That purple- or black-eyed monster

I have been beset by a capricious DSL connection, and so have found even the simplest of online acts to require a heroic level of faith and persistence. Emails, blogs, the OED, etc. have practically closed their doors to me. At this moment, however, on this morning (Sunday), the connection is - though not constant - frequent. I am prone, as most of you know, to read into this "dis-connect," occurring as it did on the same day that I had finished school for the semester. I won't, however, do so here.

What I will do, is tell you how, contrary to all expectation, my days have continued to be spent on campus. The ostensible reason for my going is to return some of the hundreds of library books I have borrowed this semester. Once there, however, I hover, wander, roam around campus, as though lost and on the lookout for something familiar. I rarely find it. But sometimes there's a face or a patch of light or a book in the library that belongs to me or the lines in which I move.

Which is to say that already I am lonely. It's my curse, I suppose: a monster (Jordan named it "the black-eyed monster", but I prefer it "purple-eyed") that's ever stalking me, withdrawing when others come near, and then returning. It sits across from me as I read in my study, lumbers into bed with me at night, follows me through the streets when I walk to school. If it were truly as anthropomorphic as my metaphor implies, one might suggest I befriend it. But the truth is, I think, that it's a structural gap, a beance. It's what happens when one is all or mostly will and wills oneself be otherwise.