Four distinct things have brightened my mood tonight.

The Oxe: Chatting with Lenny. I dunno why, but trying to help people through their problems always makes me feel better. Even though I can't really say a damned thing, it does. Reminds me of how I always say I would have been a priest if I believed in something.

The Eagle: Michael called. As long as I'm not feeling sickly I think we'll go see Metropolis tomorrow. Or at least do something. Get me out of my rut.

The Lion: Email from Thomas. Just cheered me up in a confusing sort of way, but sometimes the best way to avoid confusion is to be as blunt as Lenny. The odd part is I don't think I care what the response will be.

The Man: Apology from Johan. Small world, ain't it? But sometimes it's the little things that make everything all better.

Maiden, Mother, Crone and Whore: Katie and Kara are the best, but they're not men so Biblically they don't count.

May what will be come, for now it is done.

Why do I sit here all night wallowing in my misery?

I could make a few phone calls and go out. I could have meaningless casual sex. I could drink the booze in my fridge. It would probably leave me feeling better in the morning even, instead of sitting here and letting my bitterness grow.

I filled out my applications for Greece today, intending to take a long lunch and stop by the Registrar's office and the Post office to get the stuff completed and mailed.

How foolish I was.

The Registrar sent me to Student Services. After a lengthy debate, Student Services decided that they didn't have the authority to fill out the form that I needed someone to fill out. They could say I'm a student, but not that I'm a student in good standing. So I hike across the street to Johnston and the Honors Office. They're nice enough to fill it out except they don't have a university seal. Hopefully it'll all be good even without the official seal. But then they asked if I had a form from the Global Campus office. I hadn't even considered I might need to go there. Andrea asked if I had emailed the guy, and I went and did that, got the forms in the mail and figured I'd just mail 'em in. So I take the long hike over to Heller Hall. For those of you who don't know, that's a 20 minute walk across the river. I finally get there and I stumble from office to office looking for the right Global Campus one, expecting to get the form(s) mentioned by the Honors Office. How wrong I was. No, what I got was an 8:45 appointment next Friday. I dunno what good that's gonna do. I guess maybe use financial aide towards it or something. Course, he said I should bring all my information on the trip to the appointment. The Honors Office already sent off the transfer form for me.

Sigh.

Now I'm back here at work, but I still need to make it to the post office to send off the rest of my crud.

Almost every day we get misaddressed mail. To be more specific, we get all the mail for Folwell Hall that doesn't have a department name on it. Well, we got one today for Roberto Reis. I tried to look him up in the database but couldn't find him. It was from a Porteugese department at another university, so I figured I'd just send it on it's merry way to Spanish and Port.

So, I get to the end of the hallway to drop it off and I pass room 12: The Roberto Reis Memmorial Conference Room.

Fucken Hylarious.

I didn't plan on sleeping 13 hours last night...

Really...

I just discovered a secret office complex in Nicholson Hall! Full of nothing more than old Janitor equipment and old bags of microwave popcorn.

Still, it was really cool. Our key at work opens almost all the doors, and now I gotta bring a knife or something to jimmy open the other doors I couldn't open and see what's inside. It's like their secret sex area or something. I'm curious, though, as to when the janitors would be in the building. Wouldn't do to get caught in their secret sex spot.

I'm going in for my half day now.

Now that i know when my trip is gonna be (May 26 through June 15) I gotta find some kind of job for the last two and a half months of the summer. Fuck, how'm I supposed to do that?

That's what I accomplished tonight. After the first shower to rinse the bleach out I've been sitting around in my underwear eating cheeze whiz and watching Fight Club. Not it's gettin' late so I'm gonna get some sleep and then go in to work for my half day tomorrow. I should probably figure out when the rec center is open so I can go swimming, but I'm too lazy right now.

I'm back, with food and cleanliness supplies, there's an application to study abroad in Greece and I'm about to change my hair to a never before attempted color.

I've been sitting here at home since Sunday afternoon and I'm about done with it. My mommy left me her car today so I can actually go out and see if I can't take advantage of the money she said she'd pay me back. We'll see how much I can buy without feeling guiulty.

My brother already bought me a Learn to Speek Greek in three months book from Laura's Half-Price books. My dad and I went to get me a passport (I neglected to bring my checkbook home and they'd only take checks). I started some more Latin (and since I can take my time it'll take me at least twice as long as before for each chapter to learn it well). I watched some good TV (Futurama, some American Embassy show...). Damn, my anti-TV bigotry just got thrown into my face after last night. And I've probably spent about three hours just sitting in the spa my parents bought instead of funding my education.

So today I'm off to get more stuff done. I need things like soap if I'd like to keep up some level of cleanliness. I really hope my application for Greece will be sitting in my mailbox when I get back to Minneapolis. Depending on how things work out, I may be getting a trip accross Europe in the deal too. My dad either has a free or really cheap ticket I could use to go to Amsterdam or Frankfurt and them maybe train it down to Athens. He seemed less happy with that plan when I mentioned the countries just north of Greece that I'd be passing through... They're still gonna look into the costs of me flying for cheap to Amsterdam or Frankfurt or Paris first and then transfering to Athens though.

Ah well, if I can manage to come up with money maybe I'll go there some other time. Who wants to come to Amsterdam or Frankfurt with me?

Yesterday I went from sittin within 10 feet of a senile old imbicile who couldn't manage to urinate without getting it all over himself to actually helping a soul in need. Amazing how I can go from utterly despising a person to something more nobile with a change of scenery. I guess getting away from the object of my hate may have helped that.

The problem, then, is that that didn't do it for me. I mean, yeah, it feels good to help people. It feels good to get drunk, it feels good to be with people, it feels good to have sex, it feels good to create something, it feels good to break something... But now that its over, I'm still left... empty.

Its like there's a whole in my soul and nothing has been able to fill it. Academics, art, chemicals, destruction, hate, love, philanthropy, religion...

Nothing lasts, they rarely make me sleep better.

Now my question becomes, what do I try next?

The only thing that comes to mind is to keep trying what I've been doing until something works. Unless there's something I'm missing I'll just keep learning, keep creating and destroying... Get drunk again? Sure. Someone asks me out? Why not. Someone puts their hand on my thigh? Well, we'll just have to see...

I feel like I'm in that stage I call "Kevin's hair from 9th grade".

It's long enough to start curling and look hideous, but not long enough to pull back or look cool. If I get it cut now, I'll almost have to go back to "Kevin got fed up with his long hair so now it's shaved off" hair to avoid the contempt I'm feeling for it. Or, I could suck it up, find a hat or something and let it grow for another couple months until I reach long haired mode again.

Hmm, it might help if I had money to waste on haircuts of the expensive kind, where they make me a strawberry blonde or dye it black and throw in long gold extensions or something like I had in mind months ago... Maybe I could get something to make my hair strait for the time being and then let it grow out and go from there? But those things didn't work in the past and I don't really have the money to waste on vanity like that...

Sigh...

Then I think, before I'm shackled to a dress code or something akin to that maybe I should do whatever the hell I feel like while there's still time.

Coming home to Jake and Lisa watching SNL and eating cheese bread wasn't may ideal way of starting spring break...

Hmm, I didn't even get to the Kabbalah I was going to expound upon in that last entry. Hmm, not much has happened between then and now. I learned the 25 Japanese characters I thought I needed for today, but it turns out the test was cumulative so I sucked it up. Learned about the festivals of Dionysus in Hellenic Relgions. The internet has kept me occupied for the past hour here at work (Amazing) right until about now. Now I'm just going to sit here for the next two hours bored out of my mind with new guy that I don't know at all and he isn't talking. Sigh.

Anywho, the point I was going to make was something about my new Kabbalah article for class. North and south, East and west, above and below, masculine and feminine, good and evil: they are all parts of the grammar of the language of creation. When God said, "Let there be light!" he created with the power of language, thus Grammar is the Laws of the universe. Good and Evil are merely parts of that Grammar, nothing more.

Still, I think the notion of dualism may have damned humanity more than the organized religions that embrace it.

And other times, I think: "Maybe I should just go get drunk and laid and shut up about this stuff."

Yeah, I so picked the right major for me. If only I could fit linguistics and philosophy into the package, I'd be set.

Anywho, I've been dickin' around on the interenet looking for archaic languages to learn and I stumbled onto Avestan. That's right, the Persian derivative (cognate?) used to write the sacred Zoroastrian texts. At its earliest it's almost completely gramatically similar to Sanskrit. Now I want to learn about the poor lamented 4th great monotheism. (as I write that, some professor is probably spinning in his grave.) Maybe I'll abuse my printing privilages at work again today.

In conclusion, my list of dead languages to learn includes:
Avestan: Sacred Zoroastrian writing in Persia until Islam killed that religion.
Coptic: Egyptian Christian and gnostic writings.
Sanskrit: Sacred language of the Indo-europeans that the Vedas were written in
Aramaic: Language of Old Hebrew and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Any takers?

Over break I will:

Completely finish chapter 22 out of Wheelock's Latin
Read two books from the Bible: 1 Old Testament, and 1 New Testament (Gospel of John, Book of Daniel)
Learn the Greek alphabet.
Make one piece of art
Read at least 3 of my Medieval Jerusalem articles
Write my Archaeology of Medieval Jerusalem essay well
Catch up on my Hellenic Religions reading in at least one of the text books
Watch 2 movies which I haven't seen yet (Trainspotting, Fight Club)
Get my hair cut

I wanted to come up with one other goal, but I think 9 will be enough. I have 9 free days and should be able to accomplish one each day. I'll cross them off as I complete them.

I just went and had the most wonderful time, all by myself.

I walked down to the river and stood there. It was amazing. I stood there until I couldn't keep myself from shivering anymore, and now I just came back. There's something invigorating about it all. I miss the water. I think I'll have to go swimming over break. Even if its just at the Rec Center (It's gotta be open, right?). I have to stop myself now, before I start talking about how water is my element. It might belie some belief, deep within me that I'm just not recognizing.

It did, at the very least, give me time to think

"Is that a little too bleak?" he asked as he opened the curtain to reveal a gray world full of energy.

"No," was my pitiful reply. Bleak? Not at all. He couldn't know that I was just reveling in the weather outside. That the chill, the wind, the color was more invigorating than he ever could be. It was cathartic. Religious. Awsome.

I stood out over the river, twice, in as many places, just taking it all in. The eratic but comforting motion swirled around me and deposited its seeds all over me. Each one a treasure of peace. Out there, nothing could hurt me. Out there, I was alone and I liked it

Now I can write in Greek letters too.

I should unobsess myself with Greek since I need to learn a lot of Japanese characters for my writing test tomorrow. I need to scrounge up some more sources for my Kabbalah midtern in 45 minutes (I just hope the question on Sefer Ha-Razim is on there) incase I can't write on Sefer Ha-Razim. And I sent some pictures of Thomas to tomcasteel. I almost feel accomplished.

So far, instead of actually doing homework while I'm rotting here at work, I've been attempting to learn Greek. I found a website last night that'll at least teach me the alphabet and some simple bits of grammar, but it's taking more concentration to get it down than I have attention for right now.

There's not a whole lot of sounds in Greek, but there's three letters for the long ee sound, plus some dipthongs that make it all the more complicated. And certain letters (Gama and Chi, at least) change sounds depending on which vowels they're with. Not to mention all the double vowel/double consonants to master. Sigh.

I should probably also not bother going too much further in my Greek studies until I'm certain that I'm going to Greece this summer. Although, it never hurts to learn the alphabet, so maybe I'll add that to my goals for break.

Ah well, I need to highlight my Kabbalah course packet for the midterm tomorrow. We need to cite sources in our in class essay, so I gotta come up with some evidence and all that good stuff. I've got at least a good hour left of nothing to do, so I should make the most of it.