WELL, THE WASH OF METHODOLOGY LEFT ME BROKEN WITH THE RIBS OF A BABY CARRIAGE!

Before I say anything else entertaining, let me reveal that the above is a line from one of my poems. Conclude what you will about my state of mind. And once you do, tell me what you think, because I'm confused about it myself.

School continues to be a balancing act between insufferable, boring, and vitally interesting. I guess I'm just kind of shocked that I have to do work again after such a nice midsemester break. It kind of comes as a nasty surprise.

My thesis is going pretty well at the moment. I feel that my writing style is in the midst of a crucial change that, once it has occurred, will make me amazing. This is the hope.

AND THOSE CHEEKBONES OF YOURS SHINE IN THE DARK

Greene County is wonderful, as always. I love going home, especially when I bring college friends with me. It's so much easier to appreciate my home when I show it to somebody else and I guess it's always been that way. I feel a very powerful connection to the land and the broken-down barns and vultures. It's a kind of rural gothic place, lonely and desperate, but I find it so comforting. And sometimes it's just plain comforting without the isolation and fear, but that's always the way I experienced it then. I found a lot of mixtapes I made when I was in high school, and right now I'm listening to Belly, the band I loved most of all when I was in 7th and 8th grade. More than anything else, being at home reminds me of the time when I was constantly planning my escape, planning the kind of person I would be. I invested a lot of energy in envisioning myself as a different kind of person, a more cosmopolitan, sophisticated girl. I'm not that girl, but I'm not the 14 year old girl who listened to Tori Amos in her little bedroom, or sang Ella Fitzgerald ballads while watching snow collect on the corrugated tin roof outside my bedroom window. The people I go to school with say that I seem to them like an urban girl, and I've certainly affected some urban slang recently. My voice is lower and I walk with a cocky bounce in my step. The cool kids I went to high school with cede authority to me in the matters of punk rock and whatever. Because I made it out. I'm living in a real city. I made the image of myself, culled from issues of SPIN and the few Mission of Burma songs I downloaded back in the Napster days, into a real person. And I like, know more about Sonic Youth than they do.

What kind of weird victory is this?