Not much to report tonight, considering not blogging at all. Up in the aerie, it's night, the lamp on my desk is on. Downloading Pet Shop Boys yet again, which crashed. Rafe snores raspingly in an armchair, and when he wakes he sneezes and snarfles. I've never seen anything like it. There is very good news from a friend, who received a bad scare from a false-positive of a test, which, taken to the next level, an M.D., turned out to be a scare caused possibly, my friend thinks, by stress. I am so glad he'll be okay - he had me going there for a bit too. I once spent a Christmas in the common lounge of the MIT math, or maybe applied math (fittingly enough), department. I was by myself, having been booted out, or booted myself out from my parents' house but having nowhere to go, except that I'd audited this Heidegger course (I had three hours on that Christmas Eve train ride to Boston to figure out a game plan), and so had become familiar with the labyrinthine corridors & rooms of that main pillared building, and so, somehow found safe haven on a sofa there by myself, just lying there all day, for a couple of days, I had nowhere to go, and MIT's common rooms, at least at the time, were rather commodious in accepting a wayward one like me. It was exceedingly lonesome, I was all by myself (of course), and yet at the same time - even at the time - I was grateful for the bit of safe haven. It was a separate room, with a door that locked behind me, so I felt a sense of vigilance (I mean, I was so isolated, so alone - what if a weirdo were to find me? what would I do?) but ultimately safe behind the glazed glass-fronted wood door, safe enough to drift off and on to sleep on the narrow settee, room illumined by day from wan winter light casting in from the east facing windows, and dark at night, or perhaps dimly lit by some wan moon. At some point on Christmas Day, hungry & thirsty (I didn't have any provisions) I scraped myself together, washed up in a public lavatory in the building (very very strange to have MIT - to myself), and took the Mass Ave bus up to Harvard Square (I think) - or maybe just Central Square - I don't remember. What I remember is going to one of the few cheap restaurants that was actually open - and having Chinese food on Christmas Day. Lonesome? Yeah, but you know, it wasn't so bad. I was doing it on my own terms, the ones I had the wherewithal to manage at that point, because being trapped in CT in my parents' cramped house was too much. It didn't help that in the time since I'd been in high school and spent a year in college, I'd developed a terrible smoking habit - and it only added to the stress at my parents' house that of course I couldn't smoke there, or even admit that I smoked (though I must have reeked of it, because I was forever sneaking out). Anyway. It was on my terms, sort of. It's strange the hells we pick. But sometimes the alternatives are worse.

It's funny, those college winter breaks, even all the foreign students, the ones from foreign countries, found a place to go, it seems. Once I left home for college my mother wanted me gone. She didn't like me coming back like a stray cat for Thanksgivings and Christmases. But I get booted out from the dorm at those times, Mother, I would say, I can't help it - where am I supposed to go?

Up in the aerie, cat snoring & rasping, wind chimes clanging, dinner will be pasta with a sauce of broccoli rabe...

Love you. And thank you - Applied Math common lounge.