There are a few ghost cats on my block, ownerless, nocturnal, seen only by streetlamp and moon. They disappear whenever I bend and make the internationally recognized Call to the Unknown Cat. Rabbits also run away, but far less aesthetically. (An odd tie between the two campuses: the immense population of frightened little bunnies. Enough rabbits to store one in every dorm room and still have overstock.) Rabbits lock their muscles and stare into the darkness, sniffing, and then bounce stiffly in the other direction. Cats look up quickly, as though an action hero hearing an approaching train, incline their front, approach a bit, contemplate, quiver slighltly for a few seconds, then turn and flee in a fluidly choreographed move, not ceding territory but simply looking for something more awesome to do. They look back every few seconds as if expecting you to come see, and then the light runs out and they are gone.

I miss you, cats of the world. I would like to hang out with you, but you will not let me. Why do you tease me with your insensible image?

An older man comes into the library every night for three and a half hours and looks at bargain websites. This may be a more effective use of time than my own.

Intertextuality in Action: a play.

Marx: There is a double error in Hegel.
Faulkner: A bear or a deer has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be.
Marx: It would therefore be unfeasible and wrong to let the economic categories follow one another in the same sequence as that in which they were historically decisive.
Faulkner: But he aint gonter never holler, no more than he ever done when he was jumping at that two-inch door.
Marx: For this very reason, however, every medieval craftsman was completely absorbed in his work, to which he had a contented, slavish relationship, and to which he was subjected to a far greater extent than the modern worker, whose work is a matter of indifference to him.
Faulkner: So he comes to work, the first man on the job, when McAndrews and everybody else expected him to take the day off since even a nigger couldn't want no better excuse for a holiday than he had just buried his wife, when a white man would have took the day off out of pure respect no matter how he felt about his wife, when even a little child would have had sense enough to take a day off when he would still get paid for it too.
Marx: Take, for instance, the fattening of cattle, where the animal is the raw material, and at the same time an instrument for the production of manure.
Faulkner: Major has to get on back home.
Marx: On what grounds, then, do you Jews demand emancipation?
Faulkner: There aint any law against a man rushing his wife into the ground, provided he never had nothing to do with rushing her to the cemetary too.
Marx: It is still a matter, therefore, of the Jews professing some kind of faith; no longer Christianity as such, but Christianity in dissolution.
Faulkner: Come one, let's get back to town. I haven't seen my desk in two weeks.

I'm so green, I'm losing my Vitiman C. Wanna ask but I just stare.

Readers who know listen to Electrelane. They're like an all-woman Velvet Underground fronted by The Pastels' Bernice Simpson. Don't believe the implication of the band name, by they way--they're not electro, neither are they lame. Real live drummer who plays drum machine loops, jangly little rythem guitar, vocal melodies that sound sampled if only because she never really hits notes, but miraculously repeats the exact same mistake-sounding pitches multiple times. No Korg, but then, nobody's perfect.

Also good: Can is really good.

True, and if you ever need structure for your thoughts, bring them to Kay Duffy. She'll tell you what to do, with a hastily scribbled outline and a request for falafel balls and tzaziki. More revisions would still be appreciated. Any takers? How about you, Jellybaby? I hear you're reading a lot of crap for that Review thing, maybe you'd like to read something good for a change. J$, you're an author, right? I think I saw some of your work in The Education Gadfly. Anne, you have the essay already, or will by the time you read this.

Hey, is that a shiny object? I'm gonna go look at it.

"I know a girl named Elsa,
She's into Alkaseltzer."
-Noel Gallagher

I just read an essay by Octavio Paz in which he states that a poetic image at its most powerful unites two mutually exclusive objects, while retaining their individuality nonetheless. His example image used throughout the essay was based on an example of what he called the opposite type of thinking, logical scientific thinking. Such a statement as "a pound of feathers has the same weight as a pound of rocks," he says, deprives both feathers and rocks of their individuality and nature. The poetic image "feathers are rocks," however, combine the two without losing either. Though it breaks the law of contradiction, it is still true, part of the reality of realities.

Octavio Paz, it seems, is a douchebag.