Where is the vernal sun?

I am standing in the kitchen watching the water over my beans foam, waiting for the explosion of bubbles that signals boiling, counting off two minutes, waiting an hour. The three step soup - soak beans, cook vegetables, combine and cook more. I am standing in the kitchen taking the beans off the heat to soak and cool and I am alone, because Ethan has left. Three hours ago. And since then I have done nothing beneficial to anyone except perhaps Dick Cheney.

Spring break is over - for him tomorrow for me a week ago - and we have to pretend to go back to our normal lives and like them, apart, as we have for years. I don't mind, really, in the way that doing 30-hour famine in high school wasn't difficult. It's easy to not eat when you know there is food coming in sufficient supply - the first couple of hours might not be fun but after that you learn to deal with it. I feel like I do when I've been in California for Christmas - 35 degrees waiting for the bus seems like Antarctic winter - now I feel bereft. I wonder sometimes if being pregnant makes you stupid, what about being on the pill (seeing as how it's fake pregnancy)? I cry more than I used to - is it hormonal or just some new sensitivity and empathy that I've gained though maturity? Maybe the heartbreak of Belle is timeless and beautiful that there's nothing right or wrong with me at all.

We told ourselves we could do three years, three more years after the one at Penn. What's four years, with regular visits, compared to the lifetime ahead of us? I believed it. I do believe it.
Temporary pain for lasting pleasure, the principle of sprints. I've never liked them but I know they're good for me, especially if I have someone encouraging me on the sideline, or running alongside panting equally hard. It's good to know that my competitive nature is the sort that's "not annoying" at least according to my fellow climbers. But what about two more years beyond that? Beyond a new and cheap Southwest route, beyond last-minute amtrak and hours on the road. We will have to, if it comes down to it, or I will have to think very hard about what I want to do. And I think that is the hardest question to ask these days - do I want this degree enough to further prolong my unhappiness and furthermore the happiness of someone else?

The tragic backstory, which we all (involved) hope will fizzle into nothingness: my department which has been on and off the skids for a while may finally fall apart once and for all, with more than half the faculty leaving and (as a result) the only force of good in the senior faculty retiring. No one to write with, no one to take interesting classes with, to climb with, to drink with, to hear laughing infectiously in the hallway with. No one to trust with anything remotely confidential.

If this all comes to pass (please cross your fingers in hope - the more the better) there is likely no way to stay. Which means to transfer. To retake that awful time-sucker of a GRE, to repurpose my statement, to pull together my still pathetic reading list, find a decent writing sample, solicit recommendations, do research on faculty and schools, and hope that someone will want me and give me enough money to not need loans or teach 20 hours a week. And that I will be close or easy for Ethan to see. I think I am a little afraid every time he leaves that it will be the last time he leaves - like a dog or a small child who still is unsure of the relationship between present, past, and future; before understanding of pattern or intention; before trust in words or promises or emotion - and now I am afraid that these two years of easy weekends which still don't seem like enough will recede back into the snatched visits of Penn, one a month at most.

I am afraid. But he is calling, to tell me he's back at the apartment and fine and that he loves me and that life is normal and fine. I will try to listen.

Funny, I've just been reading James Herriot

I was in the supermarket this afternoon, futilely looking for conditioner. Ever since I was showering totally on my own I've always used Finesse (more when you need it, less when you don't). It's creamy, it smells okay, and I think it makes my hair turn out okay. But in the last six months it's been very difficult to find. I think it must be going out of business or has vastly lost its popularity. So I was debating between Pantene and Dove and all the others (and ended up buying none - time to start trying the interesting versions at TJs) when suddenly Henna 'n' Placenta caught my eye. Conditioner to revitalize damaged hair with all natural henna and all natural placenta. I read the ingredients to make sure, and in fact there is extract of each. I have no idea what that consists of but I find it a bit disturbing. Also unsettling is that instead of being packaged in a nice plastic bottle, it comes in individual plastic/foil packets, like a giant pack of fruit snacks or something. Much larger than my normal "individual serving" of conditioner in any given shower. And so you can feel the gelatinous texture of the inside through the packaging like a slightly deflated jelly tube, and you can believe there's placenta in there and the thought is a little too much. I know that there are plenty of disgusting things that we ingest or smear on ourselves (unpronounceable chemicals, horse urine and hooves, insect spit, cow secretions) at least on an intellectual level which have never particularly bothered me, even when I knew the origin. But this was somehow different, and I know I'm not alone in my horrified curiosity - the package was askew in its rack when I walked by to start, probably one of the things that primarily drew my attention. Gingerly I put it back on its shelf, properly seated, and left the aisle. I may never go back.