Like a Burning Torch

Fall semester: day sixteen

Last week, I received this email from Suri during our normal correspondences back and forth when we're not on campus. I asked her permission to post it here, because I think it's not only interesting, but true -- and bears repeating.

"P.S. I'M not worried about you. Not a bit. I don't think declining to participate in grad-planned activities is a worrisome thing at all. (This is in response to your blog post about people getting worried about you now that you're all isolated and not social). Of course, this comes from someone who glories in isolation and avoids all social activities unless there is something free that she wants, but heh. There's at least one person who knows you and isn't concerned that you're going to douse yourself and your kitties in gasoline and go out like a burning torch one night.

So yeah. Comforting, I'm sure."

My response, was, of course, "Go out like a burning torch one night? Seriously?"

Suri gets it. She understands, even if her situation is a bit different from mine (she, for one, has a boyfriend in town who she's been with for five years). She also lives almost as far away from campus -- at least in terms of travel-time spent driving -- as I do.

She's also right in the fact that she knows me. As I've mentioned before, Suri is one of the very few people I've been comfortable enough to be free and open with while living here in Kansas. The only other two people I can think of offhand who know me as well are the former girlfriend and one other person who, for all intents and purposes, no longer really associates with me and really has no interest in doing so anymore -- which I'm fine with. Of those three, obviously, Suri is the one constant -- the one person I have to talk to who understands me and doesn't judge me, and who I have no prior (or blemished) history with to atone for.

There are others, of course, such as Rae, Jay, and Kay -- all of whom read this blog -- who I've "let in" to a certain extent just by letting them know this blog exists and by their reading of it, but would I sit down with them and tell them in detail about my extensive tie-dye underwear collection? Well, probably not, if they didn't already know about it. It's things like that which are the difference.

In other news, my mother sent me an email this morning asking if I'd like to come out and visit over Thanksgiving or Christmas this year.

"Thanksgiving's out," I told her. "I may have friends visiting from out of town, and/or I may be cooking a Thanksgiving dinner for those of us GTAs who stick around in town during that week."

All of this is true; I'm trying to work out a visit with one or more people over that week, and I'd like to cook a dinner for my friends who are still around -- it may be the only time I'll coerce any of them to actually drive up here to Newton to visit me. I'll create an event for it on Facebook within the next few days or so to gauge interest.

Thanksgiving week is also the only week I have to begin/continue writing the several large papers I'll have due by the end of the semester, much like last year. If you're a longtime reader, you'll remember that last year I skipped Thanksgiving with the former girlfriend's family so that I could write two 20-page papers and a third that was about 10-11 pages. Ah, the joys of being an English major in graduate school, right? I've got a similar workload this semester, and Thanksgiving week is about the only time I have to take care of all of it yet again. After this fall, though, I will have taken care of most of my required courses for graduation, so I will theoretically be taking a lot of electives, more fun courses, and will hopefully be able to sort of coast through the rest of my graduate school career, focusing a lot more (read: desperately needed) time on my writing and studying for comps.

"As for Christmas," I added, "If nothing's going on, I was going to ask you guys to come out here. This place is huge, and it's just me and the cats. More than enough room. I've been out there twice since moving out -- it's about time you two saw where I live and what I do in my day-to-day life."

This is also true; I have flown back to West Virginia twice since I moved to the midwest in 2006. My parents have never visited me out here, mainly due to time and space constraints in whatever places we (because it was me and the former girlfriend, then) lived. Now that I'm single, I have a full, large house to myself with a lot of extra space, and as far as I know, neither of my parents have been to Kansas. Well, maybe my dad has in his band-touring travels in the '70s and '80s, but I'm sure my mother hasn't. I'm sure there's a lot here both of them would enjoy, even in the winter, including two great Mexican restaurants and several nice shopping venues.

Anyway.

The rest of today will be spent writing/revising poetry, reading a large chunk of "This Earth of Mankind," the next novel I need to read for my Asian/Middle Eastern lit class, and taking care of a few things around the house, such as folding leftover laundry and finding something to cook for dinner. I need to chop up more carrots and celery for snacks/lunches this week, too.