how oddly things coincide

It feels so nice to wake up in the early afternoon from napping to mellow music and then to have some (relatively) free time to write.

So this picture summarizes my weekend: the Jimmy Eat World concert and "studying" for the organic chem exam I had this morning. On Saturday night Melkis, Steph, Jen, Amy, Jackie's friend Zach and his roommate Richard and I saw Jimmy Eat World at Avalon. I was running on very little sleep and food, but once they came on, I didn't care at all. They played such a good mix from Clarity, Bleed American and Futures. Midway they sang "For Me This is Heaven," and the background lit up with those twinkly star lights. I think those four minutes of bliss will last me for a long time. The rest of it was wonderful too. Their music reminds me of that girl in the Coke commercial who hands out Coke bottles to people she walks by. I want to be that girl, but instead of soda, I'd like to somehow package bits of JEW songs and pass out bottles of Jimmy Eat World goodness to strangers on the street. Little cures for troubles.

For the rest of the weekend I tried to maintain that feeling while cramming for orgo. I've never spent so much time in the Adams House library before. During the many study breaks I took I had a lot of time to just look at it, and enjoy how pretty it is. I like that it's just one room, like it would be in an actual house. I like the creaky chairs, the wooden panels, the old books. I forget sometimes how un-modern our campus and environment is, compared to California. There's something about being in an old place that makes you feel like you know more about the things around you, even when, like in my case, you don't.

At around 11 yesterday night Henry came in and joined me at one of the single tables at the end of the library. I don't think people realize half of the time how much their company matters. The first thing he did was make me laugh by informing me that he had a seven-pager due the next day for Helen Vendler's poetry class, and that he hadn't started. I spent a good ten minutes just listening to him type and wishing that I was writing an essay on poetry instead of figuring out how to synthesize organic compounds. But it was the same way last year, in reverse...when I was inundated with English papers I found myself actually wanting to do chem problem sets with the girls. I'm so difficult, mostly because I really resist specialization; there's too many things out there. After going back and forth for awhile, I feel this is the best balance. And now that chemistry's over, I can catch up on novel reading and paper writing.

A little later Henry asked me to read the first page of his paper (he writes crazy fast). I love reading essays written by people I know. It sounds stupid, but something so endearing comes from connecting every interesting phrase and grammatical choice to the person who wrote it. I don't think you can write anything and not have it say something, no matter how little, about you. This is why, even though I know they don't mean it that way, it makes me feel trusted when people ask me to read their writing.

I think I'm going to nap again...