the diary of antoine roquentin

Here’s what I was so tempted to leave in the layout. Unfortunately, Molly made me change my glorious headline.

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Yes–I know–I don’t really believe in omens, but foreshadowing happens so much in novels it just might as well happen in real life. I mean, do novels reflect reality or vice versa? Well anyway, I went to Wal-Mart, and I went to pull into a parking spot and I drastically misjudged and came within inches of this car. This wouldn’t have been so catastrophic except for this elderly couple had just gotten out of it. I was kind of freaked out, because I thought that I hit them from the way they were gesticulating. The husband was standing by the back fender of his car. So I got out of my car and walked around to where he was standing.
“I didn’t hit you, did I?”
“You came within like THIS MUCH” he held out a tiny space between his fingers for emphasis “of my car!!” And I did the thing I hate. I played like I didn’t care. Nonchalantly, I replied, “Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Look at that!” he said, “You need to straighten that out!” I looked. My car was catty-cornered in the space. It was a HORRIBLE parking job. I think my worst yet. I grimaced, mostly to myself, and walked over to the driver’s side to fix it. I was deathly afraid of actually hitting his car this time, so I went back as slow as I could, paying careful attention to his facial features so I didn’t hit his car. I straightened it out, gathered some change from my front seat, locked the doors, and started walking towards the store. OH MY GOD was that embarrassing. All through my ritual of buying the rechargeable batteries (which are now charging in the office here) I was consumed with guilt and self-loathing. I made up my mind to just drive home, as that whole situation was indeed a bad omen. But, I said to myself, “What are you doing? You need to be a true nihilist and recognize that omens are simply fiction.” And then I got my conscience tied up in the “does fiction imitate reality or vice versa” debate, so I went back to the college simply as an experiment in whether omens really are true. So if something else shitty happens to me, then I’ll have proof of omens. Or just proof of coincidences. We’ll see. I wish I could hang out with the Lethargy Club gang. I know they’re all going to see Harry Potter, I should go. Jill is here. Gotta go, we’re going to look for Molly.

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Yesterday I bought a sketch pad to keep by my bed so I could write down my dreams. So every time I came out of sleep, I’d jot down what happened. I guess it’s part of my comprehensive plan to blog twenty-four hours a day. Well, here they are. I’ll first have what I jotted down, and then the dream.

Weird bugs in room: I dreamt that Kelly and I were watching TV in my living room, and there was this show about bees. Well, with that, bees started coming from everywhere, so I ran into my room and locked the door. When I glanced around my room, I noticed there were bugs everywhere—ants, bees, everything—and that my carpet was all earthy and mushy. Well for some reason I started building this train set that turned into a launch system for this satellite that was probably about as big as my fist. It was all silver and metallic, but there was some mechanical glitch and I couldn’t get it to work. Then I woke up.

Carrie creepy house NY: Well, I was in New York—actually I think it was New Jersey. It was all grimy and there were no trees and there were all these weird places that we didn’t feel like we could go into because there were too many black people in them. So me and this group of maybe two others went into this high school prom, and they were really mean to one of the people I was with, and I said something about Carrie and that they’d get what they deserved. Well, I left and next door to the school was this little shack and out came out this really big black man who was evil and all covered in gross-ness and rags and it was somehow obvious he was going to kill everyone, so I ran away. Then I woke up.

Halloween party: I really don’t remember this dream. I guess it had something to do with a Halloween party, obviously.

Harry P. Tree Man: Well, this dream started and I was in this cool city, it was all beautiful and kind of French village, but in some aspects Harry Potter-ish. Well, I was walking around and something happened, then I started talking to this guy, saying “Yeah, I’ve read the first two (Harry Potter) books, I just did it because I couldn’t find anything good to read, and my friends were doing it.” “Yeah.” He said. Later, we were looking for someone, so we climbed up this ridge and on top of it was this cottage. We went inside looking for some guy and he wasn’t there, but then we noticed this sculpture on the wall of this tree-man and how lifelike it looked. Then it came alive and stepped out of the wall, as if to say “your quest is at an end, you have found me.” Then I woke up.

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