Thursday, August 30, 2007

caution.

Last night, our neighbor's apartment got broken into, and a laptop and X-box were stolen. This is two or three nights after we heard sirens going off, and then got a call from H. "Someone just ran by my window," he said. "Followed by two cops." I had been drinking tea and listening to music and looking at my atlas.

"Oh, right," T. placidly responded. "There've been policemen lining 53rd St. for a while now. Apparently something was going to go down today."

A few days ago, another friend's input: "Apparently during the party on Friday there were something like six gunshots on the next block."

Oh; yeah. We live on the South Side of Chicago.

Hyde Park is an interesting neighborhood, historically and presently. Sandwiched in between Kenwood on the north and Jackson Park on the south, it literally runs the gamut of millionaires with small princessy dogs to toughened street gangs. I've never been anywhere with as much economic and quality-of-life variation in one neighborhood. The most nervous I've gotten yet living here has been walking back from the 63rd Green Line stop at dusk, back when I lived in B-J on 60th Street. Conditions were not good--police surveillence lights blinked from the top of electric poles.

Alternatively, from 54th Street, I walk 4 blocks to the north to where A. babysits and feel like I'm in England, with the houses all set back in the lawns, with ornate brick & stone architecture and fountains on the front lawn. She points and says, "That's where Muhammad Ali lives. That's where Barack Obama lives... I think."

Things can be tense. Race relations are historically and famously poor. UChicago is a beautiful and gothic campus built beside blocks where people sleep in doorways. It's just... a lot, in one place.

I've rarely felt scared for my own safety. Hyde Park doesn't have the impact on me. I've walked back from the 6 past midnight, beside Nichols Park. There aren't really gangs of people standing around, looking shady. Granted, I always have at least one person with me, and we walk 53rd Street, where everything is located. Cops patrol the area. You'd have to be stupid to stand around and look shady.

Anyway. Things are much scarier a few blocks south & west of here. We live on the third floor, and we've got protective bars on our kitchen windows. It wouldn't be worth the time & energy.

..in other news, I realized a few days ago that if we'd taken the first apartment we looked at, we would have been neighbors with Barack Obama. Strange, awe-struck neighbors. We would have lived on the same block.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

"Bitch."

Last night, T., A. and I got into a very, very long and complicated discussion about the word "bitch", hip-hop, African-American culture, and racism.

It started when I heard a song playing - rap, or hip-hop, something - and said something off-handedly after hearing the word "bitch" (or maybe just being reminded of it), something general and controversial, like "This is what bothers me about black culture."

Having had experience at a public school in St. Louis, A. is highly sensitized to stereotyping and segregation. Hearing my blanket statement was understandably not OK to her. She looked at me, concerned, and asked why I would say that.

"When I hear the music that's mainstream and popular, it's almost always about how money is great, and women are 'bitches', and all of these things I just don't agree with. I feel like the values are really strange," I said (sounding like somebody's grandma.)

"Yeah, but 'white' pop music doesn't exactly represent white people," T. joined in.

"Right, and tons of white suburban kids listen to rap music. But the thing is, that's what's being consumed. So that's what's being allowed to represent black music, and African-Americans in general. It's what's being chosen," I said.

A. pointed out that she felt this was mainly a low socio-economic thing, which led us into a discussion of the problem of poverty in the black community. It got really charged really quickly. A. said she was just concerned that I was approaching black culture with a negative attitude, which is destructive because equality still hasn't been achieved. She said it was easy to see something I dislike and apply it to the whole group of people. That it's easy just to turn off.

This is true, I said, but how can I approach something I find negative with a positive attitude? I don't like the word "bitch", and I don't think it improves things to use it more broadly, so why support it?

A. and T. argued that I shouldn't support use of the word, but I shouldn't tune out the musician either. Then it became a more linguistic conversation, about how the word "bitch" is different when I hear it from my white small-town background than it sounds from the perspective of someone in the black community.. that in the latter situation, it is less stigmatized. I can have my opinion, but I should understand the difference and approach it with respect.

Basically, T. said, it can be something I dislike but not disrespect. Respect implies a kind of openness--not turning one's back. This was, I think, his main point. A. wanted to emphasize that one should approach an entire group of people positively, even with negative associations. I wanted to stress that I don't think racism should be destroyed at the cost of sexism being allowed--that to be accepting of people shouldn't mean being accepting of things you don't respect.

I think we all got somewhere, although it was sort of loud and passionate toward the end. When you start talking about sexism in a multi-gender context, or racism within the American context, automatically everything requires great care. And we were doing both.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

bee inspired!

I've been feeling inspired lately, in a muted, stuck-in-a-routine, late-summer kind of way.

So here's an update: I've been thinking about possibly double-majoring in Environmental Studies. Relentlessly thinking about it. There are some pros & cons. Allow me to list them.

PROS:
-I would get to take a lot of really cool classes about which I'm already excited... i.e. Introduction to Population, Environmental Law, History of Ideas of Nature, Is Development Sustainable?, U.S. Environmental Policy, etc.
-I could easily get an environment-related job in the future, which I'm thinking I might want.
-It goes (very) well with International Studies. Environmental + International = Interesting.

CONS:
-I would have to take a few classes I'm not quite so excited about, i.e. economics & statistics. And after I'd thrilled at finishing math second quarter. I think I may also have to take chemistry, which, uh.. I haven't ever before.
-No more room for extra classes.
-Lots of work at the end of year four.

I am playing very tentatively with different plans. Poking at them, really. Trying them on. Taking them back off. Staring at them.

There's the Year-In-India Plan, still in idea-form, backed by my starting Hindi classes. There's the current tangible evidence of Plan with my Teach Yourself Hindi book. My parents have been informed of Plan. I am alternately thrilled and frightened by its significance. I have dreams about it.

There's the lovely idea of finding a way to spend the next summer in Boulder with my sister (who has yet to be informed..) perhaps by way of getting an internship or good summer job. The University of Colorado is out there, and the Center for Atmospheric Research. They like the environment. Me, too.

There's the vague and distant "Law School?" idea, which doesn't really go anywhere, just sits there, waiting to be explored or discarded. Always with the question mark.

It's funny that now with my lack of spending money, I keep finding things I really want to do. Probably because now I have lots of time (my job offers some hefty down-time, hence my prolific posting) to look for things to do.

For example, I have a sudden gnawing desire to take music lessons at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Lincoln Park. Why? Mainly because it's so cool. They don't offer just your standard guitar, drums & bass. Oh no. I could take lessons on the tin whistle. I could learn Brazilian guitar. Lessons are reasonably priced. Maybe I'll look at it again in winter or spring quarter.

And then there's photography. I've become sort of obsessed with taking pictures. If I could afford a lovely camera with a fast shutter-speed.. ohhh.

Of course, school will start soon, and so will great masses of homework, and that just might put a little damper on my inspiration where extracurriculars are concerned. What a sad thought. I'm very big on the ideas lately, very small on the action.

But I did manage to walk through the grass at the Point on Sunday, step too close to a bee, and get stung in the side of the foot. I haven't had a bee sting in 10 years. There's some action.

It itches like crazy, now.

Monday, August 27, 2007

a cautionary tale

Called "Never Set Your Laptop On the Floor".

My roommate and I are playing a game. It consists of seeing how long we can go without buying food.

Buying a $430 laptop, inexpensive though it is, has wiped my savings nearly clean. It's like paying rent 2 weeks early. I am financially fragile; I'm feeling the quick, sharp sting of a $7 dinner in Pilsen, even when the leftovers serve as tomorrow morning's brunch (and $7 covering 3 meals is pretty decent.)

There still exists food at home; therefore, we theorize, we needn't shop. There is pasta & sauce, which was both last night's dinner and this morning's breakfast. (This is, by the way, a new talent I've developed--making one big meal cover two.) There are something like three bags of rice. There are a few eggs left. Some tortillas. Orange juice. Thai red curry. No milk. No cereal. No soup. No tofu. It forces creativity.

T. has lucked out--he works in a bakery and gets one sandwich per 7 hour shift, which he turns into lunch or dinner, depending on the shift. If working the afternoon shift, he also brings home a few of the day's unused baguettes. We still have olive oil, so it works.

Worrying--nay, even thinking about money is a new & exciting exercise for me. That isn't to say I've been richly spoiled.. I've been buying my own clothes and entertainment since mid-high school & my needs aren't really outlandish. But switching from public education to the University of Chicago, as snooty as it gets in the Midwest or anywhere short of the Ivies (and even snootier due to the current administration, who happens to be so concerned with basically making us Harvard that it will increase tuition by $5,000 apparently for the hell of it) has hardly been an entirely smooth financial transition.

Suddenly, I am dealing with guilt. I am expensive. The guilt is bearable for a few reasons; at least one-half of my parents believes the price tag is worth it, and I will be overtaking the loans in tolerable but everlasting payments in a few short years.

Of course, my darling alma mater still has some beliefs (delusions?) about money that I am at a loss to correct. Like that I should be making circa $3,000 in summer money toward tuition. The fact that I have to make rent & feed myself sadly are not factored into the equation. Perhaps they want me to go home.

How can I explain that I could never find a full-time, $10-an-hour summer job in Hastings? Or, more importantly to me, more extraneous to them, that I simply don't want to spend almost 4 straight months in Hastings..?

And so... pasta for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I was a bit more lavish earlier in the summer. I ate chocolate mousse once or twice in Greektown. I saw a couple movies. I carefully started revamping my wardrobe. But for the next month, prior to my rent being subsumed by my parents, post entire-paycheck-spent-on-laptop, ..PASTA.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

so stereotypical.

Yesterday I purchased a new laptop, for ~$400. Quite inexpensive (especially for a Toshiba), but I don't really need to do anything fancy anyway. All I do is write. And troll people's heavily-congested, frequently too personal myspace pages.

Sometimes I get into themes. For example, perhaps you didn't know that blogs among army wives with small children are extremely common. I sometimes come out of those either feeling nostalgic in a WWII, Rosie-the-Riveter kind of way, or longing for a baby in a kittenish, unrealistic sort of way. It makes sense that people with babies would have a nuclear-familyesque blog, especially if the rest of their family lives far away. I can even see myself doing something like that, in the cloudy, comfortably-far future, from some vague place like New Zealand. It can be done well. I came across the blog of an American woman living in Israel, detailing her pregnancy and displaying pictures of various picnics and hikes in pretty countrysides with her Israeli husband. It seemed very happy. I'm a bit fascinated with pregnancy.

I realize now that last paragraph might make me seem creepy. Too much qualifies as creepiness, in my opinion. Which, of course, is something no one can say.

There are other themes. The Emo, for example, still in existence and boasting several intoxicated and exhibitionist posts which say things like "Do you know how often I cry about you?" (direct) or else something a little more artful. Emo blogs can occasionally seem artful.

The self-conscious hipster myspace pages, the display photograph being maybe a close up on the person's nose ring or something. Also artful, pretty. But the writing is often so jaded & cool that I feel a little dull inside after reading.

My, I'm full of labels and accusations today. It does seem a little too methodical though, the way people stick to their types. I feel sometimes that had some things been just barely adjusted in my earlier teenage years, I might have assumed the position of hipster. But I'm not that cool. I don't have a tattoo or piercing, and I've grown somewhat critical of Kerouac, and my own cynicism. I'd like to be sarcastic less.

Does everybody need to identify with some particular culture or counterculture? Sometimes I feel like an Old-People. I have some Old-People tendencies, like listening to a lot of bluegrass and old country-folk standards and drinking a whole lot of tea and drawing enjoyment from rearranging my books & quiet weekend nights.

These sort of thoughts are starting to give me a headache. Labels are an overused and trite topic, especially for the internet.

...

T. gets out of work in a few hours, and I think we may go to the West Side and explore various Middle Eastern bakeries and Korean cafes. I can't spend any money, but I can take pictures and absorb moods, which is really why I get into the city anyway. Though money will get you chocolate mousse from Artopolis..

Here's a good song: The Pirate's Gospel by Alela Diane.

thursday night's storm

 
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Thursday, August 23, 2007

theories of love

It has been storming all night. I thought the power went out, but really T. turned out the lights and lit candles while I was on the deck. When I came in I got excited, felt happy. It's nice when the power goes out.. feeling submissive to the weather, instead of all-powerful and domineering.

We had dinner and talked about love. We understand each other about love. Really. I feel like there are few people I can say that about. Everyone's got some idea of it. There are some people who say they fall in love all the time. To them, I say: you're either wrong, or astoundingly, ridiculously, unbelievably lucky.

T. discussed with me a theory, and it went like this: let's say you're represented by a dot. Life is the movement of your dot from one side of the chart to the other. Every other person is also a dot, and everyone's moving together from one side to the other. The state of being in love occurs when you intersect another person. Your dot and their dot literally overlap. You are ready, in the state of being ready, for the exact same thing, that thing being the care you are about to give one another. And together you buzz along happily, until one dot crosses over the other. One person (let's say Dot #1) has moved in a direction, developed new and different needs. (It is conceivable, though rare, that the dots cross over at the same time.)

There are some corollaries to this theory. For example, being in love is a happy thing. It is burdened with occasional, but conquerable, problems. The real misery associated with heartbreak occurs after the separation of the dots. No longer are you in love.

Corollary #2: (HOWEVER:) If you have been in love, you still love the individual after the intersecting completes. Why? Because in-love love is unconditional love. You have been nakedly emotional, silkily comfortable, one open, experiencing unit. If you move in a direction, that still exists. It exists in time.

Really, I suppose it may be more of visualization than a theory. But I get it.

I have had experience as Dot #2. But not Dot #1. The two experiences, I believe, are very different. I have very little patience with people who claim to've been in love, but haven't felt ravaged by it. Who haven't felt deeply confused about their identity because of it. Who haven't felt stagnant & pointless & unsatisfying due to it.

But I don't know your side, Dot #1. How does it feel to eclipse a person, bask in the warmth and then desire to crawl away? I have thoughts that may not be congruent. I see Dot #1 as invigorated with a confidence to surpass people. I envision a pity that may or may not exist from Dot #1 directed at Dot #2. I understand intellectually Dot #1, but am powerless to navigate the tangles that are its feelings.

The upside to the dot theory is that you are by no means limited to one intersection. It is well known, though, that the odds of two dots intersecting are rare. Let's say we're tiny little dots, molecule-sized almost, and it's a big grid. Also, it's possible for two dots to re-intersect, but don't bet on it.

Science has said that the state of being 'in love' typically lasts for three years. You can't be all seritonin-overdosed forever, I guess. Me, though, I think I might be able to last longer. But I'm hypothesizing.

I feel good, though. I am a dot, free-floating. I have so much potential for an overlap. Like a tennis ball on the edge of a hill, or something.

And in the meantime there's hot tea. Snowstorms. Kittens. Towels hot out of the dryer. You know the drill.

stormy weather

According to weather.com:

"Throughout Chicago, there have been damage reports of widespread felled large trees (some over 100 years old), blown out windows in skyscrapers, power poles and lines down, semis and cars blown off roadways, roof collapse, building collapses, and finally home and building damage mainly due to fallen trees."

Time for haiku.

Permanent lightning.
At home. Alone. Waiting.
Maybe I'll make tea.

lyke OMG!

makeover!

Monday, August 20, 2007

why i like music

"i'm just something else he tried
a catalogue of interests
in a catalogue of lives.
i hid myself from him
i wouldn't say it was a lie
but hiding worked its way
into the way we lived our lives"

Sunday, August 19, 2007

oh hey, you

Well, I'm alone for the night and that's usually when I get my worst ideas. Nothing drastic, mind you--just your typical calling-the-wrong-person, eating-an-entire-pint-of-ice-cream, sitting-through-all-of-Dumb-and-Dumberer stuff. It's borne of night-loneliness, which is why I should never live all by myself.

Anyway, I've thought of a fun exercise to release my communication skills without any of the consequences! I shall, right on this very blog, construct a dozen or more anonymous letters to people as close as family and distant as my 3rd-grade gym teacher, but without identifying when I've switched to a new person and when I may have whimsically backtracked to an already addressed individual.

It will be honest! It will be freeing! oh, the drama.

Dear...

You would get more girls if you actually paid attention to them. Personality can stain good looks. I wish we spent more time together, even though that's sort of impossible because of location & age. I hope someday we end up talking on the phone a lot. You're the most beautiful person I've ever met; how inconvenient. Sometimes I can see kissing you but other than that we don't really make any sense. When I'm around you I think much more rationally--you manage to be balanced and not boring and I think soon someone will fall madly for you.

You're not quite human--I think you're part star. You lied but that's OK because sometimes I lie too. As time goes by your faults become clearer but you still bring me so much comfort. I think the faults are harmless. I haven't seen you since I was ten and we never actually talked and I can't remember what you look like but I still think about you sometimes.

I used to be so angry at you but now I'm not sure what to make of you, which is better I guess. You're in a relationship now and it makes me really happy to think about it. There's more to me than I'll ever be able to make you appreciate. You're a better friend than me.

You might be my only adult friend and your strength is impressive. You're always more understanding than I expect: thank you. I wonder much of the time which of what you said was true, though it can't be much. I love how unselfish you are; I like being around you. There must be a lot in your head that you don't say, and I wish I'd think of you more often or even call you once in a while.

It's weird that we were friends, we couldn't really talk about anything. I wonder what I based infatuation on before I knew you. You were wonderful and I could tell even though I never knew what you were saying.

I think you suck as a person, and I'm glad I think of you as little as I do... it's funny I even thought of you now.

All I ask is that you see me and think that I'm better than you. More respectable, smarter, anything really--that's my dirty little wish.

I talked to you for only a few minutes but I'm glad you were there to make me talk. I think you're a hypocrite and confused and if I could boggle your mind and make you see how elegantly I can identify that, I'd feel so empowered for a few minutes.. I WANT TO SEE YOU CLEARLY.

I'm wearing your shirt right now; it's real comfy and smells like you.

You're kind of a shitty friend.

I think you analyze even more than I do, or maybe I analyze less than I used to. I used to show you the stupidest poems and for that I'm sorry and embarrassed. You're way prettier than you think and I like that you don't spend much time on your appearance. You don't get me, but worse, you don't care to and I'm not sure you ever really did--a shame, that.

I love you.

Sincerely,

me.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

sicknesses

I shouldn't be here in Chicago; I should be in New York. But I have an eye infection, which for some reason feels like a bigger deal than it is. When I went to the eye doctor yesterday morning I missed my flight so I could figure out what was wrong. They poked my eye a lot and then I started to cry, and the doctors argued over cellulitis or allergy. Then they gave me a prescription for antibiotics and I left and started to sob. I fumbled with insurance information at the pharmacy counter for maybe twenty minutes, all the while dabbing at myself with squares from a roll of toilet paper I'd taken along in my bag. After I got my antibiotics, I walked back across the hall to the doctor to see if they'd prescribe pain medication; they wouldn't. So I walked home haphazardly, as it was sunny and my eyes were dialated and puffy.

It was really just intensely pathetic.

I feel better now, medically speaking. I'm 4/28 tablets through my antibiotics and I imagine the infection as strange white spots on the inside of my eyelid, slowly shrinking. I'm keeping my eye closed, so it doesn't really hurt much now. I'm sleeping a lot, but I keep having nightmares, which I almost never have. Also dreams that feel like nightmares but for reasons I can't identify.

I watched a lot of TV today via the internet. Episodes of Friends, and Monty Python's Flying Circus, and Scrubs, and then A. and I finished The Godfather. I practiced Hindi for a little while.. I like writing certain things. Like "Indian" (hindustani). I'm almost through the first chapter of "Teach Yourself Hindi", and it's a relief compared to Mandarin. It's so logical.

Ach, I wish there were a few more people around. And I was a little more functional. Being even a little sick, in a way that requires one to take care of oneself, feels unnervingly reminiscent of being old or being a little dead. It's too much sleeping and being inside and not being hungry.

[Admittedly depressing segue:]

I get really terrified sometimes, about the future. Not my future ("what will I be?") but the future in general. I've written about it in posts before but I usually delete them within a 24-hour period because I feel they're too depressing and don't make fit well with my normally-upbeat-or-at-least-containably-sensitive writing. Fear about the future is a bigger ballgame. More serious and expansive. Overwhelming, really, as a worry. It's about a lack of context. I had a dream a few months ago, in which I was in a perfectly normal and banal situation and suddenly the law of gravity began to disappear. Everyone started to lift from the ground and drift away. If you just picture it, it seems more interesting, but if you actually try to feel yourself into that position, imagine the feeling of context entirely disappearing--that's the horror of it. The depth of the fear, I guess. It's really hard to see it if you don't believe for at least a second or two that it's happening.

It happens to me every so often, maybe an hour or so a week if I'm really concentrating on things bigger than my life. Not nearly that often when I'm focusing on me, food, happiness, sunsets, history, paychecks, my future. I feel like it's something universal though, or at least now universal for my generation. Something not just about being 19, but about being 19 right now, at this time, in this world. With all of these things bearing down and cynicism and selfishness being prominent cultural institutions.

It's freaky.

Not to depress anyone reading this... I just had to express that, as the feeling struck. I hope it's an extreme, as I usually manage to convince myself. It's such a broad, modern topic.. but hope isn't terribly far away. Sometimes it's comforting to know the human race is "in it together." You hug someone and you're melding, you're made from the same stuff. As much as people feel isolated and lonely, maybe we do understand each other. Maybe we just can't communicate it.

One apartment over, my neighbors are singing "American Pie" and laughing. I don't really know them, but they're profoundly comforting.

Yeeah, I probably wouldn't have been much fun in New York this weekend anyway.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

ew, dreaming.

I don't really like dreams all that much. They're so, for lack of a more descriptive word: powerful.

And therefore capable of deeply regressing one's emotional progress. You've moved to a new city and started a new phase of your life, you're feeling productive, and then you dream of bad nostalgia. You think you've stopped thinking about someone and that's when you have a beautiful, wrenching kind of dream about that person. Someone died a year ago and you've stopped crying? Time for a surreal re-enactment!

So there you go. I hate dreams.

Here's to waking life, reality. It's not so overrated, really.

Monday, August 06, 2007

save the point

I found the perfect beach yesterday.

I rank this beach up in my Top Ten Beaches - not that I'm a real beach afficionado, and not that I have a Top Ten Beaches. But this one had everything a good beach needs. Completely smooth, sandy bottom. Very deep within fifty ft of shore, for optimal swimming. Lovely view of downtown. And... barely any people.

I found this beach not on the well-dressed shores of the North Side, but rather in my very own Hyde Park, out at the Point. People, myself included, have made the mistake of colonizing the sand of the 57th Street Beach due to what must be lack of knowledge. That beach is loud about its beachiness. It features a long expanse of sand, and a building for changing and showers. It also features, on any beautiful summer day, a miserably large crowd of Hyde Parkers desperate for heat relief slash tan skin.

Nameless Amazing Beach, on the other hand, is discreet. It doesn't advertise itself with sand, or showers, or its own changing building (clearly, just use the old Point building... where on any given day one can walk into a wedding reception and change in a stall with a giant purple bow wrapped around it and wash one's hands with lavender-scented soap provided by said reception's decorator.) In fact, the only way you can tell NAB is a beach is due to the four or five No-Boating buoys anchored a considerable distance from shore, and the four or five quiet college students who figured it out before you (but don't worry, there's plenty of room.)

My swim yesterday with H. was so good it gave me a bit of an epiphany: this is summer. It can be easy to forget when you're paid to spend 7.5 hours a day in a building so air-conditioned it gives you goosebumps. And when you wake up at 7AM in order to do that. And when things consequently are somehow even more routine than they were during the school year. Swimming, though, is like campfire--something very simple with a profoundly blissful effect.

Last week, in my dark room and with brilliant aim, I stepped on my laptop, cracking an enormous spiderweb into the screen and rendering it not usable. I was overcome with panic, and with something worse than panic, something really heavy and frightening and big. It was as though, damaging my computer and witnessing my resulting fear, I felt that my life was sort of small and meaningless. Even to myself. It took me a while to figure out what that feeling was.

People can be so silly.