magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

It's quarter of nine. The middle of February. I'm sitting in my studio and am still wearing a tie (woven black and off-white, making a soft and pixelated grey, and diagonal off-white stripes).1 I worked in the library this afternoon. I've worn a tie to every work shift for the last two semesters (as long as I've worked in the library as a graduate assistant) to distinguish between the states of employee and student/patron. Sunday afternoons in the library a typically pretty uneventful.

I've spent the weekend largely avoiding diving into the reading of Unit 2 essays for my Professional Writing class. The class is set up as a writing workshop. We all email out our essays on the Thursday before the Tuesday that we'll begin discussing them. In class we present them lecture-style, receive critique of the presentation, of the written paper, then discuss the content. Unit 1 essays were autobiographical. Unit 2 are focused on contemporary library/information professions issues.

I've been procrastinating the reading because doing so will also mean acknowledging that my own essay probably made absolutely no sense. I was writing on the topic of whether information is a commodity. My argument was, yes it is, but often unethically so. I got tied up in some metaphors that fell somewhere between being entirely unillustrative and working at cross-purposes to my thesis. By the time I realized just how tangled up I was, my options were to plow blindly ahead or scrap everything and turn in something potentially more cogent late, late, late. Stubbornly, I trudged on.

It might not be that bad. It's probably not that bad. (Maybe it's worse.)

I have been working on orchestrating a MIDI file of the theme from The Pink Panther for Computer Music. Reading philosophical texts on poetic language as background for my impending thesis (I'm taking Thesis Research this semester). And experimenting with projecting images on odd surfaces for Projection Mapping. Plus, slowly populating my new shelves with books from my piles and boxes. Also, still probably not eating enough; but generally sleeping well.

Leaving the library earlier this evening a girl told me that she liked my hair, it made her happy. It makes me happy too, I said. It's pink again. For the first time in my 30s. I had thought about doing it before. I had talked about it. I did actually try once, about nine months ago, but the dye that I had apparently needed to be heat-set, which I didn't do, and it washed out in two showers. And it does make me happy. I can't say why I let it go for so long. Was I pretending to be a grown up? Thinking that I should be pretending to be a grown up? Was I actually a grown up for some part of the last half-decade? And really, grownups can have pink hair. This isn't punk rock, screw the man, counter-culturally oppositional pink hair. This is pink hair because it makes me happy.

But I'm rambling. I should go eat a peanut butter sandwich or two. Drink a bottle of beer, sketch some, read some, and get to bed at a reasonable grown up hour, so that I can come back here to my studio in the morning, refreshed, with another day's perspective, and read those essays.2

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