Another busy day: four classes (three conferences and a lecture), therapy, a performance, orchestra rehearsal (so make that five classes) and a rehearsal for the upcoming Bachannalia on Friday (at 4 in Prexy -- if you know where that is, you should come). There will be more rehearsals through the week, plus I have a concert on Sunday (and consequently a dress rehearsal on Saturday). Other than that, I have to find a job and a place to live over the summer; oh, and I have three papers to write. ;-)

Speaking of writing, I'm thinking of paring down my prose -- again. Ok, so I go through this "my prose needs work" thing every few months, and inevitably my complaints are flowery, a surplus of mannerisms and repetitive sound. What I want is something straight-forward and without complication; I want to really speak to people. Perhaps it's because I crave attention -- but I want to describe things and I want people to read them and respond without leaving me sly comments about how stupid I am. At the same time -- I want to like my prose -- I want my prose to be something that's well constructed and not just easy to read, but at the same time worth reading. I'm not writing a newspaper here, to paraphrase Mallarmé.

I suppose that one of the reasons I've tended towards Ciceronian periods and "Chateaubriandisme" (a great adjective -- I never knew it existed until George Sand...it means flowery romantic shit prose, apparently, although I personally like Chateaubriand, despite his "Genius of Christianity") is because I secretly fear that my life is boring, so I try to write about nothings that have nothing to do with me and dress them up in frosting and garnish, my desperate plea always, "Please read me, please...look, I have apodosis and sly allusions".

There's a blog-writer who calls himself Geek-Slut. He writes about his sexual escapades. It seems like every week he has sex with at least three or four different guys. To me, that seems life. I mean, however sordid it is, he actually has adventures -- he has something to talk about -- the "what have you been up to lately?" portion of the conversation doesn't end in, "not much, you?" -- he launches right into a catalogue of lovers that would would make Homer jealous. Now, I don't want a catalogue of lovers; but I do want to be able to say, "I went to the beach and saw something shiny that changed my life; I saw God rolling in with the tide." But I don't have the license to say such extravagant things; that's not the nature of my life. My life is workaholism (hence Reed College), vanity, and dashed expectations; longing and melancholy stained through with pleasure.

One of the reasons I'm so obsessed with writing -- I want to begin a great work. I want to begin my masterpiece...something that will sing to the world (presumptuous yes, vanity -- time will tell); I want to have produced, at the end of my life, one perfect crystal cut to quality. My own Sentimental Education or my own Eclogues. I keep trying to begin, but I keep failing. I read (whilst perusing the biographical note in a volume of Pound's "Cantos") that Ezra tried to begin his Great Poem again and again, but never succeeded until late in life, and then perhaps only marginally. Ezra Pound, whether I like it or not, is my model. I haven't read much of him, but I know who he was -- an amateur linguist who had an obsession with great literature and an ardent desire to connect with the past; in short, a studied romantic. OK -- you lit majors out there, prepare your hate-mail. But that's who I am: an admirer of the past, a collector of dead tongues; dazzled by outmoded styles and cliche, looking for my voice, my vice, a word, the Word.