Boogie times in Olympia. Watched Eric's Shakespeare class perform A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is actually better with bad acting, as I would not have guessed and you would probably not have guessed either, but Shakespeare knew it. I've been riding around on city buses, the 41 line, going to and from Evergreen State College to see what the art fags are up to on both sides of town. People here buy some strange, diverse cars, and they commonly sing on the streets for themselves and play odd-looking instruments. Eric often plays his harmonica and sings Dylan.

And there is a lake called "Capitol Lake," usually referred to as The Lake or My Lake. There are seals in the lake, who come out mainly at four a.m. and flip around in the water. The town is full of majestic views from on high, looking down great hills and over bridges with epic movie shots onto house tops and lush forests and deep brown dirt. This is essentially Maryland but more compact.

Yet, according to Eric, this town is Death. He still searches for cool people, but so far whenever he's found one it turns out the person is from Maryland. The residents are very wigged out, wear hipster clothing and slouch around being local. Lots of smiles and vacant conversations about happenings. The bars have stylish neon designs and are the kind of place chronicled in indie movies and internet hip-posts. Eric's classes are laughably, cryingly bad. His Blake class has seminars that remind me of the early months of freshmen year, when no one knew what to do and so spouted theories and spoke authoritatively to the open air without conversing. The teacher is a real flake hippy willow chick, who mainly teachers poetry workshops with exercises that mix high school and party games. She doesn't talk much, just nods encouragingly.

I wouldn't mind living here, though. I rather like death. I thought that's what hipsters are supposed to exonerate, anyway.

So I'm totally in Olympia, Washington right now. I had a fifty-five hour Amtrak ride up from Albuquerque, which should totally be a band name, totally, Up From Albuquerque, I like it, I totally do. I rode first the Southwest Chief, great name, and then the Coast Starlight, not such a good name, and not such a good train, either. Amtrak rents Union Pacific's lines, and are thus forced to stand aside for all of Union Pacific's freight trains, which unionpacific their fannies on down south with dull regularity. Our train spent half the time sitting by the side of the tracks, and the passengers got to stare out the widthy windows into small patches of trees and rocks and little round bushes you in the east would not recognize. We were staring at the sort of place I've dodged away from trains into. Not much goin' aaahn. And so, over night, while I was adjusting and readjusting the seat, trying to find a comfortable sleeping position, not finding it, and sleeping somehow anyway, and waking up smelly, the train lost SEVEN HOURS.

The next day it moved in spurts up the coast, literally on the coast for some beautiful stretches, and as my odors grew, I read and tried to avoid the loud mother and her louder four year old. Their usual schtick was to run back together from the café with soda and buckets of grease stuffed into the form of hamburgers, the mother chiding the girl and the girl crying "Mommy, how can I make it up to you, how can I be good for you" and the mother saying, loudly, "do you have to be so loud? Why are you so loud? loud, loud loud!" The girl also played "Baby," a game which consisted of her shrieking in a mimic baby cry repetitively and the mother saying, "Whay are you crying like a baby? You're not a baby." (I'm not being sarcastic, mind you. This really was a "game" the girl played.) The girl was mildly overweight, dressed in tight pants and ill-cut shirts with miss-matched colors, crooning at every other little girl that passed, "You my friend!" and the other little girls running away. The mother was monstrously fat, kind of like Jabba the Hut only bigger, and wore a tank top that had a "provocative" hole in the back, and which displayed her blue bra.

I was seated near the connection between trains, and my car had a door that slid closed as if it were retarded, squeeking shut as slowly as possible, taking about a minute and a half, leaving revealed the banging and rattling and clinking and huffing of the space in between cars to shout at us as we tried to sleep. The attendents made maximum use of this door between the hours of midnight and eight a.m., and courteously made no announcements, so that no one would know what station it was, or if we could have a cigarette break.

Ah, cigarettes. I've made up with you since I got back on the ground, now haven't I? In two days I was able to get maybe one cigarette every eight hours. There was no smoking car. There had been on my previous Amtrak ride, which led me to believe this trip would be better than a Greyhound. And maybe it was for all that. Next time, however, I will get a sleeping car, which even has a shower and paid meals. As it was, my underwear were fused to my ass by the time I got off, and I mainly ate microwaved Gardenburgers fused together with grease.

And now I am in the home of American Indie. Eric has grown progressively weirder. He now wears a head scarf, a bracelet and rings; still has a shaved head, and still wears clothing much too big on him, for he is still bone thin. His apartment has two identical cats, a mother cat and her son cat. Both are black and bug-eyed and huge. The mother cat has nine distinguishing features on her belly, but otherwise they are a perfect pair. The mother is called Salome, and the son Babylon. My brother never managed to get his Nebiru cat. It's ride kept falling through.

Eric has five very tiny rooms: two bedrooms, kitchen, living room, and the nonesuch. The apartment's probably intended as a single, but he has a roommate, whom I've not met yet. He's fed me mainly peanut butter so far, which is what he generally eats all day. He has found no job yet, but makes some money modelling for thirty six bucks a pop, which he gets roughly twice weekly. (No, it's true, really. Everything I've said.)

I'll be leaving here next Tuesday on a plane for Chicago, and then will drive with crazy Will back to Maryland. See you soon, Scott; Anne, don't drown; Noah, I don't believe you exist anymore, but if you do, shalom. If I don't write again soon, huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugs.

I had my don rag today. I got my junior essay back, and my tutors commented on it. One seminar tutor said, "I was impressed by Mr. Green's understanding of Kant's logic, and his clarity was excellent." The other said, "I thought Mr. Green was very good at coving up the parts of Kant's arguments that he didn't understand, and he did this particularly with the logic." I don't know who was right.

My language tutor noticed that I was separated from the other students socially, but said that when I entered the conversation, we talked to each other well. What he doesn't know is that I despise the other students . . .

My lab tutor gave back my paper on James Clerk Maxwell. You may think I meant "Clark", but indeed, his middle name is Clerk. This should be a lesson to us all. My tutor thought my paper was incomplete. Perhaps this is because the paper is incomplete. I lost some sleep over it so I could say I tried. It was written between 3 and 5 a.m. Wes was able to give me just enough insight into the electro-magnetic theory of light for me to produce three pages on a treatise thousands of pages long.

And math.
And math.
And math.

It's surprising. I did well in math. I was told that I ought to trust myself more on the complicated proofs, as in Newton. This despite the fact that he only thinks I would do well because I understand calculus, which is like thinking that because I understand how to govern a flashlight, I should trust myself to be a Senator.

Oh, and then the ship finally came to dock, and walking off the deck came Bob Dylan. He lit a cigarette, donned his sunglasses, and smiled. I have no more classes, and the Dylan in me is happy.

"The film features a singer who joins a rising band, only to accidentally cause their deaths. After making a pact with the devil, the band returns from the dead, and become highly successful."

Has anyone here head of Emir Kusturica? Director of Time of the Gypsies and Underground, two of the most awesome movies ever made? One does wonder, one does wonder.

It is getting tired here. I am one of the last hold-outs of the original credo, sworn in blood, that we will never die. Weariness has rendered me even more useless than I ever was. I am awake every night at two a.m., frantically attempting to correct my amassing and horrible errata. My face looks like that of a losing boxer's. Even getting a small bit of food is a daunting effort, and I think I might soon question its necessity.

The college has replaced the edges of every table with shards of glass, razors, cactus needles and salt. I have not been able to lean anywhere, on anything, for weeks. The legendary dust of New Mexico, second only to the hills of Idaho, and followed closely by the volcanos of Montana, has collected under my window, and so every time I try to air out my maggot infested room, I must prepare to whoop and bellow and cough and hawk and wheeze.

The library fired me on Monday, and then rehired me as jester. It is now my job to entertain the board of visitors and governers, putting on a smile with red paint and pretending that the wrinkles are made out of putty so that I don't disturb the childish minds of the my customers. I am forced to dance on pained feet, and wave my strengthless arms in the air, to turn my death thralls into a caper, and make mirth with lungs that are tired of breathing. My tears usually erase my painted smile, but the ignorent bourgeois audience assumes that I am converting from jester to clown, and calls out innocently, "yes, show us your misery and your foppery, make us laugh by causing yourself pain!" And so I do, and when they see me, they begin to sense the destitute and exhausted plight of the Student. As the realization, such as they are able to understand it, drizzles over the heads of my imbecilic audienc, some of them throw money at my feet and cry for my forgiveness, but the money is always fake, given them by their handlers to make them pride themselves on their riches, of which they are in fact being swindled daily, and so I am left with nothing.

There is a new regulation in the dining hall that, after every meal, all students must vomit up what little they were able to eat. This is collected and turned into dog food, by which Aramark, our contractor, turns a significant profit. I lose nothing from this decree, as I never ate there anyway, but still, the injustice rankles in my breast, and brings tears of outrage to my already wet eyes.

As I left my room to write this, my one allotted missive to the world, which I intended to use by begging for charity but instead have filled up with nothing but complaints, stern-faced men were carrying my bed sideways out of my door. They said they would replace it with an iron bar fastened to the walls and draped over with canvas.

The hope of Maryland is now all that keeps me from complete despair. If anyone has taken my cats, or removed the moisture from the air, I hope that what I have written above is enough to make him want to reverse his deeds. Please pet Flagg for me; rub him well and with diligence, for he is and has always been very dear to me. Give him whatever extra scraps of meat you can scrounge, and try to keep him free of flees. Glance with kindness on Mulder once in a while, too. He may not deserve it, but he has made himself mildly less disgusting to me by means of his loyalty. He has written to me every day, although most of the content of his letters has been removed by the auditors. Still, it has provided me with my only news for these many long months. Perhaps you might spare him one or two kicks a day on this account.

As a last entreaty: I have found it necessary to sell all of my possessions, including my beloved collections of curtain fabric and car decal stickers, in order to buy my passage home; and this small income proved to be insufficient. If any of you could find it in your hearts, or perhaps in your purses, which is more likely, please send me a few pennies. It would be the work of divinity if I don't have to sell my ass somewhere in Tenessee to pay for the final leg of my trip.

The seminar was on Smith. Adam, that is. Every one was a bit jittery, but we were all pretty sure, because the seniors hadn't doen Lola's yet. That's where they make their money, right? They can't do it before they make their money! So it can't be, could it? Of course, there are balloons in the freshman seminar down the hall . . . and somebody saw seniors mixing drinks in the faculty office twenty minutes ago . . . and a bunch of seniors were seen driving down Camino Cruz Blanca in the back of a pickup truck porting a keg of beer . . . but still, Lola's hasn't happened yet, so how could it be?

We talk about sweatshops, with an air of absurdity, because there was nothing in this particular reading that would lead one to talk about sweatshops. Tairiffs, yes, how much France sucks, yes, but not child labor or Nike. I tell them all this, but they don't listen. They almost never listen to me. I make a comment and the conversation stops, my tutor says something like, "But isn't he also talking about how we should have no qualms about importing, as long as the price is cheaper?" And I say, like, "Yes, but it's in reference to developed countries. Last I heard, there weren't any sweatshops in Holland." And she says, "But it's not such a leap to apply it to a debate that's still going on today, is it?" And I say, "No, but we would have no support from the text if we want to talk about it. If we want to talk about it anyway, fine." And she says, "That's understandable. But suppose--"

And then a phone rings. People look around to see what asshole forgot to turn his phone off, but we soon realize that everyone is looking around. Finally, the guy in the corner (the prematurely balding blonde Texan with freaky jaw bones, as a matter of fact) opens the cabinet and takes out a tiny gray cell phone. "Hello? . . . He wants to talk to Mr. Green." The class laughs, and the phone is passed to me.

"I thought I told you never to call me here."

"Camm autsihd," I hear Jess Castle say. "Ant tell suh clas to continyu see conferzation."

I leave the room and there is Jess, dressed all in black, with sunglasses and a blue neck scarf. His friend Angus is also there, wearing the same get-up. They pull me into the corner and say, "Take ov your shirt and your chaket, hmm? Ant put on zis sun dress." They instruct me to put my arms through the neck hole. "It iz sleefless, yah. Klaus, look at the big girl!" "Yah, he is zo pretty! Now go back into see classrohm and tell zem to continyoo see confersation. Ve'll be there in a few minuten."

I go back in. The seminar is talking about machines and labor. I sit down and people laugh nervously, explosively, still trying to control themselves a bit. "Hey, pretty lady!" "Mr. Green, what are you doing later tonight?"

"It's becoming increasingly obvious. They said to continue the conversation."

Amazingly, people actually did continue to talk about Adam Smith, though in the silliest possible manner.

After a few minutes, my shoulders were getting very cold and I was wondering if Jess and Angus were actually coming. I was looking down at my lap and Mr. Coker-Dukowitz looked over and said, "It's showing, but don't worry, it looks good." Hmm.

In come Jess and Angus. "Hello, seminar. Vee are prospective tutors, and ve're goink to be takink ovah your seminar tonight. I am Klaus, and this is my partner Klaus. Vee are gay lovers from East Berlin. Hm-hm-hm-hm! Olt tutors, please go to Lowah Commons. Come on. Get aut."

"Do you mean 'old tutors,' or 'legitimate tutors'?"

"Vee ahr Cherman. Vee mean 'olt'."

And there was much drunkeness and spilling of baby formula.