Thursday, December 22, 2005 // 1:30 AM

how disoriented do i feel right now

the room is spinning, i swear: i don't even know where i am anymore, what is going on. hello, hello life, hello reality, reality it comes crashing, crashing down, the three essays i have not written, the million and one things to do, two camps in the next few days to come, sats and what not, more exco stufff to do, do, do. hello, hello hysteria, i think i might die, i think i might get a heart attack, panic attack, before the year is through.

and. and i have lost myself, it is true. foreign countries will do that to you.

i need a holiday. i need to sit still for a moment and think, not think. what i liked, of sydney's museum of contemporary art, besides the really superb politico kienholz stuff: the empty platform with a couple of tennis balls, and instructions to the audience to lie down with no part of the body touching the platform, lie still for a moment and don't think. i think, i think i would have liked that, staring up at the ceiling for a moment, moments, until madame curator would have to physically drag me off.

(i'll admit it: i didn't have the guts to. instead i watched asian art student do it, knees folded, fetal position, while his girlfriend disinterested, wandered off to another exhibition. one moment please.)

if nothing else i am in love with trains, in sydney; the subway double deckers with the reversible seats and the fines for putting your legs up on the chairs, the windows that irritate to no end because they cut themselves off right at your eye level, so that you get a view of gravel, train tracks, unless you're willing to hunch down in your seat for the entire ride. and i loved the eight hour train ride from melbourne to sydney, i love the rickety honest-to-goodness train with it's reliable chuggachugga sounds, the whistle blow at every station, the patient feeling of being in transit, the gorgeous countryside and the moving endlessly moving, the thinking, thinking nothing. i could have stayed on that train forever, even if old dude did take my window seat, that was me lingering at the buffet cart because it had the most gorgeous window with the most gorgeous view. by far, methinks, best memory yet, of the entire ten days.

and hello world, world that i have known. people i have known. i have missed you all, muchly, i have. happy type feelings in my stomach from being missed in return.

and world, my world view has been shaken up, slightly, from ten days in an unentirely different culture. i am afraid to say anything about this at all, other than: i am extremely confused, right now.

once again i have to shelve this thought for another time, my physical body cries out for a break. i want to see people, but slowly, i am right now too tired to be hyper and happy, me thinks. a few hours unconscious might change my mind.