Dingoes and hyenas reingest their own vomit, did you know? When food runs short, they hack up their cookies to feed their young.

And that's why I haven't been updating lately. I've been thinking about things so much, and reevaluating my roles socially, academically, and occupationally, to the point where everything seems takes on an obnoxiously postmodern hue and seems really stupid and obvious. So to write about it would be like feeding you my vomit.

SPEAKING OF WHICH: I can confidently say that I'm no longer bulimic. It's been a long time since a binge and purge, about four months, and for the first time since puberty, I'm eating like a normal human being. What's more, I've lost about 10 pounds over the past three months, despite the fact that I don't work out, and half of what I eat is starch smothered in cheese. Go, me.

This is going to be spastic. Enjoy.

My hippie grad school is very writing-intensive and experience-based, which is awesome. Most of my grades are based on in-class participation, which I can smoke like Hiroshima, and written papers, which I plan to base on personal experience, i.e. cut and paste some crucial points from readymade past diary entries.

I did have one formal exam, though, which I don't mind telling you that I aced. Sorry, but I'm both excited and relieved that I remember how to study, even if it's cramming for a midterm that's mostly based on memorizing data from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Stuff actually sunk in, though.

I got a 97.5% on my Psychopathology midterm, (yay!) so I can easily differentiate between Borderline and Histrionic Personality Disorder, I can tell you whether you have Cyclothymic or Dysthymic Disorder, and I know that Schizophrenia and Dissassociative Identity Disorder (the craziness formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder) are completely different illnesses. This makes for fantastic dinner conversation. I'm a treat.*

Funny enough, I missed half a point on my exam by writing "Bulimia" instead of "Bulimia Nervosa" as an answer to a question. I guess that my professor didn't know that I'm on a first name basis with that particular bucket of crazy.

I'm learning so much that my entire thought process and my way of seeing the world is taking on a whole new vocabulary.

* I'm just kidding. I don't dish out amateur diagnoses. I'm waiting until I can get paid for it.

There's a lot of free-floating urine in the toilet bowls around here. My friend Eric, the long-haired hip-hop hippie, cited environmental awareness as a reason, and quoted the following age-old poem:

If it's yellow, leave it mellow
If it's brown, flush it down.

Um, okay, if you're at camp or on a space shuttle and have a very limited water supply. Otherwise, yuck.

I have a different poem:

I don't care if you poop it or pee it
Please always flush – I don't want to see it

I'm meeting very cool people in my classes, and between outings to the city and hanging with my roommates, my weekends have been very full.

I'm still completely obsessed with roller derby, and have spread my fascination to my roommate, Zoe. She and I are planning on joining a team after the holidays.

Zoe, my new friend Ellie, and I attended a derby bout in Oakland, which was far rougher and less formal than the bouts I've seen in Chicago. It was in a small venue, and our faces were pressed up to the sneezeguard around the rink. It was awesome. We could see the derby girls bashing the shit out of each other and laughing about it.

A couple of classmates collaborated on a crazy pirate/stripper roller derby name for me, and have been bringing me articles about the sport every time they see one. Whenever I call them, they see my name on their caller ID and answer the phone with, "Hey, Fitz of Fury."

Because I'm a Fitz. Kelly Fitz.

It makes sense to me that man once thought the heart to be the center of consciousness. Ancient Egyptians, when mummifying their dead, would entomb the heart and discard the brain.

The heart is the only organ through which your emotions reliably register. Your brain doesn't pulse in a way that makes you fear that a glut of passion might kill you; and even when your thoughts are racing, they don't chop up your breath and numb your extremities the way the heart does as it pumps blood through your body.

Maybe that's why we still place so much stock in the heart. Heartache, heartbreak, heartsick, light- or heavy-hearted, cross your heart and hope to die. Poor little things can't escape their own symbolism.

When my uncle and I were driving from Chicago to Oakland, the topography outside the window of the moving van grew from a flatline to a freakout fibrillation. Level farmland in Illinois through Nebraska gave way to rolling hills in Wyoming. The hills grew into Utah's giant red mounds, flecked with brush like the baby stubble of a black man's beard. These mounds continued to grow throughout Utah, until we reached Nevada, where the Rockies were jagged and ubiquitous in the background.

We made a stop in Park City, Utah, where we were pummeled with hail as soon as we parked the van. We stopped for a beer and some sight-seeing in Park City, and my uncle tried, in his Leave it to Beaver way, to befriend the tour guides at the information desk. It was funny; everywhere we stopped, my uncle casually slipped into conversation that I was his niece, as if he was afraid of people assuming we were lovers. Ew.

On our way out of Park City, we decided to take a scenic, less-traveled route. I was driving. We winded up and up the dirt mountain roads, which got increasingly narrow though our van stayed just as elephantine. As the angle of the mountain increased, so did the frequency of shock-dulling bumps in the unpaved road. With every bounce, I could hear all of my stuff shifting further back in the van's storage area, shifting and settling in new and precarious sculptures. My uncle laughed. I was like, "Uncle Chris, that's my entire life back there." He was kind enough to temper his laughter from then on, and he praised my ballsy driving.

I was determined, and my uncle, a seasoned outdoorsman, was unphased, so I prodded the van further uphill as my uncle cued me when to slip into second and third gear. We trespassed through a mountain overpass where no self-respecting moving van would be caught dead, and eventually landed in a part of Utah far west of where we would have been if we had stayed on our intended course. The unintentional detour shaved ninety minutes off of our total trip.

Back on route 80, which had been our traveling companion and bedfellow for a day and a half, we drove past The Great Salt Lake, which my uncle says dries your mouth for days after you taste it, and continued straight through to Nevada.

I think the wild west is hiding something. The landscape is a tease.

Really, I've never seen so much nothingness in one place as I did when we drove through Nevada. Most of the state is unspeakably desolate. Ten miles of highway in Nevada houses more nothingness than all of Nebraska; it might even rival the prairie lands of Canada for the amount of nothingness per square acre. But everywhere you look, against the sky are mountains that seem close enough to lick, yet impossibly far away. They reek with a palpable possibility that brightens the endless brush of Nevada's foreground.

Uncle Chris and I stayed overnight at his house, located a couple of hours west of Reno. He lives in sweet, clean little development that bleeds with the love of Jesus, where the lawns are perfectly uniform green crew cuts. Walk out his front door in the morning, though, and the backdrop of blue and purple Rockies smack you in the face, reminding you that for people who believe in Him, God is a force to be reckoned with.

I said a tearful goodbye to my cat, (who, by the way, is very happy at my uncle's house and has befriended his 300-year-old blind beagle,) and Uncle Chris and I got back in the van.

My uncle led me down secret avenues undetected by Mapquest. We coiled up roads that were skinny as ribs, occasionally pulling over to let friendly motorcyclists zoom past us. To our left was a rural scene straight off a postcard, if you'll forgive a cliche. Trees in the foreground, sloping down to valleys and lakes in the middle, and wallpapered with a backdrop of mountains, there was nothing typical about it. Around every turn was a view of you've got to be KIDDING me beauty, much more immediate and promising than the paradoxically tantalizing show put on by Nevada.

Before leaving the California sticks, we pulled over to a farmer's market to pick up tomatoes, pluots, corn on the cob, and apricot pie to bring to my new house. The woman at the counter was golden, rosy, and very, very pregnant. The apron she wore, bright red and freckled with seeds like a huge watermelon, accentuated her ripe belly.

Then we got here. We unloaded the truck, had some wine and pie, and my uncle drove back to the city. Then I found a job. Then I started classes. Then I began making friends.

I've been so busy that I haven't started to feel sad about the move until a couple of weeks ago. Things are just so much different. I'm in touch with my friends from Chicago and elsewhere, and I still love them and know they love me. I see photos and footage of Chicago, and I get pangs of ... something. It's not distant enough to be nostalgia, but it's something close, and it's sharper because of the closeness. It's not bad, though. It's just change. I do really like it here.

One of my first nights in the Bay Area, my roommate Chuck and I were driving into the city at sunset. "This is so pretty," I said, "I hope I never get used to it, you know?"

"It still surprises me," said Chuck, who's lived here for almost a decade.

I've noticed the Northern Californians are total wimps when it comes to the cold. When the temperature drops below fifty degrees, they throw on their winter coats and bitch like a bunch of pussies. I'm like, "Cry me a river. Try waiting half an hour for a bus in sub-freezing temperatures while falling sleet slashes your cheeks, and then we'll talk about cold."

This attitude has made me reluctant to wear a sweater when it's chilly, even though it would make me more comfortable, and it's chilly about 60% of the time. (I love that.) I was having a cigarette out on the balcony one night, listening to my teeth chatter and watching my hands shake, and it occurred to me that I was being an idiot. So, I got a coat. Why fight it? I've changed before, I can do it again.

It makes sense to me that the human heart can break. Life can be too much sometimes. What floors me is that it can heal again, fuel us as it always has, as we become more resilient. Sometimes the healing feels like a betrayal, but what else are we supposed to do?

Things are good. They're still uncertain as always, but I guess I kind of like that.

I don't have much else to say, but then I've never had much patience for tidy conclusions.

~ Last Five Entries ~

Spike the egg nog! Unless you don't like egg nog, in which case just drink the brandy. - 12.24.05

Say Hello! - 12.14.05

Black Friday - 11.27.05

Hey! Who's That Drunk Chick on the Blue Couch? - 11.23.05

Ratso Rizzo - 11.11.05

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BUY JEN'S BOOK! BUY IT! DO IT!

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BUY DEAN'S BOOK, TOO! YOU KNOW YOU WANNA! SERIOUSLY.

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