how this will end.

I finished reading "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy today, and found it profoundly moving. It's extraordinarily stark, but I've been in a sort of post apocalyptic mood lately, so it matched my outlook well.

I also thought of a scenario in my philosophy class (when we talking about something completely different, but still):

You have been given a chance to glimpse the meaning of the universe. Is there a God, or any other kind of discernible intelligent structure behind the world? Where does it end, or what is the meaning of its not ending? Is there any answer to the question Why? All of these will be answered. However, because the human brain is too puny and incapable of existing with this knowledge, you will die of shock almost immediately after accessing the information. Assuming you believe that death is final and you cease to exist in any fashion upon your decease, would you still want to know? Or would you prefer to live out your life ignorant of this knowledge? Is the moment of knowing worth it?

I feel like big questions.

I also wish I weren't feeling so lonely. I think maybe my evolutionary impulse as an affectionate and social animal is stifled.

(...At some point I began to find it reassuring to blame all of my impulses on evolution and biology. It feels much less mental that way. Lonely? It's because your prerogative is to go reproduce and populate the world.)

And on that note, doesn't it seem sort of bothersome that our biological imperatives are to a) reproduce and b) survive? It's like self-consciousness is this big red herring thrown into the mix to make everything a lot more interesting for the figure writing the story. What could be a better plot twist than making the creatures meant to reproduce and survive aware of the futility of reproduction and survival?

I think there's a bigger logic outside of our logic.
And I think self-consciousness will lead to the eventual demise of things and it will be IRONIC.
And I think I will probably never fall in love again.
And I think I won't be satisfied with any job I ever have.

Is it possible to feel like this and not be depressed? Because that's the case. I guess I'm just probing darkness.

re:

A wall exists. My place? Not scaling the wall.

your 97th tear.

I am on my sister's computer (while she mountain bikes 9ish miles, which I might possibly be doing if I'd stuck to my exercise regimen back at the Uni [before stuff to do with traveling hit me like.. something that would prevent me from continuing my exercise regimen] and also if I hadn't eaten Persian kuftah balls at the Dushanbe, which are tasty but made me feel less than physically adventurous). My mother is in the other room complaining about things like her teeth (sensitive) and her ankle (swollen). Not out loud, but in her head, I'm sure.

I had been reading a Sarah Vowell book, and I could be studying, but I mostly want to ponder--a bit more... then I'll ponder tonight--about My Place. In the lives of others. Generally I'm pretty good at determining that place, but it can be difficult. When you're feeling awful, to what degree is someone who was important in your life (but now is estranged) allowed to intervene? Is anyone welcome to offer their support? Is there a territory far above and more sacred than the romantic (and the problems associated with it) where you can continue to exist, sitting quietly and listening, or offering the fact that you care, if that could help anything? Basically: Can you offer support when, at one time, you might have been part of the cause of the need of support?

I'm deeply skeptical--not only of my ability to help, but also of my ability not to be detrimental. And I wouldn't be exploring this question if it didn't seem like an extreme situation.

But I'm not sure what can help a person. Bounding back in to someone's life to declare yourself ready to listen seems condescending. Who am I to assume that nobody exists to fulfill that role as it is?

But what if I can offer something? Like the image of myself extending a cup of tea in that person's direction, instead of something more resembling a pitchfork, or a wavering glass of gin--which it wouldn't take a lot to imagine, from that person's shoes. But who knows how believable it would be. In some cases, it's just better for people not to interact. It has been decided before--probably dozens of times--that this is one of those cases. Largely because of my own actions.

Is the best option here to calm myself down with a cup of tea and abstain from involving myself, having faith that a friend can find his way out of the darkness without me, or if he can't, that I would only be a burden?

I don't know. I also don't know which of us my refusing to say anything would benefit more. But I do know that my sister has three kinds of tea, and that's something I'm going to take advantage of, right now.

I got a you.

I feel good. Because:

a) I wrote a story. I WROTE A STORY. I haven't written anything creatively in approximately 50 billion years, so I feel productive. And despite the fact that it's rough and unedited, and needs a lot of work, and it might be kind of short, I think I feel pretty decent about it. Mostly I'm just reeling because I wrote something, which is sad, but also GOOD. I also have two other short stories in my head. Chillin'.

and

b) I'm going to Boulder from Thursday 'til Monday. Totally spontaneous. So even though I can't spend the summer there, I can go there again, and enjoy it before I leave.

warning: rant. modernity, and rant.

I've been horrible at taking naps, lately.

Not because I haven't been tired--I've been tired. More because I have a strange complex in which I procrastinate terribly, but feel so terrible about it that I can't even enjoy it. I have a whole list of things in my head that I need to do, but when I get close enough to actually doing them, I have little to no energy. It's a sort of expansive-feeling exhaustion that includes headaches and stress and guilt and depression.

But I can't take a nap to relieve my exhaustion. Because even when I set my alarm clock for a strict 20 minutes, I lay in bed and first wallow through the things I'm not doing but should be doing, and then I just stumble into some non-stop rapid thought territory, which is occasionally productive but mostly just ends with me deciding that styrofoam is evil and going to single-handedly kill the planet, or that we all exist in a context that's completely apart from reality, blah blah, blah. So I get up and waste more time.

Maybe it's what I eat. I haven't eaten particularly well, lately. But then of course I think about money, and how I just spent possibly into phantom dollars for a visa and shots and prescriptions and dinners and any other thing that I touch, or do, or breathe, or exist. So I'm unwilling to go to the grocery store for what I want to buy--spinach, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes. (That's where I stop because I don't really want to buy milk or bread [did you know lots of bread has high fructose corn syrup in it?!!] or cheese or anything in a box or anything in a can or anything containing any kind of corn or BLAH.)

Um.

So, I'm sort of stuck in a cycle. Of trying to make myself feel better so I can tackle the problems and errands and life-sucking that requires tackling, but not letting myself because then I'm not doing anything. A nap feels like the most unproductive, death-enhancing option in the whole entire universe. I'm just a big mess of guilt and anxiety and Bourgeois problems (the guilt feeds on that adjective) and lameness and non-productivity.

AND I NEED SPINACH.

the great american identity crisis.

Jaipur was bombed.

You might have seen the news about it, if you got to it before it was submerged under whatever the latest Britney Spears update is, or some Miley Cyrus crap (who the hell IS MC, even?) or the fact that Angelina Jolie is having twins, or the BREAKING news of the new TACO BELL DISCOUNT MENU (I'm not kidding, by the way; in the waiting room at the doctor's office I honestly saw the new menu emerge as a news story, in which somebody was actually interviewed--I very nearly asked for a glass of arsenic, right then and there).

I saw it because I was on Google News at the right time. As predicted, my mother emailed me a few hours later (I lost my phone) in a panic, wondering what the hell was going on, wasn't Jaipur safe? You said it was safe! You said you wouldn't be kidnapped and placed in a hijab!

I don't know how to feel about it. Bad, obviously. I read the news and felt immediately scandalized. I don't know anybody in Jaipur yet, and I can't claim any personal connection to the city, but I do feel a sort of relationship to it now, after applying to two programs there, and tentatively researching its history and culture and geography. And knowing I'll be living there very soon. So I feel angry, for the 63 people killed and the 200+ injured, who were buying vegetables at a market or praying at a temple. For how futile and harmful and morally degraded terrorism is.

It's weird--terrorism just seems like a cliché most of the time, living here. With Bush standing up at a podium every 20 minutes to tell us how terrorists want to kill our children, with every heavily made-up blonde news anchor asking us, in deadly serious tones, is the world safe for Americans? Most sane people are just sick of it at this point. With perfectly normal-seeming American citizens walking into malls and universities and opening fire, without any motive except personal angst, why be afraid of angry bearded Muslim extremists? Why not be just as afraid of your neighbor?

The thing is though, if you do think about it, if it feels relevant to you in any way, terrorism has the capacity to build up an extraordinary amount of anger. I understand that people are frustrated... that they feel like no one hears them. But killing perfectly innocent people will do nothing, absolutely nothing. It's a futile action that will do nothing but irk the government (not even enrage, I don't think--you have to go after important people for that), and cause innocent people suffering. So... I feel angry. That the people who resort to these methods don't value human life enough to consider whether what they will be getting in response is worth such destruction.

I also feel strange, being an American. I feel strange that the first thing my parents, or any adult, really, wants to know is, will you be safe? Apart from the fact that fearing Jaipur now would be like fearing New York City after 9/11--I really hate this worry. I hate it. Because this situation is not about me. Jaipur is not about my safety, and my safety isn't worth any more than the safety of the 63 people who died, in their own city. Going into that city and expecting my safety to be a priority to the people there, any more than their own safety, is ridiculous. Being American doesn't mean being special. So when I read about terrorists and bombs going off and people dying, I don't want my thought to be a sarcastic: And I'm going there in a month! What great timing!

Being an American, as is probably obvious, is not something I'm particularly proud of. I don't think it's anything to be proud of. Sure, I know plenty of Americans that I feel proud knowing, but it has almost nothing to do with this country. The U.S. is not a particularly progressive country. It isn't necessarily the most ethical country. And most of all, there is a pervasive sort of institutional jingoism that is entirely unparalleled. My mother, when she moved here from Germany, thought it was funny that the flag was printed on shirts and mugs and hung from every building and praised in every classroom. Why? she wondered. What's so special about us that we need to pat ourselves on the back every time get together? And that we need not know anything about the rest of the world?

For years I've been vaguely resentful of my country, but now, knowing I'm going to Jaipur, I feel even stranger. One of the terrorist groups claiming responsibility for the attacks cited India's alliance with America as one of the reasons behind the bombings. I certainly don't think India and America shouldn't be friendly toward each other, but at the same time, I don't think Americans have dealt with the Muslim populations of the Middle East and South Asia--historically or currently--with any degree of grace. I don't feel that I deserve respect as an American. As a person, yes, as an American, no.

But I'm both... how should I convey that?

btw

An actual phrase I used toward the end of my paper, when I wanted to die or cry or sleep:

"By creating a counter forum for discussion--perhaps a discourse on why individuals turn to fascism--the majority of society can help to paint the offensive party as ridiculous, and clip the feathers of fascism, all without limiting the rights of the individuals promoting the agenda."

It's so stupid and yet so delightful; I think I'll keep it.

sometimes leaving is a joyful sign.

Lately I've been feeling... intermittently grown up.

And not in the horrifying way I used to imagine when I was fifteen and hiding in my room with my CDs and angry at several people and the majority of society. The horror of being adult then translated to a sort of numbed acceptance of the way everything was, a bland assimilation into the routine. It included sitcoms, FOX News, embroidered pillows, Free Cell, family Christmas letters, and, eventually, pink sweatshirts with kittens on the front.

I am understanding--slowly--that you can't necessarily peg people into a way of life based on these things, and therefore that you don't necessarily need to avoid them at all costs. What I was reacting to at the time wasn't embroidered pillows, but rather the frequent meaninglessness or tamed nature of the embroidered pillow. The way adulthood seemed to imply the need to delete the interestingness of the life you have for the commonness of the life that is ordained. I imagined eventually trading in an immensely cool foreign drape with some spectacular story behind it for the inevitable damned embroidered pillows.

My fear--nay, phobia--of becoming an adult is linked to my tendency to still imagine this scenario. Bit by bit, my quirks and souvenirs from life being ironed out by some horribly forceful Hand of Convention.

Thankfully, my curious feelings of growing up are not marked by a new set of embroidered pillows I bought.

This is what has contributed to the sensation:

1. If I was difficult to embarrass before, now it's almost impossible.
2. A staggering decrease in romantically-inspired angst. By forcing myself to face the reality of old relationships and invest hope in the potential for new ones, I am no longer plagued by constancy of conditions, and am no longer consequently feeling helpless. And coming to know myself in this state--remembering and reading some of the things I've said--helpless is so not an attractive state of being.
3. Expanding interests
4. Tolerance (but not in a I-will-submit-to-mediocrity-now kind of way, rather in a this-person-has-reasons-for-the-way-he/she-feels-and-I-recognize-that kind of way).

In other words, it's a much more Zen maturity than embroidered-pillow maturity. And it comes in little pockets I sometimes seem to walk into, where all of a sudden I'm immensely self-confident or understanding or forgiving. It doesn't last long--I mean really, I'm not the Buddha--but what's nice is that I remember, and so it leaves me with a way back to the wisdom. And as it happens more often, I rarely shoot into the opposite extreme.

I'm having this reflection behind a desk in the darkened bookstacks at the Reg, when really I should be finishing my Urdu homework. But have you ever tried that language? It makes the Devanagari script seem like a homey cabin with marshmallowy hot cocoa waiting for me.

I have a Philosophy of Human Rights paper due tomorrow morning, and since my mother always wants to read and subsequently "edit" my papers, I sent it to her. I had two papers due last week, both of which she lambasted me for, for turning them in before she could edit my grammar. Anyway, this was her response to my philosophy paper:

"JUST READ YOU PAPER, IT'S GREAT. lOVE YOU.

MOM"

Crazy lady.

...Happy Mother's Day.

thik hai!

I'm not that upset. I was a little upset a few days ago--but surprisingly not horribly so. Because I was going to be sad if I didn't get to go on the Pune program too.

Here are the reasons it's good that I'm going Pune-style:

1. I FINALLY know what I'm doing next year, and can stop doing acting like 2 things are going to happen simultaneously.
2. I will see more of the country this way. I will spend the first three months in Jaipur, which is in Rajasthan, in Northern India, and the last three in Pune, which is in Maharashtra, which is in Southern India. Also, there will be some extensive traveling--the last several weeks in the Pune program are spent traveling all the way South and then back up again. Kerala! Goa! Karnataka! If you check a map, I've got almost the entire Western side of the country down. I'm also experiencing Mumbai and Delhi. And, because the Pune program starts so much later than the Jaipur program ends, I have about a month in between. I don't know what I'm going to do with it--get into the Himalayan foothills? See Vanarasi? Find some sort of short-term job in Jaipur?--but it'll be excellent, I'm sure. I'm also staying a few weeks after the Pune program ends and I'm probably making my way up the coast again during that time (as I'm flying out of Delhi).
3. Civ credit.
4. I'll get to know Mark Lycett, who a) seems pretty cool, and b) will be my Environmental Studies adviser.

So I'm good.

I've also decided I'm taking a year off between third and fourth years. I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet, but I know it's there. Full of potential.

It's probable that I didn't get any money from the government because I'm such a newbie to Hindi. All of the advanced Hindi students, that I know of, received CLS scholarships for summer study, while no one in my class got one. Whatever. I'll try again next year, if I'm planning to go back. Maybe they'll take me more seriously then. For now, things are alright. No; things are good.

Oh, and--I bought my ticket. I leave June 12th (!!) for Delhi. My tentative ticket back is set for December 20th.

It's British Airlines. Because that was cheapest. And I like the British.

fail.

I didn't get the NSEP. No year-long program.

Today sucks.