Your loyalty is not to me, but to the stars above

(No reason, really, for the subject, just a line I kind of like from the Bob Dylan song currently playing on Radio Paradise.)

In one of the numerous ironies that characterize my life at any given time, I--who still maintain that I really shouldn't be in anything approaching a full-fledged relationship--seem to have spent the larger part of this weekend engaged in "where is this relationship going" conversations with not one but two other people. One is actually (I think) pretty simple and straightforward, something that I accept my complicity in and so on. The other involves The Poet and is still eating at me in a certain way because it so vastly changes certain calculations that I had made to allow this to be okay. It's hard to explain without getting into wildly unbloggable specifics, but, suffice it to say that I had to puncture a couple of illusions once and for all in the "I have nothing to give" conversation--he took that as being all about the sex, I told him that was the easy part--and I'm still unhappy about being placed even momentarily in a situation where I was risking more than I thought I was. But, on the other hand, I also find that I really like him, even given all the reasons I shouldn't, that he makes me happy, and that I don't have to listen to him complain or worry about things--while that last one is partially what contributed to the situation that pissed me off, these are all really huge things for me that I don't often find in people. The problem is that I don't want to be his girlfriend and I don't completely trust him not to accidentally fuck up my life. Stupid paradoxes. We're planning to meet up tomorrow night. I'll see what happens.

But I probably should revise what I said about Hegel on my other blog--it's not so much, perhaps, that there are a thousand ways to be unhappy, it's more that there are a thousand ways that your life can get fucked up.

Speaking of which (ah! transitions!), the Professor and I returned to West Village Coffeeshop today to work in tandem. It's possible that certain things are coming full circle (this is mostly true work wise), and that most of the bitterness and hurt has finally been bled out of our interactions. It's not just like it was, but I don't miss the differences. And it's nice to have my working buddy and best reader back. Between him and my friend S., I talked out how I need my conference paper to end, and I can see an end in sight and--more importantly--a non-sucking presentation in my future.

I went up to school to make some photocopies (why, why, why, have I never read The Madwoman in the Attic?? Who knew there was a chapter on "The Buried Life of Lucy Snowe??") and get a few other things done. No trip to the school library, of course, would be complete without seeing The K. He made eye contact with me this afternoon, which was a new thing. I alluded to his part in the weirdness that was new student recruitment Friday--a combination of weird tension in the basement computer lab, then his kind of swooping down on me from the second floor for a weird fasttalking conversation as I was on my way out. Every time I see him I feel a bit less, but I'd be lying to say I don't feel anything. I don't know if this is so much a question of being "over" him (I came into the situation more or less being already over him, knowing his position) as it is a kind of lingering sense of--well, something suspended, that keeps getting shaken up when we make eye contact or pretend not to see each other. And it's all very high school and I certainly don't want to continue the affair, such as it was, but I...I don't know, I guess I sort of feel like there should have been more, somehow, somewhere. And that's sort of silly, I know. And it has a hell of a lot to do with why I'm trying to keep The Poet at a certain distance. And I may well be kidding myself if I think I could really be a decent friend to him. Because we really were very kind to each other for a short time--and I guess that's what still...I don't know. Perhaps this is all to say that, even though I sent him that well-deserved "are you fucking kidding me" response to his notorious "douchebag" email, I don't have the heart to be that person all the time.

Believe it or not, I've also had a pretty decently productive weekend, in spite of all this. Friday was something of a lost day, but I made up for it on Saturday, and I get to read Godwin and Wollstonecraft for my committee member this week, which can't fail to make me happy. And my students are going to the library tomorrow, which gives me a reprieve on any formal preps.

At the moment, though, I have to turn my attentions to where I can find a loaf of decent bread on my way home. I have been dreaming of a bruschetta-like combination of avocado, corn, and Parmesan with some roasted asparagus all day....