on tuesday i left the house at 6 and worked on my paper for 10 straight hours.

the housemate had arrived in philly the night before, and we had arranged to get dinner and see the place. i spent the entire walk up spruce st. preparing him psychologically for the wreckage, but like the other housemate, he seemed completely unruffled by the state of affairs,* and was in fact rather pleased with the size of his room. there’s definitely something strange happening; i’ve gone down the rabbit hole to a place where everyone defers to me and thinks that i’ve somehow got everything under control, when in actual fact i’m mere moments away from doing an ophelia and running through campus with petunias in my hair**.

i walked back with the housemate to the hangout house to say hi to kinjal, who was in the middle of one of those 45-minute showers that women take. we hung out downstairs waiting for her and discussed rice cookers and flat-screen tvs and wii sports, and then kinjal appeared sans dinner and we went with her to get fried chicken. grace had invited some of the new grad students to her place to watch high fidelity (used to be one of my favorite movies while i was at duke; have gotten over it a little), so we clattered along and disturbed her advisor and her advisor’s dogs***, and watched john cusack being awesome, and i forgot for a little while that i was going half-mad and pretended that i was a college freshman again on the grotty blackwell sofas with han and kwonie and all the rest, thinking: ”now is the time. now is the time i get to figure things out”


* still no ceiling, no carpets, no fully functioning bathroom, unfinished floors, incomplete electrical fixtures, etc.

** the housemate, incidentally, is from oahu. he’s lived there all his life, including his four years in college, and this is his first time away from home and family. this tacitly, automatically and unquestionably makes me the big brother (again). to make matters worse, the other housemate has moved to the mean streets of west philadelphia from nowheresville, ohio, and although I haven’t had a chance to speak with him much yet, i do know that he’s fresh out of college and potentially very blur. i have a bad feeling that this entire enterprise is a house of cards built upon a chocolate teapot, but for now i’m going to shut up and pray that providence will guide our ship through stormy seas.

*** i’m not sure i’ve said this before, but grace lives on the top floor of her advisor’s house. her married advisor, and their 6-month-old son. go calculate your own weirdness quotient on that.