mmmarilyn; a big-city fairy tale.

tuesday, october 24, 2006.

For why do our thoughts turn to some gesture of a hand, the fall of a sleeve, some corner of a room on a particular anonymous afternoon, even when we are asleep, and even when we are so old that our thoughts have abandoned other business? What are all these fragments for, if not to be knit up finally?

Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

3.01am, dang dang I need to go to sleep

my cozy bed with my amazing laptop

I got my first midterm today, due in seven days (the clock is ticking: now it is actually only 6 days and 14 hours) and it is not as long as it could be, and at least the first two problems I read at all thoroughly are not nearly as difficult as they could be.

But then, I've been averaging 60% or so on the (usually very very challenging, in my v. v. humbled opinion) homeworks in the class, so my skills of estimation probably shouldn't be too highly regarded.

(It's Logic, Propositional to First-Order, with some very tricky proofs sometimes, particularly for miss I-want-to do math and other things that require rigor and careful consideration of many aspects and that discontinuous spark of insight sometimes as well (though that applies much moreso in Honors Linear Algebra), even though I haven't taken a math class in, oh, about five years. Unless you count GT's probability and statistics. Which I don't. When I'm not whining mercilessly and looking for sympathy for having spent the (ENTIRE. *#$@!^&*.) weekend in the library, though: I think I'm enjoying the crap out of myself.)

Andy and April are going to be getting into town on Wednesday and I'm so excited to see them, even if I have to be in my midterm cocoon during most of the time they'll be here. I'm just excited that someone I know will be enjoying this city for all it's worth.

But even through the haze of all-nighters and take-home exams that will hang over my head during my entire birthday window, New York finds ways to peek its little shine of amazing into things: Elena visited and we had crazy and delicious Tibetan food and a martini overlooking Grand Central, were entertained by the half-ostentation, half-historic class of a night in the Waldorf-Astoria; the chill delights me as the wind cuts through my bones and I revel in the dramatic CHANGE of the season that will lead us into Thanksgiving, into Christmas; I had the best slice of pizza of my life at 3.30am last night between Courant and the subway. Jonathan, who in a way MEANS New York to me, just let me know that he's returning, to the country, to this crazy other part of the world, next week on Halloween.

the older things.

about this.

Marilyn C. Cole (email), 27, New York City, an apartment in the Hamilton Heights end of Harlem, since August 2006. Before that, Atlanta, Georgia for seven years, through a Georgia Tech computer science degree and three years of learning how to be a grown-up and still have fun. Before that, ten years in Savannah, the place that gives her stability, that she considers to be home. Before that, short stints in middle Georgia next to a lake; on Tybee Island next to the beach; in a suburb of Dallas, Texas during the peak of Dallas (the nighttime soap opera); the middle of Oklahoma for the birth of her little brother; and Nashville, Tennessee, where she greeted this mad messed up world.

Attending New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, taking coursework toward her Masters in Computer Science, with debatable ambitions in the direction of a Ph.D. in something or other.

Simply head over heels for a musician whose songs makes her woozy, whose words make her happy, who she wants to marry one day.

Strawberry-blonde hair, blue-green-yellow eyes, pale skin with freckles.

academia, acoustic guitar, acting intelligent, adventures in the car, after-rain smell, alanis morissette, angelina jolie, ani difranco, articulateness, artificial intelligence, audrey hepburn, avocados, bad pick up lines, beauty, being egotistical, being insecure, ben folds, bertrand russell, bisexuality, björk, black eyeliner, blackberries, bloody marys, books, britney spears, bubble baths, candy, cat power, cemeteries, cheap red wine, collar bones, conan o'brien, cooking, cool points, crisp pickle spears, dancing, dar williams, daria, death cab for cutie, dismemberment plan, douglas coupland, drinking, drugs, eating outside, eeevil, elvis costello, english accents, etiquette, falling in love, feminism, firefly, fishnets, flowers, freaks and geeks, frolicking, fun, getting my way, gilmore girls, gin and tonics, girls, google, grammatical correctness, greek mythology, hal9000, handwritten letters, happiness, harold and maude, harry potter, harry/draco, homemade t-shirts, hot hot baths, intelligence, jem, joel, kids in the hall, kissing, kittens, knee-high socks, knitting, late night conversations, laughing, life, luna lovegood, magnetic poetry, making things, margaret atwood, math, max rebo, mazzy star, messy hair, milk, mirah, modest mouse, my computer, my mama and daddy and little bro, night swimming, nintendo, nonsense, not waiting, nudity, new york, originality, pi, pie, pillows, pinky and the brain, radiohead, rainer maria, reading in the bathtub, red popsicles, richard bach, road trips, robots, rocking out, roller coasters, sandals, sarcasm, seduction, sexuality, shoes, sifl & olly, simon & garfunkel, simone de beauvoir, singing very loudly, skirts that twirl, sleep, songs: ohia, soup, stars, staying up too late, subversive literature, sushi, swings, sylvia plath, tetris, thai food, the beach, the color pink, the history channel, the month of october, the simpsons, the smell of bookstores, the windows down, the word indeed, thrift stores, thunderstorms, virginia woolf, weezer, wet trampolines, winks, words.