASYMETRICAL HAIRCUT IS THE DAY YOU KNOW FOR SURE THAT I'VE SIGNED MY SOUL OVER TO THE BETTIE PAGEINATED DEVIL INCARNATE NAMED ELECTROCLASH.

LOOKING AT YOU REMINDS ME OF LOOKING AT THE SUN
In response to Ram:So, my top five desert island records (and get ready yell off your hipster-hating heads, folk) are as such: 1) Murray Street, Sonic Youth; 2) Insignifigance, Jim O'Rourke; 3) Do You Want More?!??!!, the Roots; 4) The Beatles, The Beatles; 5) OK Computer, Radiohead. So, I'm aware that you may be thinking, "No Pixies?!? I thought this was Sarah Smith we were talking about." And yes, that's true. Although let's be clear, this is not a favorite-albums-of-all-time list, which would be at least a little different. Doolittle has already been my desert island album, but more in the long, arduous desert island of the soul way. I've already scrutinized and thought through so much of that album. Also, I realize that it's cheating to list the white album as one record, but that's just the way I'm playing this one.

Other items necessary for a pleasant desert island stay: teas, coffees, and sugars, cans of jewel-like green vegetables, scissors, black linen shirts and dresses, ebony cigarette holders, a few tarps, a few cases of Bic pens, candles, brandy snifters, copies of Through the Looking Glass, The Wasteland, and Shakespeare's Complete Works, a few red pennants, and a star chart.