I'm here in the library this morning with a breakfast of salsa Doritoes and coffee. Yes, I know it's disgusting, I'm the one eating it. You know what else people find disgusting, and I think this is a little odd, dead animals. I mean, we eat them for goodness' sake. Last night two of my hallmates, who shall remain unnamed, and I had a "Date with Justice" (aka Mallory Dean and the "Peer Review Board") over a matter of a part of a dead deer we left on a guys' hall on campus that shall remain unnamed. We were not expecting any kind of "discipline" for the prank. It was really simple, really clean, just a deer's head on a plastic bag on their floor. Then we heard from Mallory that he "knew we did it" (this was hardly scary news to us since we signed our names to the prank as we always do) and we should turn ourselves in or face "worse consequences." So we did, and last night we went in and told them our story (one at a time--it was pretty intense) and now we await a verdict. It was so strange going into Mallory's apartment and seeing all of these kids who had their notepads and were really serious about dealing out punishment. I felt like a rebel and being a rules-conscious first-born I don't feel like that very much. It was kind of fun, especially since I know I didn't do anything wrong. I found the whole thing kind of funny, especially when they started going into the dangers of bringing a dead animal onto campus. Okay look, we stopped on the side of the road and cut the head off this deer. It was fresh it was killed by a car, presumably on impact, it was a darn healthy deer. We had a dead possum on our hall a couple years ago with it's intestines going everywhere. I'm pretty sure that was more unsanitary than our clean head. I told Mallory that this deer was so healthy we could probably have eaten it if we had needed to. He said he didn't think it was ever a good idea to eat roadkill. He was probably right. It was a fun date with Justice, and Justice asked us for another date on Monday to discuss our "consequences." Maybe I should shave my legs.
I'm in New York City and right now all I really care about is the radiator behind me. I love radiators. It feels so nice to have heat gently reaching out to me, rather than blowing in my face like a desert wind. We got to New York at 6:30 this morning, got here after thirteen hours of driving. It felt like we were lost in a world of eternal night. The New York skyline spread out across our sky at 6:00 like a city out of a myth or fairy tale. It was amazing. Everything is so peaceful at night. We got here a slept for a few hours then got up and ate and went to see the town. I ate salmon and creamcheese on a bagel for breakfast. It was so good. Excuse me while I melt back into the radiator now.
I figured out Jane Austen. It's all clear to me now. What I didn't realize before was that she is really writing about her own little Jane Austen world where she gets to manipulate the people and reward and punish whom she wants to reward and punish and even if things get out of hand she can always fix them with a little husband ex machina. So, the main rule is that you have to be smart and pretty and if your smart and pretty you deserve to win and Jane Austen will make you win. So you have Elizabeth Bennett, who is weak in the money and man area and she is going to lose if something doesn't happen soon, so Jane Austen (or shall we say Super Jane Austen) comes in and saves the day (like a fairy godmother) she says, "Lizzie, I see you are weak and have no good connections and no money," (this is also part of the rules, if you are below a certain income that for us would still be pretty well off then you count as having no money) "but you are pretty and smart so I will reward you with Pemberly, Mr. Darcy, and ten thousand pounds a year." But for people who are stupid and/or ugly she gives them bad marriages, marriage slow and miserable as it were. So that's why these books didn't make sense to me and made me angry, I didn't understand that Jane Austen was controlling her own little world here. Jane Austen is really just the nice fairy godmother taking pity on the weak and helpless women who deserve husbands and money. And it's not really about husbands, it's about marriage as death and if people follow Jane's rules of goodness then they go to marriage heaven and if they are bad they go to marriage hell. That's why everything ends with marriage. There is no escaping marriage, it is the ultimate fate. And I realize that when I was a little girl I lived in Jane Austen's marriage world, and I think most people do when they're little, even boys. But now I realize that I can just not get married and it's like I've found out how to cheat death. Digory says, "I don't know that I care about living on and on after everyone I know is dead." but hey, it could be an interesting adventure.