Four-day break, just the right length break, at just the right time in the semester. I've allowed myself one day entirely off, and the other three must be spent catching up on work I've neglected. I'm glad to be away from campus, but I imagine by Tuesday I'll be more than ready to be back in class.

Friday, as I feared, T@ger came into the library on my shift after I skipped his class two days in a row. He checked a book out and didn't say a thing. I felt like such a sleaze.

Anyway I've had a great time at home so far. I'm having much more fun with my brother's homecoming than I did with the one I went to. Although, compared to that angst-ridden fiasco, almost anything... But yes, as a high school sophomore he's developed his own "style," which consists of wearing jeans and tennis shoes with a suit jacket, with a paper towel folded in the pocket. Hilarious, I think. We spent the entire afternoon trying to find a decent novelty tie to complete the "look," unfortunately to no avail. I don't know where my crazy high school teachers found their interesting ties... we couldn't find a one.

But the more important thing is, I had a blast spending the afternoon with my brother. Which is sort of unheard of. I think it's really cool we're getting along more, and finding we have a lot in common.

Ohh, I just have nothing in common with my sister, though. She has her heart set - I mean it, her heart - on taking me out bar-hopping and getting me trashed for my birthday. Which is so completely not my idea of a good time. I just don't feel comfortable around strangers when I'm not entirely in control of myself. A good time to me would be maybe renting a couple movies and getting trashed. But she absolutely has her heart set. Last year I told her I wouldn't go out clubbing with her. She doesn't want to hear me say no again. I could just do it - it's not going to kill me - but oh, I really really don't want to.

And it seems she really is serious about leaving her husband. She does not want to work it out anymore. And I absolutely do support her in this. But it is very clear to me why her marriage is falling apart. It is her recent obsession with going out until five in the morning several times a week. I think she's afraid of being thirty. I think she's somewhat afraid of being defined as a mother. I know she is very unhappy. And she's regressing into her 20-year-old self.

I think she's trying to recreate me in her image. Now that I think about it - yes, that's exactly what she's doing. That's her obsession with getting me into a bar and getting me vomitiously drunk, two things I personally don't care to do. That's her obsession with my college life, always asking me about boys and parties, two things that are also rarely on my radar screen. She needs to reclaim this part of herself. I don't know how long until she realizes it is gone.

Anyway, I imagine the marriage will be over within months. I guess Chad told Mel awhile ago that were it not for Emma, he would have left her himself because of the way she has changed. They've both changed, whatever the reason and whatever explanations I can invent. They've changed and it's over. It's a simple thing, and it happens every day. One more reinforcement of everything I believe about the institution of marriage anyway.

On a completely separate note, I think I have a rough idea of what I'd like to do for my senior honors thesis. A little background to explain my interests: the summer after my freshman year I went into a huge period drama film phase, which led me into an obsession with seeing every Emma Thompson film I could get my hands on, which led me to absolutely fall in love with Howards End, which led me into a summer-long E.M. Forster kick. Now this semester, I have to admit, I'm falling in love with Emma all over again, which has sort of put me right back in the middle of all that again.

So here, essentially, is what I would like to do. A comparison of E.M. Forster's Howards End, A Room With a View and Maurice with the Merchant-Ivory film adaptations of each from a feminist theory perspective. Which would sort of synthesize what I learned in Masculinity in Film, what I'm self-teaching myself about theory, what I'll learn in the Netherlands next spring, and my adoration of E.M. Forster and Emma Thompson's Margaret Schlegel. :) Obviously there's a long time before I need to confirm or begin work on anything. But I'm enjoying playing with the possibilities.

Next time I write, my hair will most likely be significantly shorter! You'll sense a certain new lightness, I promise.

Till then, time to do more work on break than I ever do at school.

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.
-E.M. Forster