Rereading Diana Wynne Jones is proving precisely the sort of relief from James Joyce as one might expect. The mental break is needed. I've been writing for what feels like days; if it isn't the research paper, it's the workshop venture (working title: Twitch), if it's not that, it's what is currently operating under the title of That Bastard Millionare Story, and if it's not that, it's something recreational like blog posts or randomized, poking attempts to write within one of the other established worlds within my current range.

Not that I'm complaining. It feels good to stretch out those wings, truth be told. Shakespeare one moment, Wanderer the next, small gods and rhapsodies shortly to follow. It's just wearisome.

Other schoolwork: reading Chekov, studying chemistry and writing an essay about the belongings I feel essential on my travels through life, written in the style of The Things They Carried. The point of that particular assignment is a mystery, but who cares? The story is amazing, the style is fun to copy and the subject is my very most favorite: me, myself, I, me me me me meeeeeeee, glorious wonderful ME.

I do not carry humility. It has proven too heavy.

I've taken to playing Pokemon Sapphire in my spare time. Gracious, that game is addictive. I have completely abandoned William Trevor in favor of wandering the sprite (named BEAR) about the world enslaving tiny cute animals and forcing them to fight for her. Depressing Irish short stories vs. tiny cute animal-things, really, it's no debate at all, is it?

And then there's Diana Wynne Jones, maysherestinpeace. I started with the familiar Howl's Moving Castle, then moved on to The Lives of Christopher Chant, a book I can be confident in saying was read many a time by one J.K. Rowling.

I feel it should be mentioned the book has a card attached to the back cover on which is written, in clumsy nine-year-old-me scribble, the title and the name Chloe Brownstein. I have no idea who Chloe Brownstein is, but apparently she borrowed this book from baby-librarian Susie at some point. And brought it back, good for her. I have this mental picture of tiny-me wandering about in Chloe Brownstein's wake, demanding at ever-increasing volumes that she return my book or I will fine her.

This is, I'm sure I have no need to tell you, why tiny-me had no friends.