There is a charge, a very large charge for a touch or a word...

I heart Sylvia Plath.

And indeed there is a very large charge for a word, because I am a fucking master-mistress of rhetoric.

I just finished a huge paper--can you tell?

The paper on cross-dressing? So last week. I just finished my gigantic term paper for my linguistics class. I don't know how well received it will be, as my research was not exactly discussed at any point during the quarter, but I think it's pretty solid and I should get points for originality. I backed things up with text. There are quotes from people who are much more knowledgeable than I am. I made pretty tables. I think I'll be okay.

Now all that's left is my equally gigantic term-paper, due Friday, on T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland."

I feel quite on top of things, though. I'm on page three (single-spaced) of that one, and there really are no limits as to where I can go with it.

I am not worried.

On the topic of words, though, I must admit that with spring there's come a sort of renaissance for me. I'm reading again--for leisure, not just for class. I wrote a few lines of poetry the other day. I'm journaling--physical and etherial-internet journals alike. It's as though my life had been possessed by someone, something other. I'd been reading a Nick Hornby novel since December. What had become of me? I don't quite know where I was, but in picking up the pen, in my feverish scrawling and my obsessive purchasing of books recently . . . I feel like I'm back in my own skin.

This is what I do. This is why I have a quill tattooed on my ankle. This is why I want words carved into my back like The Woman Warrior.

This feels right.