To make a long story short: my graduate program is imploding.

My favorite professor--the only female core faculty member in the poetics program--is being royally screwed by the administration. We have four professors, and two of them (including her) are being forced to either take a 50% pay cut and go to part time status, or take their severance package and quit.

This is unfair on about seven thousand levels. She is easily the professor that puts the most work into her classes. She's a faculty advisor. She has been working there for fourteen years. And she already makes a miniscule salary as it is.

We organized a protest meeting and letter writing campaign to plan our next move, and to try and get something done about it. At the meeting, Alexander Hamilton showed up (he's the faculty chair) and told us that another thing they're doing--in fact, their first move--is not to renew the contract of the faculty advisor for our magazine. (The magazine that just came out--you can buy one from me for $10.)

My Keats professor volunteered to take on the magazine for next year. But unfortunately, he has no computer facilities, failing health and, I'm sorry, few organizational skills. It's going to be a half ass version of the magazine, instead of something to be proud of and which will promote our program.

Fuck. That. Noise.

This is just another indicator of the way the administration doesn't care about the poetics program. Our tuition should be able to cover the program's expenses, except that the school is siphoning the money into other programs instead. The morale of the program is already low, and this is going to deal a death blow to it, seriously hurting a group of amazing, passionate, talented, loyal students.

The meeting today was energetic and productive. Tomorrow, I am calling the acting president (who we sent a letter of protest to) to make an appointment. Some representatives (myself included) are going to meet with him and talk about the situation. I don't know if we have a chance in hell of succeeding, but we have to try.

My friends and I spent tonight talking it over from every angle. I echo the sentiments of Hannah, who said that her heart is breaking. "I've never been happier in my life," she said, "than in being here, with you guys, in this program. If it falls apart, I don't know what I'm going to do." A bunch of students are talking about leaving, including Huck, Probst, Mickey, and Joey.

This is bad news, guys and dolls. This is very, very bad indeed.

Ah yes. Probst. Well. Uuh...

Let's just say that I don't think our little dalliance is a secret from our friends anymore. (Yeah, there's a dalliance. See what you miss, not being on the notify list?)

I can't really define the dalliance for you at this moment. (I'd prefer to phrase it with a bit more couth than Buddy, who said tonight: "So... you guys are fucking, right?") I keep getting tarot readings that say we should go with the flow, and I guess that's what we're doing. We're just going with what feels right, figuring it will all sort itself out, whether we're destined to be friends, lovers, or whatever.

He's one of my best friends in the program, so of course I care about him a lot. We have tons in common, the same sense of humor, blah blah blah. And as Bruce pointed out (yeah, yeah, he was right) I'm totally into how fucking smart the guy is. I am such a sucker for a smart guy.

The problem is, I made a decision to be single so I could focus on things like poetry, the city, and my friends. I have other places to put my energy, rather than into a relationship.

However. I can share a lot of those things with Probst, so that rationale just isn't as persuasive anymore. For instance, he and I have been planning for a while to do a 'zine this summer. We'd be working together on that project anyway. So, for now, we're just letting the relationship evolve and seeing what happens.

Oh, he knows about the journal. And he wants me to change his journal name from Probst to Tiger. Which is just not going to happen for him. (Sorry, Tiger.)

I keep coming back to the sadness. My friends are feeling it, too: people aren't sleeping, they can't eat. Everything has just been thrown into this nightmarish limbo.

I think about events that are coming up: Huck's party, Mickey's pair of poetry readings, the next meeting of "Fiesta de la Revolucion," and I wonder. How many more days will I get to spend with these people, who I have come to love? When is it all going to come crashing down?

I knew this experience couldn't last forever. But why, oh why, can't I have one more year?

"I distinctly remember being shown these pictures of my grandfather’s corpse, looking waxen and serene. I hadn’t thought about this in fifteen years and suddenly, for the first time in my life, it struck me as a little odd that my mother had done this."