i remember dan kinney once came into the library when i had skipped his class earlier that day, and i instinctively dived under the table, while jenny geer pretended to read her book and shielded me. von, for instance, would not have shielded me. jenny, because she reads children's books, did. we discussed, afterwards, that the mature thing to have done, of course, is to smile at him politely, in a we're-all-adults-here, choice-freewill-nothing-personal-and-all-the-rest manner. but the logical thing to do, we agreed, is to dive under the table. i was in the library only a few days ago when bob reeder said to me, don't turn around, and staring forward i automatically said, is it a teacher? (yes) is it one of my advisors? (yes) is it alison milbank? (yes) thereupon we, as they say, beat it. and the other day driving back from downtown he had spotted her on the kerb on the corner and said, isn't that your advisor? and i'd darted a confirming look out of the window and exclaimed "keep driving." the point of all that being: frequently indulging in your negative fantasies means that people around get infected too and they start looking out for me, and in my journals she does sound like the boogeyman, but i have figured out that the reason i'm always terrified of milbank is that i don't know her well, so i am convinced that all sorts of unimaginable terrors will befall me should i run into her sans pages. also, i think of her as being efficient and organised and goal-oriented, so i naturally assume such people disapprove, or will disapprove, if they knew what i was doing i.e. meandering. in actuality she's always been very pleasant to me and doesn't scold, and when you shove imagination out of the way i find the kind of feeling she arouses in me is less of terror than an ill-defined kind of parental-guilt. but with nohrnberg i know exactly how mad he would be with me, how encompassing both the degree and manner of wrath, and i think of disgraaace and disaaaster all the time. also, he asks "how's that thesis coming" far more often than she ever does. she doesn't ask because she has faith in me, and that would be because she doesn't know me. he has no faith in me, of course, because he does know me. you know, i have been going on in this vein for ages and ages, haven't i? in approximately three and a half weeks, however, the tone will be considerably different. but right now, my loves, you'll just have to put up with a bit more of this whinging.

random amusing things: this morning i heard someone use the word discombobulated, which put me in mind of choonping, who used to dance around giving that word the most dramatic intonations. when the heck are we turning our clocks forward, incidentally? how evil to let you lose an hour when you're trying to write frantically!