HELLO MOTHER, HELLO FATHER
My flight arrives in Charleston at 1:30 PM, flight 3338. See you then!

XXXXX
Sarah

TURN ON THE BRIGHT LIGHTS
So yes, I admit, I tend to romanticize academia. (It seems that I don't really have any choice about this, because being the academian that I am, I have to find some way of casting myself in a favorable light. So, books.) This happens to be the best time of year for such thoughts being that 1) it's getting too cold to spend an awful lot of time outside 2) everybody has lots and lots of work to do 3) we are listening to very serious music right now 4) there is much thought in the air; even at bars we discuss epistemology and theories of subjectivity 5) people look at once more interesting and more adorable when bundled up with scarves and knit caps 6) it hits me occasionally that I've done A LOT OF READING lately, and I'm awed by it.

I am, nerdily, very excited about my final paper for my African American Diaspora in Transnational Expressive Cultures class. I'm writing about identity construction in James Baldwin's novels, and I can't wait to hit the library this weekend and get myself up to the elbows in index cards.

I've been getting a lot of enjoyment from playing trombone recently. I'm not even really rehearsing anything for concerts; I'm just going back through my old etude books and playing lyrical studies for the hell of it. It's nice to feel that there's something graceful I can do with an instrument that largely acts to frustrate me and damn me.

I'm making a list of ends to tie up over winter break, and also a short reading list. I'll definitely be reading Portrait of a Lady, especially because Rachel and Carolyn have been so nuts for it this semester. I'm also looking at getting myself through that tremendous Robert Lowell anthology that's been the talk of the town lately, not to mention a great deal of Charles Simic, Larry Levis, Ai, Pablo Neruda, Frank O'Hara, Marie Howe, Adrienne Rich, Maureen Seaton, and Sappho. I admit, vacations from school always have a great air of self-improvement for me. I want to return to my studies having taken a month to drink tea, read the paper, take long walks, bake bread, floss my teeth, read everything I've been needing to catch up on (ha), play my scales, trim my bangs, paint my toenails, and stretch. This, of course, sounds lovely at a moment when everybody is so tweaked out, exhausted, bitter, and bright. I wouldn't mind being slower and more glowing for a while.

TWO OF US WEARING RAINCOATS, STANDING SOLO
Well. I just made up my schedule for next semester, and it looks like this: advanced poetry workshop, beginning fiction workshop, the question of sentence, the question of paragraph, narrative theory, the roots of rock 'n roll, jazz chamber music, jazz piano I, and maybe modern poetry. I'm sure all of these will be cut back significantly in a few weeks, but damn was registration easy this time around. Every other time I've had to register for classes I've been on five waitlists with only three actual classes on my plate. Oh, but it is fun to be an upperclassman. Which I am.

Sorry it's been a while since my last post; I've been tempest-toss'd as of recent, for many reasons which I would write about, except I fear it would be reductive to do so. And you can't argue with that because reductive things just suck, right?

This weekend I went home and brought Carolyn and Rachel with me. It was great and relaxing to be able to show my friends what I'm about, where I'm from, how dark and isolated the country really is, and so on. Also, my parents are so fun and so kind. (I'm really not just saying that because I know they read this, either. But hi, you guys, all the same).

See you around. I'm off to get a disgusting sandwich from Entropy and eat outside on the wet grass.