potential energy

onward ho.

2011-01-29T15:52:00.003-06:00

Hey kids,

I've been a little lazy about announcing this on here (for those who don't know), but I've been seeing another blog for almost a month now.

My new one is here -- I've been hesitant to post it because I'm not sure whether the army of spambots that have infected this domain are going to follow me there. Damn spambots. But I realize there are some people who read this who I don't know (hi!) so I'm linking just in case.

And thanks for reading this, ya'll. It's not terribly refined or well-thought-out stuff, but it's nice to know people are interested in your thoughts regardless.

today's moment of Zen...

2010-10-10T23:18:00.001-05:00

...The giant football player with "Assassins" across the front of his uniform, who approached the cafe counter to order, in a mild voice, a latte.

rock me mama like a southbound train.

2010-10-09T23:02:00.006-05:00

Itemized, because there is too much and no opportune organizational method:

1) Yes, I am still alive.

2) I have not updated because, I think, I have generally been avoiding reflection. I have been needing it, thirsting for it, and avoiding it. I've also been feeling out of place existentially and not knowing how to deal with it.

3) Done with the library job, and now have a job in a bourgeois "marketcafe" where the owners are nice, until it becomes stressful, when they yell at you for no reason. As this is my first week, I have been rather sensitive...

4) ...which isn't helped by the fact that my car has been broken into for the second time in two months to steal my CD player, and this time they shattered a window. Excellent. I love humanity.

5) F. and I are broken up--I think. I say I think because we are still in a lot of contact, and our "where is the state of our relationship" conversations end up, somehow, always deeply ambiguous. I cried a lot and instigated a break over him not paying enough attention to me when his sister was here, clearly distressing him. Our "Okay, break is over" conversation ended up with him exhausted and crying over being overly busy and not wanting to hurt me. I said okay. Since then it's been lots of messages from him and two meetings involving him bringing me printing pictures he'd taken of happy times over the summer and him buying me dessert and saying he wasn't sure if his newfound embrace of being alone was all that smart. So, I don't know. I know he is not someone I cannot live without. I also know that I'm drawn to him, comfortable with him, and seem to understand him--his need to be considered successful, same as mine; his appreciation for solitude; his need to keep everything together and organized or somehow, everything falls apart. His constantly feeling foreign in a place he struggles to know. But I am not a priority, and I know that, too. (I did, after all, convince him into a six-month relationship after he kissed me and immediately announced, as a preliminary warning, "I would not be a good boyfriend.") And I don't know if that's okay.

6) Some things, though, are okay. Tonight I went to the birthday party of someone I had never met with some friends. I had peanut butter pie and drank hot cider and rum. The evening descended into folk songs on ukulele and guitar. I sang. It canceled out some of the feelings I had from my shattered car window, and still more job rejections added to the pile (growing taller and taller) -- that it is the world in one corner, and me in the other.

I don't feel like I'm comfortable right now, on a deep level. The foundation feels shaky. I don't know if that's internal or external. I guess I'll have to work on that. I'm thinking of making a new blog -- tried the other day, but alas, my name was taken. Soon.

umm, what?

2010-08-23T16:19:00.003-05:00

I wrote this text to F. this afternoon:

"Boring boring workday. Are you driving to the grand canyon? Is it beautiful?"

This was his response:

"Dear! On the baghdad cafe spot! No americans gross and everything, beautiful landscapes, pictures all the time and the road route 66 on a sunny day!"

......? Anyone want to decode that?

OK, OK

2010-08-13T23:57:00.004-05:00

..here's an update.

I have been in ever-shifting moods the past month, but thankfully, I've been phasing out (mostly) the aimless crying and intensive stress re:jobs/life/omgwhatamIdoing. Things have not changed drastically in an actual, tangible way, but my plans for the future shift frequently enough that it feels like I'm playing a casino card game with my life.

The options I've toyed with:

--Find something in Chicago and stay here (currently applying for an unpaid internship, which means I'd have to find another job). This is dependent on finding a job within the next month.

--Go to Boulder and soak in the sun and mountain air, possibly picking up a menial job while I applied for work back East. This is wonderful in terms of social stimulation and mental health, but would probably isolate me a bit from what I'm trying to do.

--Go home and apply for jobs without having to pay rent/for food.

--Go to Wash, D.C. and more aggressively pursue the international orgs that have been ignoring my applications (or declining me sans interview).

...and then there's the Wild Card, in the form of a friend from high school (do you still read this, Cat? Hi!) who has an editorial position in New York City, and seems to think with a high degree of seriousness that she could help me secure something.

The past week has been an explosion of the Wild Card option in my mind, as it just presented itself like a mirage in the desert. And if it's true--if something comes out of this--it would be such an opportunity. NYC must be the capital of publishing in the U.S., and her contacts' companies are big-name players. I would experience the world of language in a new and direct way. I would have a steady income. I would have a tiny apartment with many varieties of tea in the cupboard. I would go out to coffee shops on Saturday mornings and sip something warm and caffeinated in a mug while pouring over the New Yorker or the New York Times with a new-found, local perspective. Then I would go to a park, or a record shop, or one of seven trillion bookshops, or do anything I wanted because it would be New York City. Where I've never been.

Amazing.

Few options involve me staying in Chicago, which means leaving the boy is almost an inevitability. This is made all the more poignant by the fact that we have so little time together now. He's been in Oregon since Tuesday, and tomorrow evening I pick him up at the airport. We get exactly one night together before his parents fly in from France on Sunday and stay at his place for two weeks. One of these weeks they'll be exploring the U.S., and after that F. goes home to France for another week. He's finally back here the second week of September. If I'm still jobless, I'll be here until September 18th--otherwise, I'll probably be gone. Which means all I know is we have tomorrow together. And not even the day.

It's made especially more poignant in that we've had such a nice couple of months together, driving around town and going on a picnic and listening to music and watching movies and talking. And kissing and laughing and growing to understand each other better. There's an animal comfort you get when you wake up in someone's bed day after day, when their bed is your bed, and after five months this is where we are. Now, more than likely, I just have to drop the comfort and abandon it. I should be happy for what I've experienced, and I am, but... this is hard to face.

The dreamy mirage of New York, and the social net of Boulder, helps. A great job and a big city or family, friends and mountains. Going home would be infinitely depressing, and I can't afford D.C. right now.

You know what I'm imagining? That glittery, multi-colored wheel on The Price is Right. Except that wheel hasn't stopped spinning, it just keeps on spinning. Homey Chicago + Boyfriend? Great job + great city (jackpot)? Refreshing Boulder + menial work?

Spinning, spinning, spinning...

armed!

2010-07-18T13:54:00.005-05:00

I am now taking the following vitamins/supplements:

--Women's One-a-Day multivitamin;

--Vitamin C;

--Stress Vitamin B Complex;

--"Heart and Stress Defense" Fish Oil;

--L-Lysine

QED:

I am so ready for combat. I have a general multivitamin, two extra-strength, anti-stress vitamins, lysine to destroy my cold sore & prevent future ones from forming (maybe?), and Vit-C for a further boost to the immune system. I should have an enhanced mood, glowing skin, a healthy heart, and maximized energy.

Maybe it's a placebo effect, but I do feel lighter.

Though yesterday (before purchasing half of these wonderdrugs!) I was feeling pretty crappy. F. and I drove to Niles to look at a car he's thinking of buying (a tiny, barely used convertible) and as he was looking at it my mother called to unload her usual load: health problems, marital problems, job woes, financial issues, and do I have a job yet? It was depressing, as usual. And it had the usual effect of making me feel clueless and irresponsible. F. picked it up on the drive back (he sniffs out my bad moods immediately and then pounces relentlessly, like a bloodhound). When he asked what was wrong I explained, and he made me feel better by pointing out two things:

1) "Honestly, most of those things are your mother's problems--not yours."

and

2) "You're doing what you need to be doing. You're doing it right. And you're only 22--this is too much stress for 22."

And then he helped me formulate an afternoon plan (write 2 cover letters) and I calmed down. And realized that it's true--I need to both become more combative and motivated, and less wracked with despair and stress, as per my age. I am going to stop thinking of time as my enemy and try to get more creative (informational interviews, more investigation, looking for contacts in the alum network, etc.) -- and look for ways of staying involved and interested in my free time. And I'm going to stop being so alarmed and paralyzed.

And I'm going to take my vitamins.

this is not eustress.

2010-07-14T22:46:00.003-05:00

I decided to do nothing involving job applications today.

I made this decision because the stress of all this stuff has been utterly palpable lately. I have been grinding my teeth, and clenching my jaw tightly enough and for long enough that it feels consistently sore. I have been generally unpleasant and whiny to an obnoxious degree. And Monday morning, a cold sore appeared on my upper lip.

I am not a particularly vain person, but getting a cold sore, about the one time a year it happens (curiously, I have come to realize, once every July for the past three years), makes me utterly miserable. It is an aesthetic wake-up call. I can think about almost nothing else. When I speak to others, I envision myself reflected as not a human with a cold sore, but as a leper, a bleeding, oozing, warty, oily, physical manifestation of disease and horror. Yes; it is actually almost this dramatic. I stay inside as much as possible and avoid human contact. I apply miracle goop hourly. Right now that's Abreva, which promises to speed healing time and claims a median healing time of 4.1 days (key word median and not average). It seems to actually be working. Tomorrow is Day 3.

I am the sort of person, I have realized, who is less stressed by actual, stressful, targeted events than by much grander, more complicated things. For example, I can handle having two midterms within a week. It will create manageable stress. I can handle the first day of an internship, the first date, the awkward family reunion. I might be a little sweaty and uncomfortable, but I know the parameters.

But the state of my life right now? Few stressful scenarios, but plenty of omnipresent, existentially torturous stress.

Let's take an inventory:

-Just graduated from an excellent university, with honors, but jobless.

-Although not completely jobless. I have the extension of my unimpressive, tedious library job throughout the summer. I do one of the same, like, seven repetitive tasks every day. I look at the clock frequently and end the day exhausted. This job expires at the end of the summer.

-With my remaining time, despite being exhausted, have tried to work on resume and cover letters and have been edited and edited and edited. Feel paralyzed in my approach to any job. Motivation feels beyond my capability right now.

-Lease ends September 1. No concrete plan for a living situation after this.

-Unstable, casual relationship with adorable Frenchman. (Usually, a drain on stress. Unless we have a fight because he tells me I "move a lot" at night which disrupts his precious sleep, which prompts me to ask "Do you even want me in your bed? Why are you even dating me?" and crawl out of his bed and prepare to leave while he says, looking perplexed, "I think this is a misunderstanding...")

I have no idea what I'm doing. It's like I'm navigating my way through a dark hallway and doing everything wrong. I want to apply for jobs but it's unbelievably time-consuming, and I can barely pull together a decent phrasing to prevent my poor, beleaguered application materials from being thrown in the trash.

Mostly, though, I see discrepancies between who I am and who I want to be. I am uninspired, terrified, apparently talentless, somewhat spineless, and without a plan. Clearly without confidence. I am unrecognizable to myself. I am envisioning a future unfolding, a future of jobs I don't care about, jobs I would take anyway because they would have me. Jobs like the one I have now, where I would spend all my time looking at the clock, contributing in pointless and tedious ways to something I ultimately don't really care about. Being a cog in a machine: always replaceable.

This is the great, horrific existential stress weighing on me. It is literally my future. And it is here. I am paralyzed in the headlights of my future.

Haiku for Kinko's

2010-07-13T22:14:00.003-05:00

pay-by-the-minute

the glacially slow scanner

drains money from me

copy machine hums

piled-up papers convince me

I am productive

giant on the screen:

my story in PDF

false professional?

sweet frustration.

2010-07-12T23:19:00.003-05:00

Writing a resume and then showing it to different people is like decorating a room and then asking all your friends' opinions.

Friend 1: "It's nice, but couldn't you paint it a lighter color? It would open it up more."

Friend 2: "Nice idea, but maybe a few shades darker."

Friend 3: "Too much art on the walls."

Friend 4: "Maybe you should paint it all white and then just paint that one there as an accent wall."

Friend 5: "The whole thing kind of... doesn't go together."

Friend 6: "You need more art on the walls."

Friend 7: "It's too well-balanced, maybe add some new elements."

Friend 8: .....need I go on?

I have been "working on my resume" for hours and hours these past couple weeks, in what feels like a sort of deeply unfun, fruitless abandon. Changed the font, the formatting, the lines in bold, the verbs, the amount of writing, the information. Changed it again. And again. Showed people. Problems brought to my attention. Incorporated changes. Showed people. More problems brought to my attention. Finally the critiques are starting to wind down, and it's admittedly looking a lot better. But my confidence in my ability to put together anything professional? Well... I sort of feel like I should really be applying to Subway and 7/11, at this point.

I'm like an unbroken dog. I keep peeing on the carpet, and then my nose is whacked and I am brought outside and made to look at the grass. But then I come inside and pee on the carpet again.

I don't get it. Nothing about applying for jobs is intuitive to me. Other things are not intuitive to me either: playing the drums, break dancing, interacting with someone whose parent has just died. But applying for jobs? That's something I need to GET. It's my next step. It's muh bread and muh butter.

But everyone has a strongly informed and different idea of What's Good and What's Terrible, as does every person hiring. I have looked at some sample resumes that strike me as atrocious. I have seen graceful phrasing scrapped for greasier, inflated phrasing. All this exercise is really telling me is how dizzyingly subjective the whole process is. It's a big crap shoot, based partially on the emotional flarings that occur in the brain of the boss when she scans my resume, partially on my actual experience, and largely, I think, on whether and how well I know her cousin.

It is a little frustrating. A little chaotic. A little enlightening. A little nauseating.

Very "Real World."

overdose.

2010-07-05T23:18:00.003-05:00

It turns out that when F. has extra time, he likes to spend it with me. As in, I have spent the last four nights and most of the past five days with him. The boy is a Boyfriend, with a capital-B. He's in the lab, he's out of the lab, he's in my bed, he's back in the lab, he's kissing me in the kitchen, he's back in the lab, we're in a park, we're at a party, there's another bed, he's in the lab, he's texting me, we're eating dinner, we're eating breakfast, we're brushing our teeth, he's kissing me in his kitchen.

Three months into the relationship, with a generous two-three week break, and this has somehow become a dizzy world of inseparability. He texts for dinner and I welcome him. He emails in the morning and shows up in the night. The lab separates us and we're back together, wherever. It's not passionate enough for this, and so I don't really know what we're doing. What I do know is I have trouble saying no. And so tonight--dinner at his place with his lab friend and her amiable Swedish couchsurfer--I was determined to lay down the law and say, "I'm sleeping at my place tonight, dear." I would have control!

So imagine my frustration when, as we're driving to his place, he gently says, "If it's okay, I think I'd like to sleep alone tonight. I really need the sleep."

That was MY LINE.

This was said as a sort of churning illness was coming upon me, one of those no-food-all-day-but-lots-of-coffee toxic stomach things. And so I was becoming literally sick to my stomach, irritated that I couldn't even take control because he beat me to the chase, and was stumbling into a situation with him and his friends. It became too much. I wanted to be alone. I curled in a ball on his couch as he made crepes in the kitchen. I looked dazed. I got up for water and curled back up. Nausea. Nausea. Effing coffee.

He checked on me every so often. "What's wrong?" he plied, touching the back of my neck gently. "Is this because I said I wanted to sleep alone tonight?" He asked this softly, with concern. Well, sort of, darling, but only because I wanted the upper hand. And the coffee, aaugh, the coffee. Remind me never to drink coffee again.

Eventually the friends came, I ate half a crepe, and because he wouldn't let me drive home in my moaning, nauseous state, I took to his room and lay in his bed, miserable. Every so often the door cracked open and in he came, feeling my forehead, searching for non-stomach-related issues, saying, at one point, "You can sleep here tonight if you want."

"No," I said. "I want my own bed." (HA!)

And so he submitted to driving me back, sweetly, without complaint, dipping into theatrical French as we approached the apartment. "Pauvre petite.." he cooed, "Trop de cafe! Oh la la."

And dropped off, alone, sighing in relief, I took a cold shower and came to where I am now -- lying in front of the fan, gratefully in solitude, still feeling toxic but basking in relief on my soft, familiar, wonderful, greenish-gray bedding.

Too much. Too much oxytocin, too much dopamine, too much kissing and compromising on dinner and waking up early while he sleeps on and watching the Mel Brooks-related Youtube videos I Simply Must See. Holy crap. This is an overdose. The girl needs a break.

We have worlds, our own worlds. We'll never lose them. But we have to tend to them.

Mom's First Text Message

2010-07-05T12:05:00.003-05:00

(After convincing her somehow to get us Android phones with her Verizon credits.)

"Hi b aby, I am sending you my very first text : )this new phone is incredible,,,a little supercomputer, email,google at your fingertips. I am tetermined to lrarn all of the features.I have 2oo msg a month, you have unlimited to -eri."

...

"Verizon people only and 3oo to other carriers. I love u. Mom"

finding yourself in the stacks.

2010-07-01T21:49:00.003-05:00

Good decision, I think: taking Fridays off (for applying for jobs, I tell myself).

Do you have especially neurotic days? Like, days where you actually feel crazy for a while? Like you pull back the burlap flap of your mind (or the dangling hippie beads, Choose Your Own Metaphor) and enter a territory completely out of touch with your everyday existence? I think this is supposed to be a state one can enter in meditation, but if you work in a job that requires no advanced thought, lots of solitude, and a willingness to engage solely in mindless tedium, you sometimes crawl into this mindspace.

And crawl I did, today. I got so stressed out, I considered the possibility that I might actually have (diagnosable) anxiety. I have thought about this more over the last few years; last year I went through a period over the summer of experiencing an uncontrollable rapid heartbeat, but I figured it was the coffee and it ended when I cut that out. (Odd, because I only stopped for a while and then picked it right back up again, but haven't had the rapid-heartbeat issue. Placebo effect?)

Mostly, it's because I have such intense physical reactions tied to my emotional state. I wonder sometimes if my body is not, in fact, physically oversensitive. Speaking in class, for example, will usually turn my fair-toned face an almost frightening shade of deep red. I get seriously nervous before first dates, even coffee with a new friend, and it sometimes impacts my speech (speaking too fast, mixing words). Along with the red face, of course. My face will turn red at any provocation. A presentation in front of the class--or (my worst nightmare) a skit in a foreign language--will kill me. I will be visibly terrified, and visibly trying not to be so.

There are two really frustrating aspects to my body's quick descent into anxiety.

One: much of this is a psychological condition that feeds into itself. My body thinks: this is a stressful, high-stakes situation. OMG, you know what would make it worse? If you completely forgot what you were doing. If you just went blank. Can you imagine how bad that would be? And then, there I am, staring, stunned, actually distracted by the thought that it would be a horrible time to lose my train of thought. Seriously. I cannot tell you how many times I lose track of what I am doing by becoming literally self-conscious. Suddenly only aware of the fact that I am thinking, breathing, existing. Like the concept of being is so weighty it takes up all the space in my brain for a bit. The knowledge of what there is to lose causes me to compulsively lose it. It's like if you point at a doorway and tell my brain, everything falls apart if you go through that doorway. Then I have to go through it.

(Another especially alarming thought: What words could I scream in this scenario that could completely change this situation and ruin my life? For example, you're in an interview and you say "Penis" or yell "FORKS" or say, quietly and in response to nothing in particular, "Yes." And you are almost certainly immediately not going to get the job. Your ability to damage everything--job prospects, social prospects--is that easily accessible. One word, even whispered. How frightening is that?)

The truth is, this happens a lot, even in situations that are not inherently stressful or give me much to lose, like spending down time with an old friend. I will suddenly shift into a zone of being hyper self-conscious, able to think about nothing except for the fact that I'm thinking about nothing. It's like being the outermost Russian doll, unable to access the stuff inside. Does this happen to anyone else? I would be interested in strategies for either understanding it or defeating it, preferably both.

Two: I never used to be like this. I actually adored being the center of attention as a child, being called on in class, speaking in public, putting myself on the line. And not only was I cool and calm, I was reasonably articulate, even occasionally in off-the-cuff situations. This began to falter slightly in high school, but I really lost this aspect of myself and let anxiety take over in college.

I have seen the comfortable and self-assured part of myself come through on occasion, when I seem to have a mysterious grasp on a relaxed perspective--when I can manage to care about the material far more than the superficial appearance of a situation (to which I am unusually sensitive: long, awkward silences feel painful, and I will deliberately take a different route to avoid interacting with the girl standing in front of the library who wants my credit card info to support gay rights).

For this reason, I don't necessarily think I have diagnosable anxiety. I can somehow access the part of myself that is not anxious, the part that is even a bit risky and attention-seeking. I am the baby of the family: I am naturally attention-seeking. That is not to say I hope to be completely obnoxious, but I long for a consistent comfort in high-stakes situations again.

---

In my crazy state, it became necessary to find scrap paper and a golf pencil and document the figments of thought that fluttered through my head, half-developed, and then escaped out the door. These are the couple of things I wrote over a period of about an hour, if you can follow in any way:

"spread love like you're in the last throes of life"
"hamster + food pellet"
"holding in my head two conflicting scenarios"
"no security"
"do one thing every day that in no way resembles what you did the day before"

Understand? Yeah, there was a lot of synaptic firing in between each statement. Another thought I had at one point, is that maybe my brain is actually (by virtue of modern life and its accessories) losing the ability for sustained, deep thought. Instead it's thought-thought-thought-thought-thought, a rosary of random thoughts strung together, each only examined as long as another thought doesn't push it out of the way.

For example, the following might be a typical "train" of thought for me:

1. Mn, my contact hurts.

2. Could wear glasses.

3. Feel ugly in glasses.

4. What does this mean, that I feel ugly in glasses? Is it so important, am I that vain?

5. God, I'm vain. I only care about the way I look.

6. But doesn't everybody, kind of? Is this a big secret, is everyone equally vain? Is vanity related to actual, qualitative beauty? Would I be more vain if I were more attractive? Or is it more determined by your personality?

7. To what degree are we able to control our vanity, etc. through perspective? To what degree are we all wired the same?

8. Does wearing glasses make you a cyborg?

And on. And on. I have thoughts, but I don't sufficiently explore any of them. It feels like a fast-flowing river, as opposed to a deep one. This post only serves as an example.

And so, if we're friends, and you happen to notice that I'm being wildly inarticulate, or that I space out momentarily, here's what's going on in my brain.

(I like to theorize, generously, that it's actually going much faster than I can keep up with.)

dopamine.

2010-06-30T23:08:00.006-05:00

OK, so all that stuff, about keeping perspective and pushing the boy away and being the Ice Queen Girlfriend? Yeah, I've realized over the course of yesterday evening through this morning that this is going to be difficult. What with him teaching me about rugby and earnestly announcing he wants to go to yoga with me (HA), and what with him grabbing me and pulling me into an extremely impassioned embrace in his sleep (no; this seriously happened), and what with the paltry attempts at French back-and-forth.

He left this morning and I was stupid with dopamine. Just really, dumbly happy. This has happened a few times since our recent shimmy (collapse?) back into a relationship. We're together and he leaves me in a pocket of chemical-laden Happy, not the truly dangerous euphoria-Happy, but the kind that sends you off to a horrifically tedious job in a swell mood. A mood in which you might employ a word like "swell."

I remain in my pocket for a couple of hours, happily working and drinking my iced coffee and occasionally replaying the more adorable moments of our interaction. And then I start to crawl out of the pocket. And the Happy comes into contact with the Fear, which gives it a finger-wagging and recounts the recent nearness of the Sad, which, while now vacationing in Iceland, could still return from its holiday any second, bringing souvenirs.

And then I am not really too Happy, because I am nervous. But I am not really Sad, because I don't have to be yet. What I am is slightly frenetic, bouncing from hits of isolated joy to stark realism, taking refuge in knowing the names of the chemicals invoked.

I'm still not in love. I live in the present, I am surrounded in activity I create for myself, I see the end like the lookouts on the Titanic didn't see the iceberg.

I'm just managing dopamine.

Confessional.

2010-06-27T21:49:00.004-05:00

June is thick with thunderstorms and heatwaves. My legs are covered in bug bites, which I seem to acquire while sleeping.

I am falling in love with iced coffee. I am following the World Cup with an unusual degree of interest. I am working my way through seasons of Weeds. I am staving off indescribable boredom at work through the use of intriguing audiobooks and podcasts (relistening to old Radiolabs, All Songs Considered, episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher, "Happiness" by Matthieu Ricard). I am reading things about applying for jobs, and cleaning up my resume, if not yet quite actually applying for jobs.

I am also spending large amounts of spontaneous time with F., something which happened when I got back from Michigan and has continued unabated. First it was conversations about our relationship and the nature of it. And about past relationships, which we'd never talked about with each other before. And then it was conversations about everything. Our interactions have been fundamentally different. With nothing to lose, I have been cavalier, more comfortable and more myself. With his classes and the play done, he has had more time and less stress, and has been more interested in spending it with me. Wednesday we wrote together (separately). Thursday he helped me reformat my resume. Friday we shared a pizza, talked, and watched a movie. Yesterday was his birthday and we went out for dinner, which he paid for while I was in the bathroom. Today we sat in the park and read together.

Full disclosure: starting from last night, we are dating again.

I know. I know you just made the look. The disapproving look. The cringe, maybe. And I understand. I, too, would cringe if I were you. Or I might be like my mom on the phone, who at the prospect of my even spending time with F. again, declared breathlessly: "He's just using you for sex." (Which is sort of hilarious, and only demonstrates how little she understands about our relationship.) You are probably worried about my dignity, or my self-respect, or something. I get it.

And you might be right.

But, well, I don't care very much. I can't ask him to be madly in love with me, when I am not madly in love with him. I can ask for, and he has consistently provided, spare honesty. (He and Lady Love Glimmer, for the record, are not in contact, at his request.) I can ask for friendship and respect, and I have that too.

The difference is I'd like to try going into this more self-consciously aware of what's going on. Being in a relationship gives you a feeling of being fundamentally buttressed, as though you are always a part of two people, instead of one person. Hence the physical crush of the break-up. I want to be one person, this time--one distinctly separate person, essentially alone. I'm not sure if I have the perspective for it. But I have been reminding myself that I could be single any moment. I want to spend more time with my friends. I want to spend more time doing things I want to do. I want to continue being cavalier.

And I want to do what I want to do, regardless of other people's opinions, even if it's stupid or naughty or whatever else. Things are sort of messy, I guess. I don't know how they're working better while they've also been dirtied. I think it has to do with my loosening up, his lack of stress, and the new value of openness.

June: hot and stormy, and a decent background.

confronting things.

2010-06-11T23:54:00.004-05:00

Today was the Baccalaureate service, the descending of my family and friends on my taped-together and not-quite-celebratory current existence, the slightly-more-celebratory-after-two-Greek-beers dinner, and the sort of woozily-celebratory-after-a-champagne-flute nighttime reception at the Museum of Science and Industry.

It was also the first day I didn't sob. It was also the night I received, while in a happy, post-three-drinks state, a text message from F. Saying he's sorry he hasn't given news the past few days (this confuses me, I admit; don't you typically leave people alone when you break up with them?) but if I'm not angry he's on campus tonight (brilliantly put--it neither implies that he wants to see me, nor that I want to see him). I texted back, basically, "I will get in touch with you in a while, hang on."

Then, at 10pm, back at my apartment and with everyone tucked in bed, I grabbed my bag and (clandestinely?) slipped out the door to go meet him down the block. (This is the part where, if you're watching a movie, you scream "NO!" at the heroine and wave your hands frantically to stop her.)

But fear not, fair observer of my life--this didn't end with intense apologies and begging, or sex and the status quo.

Here's the great thing about meeting him tonight, though: I looked good. Nice dress, haircut, new earrings. And he noticed. This is far preferable to yesterday, when my eyes were raw and my body was crumply and exhausted. Today I am tired, but I was three-drinks bubbly and ready to see where our conversation would go. I was protected and enlivened by my Shield of Tipsiness, ready to have our first talk with a syringe-full of not-so-nice Reality injected.

What ensued was two hours of remarkably therapeutic talking. In which we both came to understand the current situation of the other, the reasons for our reactions to the relationship's ending, and each other's historical relationship landscape. We went from the bakery to the lab to, memorably, two empty chairs in a sea of many thousand on the quad, in preparation for graduation. Here we sat and talked the longest, alone and emotive in the midst of what will be tomorrow's massive spectacle.

And, wonderfully, for the first time during or after our two-and-a-half-month relationship, I felt able to communicate. I talked and talked, without the self-conscious and rather idiotic editor floating above, and was able to feel finally articulate and open and freely expressive. It happened the way conversations are supposed to happen, the way thoughts are supposed to just appear on the air, not stifled or confused or disappearing on the way out. Perhaps the pressure of our relationship was gone and I could access something that was a bit too nervous before. Perhaps the excessive pressure of my emotions and the added confidence boost of the evening alcohol triplicate (although understand: I wasn't sloppy or seeing in film slides) had given me what I needed. Or maybe it was a combination of the two. The stars aligned and I am proud of the way I spoke tonight about how I felt and what I think. It was radically honest.

He explained himself and spent a fair amount of time taking me in. His story goes like this: he met someone and felt a sudden glimmer of falling in love, but come to find she has a boyfriend and is leaving town. He broke up with me following the realization. Now he doesn't have the girl, or me, or know what he thinks about the love glimmer, which he had learned in his youth, perhaps wisely, not to believe in. He just feels like a big mess.

I made it clear that he better appreciate that while I haven't had a love glimmer in years, our relationship was no less substantial and left me a similarly big mess. And that love glimmers aren't always the be-all-end-all. I explained my long and painful journey of following a love glimmer, which was only about 1/44968ths joy and left me with the cold realization after many years that this guy after whom I had pined was wildly self-involved, totally disinterested in me and frankly, not that great.

I didn't ask him to reconsider our relationship. Because being told that you're jello and he's just tried creme brulee (to borrow a metaphor from My Best Friend's Wedding) is hardly an aphrodisiac.

But after some long string of something that sounded a lot more like what I might write than say, he looked at me for a long time and said, "You know I don't not like you, right?"

To which I replied, "Yeah. I mean, I don't think you dislike me."

And he said, "No. I mean, I don't not like you. I mean--the way I felt about you before, I still feel that way now."

Which caused me to stare into space for a while. It wasn't an invitation. It was information.

"The nature of our relationship--as humans--is now completely different," I pointed out. Because it was, after this conversation, this conversation following two months of our greatest moments of intimacy being uncommunicative. After knowing that I'm jello and he's tasted creme brulee. After discovering that our relationship histories are the inverse of each other, even up to this moment (a climax after which a kind of denouement will necessarily ensue).

Here's what's going to happen: he's going to take some time and dig in to his emotional Stuff, analyze it and figure out what he wants to think about it. I'm going to take some time and consider why I may have reacted so strongly to the break-up, and what I want and expect from a relationship. We will reconvene, and update. But I don't particularly want to be someone's jello, and I don't think he wants to go from creme brulee back to jello.

But here's the interesting thing: he wasn't my creme brulee either.

The nice thing? We heard each other out, and we were honest and kind.

- - - - -

At one point I said, like the words had been whispered to me, "I think there are different ways to reach love, whether by falling or crawling."

the damage.

2010-06-10T21:34:00.004-05:00

I'm taking this physically.

Here's an account of the damages: my heart is still floating somewhere up in my throat, making talking difficult if I'm not well-distracted; my appetite is non-existent: yesterday I subsisted on a croissant, handfuls of dry Cheerios, a pear, and, at 9pm, a few bites of some fettuccine Alfredo I ordered, while today I've had a bowl of Cheerios (with someone else's milk I'd pilfered), a bar of chocolate Pex brought me, and a few more bites of the same pasta (the same leftovers might stretch over for days, which is at least easy on my budget); and my body is downright exhausted, as if I've been exercising or awake for two days straight.

And the tears. It's been great waves of sobbing, until I'm wrung out, followed by a chemical stupor of calm in which I read or make calls I have to make while stable or fact-check an article. Then I last usually a couple hours before another thunderous wave comes crashing from out of nowhere--when I think about my toothbrush in his bathroom cabinet, or the movies waiting in our Netflix queue.

I feel a massive clusterfuck of emotions; eroded self-esteem topped with depression glossed over with a heavy veneer of shame and humiliation. The thing I keep saying to my friends, over and over, is It's Ridiculous, like I don't get to be this upset and I'm violating a deal I had with myself wherein I got to have a fun little fling type of relationship with an attractive Frenchman on the condition that I would not get too emotionally involved. Or, I was cavalier about the effects of that involvement, because goddammit I was going to have a relationship and going to experience all these things you're supposed to experience--heartbreak, large or small, didn't seem like a legitimate concern. Didn't even cross my mind. Because I hadn't sobbed before.

I am not inconsolable; I am casting about for healing mechanisms. I bought "Eat, Pray, Love" on a magnificent impulse with a sort of extraordinary need. I need things that metaphorically rub my back and bring me tea, things that tell me not to be ashamed, things that start making little repairs. (The phone conversation with my mother, the manhater, didn't particularly help: "Well really, I think all men are bastards.")

Meanwhile I am taking a reprieve from replying to his follow-up apologetic email which was basically the French version of "It's not you, it's me." I know he means well; he's not a malicious guy. But what I want him to see of me is not a human puddle of emotions. We didn't even exchange talk of love, and we kept a steady and consistent emotional distance, in speech. But I was burying a lot in him, silently. I was building up capital. I was preparing to love him.

But you know. He never called me beautiful. I want to be with someone who not only thinks I'm beautiful, but tells me so... at least once.

Doom.

2010-06-09T13:56:00.002-05:00

Yep.

Newly single. I feel humiliated, stupid, and deeply uninteresting. I don't want to leave my room. I knew this was inevitable; so why am I so upset? It was two months. I wasn't in love with him.

Why is the whole world descending on me this weekend? Why is RIGHT NOW the time for intense simulated joy?!

Meh.

2010-06-08T23:37:00.002-05:00

Some interesting things happened but today all I feel is meh. A descendant mood. A malaise.

Rain, a headache, an out-of-contact boy after a strange and fragile conversation spelling (at least in my head) doom, a long movie about humans not connecting, a cap and gown to buy, upcoming celebrations when mostly I feel like decompressing.

(This, in favor of writing something.)

Summer Reading.*

2010-06-06T16:33:00.005-05:00

Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself - (Conversations between) David Foster Wallace and David Lipsky [almost finished]

The Color of Magic - Terry Pratchett**

And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie**

The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow

Freedom - Jonathon Franzen

Fortress of Solitude - Jonathon Lethem

* * *

I've also been eyeing DFW's "Infinite Jest," but that would take serious dedication. Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" is a possibility. I have some intense Russians on my shelf, but just now doesn't seem like the time for that. Could work on my Updike by moving onto "Rabbit is Rich." Thinking about maybe a Marquez too.

If anyone has recommendations, I'll take them.

------

*Subject to (many) additions and alterations

**As recommended (insisted upon?) by F.

cupcakes and skinny-dipping.

2010-06-06T01:08:00.004-05:00

In the few days of school being over, things are not exactly crystallizing, but are growing into a strange and comfortable chaos, an absurd kind of closure.

Last night I went to three separate parties, and talked at all of them with great enthusiasm to people I had either just met or barely knew. I greeted acquaintances with disproportionate excitement and joy. I had two beers at the first party, a potluck; a cupcake at the next, a bonfire at The Point; and some small vodka-cranberry thing at the third, a cast party for the play F. is in. Even he was a bit wilder than normal, drinking and introducing me to the cast and disappearing and orbiting people he seemed to find very exciting. Around 1:30AM I realized he was still glowing with energy and said I'd leave, only to find myself sitting downstairs on the porch talking with an old friend and then suddenly joining a mass exodus of fourth years back to The Point for skinny-dipping. And here's the thing--honest to God, I wasn't even drunk. I am this aimless right now.

Everyone is loopy from the sudden, warm June, and so The Point was far from deserted, even at 1AM. I almost held back, but seeing everyone else stripping I realized it was unlikely that I'll have this sort of opportunity again for a long time, and that the last time I went skinny-dipping in Lake Michigan (at 17? 18?) on the opposite side of the lake was unforgettable. I thought of F. and decided to maintain a shred of propriety (seriously) by keeping my underthings on. Not sure how that validated my faithfulness; he didn't seem shaken when I texted him moments later in a sort of "HA!" fashion (i.e. "HA! Your girlfriend is insane! You thought I went home to bed but really I jumped into the lake in my underwear!") -- shoulda just gone Full Monty.

Water was warm, surprisingly so; scene was bright with public lighting and full of reactions of hilarity and approval from a big group of African American neighborhood folk--they seemed to enjoy our ridiculous and irreverent display of public indecency. You'd think 30 naked white asses in the moonlight would be more of a shock to the system, but the thing is, nudity is not terribly offensive. There's nothing violent or violating about it; a naked-assed college kid in the moonlight is as silly and vulnerable as a kitten.

The police eventually drove through the park, as they are wont to do, and caused us to retreat, but they were harmless enough and didn't even get out of the vehicle or yell at us; their goal was to get people out of the park--which closes at 11pm. In fact, they didn't even seem to care about the obvious skinny-dipping. While the audience cried, "Hurry up and getcha clothes on!" in anxious anticipation as the cops slow-mo'ed toward us with a big beam of light, we ended up dressing and leaving without even a minor incident. The world is gentle, sometimes.

Picked up F. and we went back to his place and slept to the sound of rain pattering on the window. It's alright, this being-alive thing.

Dive dive down.

2010-06-04T00:25:00.005-05:00

Today was my first free day, and a mixed bag of emotions. I worked cheerfully for four hours, still euphoric from last night; got a haircut on the North Side at an Aveda salon called "Blueberry Moon," based solely on the name, and felt increasingly self-conscious as I was made to stare for an hour at my baggy-eyed, lopsided, awkward mug (why can't I look at a painting while my hair is being cut? I trust the hairdresser!); bought a plum-colored camera + couple of necessary cheapo accessories and felt the money draining out of my account like blood from my veins; watched a few funny and poignant episodes from the first season of Weeds on my new Netflix account; lay with my head on the boy's lap on a bench in the sun, before we parted ways for him to act (and die) on-stage in front of an audience and me to go home and scrub the bathtub and toilet with bleach; sifted through and acquired some of C's wardrobe castoffs; did 40-60ish crunches; and felt, appropriately, aimless.

I am down and up, simultaneously full of dread and hopeful. For so many months I have been in the state of dreading. Dreading the end of my undergrad and the nearness of finding a job--having my worth determined in a way even more disconnected from me than through grading (cover letters, interviews, the slick veneer of being the Professional Everybody). Meeting F., kissing him, and feeling an hourglass flip over somewhere.. dreading the quick and inevitable end to what is, in many ways, my first real relationship. Dreading the slow dissolution of college friendships. Dreading socialization with primarily people I want to kick in the eye. Oh, the dread.

But then... the promise of a life is open to me, too. Piles of books I will have time to read. Goals I can pin on a wall and work through. It's not as if the world has ended--I am still young, still curious, still want to do XY&Z. Who's to say things won't be better than I expect? But it seems only fair to expect the dismal. No one starts out wanting to sell insurance or stand in an assembly line or be a receptionist.

These are the thoughts of first-day freedom.

Help, I'm Alive.

2010-06-02T23:54:00.002-05:00

Holy exploding Jesus in my brain, I just completed my undergraduate education.

I have no homework. I have no exams. I have no non-joyful readings.

I have no anticipation of any of these things in the near-future.

I am liberated. I am being swept toward the cage of mirthless adulthood. Please do not say the words "resume" or "cover letter" to me for a few days. I am going to exist in a suspended reality with things I want to do, like attack the bathtub with bleach, and pin up on my wall the giant list I wrote during class of summer goals and motivations, and kiss my boyfriend, and buy a camera, and get a haircut.

I'll get back to reality... soon enough.

Snapshots.

2010-06-01T23:55:00.004-05:00

Something is telling me to record June.

It is summer in Chicago. Little insects are finding their way into my room and buzzing around my arms. Gangs of cockroaches patrol the sidewalks, bathed in streetlights. Walks home at night are comfortable. Gone are the chilly gusts that haunt Chicago three-quarters of the year. Nights are too hot to crawl under anything but the lavender afghan and mornings begin showing their face at 4am, if you happen to toss and turn and look out the window. A greater compulsion to shave my legs. Everyone walking a dog.

And that general unease with it all, partially as a result of still being in school (for one more day), partially because I'll never do this again. This is my first summer that hasn't been bookended by another school year... since I was four. It is at once freeing and confusing and panic-inducing. It is a break from the comfortable, static hum of my education--like a refrigerator hum--constantly filling the background. The hum is shut off. It is a question mark. And frighteningly, it is the commencement of the next stage of my life, in which so many lay down their subversive ideas and surrender themselves to American Idol.

Hopefully I can carry through the summer. I have a lot to record.

Lost in translation.

2010-04-25T20:55:00.003-05:00

Can you really say anything about a nationality, in this modern, globalized age? Everyone watches American movies and listens to American music, we all eat watered-down Chinese food, are familiar with various Japanese anime, retain traces of French and German from our high school courses, have private obsessions with the KGB or the Bay of Pigs or some other historical niche. So how am I really American? What little tics distinguish me?

F. and I end up spending a lot of time discussing culture--French and American, up against each other. He's fiercely proud of la France and grumpily critical of American culture, making for lots of long conversational deconstruction, in which I attempt to explain why we do this-or-that, frequently when I'm not even sure myself. Why are we so fat, why, why? He's deeply perturbed, as most intelligent people are, by the average amount of television-watching. I give him what I think is the answer--well, you see, people work so hard here, spend so much soul-crushing time at work, that they're just too tired when they get home and there's not often a lot to do in small towns so they just collapse in front of the television, eat their dinner, and get up and do it again the next day. And then on the weekends they have a little time and money so they buy cheap plastic shit.

But then he looks so depressed and the question morphs into how? How? How can people live like that? Why don't they just KILL themselves? Which is so dramatic (and, as I think in my head, French) I have to laugh.

Then he tells a story of quintessential American culture. He takes the stairs to the third floor while a colleague takes the elevator--he arrives a few minutes later and the colleague notes, "You're making me look lazy!" This he laughs off but privately takes as a deep and meaningful example of the American mentality. The colleague doesn't make himself look lazy, he is only lazy in the context of F.

Of course, F. doesn't constantly walk around bemoaning the state of American culture, or he wouldn't be terribly fun to be around. And he's happy to try new things and accept the things he likes. Like Johnny Cash. And s'mores. But if the topic of culture comes up and I ask, he's happy to share his opinion, which is often touched with despondency.

Last night it was the French and the Germans, and we pseudo-playfully traded barbs on both sides. I asked what the French thought of the Germans. The Germans are bureaucratic and narrow-minded, he explained, while the French are resourceful. The French are stuck-up, I pointed out. He thought about this for a moment, and then agreed. The rest of the night, after making a statement, I qualified it with, but then again, I'm narrow-minded.

It was an odd conversation, not particularly bitter but leaving both of us feeling a little off. Today he sent an apology for his remarks, saying he was feeling sad, tired, and missing home.

It had seemed fun to compare culture before, but now it seems a bit tired. It seems we're all equally products of our own culture and the ones we seek out for ourselves--I am American but academic, nerdy, a rural-to-urban transplant, a hundred nuanced things. He is modern, and so he's the same.

Though I love his distinguishing flourishes. His complete security in his masculinity, without the need for a box of testosterone-fueled cultural supports. His unshakable sense of responsibility.

Still, he's not French and I'm not American, we're individuals, he's a guy and I'm a girl, he makes sound effects and I pull lint off his shirts.

We'll let it rest for a while.

springtime sickness

2010-04-22T05:00:00.002-05:00

Ugh.

Monday afternoon I caught something. I felt it settling down in me at work, where I suddenly got very tired, very achy, very hot. I pressed through my intern meeting and my Global Warming lab, went for hot & spicy Korean soup with A., and finally got home around 8, where I fell into a sleep until getting a message from F. who wanted to come over for "tea & cuddling", which is one of the few activities we have time for during the week (barf if you want, I won't hold it against you). My desire to see him trumped my desire to sleep, but I did finally go to bed around 11. I woke up the next morning still tired, my throat raw and swollen, coughing, difficult to swallow, but mostly just in pain. It feels like the same epically shitty throat stuff I had during mono. And remember how I hated the mono? God, I hated the mono.

Technically it's Thursday (5am and I'm on my third lozenge) and I'm still dealing with this, having missed classes and work since Tuesday. Two days of sleep and finishing my book, of Facebook and Hulu, of lozenges and hot tea. People have stayed away and that's probably better, as I'm probably contagious and smelly. Definitely unwashed.

I think I've really put in my time with sickness. For a while, every day after mono I was sending out vibes of gratitude that I was healthy again, letting the universe know I was thankful. But then I stopped. Maybe that's why I got sick again? Is Karma putting me in my place?

A little bit harsh, Karma.

the fern unfurls.

2010-04-18T20:10:00.002-05:00

In the past month, I have gone to Arizona, turned in my BA, gotten a haircut, gotten A's in all my classes, made a fire, and started dating someone. Happy springtime.

Did you see how I threw that in there--"started dating someone"--as if it weren't totally antithetical to how my life works and earth-shatteringly different and unlikely with my luck? As if I have ever really, consistently been dating one person? As if it weren't so strange as to be almost experimental?

I suppose it is. Experimental, that is. It is new (a few weeks old, now), fragile. He has relationship anxieties, I have relationship anxieties. We don't launch into long, emotional praises and reassurances. But we want to be kissing each other. So here we are, slowly navigating the dating terrain (and such new terrain!) while looking out for sharks and wildebeest. (Imagine us in khaki adventuring outfits, please. I am.)

Here's what I will tell you about him: He rarely drinks alcohol or coffee, but he has a kitchen drawer devoted to cocoa. His head is framed in cherubic brown curls. He is French. He is a teaching assistant in my Global Warming course, but he is not my TA (except he actually is, de facto-style). He is 6'2". He is in a play, is over half-way through "War and Peace", writes fiction. His bedroom is spotless and the shirt he sleeps in is under his pillow. He laughs at my French pronunciation, when I get brave enough to do it. He freely criticizes American food, and then shamelessly pulls out a box of Cookie Crisp to feed me with in the morning. He smiles frequently. He is frustrating. He is cute.

We will call him F.

F. and I are dealing with what I have termed a low-maintenance relationship. We date only each other but we do not monopolize each other's lives. We see each other when possible but we do not have talks about The Future. We are trying to do that thing where we enjoy each other's company without owning each other. It is low-pressure and frighteningly natural for me, the perpetually-single. I am not in love with him. But I like him a lot.

Of course, exploring the terrain of a relationship is new for me in almost every way. Lately I've been noticing that my own identity starts to grow fuzzy when I'm with him--it's as though it becomes ungraspable--what is it? What do I care about? What do I do? I have enough trouble with this when alone, but F. is the unshakable, regimented soldier of science. He's in the lab in the morning and at night, has a fangirl-like devotion to his elusive and brilliant advisor. He's building up material for a paper. His spare time schedule is filled out like he's at summer camp--three hours of rehearsal here, dancing on Friday nights, squash on X days, a day or two set aside for writing, and me after his activities, to drink tea with, to kiss. He approaches life like he knows exactly what he's going to do with it.

I'm glad of it, but it makes me wonder what I'm doing in comparison. He writes more than I do, and he's the geophysicist (geochemist, actually, I think) to my pseudo-journalist. My future feels a little like the valley below a cliff, and I'm teetering on the edge. I have a thousand interests and nothing is screaming for my attention. My goals involve what I'm making for dinner tomorrow night. I fear being herded into a secretarial position, pushing papers around a desk, getting put in the place of someone who doesn't know what they want.

F. is low-pressure, is fun, is warm and affectionate. But involvement with him is making me believe I better figure out what I want--and fast.

new home

2010-03-07T23:50:00.002-06:00

For now, I am living here.

Things My Roommate Does That Make Me Want to Take A Machete to His Skull

2010-03-02T11:41:00.002-06:00

Err, things that bother me. I have been keeping track in my head for a while now, I figured it was time for a comprehensive list. Allow me to preface this by saying that we did not know each other prior to my moving in, and we are not friends now.

Bathroom:

He occasionally urinates with the door open. While I am in the apartment. While I am in the living room.
He frequently does not wash his hands, judging from time between flushing (if it happens) and leaving the bathroom. I don't pay consistent attention to this, of course, but I have noticed once or twice.
Lately, he has been not flushing the toilet. I go in the bathroom not only to find the seat up (really, him putting the seat down would be a luxury at this point) but to find it left used. Which means I have to flush it before I use it. And while I'm not a fragile and delicate flower of a woman, I'm also not a barnyard cow, and not flushing the toilet is just beyond the pale of what I'm willing to deal with.

Kitchen:

Instead of putting his dirty dishes in the sink, he fills them with water and scatters them around the counters and stove.
Rather than hanging pots and pans on the wall, or finding another place for them, he leaves both dirty and clean ones on the burners. Routinely, there is something on every burner, for example, the tea kettle, two dirty pots and one clean pan. One or more of these might be sitting full of water.
He washes and dries his dishes with paper towels instead of sponges and cloth towels.
Certain kinds of garbage--I'm not sure how he discriminates here--are left on the floor around the garbage can rather than inside of it. These seem to be recyclable items--beer bottles, cardboard boxes, glass jars--but he doesn't recycle, he just leaves them there. Which makes it look like we just throw garbage on the floor.

Living Room:

He literally lives in the living room. On this one spot on the couch. ALL THE TIME. If I come home at any time, there is a 50% chance he will be on the spot on the couch. He spends no time in his own room. According to our other roommate, he only started doing that since I moved in, which weirds me out. All of his books are strewn on the couch and coffee table (some are falling behind the cushions), his laptop is sitting there, and his jacket is there as well, which prohibits anybody at any time from using the couch without moving his stuff.
The television is on literally all the time. Sometimes he watches C-Span or MSNBC, sometimes old movies, sometimes it's on a channel that just plays classical music. But it's always on, loud, and I can hear it in my room because it's just on the other side of the wall. If he isn't watching these, he's playing a loud shooting game on his computer that leaves me to hear "BANG. BANG. BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG. BANG" OVER and OVER.

Miscellaneous:

He occasionally smokes cigars in the living room. Such that they can be smelled throughout the apartment. He never smokes them outside.
He has no social skills. You can say "Bye" when you walk out the door, and half of the time he won't respond. Same goes with "Hi." He buzzes up and opens the door for my friends and they say "Hi" to his face and he turns around and sits back down.
On the other hand, he knocks on my door at every opportunity to show me a "funny youtube video" or other arbitrary and stupid thing.

Now. I am not a neat freak. My desk is covered in stacks of papers and books, and my dresser is covered in a pile of clothes and newspapers and books. But that's just the thing, it's my room. Not the living space shared by everyone. This apartment is already old, run-down and questionable in its clean state--put garbage on the floor and full dishes with water and leave them all over, and it looks like an abandoned shitfest. My roommate is an aesthetic cancer on this poor apartment.

So now... what to do? I was so miffed yesterday by finding the toilet unflushed for the third time that I attached a sticky note to the top of it reading: "(1) close door (2) flush toilet" and that's beginning to solve the problem, I think. I haven't encountered these two problems since I put the note there. But how do I begin to explain how obnoxious and disrespectful basically all of his behavior is? Do I continue to throw away the trash, put his dishes in the sink and hang up the pots and pans, hoping he gets the hint? Because I'm afraid that, given the right mood and circumstance, I might snap and just scream at him.

I whine, and whine, and whine.

2010-02-03T23:27:00.005-06:00

I am a whiny woman, in retrospect.

I am only sort of this whiny in person. A little whiny but a lot sarcastic and self-deprecating, for good measure. I don't know if that helps, and it's very conditional on the context of my life right now. I tend to want to write in my moments of melodrama, to collect an organized spiel that I can review and work through. Not so sure if it provides that catharsis for anyone who reads this, though.

So heave a sigh of relief, here's another topic:

I have found that, recently, I am too attached to entertainment. And I don't mean I occasionally watch TV. I have watched the LOST two-hour season premiere twice since it aired last night. I have a string of shows I watch on Hulu, and I watch the Daily Show, almost religiously, every morning with my tea. Almost without exception, the things I watch are always online. I watch these things in favor of doing my homework--even, at times, doing any of it. And right now? I'm not overburdened with homework. I have my BA, which I'm decently into and which I'm not terribly nervous about any more. I could be applying for jobs. I could be thinking about jobs. But I'm watching ABC shows, and going through Facebook (I have, mercifully, cut back on this the past couple days). My brain has effectively given up, surrendered my intellectual ideals to the mediocre comforts of occasional laughs and drama that even I end up criticizing. What's going on?

I had written about this before (in the summer at some point), and I can't help but think it's just a continuation--and steady cultural grinding toward some kind of pop-reference-rewarding mental masturbation, frothy with Kanye West and People Magazine and easy commentary on Obama. I think in not even "lol" but rather the bastardized and neo-lol varient "lawl" and frequently experience the mental sounding-out of W-T-F. When something funny happens, or I have a thought I'd like to share, I immediately experience its mental transition into a status update. Ninety percent of the time I don't share these thoughts, because people don't need a constant stream of me. But some people don't restrain, and there is a certain universality to this desire to satisfy an avatar public, where cleverness rewards you with comments. After a date two weeks ago, in which the other party was not interested, he still added me on Facebook immediately after getting home at 4 in the morning. Why the urgency? Who knows. But Facebook is your people collection. Collect all you meet! Yet the craving of the voyeur is satisfied almost immediately after the add--and then your subject becomes your audience. Your Facebook is your Barbie doll self, change your clothes and your personality by editing your profile. Accessorize and individualize with the links you post. Put your best face forward.

The weirdest part is that Facebook has become the new cell phone; it is perfectly professionally legitimate and expected. Last summer my boss--the editor-in-chief of a respected, medium-sized newspaper--promised to put me in touch with some contacts. But not through email or phone numbers; instead, he added me on Facebook and used messaging. I have been thinking recently about deactivating my account, but the desire to keep my contact open has been a legitimate concern.

Not much of this is new, and I'm not complaining about any of it. But I think it's worthy of consideration. How does our real social life alter under the impact of our avatar social life? I might argue that opportunity for real social contact has expanded (i.e. "X X is in such-and-such place! Come join me!"/party or event invitations). But how do we conceive of it all?

Foucault suffers from my neglect (although in-class discussion has been amazing). But I want a thoroughly modern social theorist to conquer the internet and my retreating attention span.

in security

2010-01-31T22:50:00.005-06:00

Last night I had the most banal nightmare.

It was around 4am when I shot up in bed, turned on the lamp, and lay there feeling dejected and fundamentally, suddenly, outside of my life. It was a dream about friendship; in it, I had brought friends back to my house (in Michigan, absurdly), and I made them a dinner while they sat outside at a table in the snow (their choice), but when I brought out the dinner they said the plans had changed, they were going to a restaurant where another friend was waiting and I could come if I wanted.

It had more to do with who the friends were--one friendship has been haunting me recently, as it does from time to time, and always my own thoughts leave me feeling cornered and vulnerable. But there was also just the action--the casual walking away, the disinterested invite, and my built-up desperation for attention, something that has always been so fundamentally un-me. But I've beaten it to death recently, letting my friends know I've felt alone, dreading--especially last quarter--weekends by myself. I've pushed it out of my head recently and I've been better at adapting than I used to be. I've taken more initiative and pursued some new and old friendships for company. But maybe it was the disinterest of my last date that has me dreaming of rejection at 4am, so uncomfortable it feels like a nightmare, so true that I turn on the light and immediately know, epiphany-style:

People are selfish. They listen and ignore. I am selfish too--I have and will continue to leave lonely people lonely in favor of someone else because it satisfies me, as everyone does. It just so happens that I've never been the one left alone, and now I am.

I can only kind of take it personally; it is, as always, the significant other that wins time and affection, that can give back the best and the most, and now it's all a matter of being unlucky in a pool of lucky people, and being unlucky for a long time. Friends commiserate with each other when they're both alone. No one in a relationship really needs to commiserate, and then your friends are pleasant people for brunch and movies every so often. If all of your friends are in relationships, then you spend lots of nights alone and you end up consoling people because their Other said something stupid or doesn't want to go all out for Valentine's. But really? At least someone is keeping them warm at night. Not one of them would trade me for a second.

That's been my mindset on bad days. I realize it's uncomfortably resentful and narrowly unfair. I don't claim that people in relationships hold the key to happiness, but I do believe they hold the key to a kind of security I feel too frequently barred from right now.

As it is now, I feel okay. I've been loosening up a bit; it's better to be alone and unhappy than to be clingy and making someone else unhappy. Today I thought of it as more of a puzzle. I am alone, have been since time immemorial, and will stay that way for a while, it seems. So how do I make myself happy alone? I need to look into projects, solo social diversions that make time alone a strengthening and rejuvenating thing (like it used to be). I want to mix in philosophy, enjoyment, peace, and contemplation. I should emerge every few weeks more interested in and aware of something, not increasingly resentful and socially desperate.

Knowing that is something, anyway.

a date.

2010-01-24T15:54:00.003-06:00

I went on a date. Sort of.

You know that rant I had the other day, about how I fail at life? Well the date that was canceled became uncanceled and last night I headed to the north side with electric nerves and met my friends and had dinner and two glasses of red wine. This was before Boy came. After the wine my nerves were no longer electric but more like satin, and I danced around the kitchen. And was ready to meet a potential... something.

I was more than impressed when he finally did show up, bearing Great Lakes beer, and it was instantly clear that he was my type. For the record, my type usually goes along the lines of, physically, a mop of curly hair and blue eyes and a cozy shirt, a flannel in this case. Because I'd ironed out my nerves I started talking to him pretty quickly. A few cocktails were made and downed and then the four of us were walking to a bar. After a while one of the group dropped off to go to sleep (5am wake-up call). I had a Cosmopolitan. We walked back to the apartment and the other went to sleep too, and then it was just me and Boy on the couch and beer and infomercials until around 4am.

So here's the thing I hadn't realized about myself until last night: this whole journalism thing? It's, uh, kind of seeped into my personality. When I talk to someone, the natural tendency to float from question to question to question ("Where did you grow up?", "Are you a Lutheran?", "And how did you feel about it?") is very much present. Poor Boy. I don't know if he started the night intending to tell me his life story, but now I know it, down to his dad dying eight years ago and leaving him a guitar, his current no-marriage, no-baby outlook, and the fact that he likes to buy books online so that he gets a package in the mail.

There were pros and cons. The cons include the fact that he smokes (although he was very amiable as I reminded him that he was going to die of lung cancer). But the pros are pretty good. We have the same favorite book. We were able to talk for about six hours straight. And there was actual chemistry, at least on my end. Chemistry like he'd smile and I'd go a little soft, and I kept looking at the buttons on his shirt. I also liked when he talked about his job and mentioned specific cells and procedures and I had no idea what he was talking about. Ooh, talk nerdy to me.

He finally did leave at 4am-ish and there was no kiss (nor any physical stuff up until that point) but there was the awkward, drawn-out looking-at-each-other moment and then a hug. And a suggestion that we "hang out" again.

When I came back this morning he'd added me on Facebook. In 2010, I guess that's Step 1. Of course, I figure the ball is in his court, but my lack of dating experience always leaves me a little bewildered (are we friends? Is the anticipation of dating still hanging in the air? Should I initiate something?)... good thing this week is heavy on the work for me. Of course, there is an expiration date on this hanging-in-the-air thing, I'm sure. As of now, I wait for the unusually dark-and-brooding scientist to get in touch. Or I bother my friend to find out what he thought.

..on second thought, that seems like a good route.

Let's talk about how

2010-01-21T16:40:00.003-06:00

I am a massive failure at life.

I have no money and owe at least $300 on my bank account, I bought a pint of Ben & Jerry's yesterday despite this fact, there's freezing rain outside and I have no rain boats and my shoes fall apart in the rain, I was going to have a group date this weekend but now it's postponed due to a friend's financial difficulties and the guy will probably get a girlfriend in the meantime, I spent an enormous amount of time this week trying not to pitifully be excited that I even had a date, I did none of my readings this week, my Nietzsche prof sent out an email expressing his disappointment in peoples' lateness for which I am at least partially responsible, other people are finding jobs and applying for schools and I have barely even thought about either one, I still need to deal with health insurance stuff from my mono hospital-going saga, I still need to apply for a Stafford loan if it's even possible, I have done almost no BA reading or work since one week ago but I know everything that has happened on Facebook, and, although it hardly requires mentioning, I have no motivation.

Please, someone kick me in the face.

Swiiiine feva.

2009-12-06T13:40:00.002-06:00

Alright, I don't know if I have the swine flu or not, but the sick-day count is officially at Day 9 (if we're running a conservative estimate). Can I possibly get you to conceive of how truly shitty that is, in light of timing? I got sick over Thanksgiving, missed an entire preparatory week of classes and work and studying for Finals Week, and tomorrow that week begins and I'm still at least a few days from recovery. There have been two visits to the ER, two chest X-Rays, every symptom possible, and a load of prescriptions (antibiotics, steroids, an inhaler).

Last night I slept for 12 hours. Today my stomach feels weird, my energy is low, my cough is deep, and my brain feels like jello. I have been attempting a Hindi essay and knowing that much of my grammar and verb usage is coming out poorly. Tomorrow I have a physical science exam at 8:30AM. I have yet to study.

I'm getting to that part of sickness where you imagine socializing as if it's some extraordinary feat, worlds away. I can see myself, weeks into the future, fancy drink in hand in a bar with Christmas lights strung up, wearing one of my Party shirts, healthy, in make-up, laughing. (I don't actually know how or where this situation would take place, but it's a good stock image.)

HEALTHY PEOPLE, ENJOY YOUR HEALTHINESS.

I also have the urge to wipe down this entire apartment seven times with antibacterial wipes. Lengthy sickness has made me somewhat germophobic. Can I drink out of that glass again, or is it covered in SEVEN MORE DAYS of ILLNESS? Can I sleep on this pillow or will I reinfect myself? THAT DOOR must be COVERED in VIRUSES. AHHHHH.

It doesn't help that the boys have been stalking around and coughing and acting like they're somehow even close to how crappy I feel (hint: if you're still drinking beer, M., NO, you're not all that sick, now are you?) They should not try to be stealing my illness thunder, as absurd a concept as that is. Because you really don't want to look for whatever this crap is. Because it sucks. And it saps your energy. And it makes you whiny, as whiny as I am right now. (Notice: I will start acting human again in a few days, I think.)

My birthday is a week from tomorrow. First, I want health. Then, I want a cupcake.

Expensive things I want

2009-11-23T00:49:00.003-06:00

1. A digital camera that takes high-res, gorgeous photos to inspire me. I would photograph food, flowers, and faces. I would create art projects for myself. And for you.

2. One pair of shoes that could be categorized as sexy.

3. No negative moneys in my bank account.

Food count: I have lentils, rice, and pasta. Outta milk again. Organic v. cheap, this is why I will never gain enough for a camera. Also, heart-stopping debt.

Work count: BA reading withers from inattention, stupid Bollywood skit requires memorization, something about a world music research paper nags at my memory, and what is ozone again? Where is my time going? Are evil elves in my wall siphoning it away?

Cripping debt + life in box + lazy = no sexy shoes.

Boo.

BAistan

2009-11-08T22:40:00.002-06:00

I haven't told you about my BA yet, have I, Blog?

Well, I'm probably not going to right now either, because while it's endlessly fascinating I can't give too much away at this point. I have done some research and I have a lot left to go. I can give you the key words in descending narrowing order, however, which are: Afghanistan, Taliban, Pashtuns, ethnic nationalism. I promise it's very, very interesting.

One of the nice things about focusing on a BA topic is getting to fall into the depth of a subject again. Being on the quarter system, and taking four classes a quarter, means you can get into lots of things but you can only fall so deep into each one. Examples from my college experience: Marx, Durkheim, pirates, Russian literature, the world water crisis, AIDS, museums, early American colonization, the Beat Generation, Bretton Woods..

But with this BA, it's all Afghanistan all the time. I am learning odds and ends. I am collecting and printing articles from journals I doubt more than 80 people read. I'm investigative. It turns out I can't really go to Afghanistan and interview a member of the Taliban, so I'm sniffing out primary sources wherever I can. The number of formal interviews given by the Taliban to the press and recorded can probably be counted on two hands. I need ethnographies, travel writing, first-hand accounts, anything that takes into account ethnic relations.

I haven't been able to explore at all the past week (midterm PAIN and SUFFERING on a grand scale), and have been insufficiently lazy for the past several. I only have about seven articles read and miscellaneous bits of a number of books. So these last five weeks? It's Go Time. I need mega-discipline. I need to at least imagine that I'm on Adderall.

Anyway, in my more leisurely exploration of everything Afghan/Taliban/South-Central Asian, I have found some things worth sharing (learn something new today!):

Ghosts of Alexander is a frequently updated blog of political/social/cultural commentary on Afghanistan mainly, but also Central Asia more generally, by a PhD candidate doing his research in Tajikistan. If you want to actually know complex things about Afghanistan, this is an interesting read. I am thinking about emailing him for help with sources. (Also: we have a mutual Facebook friend. The world is small.)

The Kalash are a genetically unique tribe in the mountains of Pakistan; they're disproportionately blue-eyed and blonde. And also, still polytheists. Apparently there's speculation that they were left over from Alexander the Great's army. Just, wow.

Finally, Afghan Atheist. Because religion should piss everyone off, at least a little bit.

...I seem to be on some kind of pan-Asia mental tour. It started three years ago in China, trekked West to India, went up through Pakistan and Afghanistan, and now I'm eyeing Central Asia while I'm at it. Check in on me in three years and I'll be up around Turkey.

I am hopeless.

2009-11-01T23:49:00.002-06:00

(As my roommates try to help me with physics concepts.)

M: "Now, let's say I have a cookie, and I'm breaking the cookie into a third and a two-third piece at a rate of 1 cookie per second. And then, I start breaking cookies into halves instead of thirds and you actually have two halves and the halves are the same so you'd have the coefficient of two..."
E: "But you don't have any more and you're not doing it any faster."
J: "Because the oxygen molecules are actually the same.."
M: "...let's just stick to cookies."

Epic intelligence fail.

lookit what I found

2009-10-28T00:25:00.003-05:00

I am in musical love with Hype Machine. It is my new Youtube. It is magical.

Hype Machine collects mp3s from a million music blogs and compiles them in one place--it is a remarkably thorough music aggregator. This means you can type in any artist and receive not only sparkly and recent (and sometimes older) music from that artist, but also relevant live versions, covers of and remixes from that artist. Even better, type in a song you like and you'll more than likely hit upon covers and remixes of it. It delivers the fresh and revitalizes the tired.

Because it's put me in such a fine mood, y'all should partake of my bounty.

Basia Bulat - "Gold Rush" (New album drops in January, YES)
Basia Bulat - "Snakes and Ladders" (Mellower version of the Oh, My Darling track--much improved, IMO)
Canasta - "The Model" (Kraftwerk cover)
Ruby Weapon - "Two Weeks" (Grizzly Bear cover)
Laura Marling - "The Wrote and the Writ" (Johnny Flynn cover)

Professional passion.

2009-10-27T00:22:00.003-05:00

One of the (incredibly lofty) newspaper internships I'm applying for requires that I write an "autobiography" of at least 500 words. Writing about myself isn't terribly difficult (I mean, I do it on here often enough) but trying to remember and decide what's important from the 21 years of my life thus far is strange, at best.

Perhaps the most notable aspect is something I think about often--passion. I think about it and it confuses me. I'm not sure that I have a passion.

I'm a passionate person, that isn't the problem. I'm passionate about life. I still want to do many things. But mainly, these things are not productive on the measurable scale of capitalist development. I feel indifferent about things like running a company or creating products. The many things I want to do are controlled entirely by me--going to X country, learning X language, learning the capitals of every country in the world, learning to cook X kind of food, learning to play a certain instrument, writing a novel, walking or biking a long distance, learning to better understand and appreciate things like physics. None of these things are marketable.

In writing an autobiography for a journalistic internship, I am probably expected to express a passion for journalism. In fact, I do not have one. The truth is, as I've rolled around and peeked at various careers, journalism is simply the most appealing in that, I imagine, it allows me to be as much myself as possible. It gives me not unlimited, but very generous independence in constructing a "product." It allows me to continue learning diverse things on the job as part of the job. It allows me to leave the building and be outside and journey to new places. I am not passionate about the process of framing a journalistic story, but I am often interested in the subject and passionate about my freedom.

Because I have no "professional" passion, I fear the ease of being depressed or at least uninspired in whatever future occupation I am swept into. As I get closer to graduating, this "swept into" thing feels more and more likely. I am a picky human being, hugely idealistic and easily dissatisfied and discouraged. I will have to make money. My skill set, background, and experience are not unusually compelling. And I don't have a professional passion. That means, more than likely, I will have to devote hours to producing something I don't care about rather than learning.

Not sure how to spin this one, autobiography readers. You will want to hear about how my passion for journalism developed and I can't give you that one. All I can offer is why journalism may be one of the few livable options I foresee.

In any case, it doesn't matter a whole hell of a lot. This is the sort of supremely high-end paper that will hire wunderkids who set up makeshift video reports after the tsunami struck on their Thailand vacation, or did independent investigative journalism on the perilous refugee situation in a Central Asian country, and then published it on their blog.

All my blog's got are long-operated, occasionally updated reflections on my life.

Most people I know are excited about working. I am not. I feel dread. Where are you, marketable passion?

musings on internet boomers.

2009-10-15T16:39:00.002-05:00

While looking through the photos my dad posted to Facebook today, I noticed one caption that struck me as odd: "A wicked game of water volleyball."

I hope you caught the oddball element--the gratuitous and colloquial use of the word "wicked", which I am certain my 61-year-old father would never use audibly.

While I realize that the walls have been scaled by baby boomers and middle school kids alike, and Facebook is now a watered-down and universalized version of its previous university-elitist empire, interacting with my parents via Facebook is still vaguely creepy, like running into them at a party after my second drink. I now know how my parents present themselves, and likewise, they know how I choose to display myself. I know that one of my dad's favorite quotes is from "Saving Private Ryan" (the other is from "Shakespeare in Love", apparently) and that my mom, given the chance, will flood those personal boxes with information about herself. (One of her interests is "heated discussions about God and the state of the World" and in the favorite quotes section--I love this--she has written, "be the change you want to see in the world (or something like that) by Gandhi I think.")

Now, using the parameters I drew up long, long ago (think: age 15) to judge people via the internet, I am faced with the ability to label my parents with specialty labels normally reserved for the guy from my biology class (i.e. "Oh my god, he lists Nickelback in his favorite music?" or [true story] "Ew, he's a Republican.")

Now, of course I know my parents better and in a completely different context than the guy from biology. But really, isn't so much of the information in the way people choose to display themselves, in the in-between stuff, rather than the facts? One of my "friends" updates her status bar hourly after each break up, to let the world know how crappy she feels. I know very little about her, but I do know that she's something of an exhibitionist. I can also identify several narcissists, who happily spend hours photographing themselves in slightly varied positions in front of their closet door, or some other mundane space, in order to post all 57 on Facebook and wait in the glow of the screen for the hoped-for compliments.

OK, so I sound a little judgmental, but don't we all have new ideas of people due to the wily internet and the opportunity it gives people to package themselves? It's this realm that creates a new, weird social space. My mom now calls me to tell me she read the link or watched the video I posted to Facebook. That's not bad. It's just weird.

It's particularly curious for me to watch all of these adults represent themselves in such a clunky way. Being "friends" with more than my parents has given me a decent sample size, and a lot of adults just can't seem to adapt. Their messages and updates are rife with spelling and grammatical errors. Is the internet bringing baby boomer stupidity to the forefront, or are older adults just really lazy and clumsy?* (Bonus question: are younger people growing up and expressing themselves in writing likely to be better spellers?)

*Aside: I don't claim that young people are somehow more intelligent or better educated.. maybe more are just familiar with spell check.

My thoughts are that basically, we have a younger population that "gets" the internet, and an older population that doesn't. Some things--memes, pervasive irony, evolving netspeak ("zomg"), themed blogs--are more intuitive than anything, a sort of dog whistle separating those who understand this part of pop culture from those that don't.

What I find interesting is that older people are taking so long to learn. Maybe they just don't care?

an atom in a world of molecules

2009-10-11T01:17:00.003-05:00

Let's talk about...

First of all, I feel like an atom in a world full of diatomic molecules.

Aside from that, tonight I finally got to go to a party. Last weekend made me beg for the week again (how is it that at 21, all of my friends put "doing homework" at the top of their Saturday circa 11pm schedules?) but this weekend I got a text from C. relating the glorious news: "I found a party, big and impersonal! Come join?"

It was what I needed. When I say needed, I mean it with a capital N, and possibly with a preceding "desperately". I needed something outside of hanging out with a couple, which is basically my only option anymore. How did the world turn into only a combination of twos? How is everyone so fortuitous? I mean, I expect there are other people in my sorry position of have-I-seriously-been-alone-so-freaking-long-lyhood. But really--it's a bit ridiculous how I know so few of them. My friends are almost all in the love bubble, and oh, how I believe they take it for granted.

On TV, there is an illusion of the bar scene, where attractive singles order their margaritas and sup them in a sultry fashion before the personal and understanding bartender. Always in these situations, other attractive singles float into the picture, as if life were fair enough to grant attractive singles. I am nearing the D-word--I am nearing the need to put on lipstick and go to a bar and sit alone on the stool and wait for the illusion with which TV presents us.

So tonight--the party of someone I didn't know--was needed. I got to nearly flirt with a third-year physics major/Vermonter for a while, someone I was perfectly happy to continue the conversation with, until he left at a friend's prodding. And there it went. But for a moment it was there--a prospect, a possibility. The reminder that I'm not entirely dead to the world of relationships. If he had stayed... well.

I wouldn't, by the way, be using this language if it weren't for years of caked on loneliness leaving me feeling so sincerely left out of the loop. Sincerely in the most sincere way. It makes me fear how no one I know who reads this will actually know what I mean. No one has gone so long without what can be called a significant other. When it starts to feel like true alienation from society, you have what can be called a problem. You have a serious fixation problem and you need to give in.

My friends have been filling in the gaps recently, and I've learned to adapt to calm. But if the third-year physics major had stayed at the party, I might feel differently right now. As it is, I feel a bit better in that at least I met someone. Really, that simple. I met a human that might have theoretically been interested.

I am this far gone. Even as I apply lipstick in the morning and feel curiously positive about myself. This is the result of knowing no one in my situation. It is freakish. Knowing no one who can have an actual boyfriend history at this age. It is alarming. It is a case study. I am a case study.

In other news, there is other news. But really, when you're this girl, who wants to write about anything else two gin & tonics under?

fomenting

2009-09-04T22:11:00.003-05:00

I am in Hastings.

Things I have been doing a lot of lately:

--Reading
--Baristaing
--Thinking

I had this goal of reading 100 pages every day this month but I've done poorly every day. Seventy then fifty then ninety, and today only twenty (though I worked 3 to close.) But I've forgotten how much my parents prod me to help them with things and go for walks and scratch their backs and the like, and I suppose that's a good excuse.

Anyway, I've been collecting many thoughts and sorting through emotions and generally being productive on the inside of my skull, which is the most important thing. I will be here for another eight days of reading and baristaing and thinking.

signs of life

2009-08-25T19:41:00.004-05:00

...and days before I leave the dreaded Bend.

I'm at the ice cream place, and as I bring the plate that held a piece of cherry cheesecake to the front counter, the guy at the register introduces himself and asks me to join in the bet with him and his coworker that he can do 200-300 push-ups in 5 minutes. He then engages me in conversation for a few minutes. If I wanted, we could probably be friends. Of course this happens at the very end of my stay here...

Oh well, I am generally very cheerful about leaving. I have 3.5 articles left to write, an interview tomorrow concerning zombies, two lunches with editors, and an exit interview left. Time to bid this town goodbye, and hopefully my lack of a social life and sprawling laziness as well.

If history is any indication, my locations over the next two weeks will only produce better feelings--hometown as a stress-free medicant where I may be able to hunker down with some books as I watch my brother, and Boulder as an energizing base before the unparalleled experience that will be my 4th year.

Hyde Park at this point is my nurturing, loving home. Every time I've been there this summer, I've walked the streets smiling compulsively. Summer does Chicago good. Hyde Park hums with dog-walkers and baby-strollers and bands of European students, bakeries teem with dignified, greyed professors picking up apple croissants, it all feels so right. Sushi choices, good beer, bookstores that burrow deeper and deeper. I fear I am becoming a yuppie. (At the tender age of 21!)

Giveaway #1: My deodorant, face wash, toner, shampoo, and conditioner are "all-natural" and have things like juniper, tea tree water, and mint in them.

(#2: I refer to myself as a "vegetarian" but I eat fish.)

Oh well. Let the labels fall where they may.

I am both in fear of, and braving looking forward to the impending year. A BA is only 30-50 pages, which means it is only really 15-25 pages, which means it is only 2-3 times as long as your typical paper, and so it shouldn't cause me interminable stress and bouts of crying, as they are wont to do. Still, my fantastically compatible advisor ditched me for Yale, and now I have to convince someone else to care about Pakistani ethnic groups and nationalism, which is sure to be tangentially related to all of their subjects (why such a dearth of Pakistan scholars at the U of C?)

But I'm confident I can do it.

Oddly, my lazy summer has regrounded me in certain ways concerning education. Certain things stand out--a certain independence from the cult of academia (i.e. take what is good and useful, leave what doesn't work), a rethinking of the term, a more liberal and free approach to my future (i.e. so many paths to take, so many ways to take them!), a resurgence of thought about life and information (i.e. more thought about depth vs. breadth of subjects, about the nature of focus).

I credit some of this thought to "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," which I have yet to review on here but which had a residual and unexpectedly freeing effect. I will try to review it soon.

Most importantly, my mental state is such right now that I feel I can approach academia, get knocked down several pegs (as this year is sure to do), and withdraw the tools to fix myself. I feel a bit more tenacious.

With such a meandering post, I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'm ready to get back in the ring.

wait, what?

2009-08-18T22:13:00.003-05:00

People bringing assault weapons to protests? Does this seem like remotely a good idea?

Reunited

2009-08-17T20:58:00.005-05:00

...and it feels so good.

Today I wasted several hours after work. And then I felt bad about myself. And then I took a bath. And I was trying to read Blood Meridian, which is good but I wasn't very good at paying attention. I wanted to be reading, but something else. So I picked up one of my academic books from my stack--one I intend to use for BA research--and after a couple of pages my brain began to wake up. Thoughts! Deconstruction and theorizing! Words like "discursive" and "dichotomy"!

Maybe it doesn't seem like the most riveting of writing, but it was exactly what I needed--a reminder of how it feels to think in the unemotional, hard world of academic writing.

My university is stressful, scary, and usually destructive to the self-esteem. But it's also reassuring to know that there's a place in my life where things are extremely meritocratic, the truth is pursued relentlessly, and you don't win unless you have a damn good point.

Last year, via C., I found this: Andrew Abbot's "Aims of Education" speech. Every year the new students get one. It's meant to ruminate on why their education has a value equivalent to the massive loan they're likely to incur four years hence. Afterward, a professor is dispatched to each house for a post-speech discussion. My year, the speech wasn't so great. But this one, if you take the time to read it, is excellent.

I love this cornerstone.

jewish cowboys

2009-08-14T01:54:00.003-05:00

The vast expanse of a night, bed, morning:

Now there's no tomorrow,
only yesterday.
But to live in the past
is to ride your life away.
I can feel in my bones:
I will die all alone.
Back down to the ground,
let the sage brush wait for me.

sorority rant.

2009-08-10T22:44:00.007-05:00

Oh, how this has been building up.

I hate sororities. I am just going to say it.

I was going to write about something else but then I received a bitchy email and I'm feeling a little enraged, given that there was no need for its dripping condescension and wagging finger approach. It was, briefly, about car technicalities, from its previous owner. Why hadn't I removed the license plate and sent it to her parents, as we had discussed? she wanted to know. Does this mean I am still driving around with it on? Because that's illegal. And I had better take it off right now and give it to Friend X. Or (seriously) she'd have someone come at my car with a screwdriver and take it off herself (inevitably a herself, inevitably a sorority [gang?] member).

We had discussed removing the license plate, but she had also offered my destroying it as an option. Which I did. About two days after getting the car. It's had a Michigan license ever since. (She made no attempt to emphasize that if I chose this option, I should let her know. Because it was pretty obvious that I would do one or the other. Furthermore, I did not indicate at the time which of these I would do.)

After I pointed this out, she sent a response that tried to diffuse the first, unnecessarily vicious and stupidly condescending email, with an exclaimed, "Thanks for letting me know!"

Thanks for threatening me!

What does this have to do with sororities? Nothing really, except that this is where I keep experiencing attitudes like this. Attitudes that are condescending, cold, and frankly, falling all over themselves to make you feel like they're going wildly out of their way if you ask a favor. It is a sort of exaggerated maturity, I feel like, this certain (cue nasally, wealthy NY accent) Well I coooould do that but it's yooour responsibiiiilityyyy.

You know what's mature? Being a person that understands that other people occasionally rely on people not because they want to take advantage, but because most people play this larger game called Cooperation. If somebody asks me to do something that's easily doable, or even a little bit out of my way, I usually do it unless it's really difficult. And even then, when I break the news that I can't or won't do this thing, I don't make them feel bad for asking. Rather, I make sure to feel bad for not helping. Because people shouldn't have to feel too uncomfortable to ask if you'll do something like let someone into your apartment or mail a letter, granted you let them know you're grateful.

In terms of the sorority, I don't know if this ties to my particular relationship to it via a complex and tense friendship that they probably all know about, or if I'm just not a member of the Ordained Sisterhood and therefore unworthy of basic decency. Or maybe they even treat each other like this. I don't know. I just know that given my tangential relationship to sororities, joining a sorority is the last thing I want to do.

I will choose my friends myself. And I will choose ones that don't send me unwarranted, threatening car emails.

fodder.

2009-08-09T22:48:00.003-05:00

I never used to think about my future. Not really. It was always, "Oh, I'll be a writer" and I would see myself with a pen and some paper (like anyone writes novels with pens and paper anymore) and think of a bunch of ideas I wanted to get across, and sew up the image with mild fantasies of success and peoples' identification. I wrote a lot more then, especially fiction, but rarely anything long, and even more rarely anything good.

Writing is the only thing that has ever seemed highly fulfilling to me. Apparently even feeding the starving is not is noble as arranged words and having them read. (I now feel differently, at least in that respect. That's all ego.)

I still would like to write, and still have dreams of writing fiction although the need or maybe the drive has been crushed like wine grapes from a seriously intense education. A high-caliber university education may leave you a more knowledgeable, and deeper, thinker, but if you get out with your self-esteem in tact and not in shreds, any hint of serious creativity is necessarily a result of your own fostering and protection. I have written, at this point, probably a hundred or so papers in college. And despite this, or perhaps due to it, my creativity has not been exercised too deeply. In fact, it has taken a hell of a beating. There is a reason my year ended on a decline in grades. I can't approach Microsoft Word anymore, and stick to the rhetorical structure, without some serious suffering. (Robert Pirsig may have been irritating in Zen and the Art, but he would be a relief to have as a professor.)

It is revelatory, and strange, that it is when I go home that I feel creatively refueled. This has happened on many occasions when I have gone home recently. I profess to hate the town, and yet some of the social experiences I've had (or come into contact with) there have been some of the most interesting and didactic. I closely know someone who is trying to deal with unutterable tragedy. I have a friend who has drastically changed religion and quickly married someone from a completely different culture. People from my high school are getting married and having babies (not often in that order), and some are already getting divorced. The coffee shop has its own mix of unique regulars; there's the transplanted, short African guy, raised English, who now teaches philosophy at a university nearby and will talk forever (he liked that I was reading The Brothers Karamazov, last time.) There's the family of Democrats and the intriguing diaspora of their attractive brood.

The strange sects of Christianity. The small town niches people fill. The blood-thirsty local politics and unbelievably intricate scandals. And surprising conversations that last hours with people you don't expect.

There is a reason I grew up romantic.

schedule and coffee.

2009-08-08T23:11:00.003-05:00

My parent's prehistoric computer is, I'm pretty sure, eligible for submission to the Smithsonian at this point, but I will try to provide a little update anyway.

I will be...

In South Bend until the 28th of August.
In Hastings until the 13/14th of September.
In Boulder until the 27/28th of September.
In Chicago from then on.. with probably some random stops in Chicago during this time, too.

I hadn't intended to spend so much time in Hastings, but it turns out I can pick up weekend hours at the coffee shop and my parents will buy my plane ticket to Boulder in exchange for me staying here with my brother for a few days while they drive down to Phoenix (they're moving to Phoenix, has this been mentioned?)

Due to rent/car/gas/etc. payments, my money is rapidly dwindling and I can't afford to just spend all of September loafing (exercising?) in Boulder and not making Adult decisions. I'll still get two weeks in. And, well, the coffee shop is still one of my favorite places. This weekend back home has been unexpectedly Nice. I've become such a snob, looking down on this town. Or maybe I've always been such a snob. I still would never live here again, but to ignore the beautiful bits and pieces and worthwhile people that are here is unfair.

I think I disassociate with things for fear I will become them. I don't want to become a part of chain stores and narrow-mindedness and cultural ignorance. These things exist here, in abundance. But they also exist everywhere.

So, enough. If you'll be in any of these places during these times, or want to visit me, or want me to visit you, let me know. We can get coffee.

Zen and the Art of Paying Attention

2009-08-06T19:01:00.007-05:00

I am almost finished with "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," which I started a few weeks ago. It has been slow going, and by almost finished, I mean still 100 pages shy. Which brings me to tonight's topic, which relates to one of my bigger concerns recently: my attention span is deflating rapidly, to the point that full-scale books, and even longish articles fail to hold it.

I have been talking to a lot of people about this, because I know it's not just a problem I have. It is clearly a result of the internet, and the type of interaction people are allowed and encouraged to have with it. We don't read newspapers anymore, we read news aggregator sites (I usually read Google news.. and I write for a paper!) We check blogs daily for bite-sized information of some sort, be it political or social or scientific or personal. People look at Twitter--which enforces this tiny attention span with character limits--and get their information in snarky, packaged comments. In between we bounce between.. play little mindteaser games, update our Facebooks and read other peoples' status updates. But nothing lengthy. Spending an entire afternoon on one thing, whether it's a book or a painting or a piece of writing, feels like an excessive investment. We're used to quick leaps, with very shallow dabbling in each bit of information we acquire. It's about maximum consumption, minimal absorption. And it feels like static.

I'm certainly not the first to point this out. Over the past couple years, numerous articles and books have been published on the deterioration of the modern attention span. This excellent Atlantic article comes to mind. The author himself brings in a legion of friends who've felt the same problem. No one I've talked to has identified with me with quite the level of disturbed obsession I've been harboring, but I'm sure a lot of people out there do.

(Authors have been calling it for years. There is a mammoth novel by David Foster Wallace called "Infinite Jest" that serves as something of a sad warning against a reliance on being diverted. I haven't read it, but from what I know, the title refers to a film, or video game, or something, that's reputedly so entertaining that people who come into contact with it never stop watching it. It was published in 1996, but right now that thought seems eerily prescient.)

Wallace hit on something that frightens me more than just the idea of a shorter attention span--in conjunction with it, I am finding my self-discipline to be in such decline as to be almost nonexistent. I made up a reading list at the beginning of the summer. From it, I've gotten barely 300 pages into "The Brothers Karamozov" until, citing Thoreau's convenient quote (something about not reading any book you don't want to be reading) I dropped it straight away (without saying goodbye, because I cling to the idea that I will pick it back up sometime before summer ends) and relaxed into the comfort and ease of a Nick Hornby book. Then I joined a book club whose meetings I can't even attend and I'm now where I started this--near the end of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." And the only way I got here was through a minimal self-discipline. Because now, when I read a book, I spend the first 10 pages ripping my eyes away, or they dance erratically about the page, like I'm about to bounce to the next object on the screen. Eventually (maybe around page 15) I start to relax into it. My speed increases and I have regained an ability to focus. Despite how pleasant and calming it is, I still find the idea of bite-sized information tempting, and have to convince myself again and again throughout the reading that I want to be doing it, that it is more substantial and valuable. And that's ridiculous, considering I'm reading a book about Zen. Granted, the narrator is somewhat obnoxious, but still.

Like I said, I cannot stop thinking about this, both the shrinking of my attention span and the lack of self-discipline to address it. These issues have a set of corollaries that deserve their own attention (ha), but this post is not for them.

I have been considering how to deal with my self-discipline problem (which I believe arises out of my attention span problem, although maybe it's more of a chicken-and-egg dilemma) and radical thoughts keep entering my mind, but they all involve using self-discipline to improve my self-discipline. Read a single book every three days. Watch no internet-TV (an addiction that is growing the more entertaining television shows I find). Wake up early and go for a run in the morning. Study X amount of Hindi. Etc.

Distressingly, I become a mirror of my environment. All of the interns are gone. I have made no friends and cannot figure out how to. My meals have been less fresh, not more, as I cook for one and try to save money, and the grocery store is five miles away. And I watch TV and use the internet maximally.

Last week I had some success--I bought paints and supplies, and spent several hours one night painting. It's sad, but I was astonished at how much thinking I had to do. And how active the process was. And how little I feel I've been experiencing that on a day-to-day basis. The infinite jest, it feels, is on me.

If I work up the self-discipline (perhaps the correct term is "motivation") I'll write about this more in the coming weeks. If not, well...

Singing the blues.

2009-07-08T21:16:00.003-05:00

If you have yet to see Sita Sings the Blues, you must do so. Right now. Stop reading! Make haste!

I had heard about this little wunderfilm back in Chicago, but only from a brief glance at a newspaper. The film festival I've been researching/interviewing people for (my recent interview with Sean Astin included) is including Sita in its repertoire, however, and today, after watching a trailer, my curiosity finally overcame me. Thankfully its creator, Nina Paley, believes in freeing creative content, and has offered it online for free.

Sita Sings the Blues has come to me at the right time. Alone in my room, I'm also singing the blues for a number of reasons... figuratively and literally. Not prone to need to sing in the past, the desire has been recently freed, perhaps by T.'s gracious teachings and encouragement. I'm still not much of a singer, but that doesn't stop me from doing it. Still, being in a silent bed & breakfast does. I realize when I'm driving (or watching Mamma Mia!) just how terribly I need to sing. The car allows me to. But most of the time, there's not really anywhere to go.

Anyway, Sita is also about a woman using her creativity to take control of a crappy situation. If your story has no happy ending, make it into an art project! I love it.

I remember doing this the winter before last, when I was so angry I thought I might lose all control of my actions. So I left the apartment, went to A.'s, and Kyle, A. and I painted. I painted an angry dog biting its own tail. It was immensely therapeutic.

The memory, and my various blues, and watching Sita, has given me a strong desire to paint something again. Oh where in South Bend are the art supplies...?

Now watch the film.

One or the other.

2009-07-07T23:27:00.004-05:00

I am going to need either a friend in this town, or a coffee shop open past 11pm. One of the two. But it needs to happen.

I have been avoiding writing, not because nothing interesting is happening, but rather because I have been overly reliant on the internet--maybe I don't want to put forth mental effort without giving my brain a break from this machine.

I have done some reading. The Brothers Karamazov waits, tucked away in my bag, for when my intellect can pull it together and take another bruising. It's a good book, so far as I can see (I'm just short of 300 pages), but dense as a mother.

And, let's face it, reading is only so satisfying. Without the social stimulation of friendship, I can cook and read, but I'm still rather blah.

And here's the thing--I do not know how to make friends in this town. Two other interns share the apartment upstairs, but they only have a couple weeks left and while they're friendly enough, it's apparent that they're not really interested in hanging out. Which, to be honest, is just as well--I don't get the feeling we'd click anymore than a few randoms on an elevator. Anyway, they get along well with each other.

I rarely see the other interns, and I get a similar feeling from most of them. Most of them are semi-local and have their own home-grown groups, I assume. Many are leaving very soon.

Another problem is the... town itself. At a population of 100,000, it's not precisely small. And yet it carries all the things I dislike and associate with small towns: too few coffee shops, too many churches, too much conservatism, too little liberalism, too many chain stores, too few young people, too many people inside watching television. Walk the streets at any given moment and they're usually deserted, except for maybe someone in the distance, like a mirage.

I could begin going to bars, but that thought makes me a little sad. I went Friday to see a band I have to write about, and I sat alone drinking Blue Moon. There is a certain myth, I think, about meeting people in bars--because unlike the characters on Grey's Anatomy, most people are not secure enough to all wander into a bar alone, hoping to see someone they know but otherwise enjoying the Scene. Actually, most people attend the bars in often large friend groups. This is what I do in Chicago, and it's what South Benders do as well. But I have no friend group. I wasn't necessarily insecure alone with my Blue Moon, but I felt a little reflective. People don't go up and start talking to other people without provoking a range of assumptions. This limits us. This especially limits those of us in a new, smallish town with few other opportunities to make friends.

A final problem is something I have mentioned frequently to some of my friends--generally, most people seem to be satisfied with their stash of friends. They don't need or want more. In that case, there's not often much interest in the whole getting-to-know-you thing... you are a perma-acquaintance, always on loan for a short period of time. Going into our fourth year, there's a routine to our friendships.

Whether here or in Chicago, I am interested in making new friends. I'm happy with the ones I have, but I also appreciate new people and the possibility for new kinds of relationships. Is it my own reliance on other people to befriend me that leaves me stranded? Am I bad at pursuing people and making them into my friends? Yes. I think so.

Well, working on that may take more than the realization. But some coffee at 11pm would help.

oh, so this is journalism.

2009-06-24T23:56:00.002-05:00

I just got home from work. It is almost 1AM.

OK, so I didn't work all day. I actually came in at 11AM, left at 5PM, went to a play, and returned to the office at 8:30PMish to review it. I finished around midnight, and my editor usually works nights, so he went over the piece with me. This is my schedule. But not every day.

Because I'm treated like an actual journalist, I'm starting to see what the life of a journalist is like. And what is it like? Random. Especially in features.

I spent Monday-day at work and Monday-night watching a show for a person I have to do a profile on.
I spent Tuesday-day at work and Tuesday-night interviewing the same person.
I took off this morning and worked most of the night.

Since I'm supposed to only work 40 hours a week (grant money details), I only have a few hours left to work this week. That's supposed to involve another interview and another play and another play review, but there's not enough time for that--so I may only do the interview. And take tomorrow morning off. And take all of Friday off.

It's very, very independent, this job. Since most all music & theater & arts events happen at night, I end up working a lot of my nights out, and then with too many hours, so I can/should take mornings off. It's kind of awesome, actually. The best part of this job? Getting paid to be entertained. The not best but still good part? Getting paid to reflect on it.

I could do this for a living. Even if the pay sucks, you have the essential part--a living.

South Bent

2009-06-23T21:09:00.002-05:00

I have been here, in South Bend, a couple of nights. I am living in an eerily empty Bed and Breakfast with last-century's moth-eaten baby clothes and black and white photos of serious mustachioed men displayed in the halls. Notes:

1) I still have not met the owner of the bed and breakfast. My key was in an envelope in a bureau--I was told it would be there before I came. I walk through the house several times a day; there is almost never anyone around. It is silent. Silent and full of baby clothes. That said, it's really nice. The architecture is lovely--the furniture is antique. And it smells floral. This contributes a bit to the eeriness.

2) Tomorrow I am going to a theatrical production of "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie"

3) Sometime in the next week I may or may not be going to a theatrical production of "High School Musical"

4) Toward the end of my internship I have to go... wait for it... to a "professional" wrestling match.

5) My hours are going to be weird--I have tomorrow morning off (sleeping in = YES), but I have to go in to work straight after the play to write up an immediate review for the web. My editor said to budget about four hours for reviews which means I won't get home until midnight.

6) I am to Part II of The Brothers Karamazov.

moment of reflection.

2009-06-18T21:49:00.002-05:00

I am feeling empty. I am empty of:

1) creativity
2) sense of self
3) concentration
4) plans
5) companionship

My grades have been on a slight decline. I am now capable of a B-, even when I try. This is not happening to anyone else.

My heart feels less protected, more vulnerable. The achievements, joys, and progress of others register as both threatening and painful. It reinforces my own inability to find the right niche. I seem to be experiencing my dip even as everyone else is somehow finding their place. I am running out of time to be doubtful of myself. I am running out of time to be disconnected in this bourgeois way. Even my inspiration seems erratic and unhelpful. Something needs to shake back into place soon.

Quiet now, at home, novels in a box in my car, but even they don't point in a direction.

things that await

2009-06-13T23:13:00.004-05:00

Schedule Update:

Tomorrow--breakfast with Kay, packing everything into boxes, driving lessons with A.
Monday--moving everything into new apartment, meeting with new subletter (a German grad student, who will also be living with me in the new place for a week before I leave, which will be probably Thursday/Friday [in my new old Saturn, the stick shift I have yet to drive, holy Jesus])

I said goodbye to T. today. He is leaving in the early AM of tomorrow for D.C., and it makes me very sad. I have grown even closer to the boy over the past several months, and being apart for him for another whole summer is not a prospect I like. I feel that as I grow older, somehow, my ability to miss people--my vulnerability--strengthens greatly. I miss people more than I used to.

We had a conversation last night that had an interesting impact. It was divided into a reflection on our parents and impacts of where we came from, a sad and scary surveillance of the uncomfortable fact that we are now fourth years (and everything that attends that, from the identity crises that have slowly been building this year to the fact that soon we'll be freed from the nest), and finally a reflection on what we know we want. I talked a bit about something I've been experiencing a lot lately, and not at all reflecting on, which is, briefly, the fact that I've felt my identity confused and wrenched between the (capital-A) Academic and the creative. It always seems that only one or the other is possible and I choose the academy to the detriment of the creative--or really, my personality in general. Without having my creative outlets--in constantly pushing them away--my confidence takes a serious hit. Recently, even my academic performance has suffered and as a result my self-esteem is shot.

ANYWAY, we had a conversation musing on this, and I talked about needing to embrace what I always force to the background (creative writing, reading novels) in order to better get a grip on myself, to the point where a bad grade won't be shattering to my sense of identity, as it is now. I talked about needing a serious summer reading list, and wanting to maintain self-discipline, and wanting to re-inspire creativity (with thoughts toward high school, when I wrote all the time, and while 90% of it was crap, some of it was actually decent, and more than that it was creative).

I have been trying to think of a way to emulate that art/life project I've been inspired and fascinated by (mentioned some posts earlier), and T. recommended new ways of writing based on medium. Writing by pen on lined paper, pencil on lined paper, pen on blank paper, pencil on blank paper, in paint, on walls, etc. In this way I'd better understand what medium feels most natural to me and how different mediums effect my style and thinking process. I was attracted to the idea, and I think I will soon put it into effect. As of now, things are chaotic and yet not so. I have time. Today T. and I lay on my bed in a pile of shirts and newspapers (vestiges of packing) and worked our way through my Teach Yourself German book for three chapters. I tried it out on my mom on the phone tonight: "Ich komme aus Michigan!"

So this is what my summer may hold: less internet, more cooking, more novels, more writing, more writing mediums, and who knows what else. Oh, probably high-quality lemonade. I believe the Bed & Breakfast at which I will be living will have a wrap-around porch, and there's simply no way I will not be sitting on that porch, reading novels until the fireflies start to light up, with a glass of homemade lemonade in my hand.

500-1000 words on life, please.

2009-06-08T12:25:00.002-05:00

Apparently I see fit to procrastinate writing a reflective article by writing a reflective blog post.

Last week I voluntarily signed up to write a 500-1000 word article on my "experiences in Pune" for some South Asian publication that I think gets distributed from our campus. They were looking for someone to write something, sent an email to everyone in the program, and I--being all idealistically go-get-'em on the topic of journalism--responded. The return email includes the words "any angle" and requests a description of the program and any long-term impact it had on me.

I now see that I am in a bind, given that:

(a) I don't know whether what I want to say will be acceptable--not that I feel negatively about my experience with India, but what I would have to say would be much more realistic and less of the "such pretty temples!" variety. The guy with whom I have exchanged emails is clearly Indian and has "South Asia Outreach" as part of his contact information in his signature; something tells me this is supposed to be a positive and heartwarming piece about how India is such a warm and spiritual place, I have now learned life lessons, etc.
(b) Only 500-1000 words on my "experience in Pune"? That's enough to talk in-depth about maybe one thing, and even that would have to be semi-superficial.

Should I tell the story of the guy who fixed my shoes, and thereafter explore the dangers of objectifying just as you are objectified? Should I talk about the guys, and the way they provided a personal scope into the culture and politics? Should I talk about all the different kinds of foreigners and how obnoxious tourists are?

There is literally so much I could talk about, and it would be hard to cut it down. I think I'm leaning toward the second option now, as it's something I can relate back to the program most easily--but this just opens more doors.

Onward.

Deletion.

2009-06-07T11:54:00.002-05:00

Last night when T. and I made ourselves tea and Korean Ramen noodles and sat down in anticipation to watch John Adams, we were disappointed to find that it wouldn't play. It would get stuck over and over in different places. We were not to learn of John Adams' illustrious accomplishments.

When I closed the program and checked my disc space, I found, to my horror, that my C drive had almost no free space. My computer is overloaded with crap. I deleted fully 4 GB out of my Recycle Bin (ridiculous, I know) and cleared my Temporary Internet Files, etc. Still, as it stands, my computer has only 8.16 GB of free space, out of a total of 73 GB. I have a billion photos and a billion songs, and I need to clear some things.

The casualties:

1. Antony and the Johnsons.
2. Beth Orton.
3. British Sea Power. (But only The Decline of British Sea Power; I'm keeping Open Season until further notice.)
4. Carla Bruni.
5. Desmond Dekker.
6. Justin Timberlake. (Actually I didn't know I had Justin Timberlake.)
7. Mariza.
8. Pavement. (Another thing I don't listen to but must have assumed I would, at some point.)
9. TV on the Radio. (It just hasn't taken.)
10. Manu Chao. (Clandestino filled a niche first year. But I never want to listen to it again.)

And with that, I still have less than 10 GB free. I am perplexed.

At least my life is a little less cluttered now?

My favorite minimalist is...

2009-06-07T01:28:00.003-05:00

I love being able to say I have a favorite musical minimalist--it sounds so sophisticated. Although it doesn't really seem fair to categorize Yann Tiersen as a minimalist, given that his music feels so gorgeously full and nuanced; I tend to associate minimalism with the ultimate of the genre, Philip Glass, who, despite being a U of C alum (have to mention these things when possible), hasn't grabbed me musically. I suppose that's because my one brush with his work was through Koyaanisqatsi, which, while a fascinating movie, hardly provided the kind of music I'd want to listen to outside of the context of collapsing buildings and mass produced plastic items. Of course, just now I'm discovering some of his piano work through Youtube and finding it to be rather beautiful...

Anyway, back to Yann Tiersen. I discovered Yann like most people: through the Amelie soundtrack, which I bought several years ago to accompany my copy of the movie. I don't often buy soundtracks (or CDs in general) but the Amelie soundtrack is so soaring and emotional that I felt I would need to have it available. Eventually I stopped thinking of it as just the Amelie soundtrack, and started thinking of it as Yann Tiersen's music, which led me to the rest of his corpus. This was sometime during first year, and at some point there was a click and I realized that writing papers to the music of Yann Tiersen was both an uplifting and inspiring experience. It was wordless (with the exception of a few songs) but not boring--it wasn't so much that it blended into the background as that it worked somehow in concert with my thoughts. I wrote probably half of the essays I wrote first year to a set of his albums.

This is an improvised version of my favorite of his--Rue des Cascades. I have mentioned it before, two years ago, but I'm so routinely blown away by it.

Perhaps I should begin to explore minimalism more in depth...

I hafta.

2009-06-06T03:06:00.002-05:00

Ouch. Making yourself blog everyday is not ideal on Friday nights, when white wine saturates. So only one thought: contexts are changing without me and I may need to create new contexts within which to build a home. I wouldn't say I'm homeless now, but the project of self-location is suffering with respect to the way I feel pulled and prodded into spaces, rather than in a position of direction. I have lost direction.

It is perhaps time for a change.

not comfortable.

2009-06-05T00:45:00.002-05:00

12:49am, starving, and my options? Oatmeal & brown sugar, "Oriental" Ramen noodles, portabello mushroom gnocchi. Looks like it's door number three.

We spent today in Evanston, working, as projected. Evanston is weird. It's weird precisely because it's so clean, so white, so rich. So suburban, so Stepfordy. After three years, I'm used to the South Side--we're a little grittier, a little more varied down here. Hyde Park has some beautiful little town houses covered in ivy, but we also have, you know, minorities. I've come to imagine Hyde Park as a sort of normal environment--all kinds of people, all kinds of nationalities and races, all kinds of beliefs. We have the Adam Smith-totin' U of C econ department; we also have Barack Obama. We mix it up, at least a little bit.

It's going elsewhere that reminds me, disturbingly, how strictly divided most places actually are. On the north side, so many places (exception: Devon) are almost completely white; south and west of here, it's all African Americans. Hyde Park is one of those in-between neighborhoods that manages to blend things. I'm not ignorant enough to believe that there is no segregation, but I think Hyde Park's better-than-average diversity insulates me from seeing how obvious it is elsewhere. It also makes it more apparent when I do leave the neighborhood. And it kinda creeps me out.

So here's the news that almost everyone ignores--or forgets:

America is still enormously segregated, for many sinister reasons.

Just take a minute and think about it. And with that I go to bed.

Victorian sexy magical realism (!)

2009-06-03T23:47:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow I have to write a paper. It is a paper that has been haunting me for a week, one I spent an entire day writing the outline for, one I need to do well on because my last paper in this class? Not good. Not good at all.

The grade I got on this paper put me in the kind of mindset that offers revelations. I thought about ducking into a bathroom, locking myself in a stall, and crying. But I didn't do that, instead I decided to forgo the crying and imagine what usually comes after: deciding to be re-motivated, deciding to be inspired to seek greatness, etc.

My TA for this class, I imagine, has a very hard time giving people positive comments. I imagine this not only because he shredded my paper, but because he seemed to have no problems with my outline for my new paper and still managed to suffer in delivering any positive feedback. Instead of "Good!" he writes "Ok, good." As though everything I had developed until that point was really unimportant and uninspired--the crappy appetizer, really, to the insufficient meal I am providing. One can see him furrow his brows as he allows himself to acknowledge that perhaps I have finally made a valid argument. And the thing is, this guy? He's like 25. He's devastatingly, painfully young in his tweed suit vests and patent leather shoes. I don't like being thrown to the wolves by a guy I could flirt with at a frat party.

Anyway, tomorrow is going to require focus, so I can make this the best damned English paper he's ever seen--or at least, not the most shitty. It needs to glisten and provoke him to angrily etch, with clenched teeth, if needbe, an exclamation point behind the "Good" acknowledgement. It tears a hole in my self-esteem that it's the English paper I run into problems with, but we can't always excel, I suppose, at what we assumed.

So A. and I are going to Evanston, to bury ourselves in a coffee shop and not emerge into the June sunlight until we've produced pages of shining inky beauty. This is a strategy I've adopted before--pick an undervisited part of the city, find a coffee shop, hunker down--and it usually bears results. Hyde Park is too distracting, what with everybody here. Coffee shop oases in other parts of town offer the dual benefits of (a) not being as depressing as the library in mid-day and (b) not providing insta-procrastination opportunities.

I have been two things especially recently, and they are (1) inspired, and (2) unfocused. Take for example the books I am currently reading:

1--Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen (a Victorian satire; oh, Jane!)
2--Midnight's Children, by Salman Rushdie (magical realism and Indian history!)
3--The Rules of Attraction, by Bret Easton Ellis (an 80's tale of amoral, sexed-up college students)

Yeah. Inspired and unfocused.

Back in the Saddle.

2009-06-02T20:40:00.002-05:00

Guess what? I'm writing again. Every day.

The day before yesterday T. was here, doing work, and I was rereading my blog(s). He asked what I was doing and I told him. He made a face that perfectly mimicked the face I might have made if someone told me they just started "really getting into" Blink-182.

"Why do you do that?" he asked.

"So I can remember what I thought."

"But isn't it like a diary? Isn't it awkward?"

And the thing is, no, it isn't awkward. And it isn't like a diary. Because when I talk about uncomfortable personal things on here, they're always safely disguised--anonymous shadowy figures pervade my social life, and all you know if how I sometimes feel about it. My actual journal, on the other hand, is an unchecked drama involving the kind of things you might say on a therapist's couch. Things like loneliness, however, I have no problem talking about on here; it doesn't require my outing any other characters, and it seems like a pretty relate-able human emotion. There is the human condition, and there is emo blogging, I hope most things I write identify more strongly with the first than the second.

I had felt, when I came back to this after my halfhearted attempts in India, that it was not awkward or diary-like but somehow selfish or narcissistic--vomiting your tiny, meager life into the void of the internet for the satisfaction of one or two people looking at it. I don't agree with any of these descriptions anymore; now I just think it's useful. It's useful to know what I thought a year ago, to know what happened to me a year ago, and to practice my writing. Writing for an audience, even an invisible one, requires more effort than a personal journal (although I wish I treated my journal with more thoughtfulness and respect, as I'll be looking back on that too). It begs for slightly more focus and hopefully for a point.

If my foray into journalism ends up being more than a foray, I will need both focus and a point. My thoughts seem so disorganized and deeply unfocused that sometimes I think writing is when I figure out what I think at all.

So I'm nourishing my blog again, day by day. This summer will not be neglected.

There you go, invisible audience.

Kajra re, kajra re...

2009-06-01T01:07:00.002-05:00

And my self-discipline dissipates horribly.

I spent too much of today exploring Bollywood music--a strange desire to hear exclusively Indian music entered my head and I courted it. My Hindi final is tomorrow, so there's nothing like pseudo-immersion to help my studying (false). Jordan and I watched almost the entirety of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai on the quad Friday night and I found myself approaching the movie in a weirdly nonchalant and understanding attitude. I couldn't stand it, when I watched it the first time--sugary summer camp moments, Polo Sport & Nike product placement--but somehow this time I accepted it. Makes me wonder if I've entered a crawlspace in my mind where suddenly Bollywood movies make sense and provoke the correct emotions. Of course, KKHH is still rubbish in comparison to films that actually provoke pathos, like Devdas (another, but far more serious, Shah Rukh flick.)

Devdas uses the Indian experience for a social commentary and (slightly) less melodramatic Romeo and Juliet tale--Devdas and his childhood friend Paro fall in love upon his return from being educated in England, but despite their love, his family won't accept hers (caste differences, family past of shame, etc.) and a feud develops. Paro's mother vows to marry her off to an even richer man, so Paro sneaks off in the middle of the night to ask Devdas to marry her, but he's a coward and by the time he catches himself it's too late, and she's getting married off to a wealthy widower twice her age, and he descends into alcoholism, and it gets a lot more interesting from there. Devdas includes the Bollywoodesque song-and-dance numbers but it retains a lot of merit from how realistic and adult and ultimately wrenching the story is. The last scene, in particular, is almost overwhelmingly powerful. If you want a Bollywood movie you can take seriously, this is the one I'd recommend.

Anyway, to lighten things up: a better than average song with some distracting English subtitles.

three shots o' blue vodka

2009-05-31T02:00:00.004-05:00

..they fade fast.

Spent the majority of today chasing a book, reading the end of the book, and preparing a lengthy outline for an English paper. This morning I woke up frightened by it (withering in the shadow of my last bad grade), but by noon I was on my way to a north side book store, by one I was eating overpriced caprese, and by three I was at the Bourgeois Pig, on a love seat, exploring the dynamic between Naipaul and Adiga in their descriptions of 'the real India' (all about poverty, but how is poverty more authentic than any other experience?)

By six I was home, Japanese green tea in hand, by eight T. and I were having a modest dinner of dal and rice, and finally, by 11:45pm, an outline was sent to my TA. Then an impulsive call, an impulsive and short-lived party-hop, with minimal benefits but a social box ticked off in my mind and pent-up energy put to use. All done. And now it's 2am.

Today felt healthy in a way I wish I could better express. I felt wonderfully inspired after reading about an intriguing art project on a blog I read regularly--self-imposed limitations and an ascetic approach to entertainment intrigues me. I am thinking about adopting a less intense version of her regimen (today I listened to only one musical artist, one I had rarely listened to [Britta Persson], for example) because I think it has fantastic merit. We do have too many choices, we should focus more. Quiet down and allow ourselves less than we have access to; force appreciation and thought where white noise persists.

With this in mind, I was out the door in search of a book I lost last night (a search that brought me to the north side). In response to my paper, and my fear, I sorted it out as such: what requires my attention first?

(1) Calm down; you can write a paper.
(2) What interests you about this?
(3) Why?
(4) How can it be explored?

Simple, but elusive when the white noise of anxiety fills your head. It felt good, calmly and unhurriedly cultivating interest in my paper. Drinking my coffee, stretching my thoughts over hours. Walking the stretch of Fullerton, continuing to feel in love with the green the rain has infused into Chicago's resilient plant life.

No need for white noise.

A word edgewise.

2009-05-29T00:05:00.003-05:00

Before the Orange Blossom beer wears off..

Uncomfortable, unpleasant territory awaits me in the next few days (a paper to write, a bristly TA to meet with, a Hindi final Monday) but tonight was excellent--T., A., a back porch, some diverse beer, a guitar, and a conversation about international relations (yes, talk about belonging here). To be with the two of them feels so good, so back to the basics. Makes me remember the summer after first year, with its dinners on the back porch, its treks-about-town, its guitar tunes. It was easier.

Luckily summer creeps ever closer, despite the finals week barrier. I feel OK about being in a smallish Midwestern town, as I was for the first eighteen years of my life. Have I mentioned my internship in any way? Perhaps I shouldn't specify too specifically, in case I end up doing some kind of back-to-the-homeland, city girl analysis (on here, of course). We'll put it at this: print journalism, feature writing, Indiana.

Drowsiness has caught up with me. More after the pain of tomorrow.

another rainbow.

2009-05-21T00:22:00.005-05:00

Tonight's agenda: Ate hummus on sourdough (as dinner?), wikipedia-ed through worlds of information on bog bodies, and wondered why I am not an anthropology major.

Summer has shone its face on us in what has suddenly become mid-May, and I am daily astonished to wake in saturated sunshine forcing its way through my four drawn Venetian blinds, in a morning pocket of warmth that already begs for looser clothes and iced tea. Summer finds me still a student in the quarter system, but my mind and body refuse to process that information--I am too happy as I walk to class, too influenced by the vibrancy of the greenness and insistent joy of the birds, too interested in establishing my place in nature rather than sitting in a closed room with a circular mahogany table. I could read academic articles but I could also read Jane Austen! I could buy cereal or I could eat ice cream for breakfast! (Which I did, incidentally, this morning.)

Summer is a reward for winter, an ever-cycling rainbow after the flood. I understand deeply and intuitively solstice festivals and wish--really--that they were still celebrated. Every season needs to ground you in its intentions each year. Summer is intended for life, play, exploration. It deserves to be recognized with bonfires and dancing and alcohol (why not mead?) -- June is convincingly the happiest month every year, always surprising in how patently good it is. July is for settling and growing only slightly disenchanted with the summer thing (the heat of mid-day forcing you back inside too often) and August stands on its own--strange and disappointing and disorienting in a way that has no answers. September brings relief.

The cycle of summer--extended joy, settling, disorientation--always feels a little like a coming-of-age, every year. It feels like a detached routine that pulls you in. Always falling for the sunshine, always burned by the sunshine, the fatigue and nap attempts, always slipping backward before the end, but usually a moment of self-assessment. Last summer was different for me in India, and it worked backward, but the American summer has a place of deja vu that I dig up every June. And I think it should be toasted, even if we don't see the harvest anymore.

Today T. and I made banana bread. I wore cut-off shorts I made this morning and my bare feet, a breeze came in through the window and I felt dazed, lazy. Summer.

this post is for audrey.

2009-05-10T00:31:00.003-05:00

I have had something to drink for four nights in a row. Tomorrow is a Sunday and I'll have tea instead.

I have been reading Gandhi's autobiography and it makes me feel slightly ashamed of myself--only slightly, because Gandhi was religious in a way I probably never could be. But his sense of morality and his self-regulation is careful enough to beg a kind of immediate admiration from those who take him in. The man believed things, and he believed them earnestly. Even the beliefs I practice earnestly I harbor a great deal of doubt for, and while I don't regret that, I have to wonder how functional they are as beliefs--are all beliefs transitory? Or are only my beliefs transitory? Static beliefs might frighten me too much to adopt.

I am in something of a good mood. I found something one of T.'s friends told me tonight about psychology interesting. He explained about some recent research a professor is doing -- apparently if one believes one is lonely, that's all that matters for their psychological state. The person might not actually be lonely. Conversely, one who spends very little time with people and feels satisfied in this, while this person may actually be lonely, will not suffer from the same psychological effects of someone with greater connections who perceives their own loneliness. So it's all in the head. As I reliably complain about loneliness... I found this information useful.

As for updates, T. is teaching me how to sing, A. is going to teach me to drive stick shift, and I will be trying to teach myself to swim like a swimmer.

Fights keep breaking out at this loud party outside, and I'm too sleepy to round this out.

the clumsiest shape.

2009-04-23T23:47:00.003-05:00

Sigh.

Went to Jimmy's tonight and felt slightly fifth-wheelish then slightly third-wheelish. It was fine combined with a Blue Moon, but otherwise I suppose would feel pretty sad. I discussed things with my roommate, along the lines of: "What is necessary at the outset of a relationship?"

I wrestle continuously with myself over my loneliness bullshit, and the idea that I should just wait until something natural occurs aggressively takes on the notion that maybe my stagnant mental state subconsciously won't allow something that could conceivably work. It is exhausting. Truth versus fiction, but I never know which is which. Intuition versus rationality, how much of each is required in this situation? It began raining and we ran home in the rain. I wore the wrong shoes again. Now I hear thunder outside and rain tapping at the window, taps me softly back into my daily contentment-lull. When do you decide you've had enough of this? What do you do afterward? Nothing seems writeable until it's filed away for a while.

As it is, I float on Okkervil River songs and my Professional Life and its duties. I stopped my internship and now have what feels like far fewer obligations, though that's deceptive. BA proposal is due Monday. But I don't feel stress. Wrap in blankets, down a beer at Jimmy's, rainstorm, mull over, be grateful and relax.

the way you hate me is better than love.

2009-04-19T02:24:00.002-05:00

I have so much to write about! I made a list! It has three things on it!

Two parties this weekend, strange affairs. Friday night's indie film organization party, with chokable smoke billowing through the room and the following conversation overheard by Sarah and me:

Guy: "No, we're not having sex, I'd know if we were having sex."
Girl: "I'm not sure; I think we might be having sex..."

The girl's friend noticed us laughing and made sure to lean toward us and whisper: "They're talking about in the movie."

Tonight was terribly nice. Korean food, coffee outside in the first warmish evening in six months (starless but still), music in my apartment, exodus to Capetown party, one stale g&t, and perhaps an entire hour of animal charades. A fine and decent night. BA ideas & advisor requirements hang in the not-too-distant future, but I'll cross these bridges when I come to them. School angst does not become me. Tomorrow: Hindi essay, pirate essays, A Passage to India, coffee with T.

Neh, I don't have it in my right now to be any more lyrical. It's past 2:30am, and sometimes things feel blunt.

the lonely.

2009-04-12T22:31:00.003-05:00

So much can come out of being alone. You can't know this until you've been alone for a long, long, long time. Long enough to ache and crack and wrap your arms around yourself and barely stop yourself for reaching for someone you know definitively won't fill the void. Long enough for a sudden panic to envelope you when your friend and her whatever are together enclosed in a room, for confused rage and panic to seem the obvious feeling to fill your personless room. It isn't something that tips you into insanity, not when you've still got friends. But it curls around you insidiously, like shrinking walls or a stifled scream. And only if you're so fundamentally lonely can you know this feeling.

Years from now, there will be some point in which I am not lonely, and I will know that I've experienced what it's like to be there, absolutely. It will be a road I know, another proud notch in the belt.

The Mouse.

2009-04-09T23:49:00.002-05:00

We have a mouse. Or do we have mice?

I noticed him the first time nearly two weeks ago, when I spilled some spaghetti on the kitchen floor, looked down mechanically, and saw, amid the sprawled grocery bags, a little brown ball bolt in the other direction.

Mentally, this is how I processed this occurrence:
1. Alive.
2. Brown
3. Bigger than cockroach.
4. Mouse-sized.
5. Mouse.
6. Holy Jesus.

I don't deal well with mice. To me, having an animal larger than an urban invertebrate unwelcome and lurking in your apartment hints toward disturbing health and sanitary issues. When we first moved in to our 1212 apartment, I had a difficult time with the occasional cockroach. Then I became accustomed. I have never seen a cockroach in this apartment, but the mouse is just too big a step up. Becoming familiar with the unwelcome mouse is too close to graduating to rats, and that is something I certainly never want to be comfortable with.

I realize, though, that mice are simply a reality--in urban centers, in apartment buildings, especially in decrepit urban apartment buildings that strain and gasp at the trial of heating your unit and reveal holes and gaps throughout the infrastructure. This place isn't a mouse house because it's gross, in the way of old food and garbage everywhere; it's a mouse house because it retains that old Chicago, worn wooden floor, crumbling interior character. This I tell myself. Especially in light of my recent frenzy of cleaning, my lemonizing the floors and meticulous organization and almost overkill cleaning of the microwave.

And yet. Tonight--nearly two weeks later--the mouse made his second appearance, in a kitchen too clean for his furry little ass. He breezed in from the hallway, saw me, increased his speed, nearly ran in to the bucket with the mop, and went under the table. Sitting at the table, I let out a short but necessary scream, and calmly stood on the chair. I did not panic further. I allowed perhaps 30 seconds of fear. I then dismounted the chair, and calmly left the room. This is an improvement over last week, when, in my rush to leave the kitchen, I tripped over myself in the hall and psychotically crawled into Amulya's room.

I will sweep up every grain of rice. I will spray jets of Fresh Laundry Fields, or whatever, into every corner. I will further lemonize our floors.

I will defeat this mouse.

I still exist.

2009-04-07T22:08:00.002-05:00

Went swimming tonight, it was nice. Laps and laps and the water weighs you back and you feel tired but you don't sweat. Afterward your whole body is exhausted. In Boulder we got drunk and went to the pool room for the hot tub but all I wanted to do was swim laps. Laps and laps and laps.

I'm not sure if I know how to do this anymore, after having written for the Weekly--gearing things toward an audience, being edited--for several months blogging feels self-indulgent and pointless. Also feels good. Laps and laps and laps.

India Chronicles: The Hospital

2009-02-22T22:02:00.003-06:00

November 5th, 2008--Pune

I wake up in the hotel bed and the sickness that has been plaguing me for two weeks--intermittent fevers, horrible cough, weakness, an eventual runny nose--has manifested into a visibly swollen right side lymph node. It is terribly sore and makes swallowing difficult, but I don't really care because this is the first day the sickness is not weighing as heavily on my mind--it is election day. We are about to get a new president, and I turn on Ioana's computer while she sleeps to check the progress. It is still early on, and Obama is slightly ahead but few of the votes have come in.

I leave the room in my sweatpants and begun wandering the hotel halls, looking for people who are up and watching the news. I run into Clara and we huddle in her room, transfixed by CNN and feeling the tension. We hear people awake down the hall, and several of us go down to the dining area for breakfast (chocolate flakes and masala chai) and run away with the plates; technically I don't think this was allowed, but the staff was hardly going to argue with us. We are buzzing and talking and hushed and shaking.

Eventually the mass of people awake ends up in one room, and the votes are coming in faster and faster, Obama is speeding ahead. California lies in the balance, states keep coming back blue, and suddenly California is in and CNN flashes a message across the screen: "Projected Winner: Barack Obama."

There is screaming and jumping and more screaming. No one can handle it. There is nothing to be said, all anyone can do is smile idiotically and jump and scream. The room can't contain our joy and we careen out of it and down the hotels hallways, Clara and I tear up to the third floor to Arvind's room where we knock on the door and jump up and down. He is on the phone--as per usual--but when he opens the door we hug him and scream more and jump. We run downstairs and run through the halls making noise, and the hotel staff looks both alarmed and avidly curious. It becomes surreal when we make our way into the dining room and the waiters are gathered around the tiny television watching the ubiquitous Bollywood music videos, calm and bored and oblivious to the way we feel our lives have changed. I feel scandalized and want to change the channel and show them, but instead I go back to the room with everyone else and wait for the speech. A bottle of champagne appears and makes its rounds, but I am too sick to partake. Tilly gives me a cough drop instead.

The speech comes on the TV and draws tears from many of us, as we pay homage to the wonder that is our new and novel president--and our neighbor. People mumble things about being proud of America through their weeping and we all hug, people that barely speak hug, everything is good. Our profs find their way into the room and there is further celebrating, and more champagne is consumed. Eventually things dissipate. It is only 10am, and the whole day lies before us to wonder.

***

I start to worry about my frighteningly swollen lymph node and the pain I have in eating and seek out Arvind, who has already taken me to the hospital twice. When he sees my neck his eyes widen and he agrees to take me back once more. I have to pick up my blood test results from earlier in the week anyway, to rule out malaria.

***

As we stand in line waiting for the blood test results, I am suddenly overwhelmed as I've been on occasion for the past two weeks and my eyes well up with tears and I burn red with fever and embarrassment. By the time Arvind (my TA extraordinaire) turns to look at me there are streams running down my face and I'm sputtering slightly and this is the first of several times that he will experience my crying. I laugh and sputter. "I'm just sick of being sick," I explain ridiculously, and he pats my arm and nods. People have been staring at the white girl as I walk down the halls, and the crying has attracted even more attention; I feel horribly self-conscious as the stereotypical foreign girl with the weak constitution who can't handle their country--I feel somehow insulting, and want no one to see me, but everyone sees me and I just stare downward.

After being directed from place to place in the hospital, I finally have a chance to see a doctor--someone high up, the head of some department. He is the typical middle-aged Indian doctor, with glasses and a furrowed brow and mouth set in a small semi-frown. He asks me some rudimentary questions and pokes around at my enlarged lymph node, saying things in rapid Marathi to the nurse at his side. Then he tells me he wants me to stay at the hospital until it goes away. "It might be an abscess and we don't want it to burst. We might have to do a minor--MINOR--surgery and remove it with a needle if it doesn't go away."

The words "abscess" and "burst" sound big and urgent to me, but I feel more relieved than anything. I want to be in the hospital, I want to be poked and prodded and stuck with IV's, if that means my sickness will go away. I have been avoiding the outside, missing the guys, sleeping and grumpy, while everyone around me has been enjoying every second of sunshine and practicing yoga and shopping on Laxmi Road. I want nothing more than to be admitted to the hospital.

***

My room is surpringly nice, for a room in an Indian hospital. It is private and even equipped with a television. I lay down on the bed and suddenly feel so much better; I have been given a place to get better, and there are no other demands placed upon me. I have a television. Barack Obama is the president. Also, I don't have malaria. It will be okay.

Arvind calls the profs to tell them the news and he sits down in a plastic chair and we talk politics. I don't know him very well at this point but I feel comfortable with him and enjoy his company. He has taken me to the doctor time and again, dealt with the bureaucracy, without acting even a little impatient about it; he has even been sympathetic. We are deep in elated Obama conversation when Mark shows up, and somehow I have become something like manic. I am making a million ironic jokes a minute, throwing self-deprecating remarks at my intidimating professor and actually making him laugh. I believe I will be better tomorrow. I imagine having lots of energy, running around, feeding an appetite on dosas, hanging out with the guys.

Eventually they leave and my burst of energy ebbs and my fever is back. I lay under my blankets with my head on my pillow and watch CNN as Obama is discussed endlessly from an Indian perspective. Will he stop outsourcing? Will he help improve relations with Pakistan? I watch the exist same 10-minute clip of his story play at least three times. At some point I turn off the TV and it is quiet and I feel somewhat less happy. The team of Keralan nurses come in and stick me numerous times until they get a vein and start me on saline fluid. The smiling and shy guy from the cafeteria brings me a pack of food--which looks horribly unappetizing--and some hot milk, which I actually partially drink.

Arvind and Clara eventually return to the hospital, and Clara--bless her soul--says she'll stay the night (there is a bed on the opposite side of the room.) I don't know how to thank her for being so wonderful. The three of us sit around and gossip for a while, about the program and the profs, until Arvo must return to the hotel and Clara and I stay.

I have a needle in me and am beginning to feel the discomfort of tomorrow but I sleep like a baby through the dark of the night.

I had made it one-sixth of the way through.

you can take the future, even if you fail.

2009-02-16T01:31:00.004-06:00

ABBA said it best.

1:32am and I'm still awake. I have to wake up before 8am, but I'm sitting here. Awake. Contemplating.

The ways in which I am strong, rational, and calm with regards to matters of the heart have improved exponentially over the past few years. Even over the past year, I have become almost unassailable in the face of scary love thoughts. I am a beacon of strength, roots buried deep. Nothing can upset me in my little canoe.

Still I wonder where I will be in ten years. I wonder--at this point, even dispassionately--at the tenacity of strings that tie. Do I seal my own fate, the way I look on but refuse to get involved? Do you have to invent your passion, knit it up like a scarf to wrap around a relationship? Are the results of the past a passive ghost in the present, or are they inconsequential?

These questions will be answered or they won't. It's okay, either way. It won't cause a breakdown. Not now.

...just one girl awake in the neighborhood at 1:32am.

scenes from a frat party.

2009-02-15T01:27:00.004-06:00

Me: "Which frat is it?"
C: "The Asian frat."
Me: "There's an Asian frat?"

It is an act of desperation that brings me to a frat party; the desperation not to be alone on Valentine's Day. Not to be by myself in any measure. I am 21 and this is, I think, the trajectory of bad Valentine's Days from the beginning of one's life to this point:

[1-11yrs old]--Fun. Involves cards and chocolate.
[12-15yrs old]--Vague hope. Anything is possible. Disappointment.
[16-19yrs old]--V-Day is stupid. Desire to burn things and listen to angry music.
[20-???rs old]--Ridiculous, at this point. Not worth it. But still; ridiculous.

I had forgotten what frat parties were like until I got here and realized why I rule them out immediately almost any time they're mentioned. Ninety percent of the people here are Asian. C. and Lucy and I work our way slowly through the crowd, pushed up against people we have no interest in knowing. It takes ten minutes to get through a hallway, and then C. delivers me two jello shots from heaven followed closely by two weak vodka drinks. They do nothing. We stand close together and watch people like it's the Westminster dog show. She points. "Blonde guy?" I say, and make a face. There's Clingy Guy, who is attached to some poor girl like he's five years old and she's his teddy bear. I feel an urge to hit him for her sake. There's Flannel Guy, who is vaguely attractive but involved with high jinks with someone else, and it's somewhat amusing to watch. There are ten thousand Asian couples. C. runs after Blonde Guy and I stand alone.

I am in sort of a corner now, watching people crowd in for more alcohol, an obvious necessity. Single people exchange rapid glances that will lead to nothing. I wish for an anybody from my past, and wonder how I'd name them as they filed in. Nice Boobs Guy, Tongue Guy, Lacrosse Party Guy, The Only Guy Who Ever Mattered, India Guy, Nice Guy, Four People Guy. And others. They'd all come in and act differently with me, if they saw me there. Tongue Guy would say it's a stupid atmosphere and we should just go chill somewhere, India Guy would want to dance for the rest of the night. They'd all be distracted and some would find a way out quickly. The others I would try to evade.

It isn't pity that I look for, exactly. I could have a relationship if I really wanted it. But I don't just want a relationship. I want a relationship with tea in the morning. And chemistry. And laughing. Or I don't want it. At all.

I get my coat, I leave alone. I didn't find anything but I didn't expect to, especially at a frat party. It is around 1AM anyhow; it is no longer Valentine's Day.

I can be alone.

everybody wants a piece o' pie, honey

2009-02-12T00:01:00.005-06:00

Calm. Down.

If you're not. Just.. calm. Down.

That's what I've had to do after two weeks of highly frenetic and unmanageable stress and mysteriously plummeting levels of self-confidence. After papers and advisor meetings and writing articles and passive aggressive editorial scoldings and equally mysterious and plentiful tears. After implicitly surrendering all of my abilities to be accepted or shredded. After caring so much.

Just, calm, down.

You are not what you do. What you do is part of you, but you are a multi-faceted creature of public and private varieties. You are your beliefs and your happiness and your quietness and your choice of actions and what you see when you close your eyes, all alone. You are not a piece of paper or a list of accomplishments.

It's taken me a while to learn this and I'm still in the process. This week I briefly lost my grounding and stumbled around looking for my identity after perceiving that I'd failed at something. Failure should never instigate a loss of identity, momentary or otherwise. That's basing too much on the outcome and too little on the process.

So, breathe.

I'm not done with this week, I still have several hours to work and another paper and at least one internship app, and then a review, but now I'm calm. I hope I will maintain a modicum of calm.

As an end note, my feature is on the front (!) of the Weekly--I'm pretty happy with it. Take a look if you're around here.

action words

2009-02-09T00:02:00.002-06:00

On my resume: "Use action words."

My weekend.

Wrote a feature, watched 300 (half), drank some vodka, made my bed, read about Middle East, missed a play, ate some dal, retrieved my phone, cried, ate some cookies, worried, stressed, stressed, read about the Middle East, edited my feature, worried.

putting the "Great" in Depression!

2009-02-05T16:33:00.008-06:00

I am poor.

And by poor, I mean, in debt. In modest, not-terrifying debt, mind you (for now), but I've once more dipped into the loan function on my debit account and am therefore not just poor but a debtor. I could explain how this happened but it's a sad story involving tears and rent money and lying to my parents about how much of my tuition refund check remains because I am ashamed of the money disappearing, despite the fact that it all went to legitimate use (i.e. groceries, books for class when the library did not pull through, HEAT). I am ashamed and I feel guilty for asking for money, and so I exaggerated the amount of money I have and I'm back. In debt.

I need to start figuring out creative solutions to this problem. Chinese buns for $1 suffice for lunch (or samosas for $1.50) and are one way of reducing costs. But the truth is, I like to live in (modest but unsustainable) luxury. For example, today I bought an Honest Tea, which increases my happiness considerably but causes damages both monetarily and environmentality (and subsequently emotionally). This is how it starts: I tell myself I will buy an Honest Tea in order to use the bottle for water. But then it's a slippery slide, and slowly I'm buying illicit bottles of Honest Tea because I love the tea (and it uses cane sugar! no high fructose corn syrup!), and I already have plenty of bottles for water. Tea with my lunch is most decidedly a luxury I cannot afford as a meager debtor. And especially not Honest Tea, which might masquerade as Environmentally Friendly but is still born of a corporation and wants my tender, hard-earned dollars.

I already work the maximum hours an undergrad can put in at the library, and it may be draining but still, much like the world, it is not enough. I need other ways of making money or reducing costs. Here are some of my/the ideas thus far:

--Going to the Business School to be a guinea pig for their surveys, thereby making $1-$12 in the process every survey.

--Going to the Business School on Fridays for dinner, because apparently the cafe gives away free food.

--Tutoring high schoolers in something that isn't math or science, which might be difficult because the lab school kids are all smart little private school twerps who wouldn't make it past 5th grade without a strong foundation in any of things in which I would be prepared to tutor.

...and that's about all. Any creative advice appreciated.

hi, ancestors

2009-02-04T21:54:00.002-06:00

I like to think about the fact that my ancestors were German farmers and pagans. I like that they lived near the forest and at some point there was a beginning Gunther, because my mother's maiden name is Guntermann.

I think I would like to be a pagan rather than a.. whatever I am. I would like to worship Thor.

I am feeling ridiculous.

2009-02-03T22:09:00.004-06:00

I feel ridiculous because I cannot get my phone back fully one week after a man found it on a bus and gave it to his son. His son called my dad. His son and I arranged to meet the next day at a Starbucks at 5:30pm, I told him the intersection and waited. He did not come. I called from friends' phones several times to try to arrange a new time. Over the next several days, I left several messages, mostly kind but increasingly pleading. I left two numbers, neither of which he called. I finally got a hold of him again and he said he would bring it to me the next morning, and that he would call and let me know when and where to meet him. He did not call. I called and left several messages, none of which he responded to. Eventually I got a hold of him again, today, and we again arranged to meet at the Starbucks one hour from when I talked to him. I told him he could drop off the phone there if he was late. He did not come. I waited two hours, until the Starbucks closed.

I feel ridiculous because when I came home today there was a gas bill from the evil corporate "People's" Gas, indicating that I personally owe ~$75 and I have just over $75 in the bank and will not be paid for another week from Friday.

I feel ridiculous because I recently had a tuition refund check of $500 and all of it disappeared into loans on my debit card that I owed the bank for food and money spent over Christmas break and other expenditures for the first two weeks back at school, and into money I owed U. ($180) for the gas bill I was barely here to benefit from, groceries, and a heating device I have to use because our incredibly expensive heat barely works. This is a joke that the gas company is playing on us.

I feel ridiculous because I can't ask my parents for any more money because they sent me $300 and they will send me a monthly rent check and I am 21 and I should be able to manage money and pay for everything myself but instead I am still remarkably dependent despite the fact that I work the maximum number of hours a week possible as an undergrad (and am only making $150 a week).

I feel ridiculous because my parents are not rich and they are still sending me rent checks and helping me pay for things despite the fact that I am 21 and despite the fact that I still don't know what I want to do and am drowning in the options and refuse to shut any doors.

I feel ridiculous because after a week and a half I still have not been sent a project for my internship and my supervisor has not replied to my email.

I feel ridiculous because the teacher I need to talk to for my feature has not replied to the email I sent several days ago asking for a day to meet, even though I sent an email last week too--to which he responded. And because this is a time-sensitive issue, so I may not be able to talk to him and my feature will consequently be worse.

I feel ridiculous because I can't call any of these people because my phone is being withheld by someone who arranges to meet me repeatedly and then doesn't.

This is why I feel ridiculous, and this is why I came home today and cried.

(Bonus: I feel ridiculous because of anything to do with dating. That is all.)

Mysore Market, Part 1

2009-02-02T21:55:00.007-06:00

I met with my advisor the other morning and it was, strangely, the most I've even gotten out of an advisor meeting. After I told her what I was doing and what I wanted to do and where I'd been, she seemed very interested in India.

Her: "Have you written about it?"
Me: "Uh, well, I had a blog about it, but I didn't get to write in it much. Internet was spotty, and you know..."
Her: "So you haven't written it all down?"
Me: "No."

--5 minutes later--

Her: "What are you doing over spring break?"
Me: "I'm thinking of maybe visiting my sister in Colorado... why?"
Her: "You really should write it down."

Needless to say, her insistence on my writing about what happened over there has made me feel a little guilty, and therefore, every time I don't have something imminent to write about, I am going to post about something that happened in India.

Like now.

Sometime in mid-November...

I am in Mysore, a city both extremely dry and paradoxically green. It is after a rather extravagant lunch with the group (extravagant in the name of saying goodbye to our Hindi teacher, Sudhir, who appreciates only the finest things in life and chooses such upon given the choice) that Arvind, Taylor, Clara and I are met by a car from the hotel (in the name of apparently continuing extravagance, but at a rate comparable to using auto-rickshaws for the rest of the day). Our first destination is the Mysore market, where we had been only earlier that day.

Immediately after leaving the car, of course, we are bombarded with the usual entrepreneurials, but we find a way into the market where they don't follow.

Everything about this market is a feast for the senses. It is in the old-style of open bazaars that have been in use for centuries--walking down the narrow lane that's been covered over through the middle, you absorb on either side of you brilliant colors and scents. A long pathway of only fruits (hundreds of pounds of bananas, apples, pomegranates, pineapples, coconuts) bleeds into a market for vegetables and herbs, but then you turn a corner and there are great piles of brightly-colored dye in bowls, and across the way are men selling scented oils. The sheer life in the Mysore bazaar is overwhelming, moreso because you can't just senerely peruse the displays or take a moment to pause without becoming the target of the man selling apples or incense; he begins yelling at you, not unkindly but with definite insistence. If you stand in one place a second too long, you become a goal, and there is no creature more persistant than the Indian seller.

We have split up and agreed to meet in twenty minutes, which is all the boys will allow. I dodge the individuals that rush by me and look as determined and focused as I can (which, I am proud to report, is a pretty well-acted look for me at this point). My mission is bangles. Not a hard mission to fulfill in India, but a mission nonetheless amid the bazaar chaos. Luckily I had spotted a place selling some bangles amongst other girly paraphanalia at an intersection meeting the fruit lane, and I had--earlier that day and in a moment of impulsive longing for self-improvement by way of glitz--purchased from the man behind the counter 1) a little bottle of red nail polish, 2) a little glass bottle of nail polish remover, and 3) a small set of glass bangles as a belated birthday gift for Clara. All at a very reasonable price.

I now wanted some glass bangles for myself. But here's the thing about being a big-handed American shopping for bangles in India--Indian women either have or are presumed to have tiny little hands and wrists. My hands are feminine enough but certainly not tiny, and I continually have to convince the bangle sellers of this phenomenon. My size is a 206 to a 208; most bangles max out at 208. My chosen seller doesn't have bangles small enough to fit me, and I end up on the other side of the intersection with a younger seller who is far less cooperative.

"I need a big size," I explain. He nods and selects a few bangles from the box, but I am skeptical. "The biggest. Big American Hands," I indicate my hand and wiggle my fingers. I am speaking in Hindi, which can sometimes piss off non-Hindi speaking South Indians. He takes my extended hand and folds it to prepare it for the bangle fitting. He then tries, with impressive patience, to force the selected bangles over my hand. When they eventually get down to my wrist, my hand is beat red and scratched up and the guy behind the counter seems exhausted. Embarrassed, I point at my hand again and announce that I will not buy these bangles; they are too small.

In his haste in pulling them back over my hand, one of the bangles breaks in one spot and the glass cuts into my hand. The seller is too distracted to notice this, and I walk away with blood noticeably welling up and draining down my hand. This has been unsuccessful and awkward.

For a minute or so I walk around the bazaar, hoping to find the others. I am preoccupied with how to treat my bleeding hand--there is nothing in the bursting market that seems the least bit helpful. And then a little boy runs up, maybe nine years old, holding something he wants to sell. But when he sees my hand, his eyes widen and he looks into my face. "Water!" he says and points at my hand. I nod and then I am following him through the gaps in people and the narrow paths between makeshift shops to a shop he is particularly acquainted with. He communicates rapidly with another boy--maybe fourteen--who seems to be holding down the fort. Then a plastic jug appears and water is poured over my hand. The older boy looks at me and suggests, "A bandage." I nod, and now I am following the older boy back through the jungle of the bazaar until we reach the outside and he somehow navigates across the busy street to a Chemist's at the opposite side. He emerges a moment later with Band-aid, opens it, and puts in over my cut.

I am not sure how to thank him but I must know in my heart that the inevitable is coming: "My brother owns a shop, he makes incense, you come and look."

I am taken to a new location and brought behind the counter and made to sit in a chair as the boy explains to a fellow (perhaps 25, this one) about my epic wound and its maintenance. The brother shows me a bag of powder and shows me the little workshop set up on the floor. "He makes incense," he says. "I will show you how to make it. First you take water, then you roll it in the powder,"--this he does, creating a small brownish paste--"then you roll around the stick. This one is sandalwood." He hands me the finished product.

At this point it is past the meeting time, but I feel bad leaving after getting a private lesson in incense-rolling. I explain my predicament, but the boy is already ahead of me. "I have seen them! One girl, two boys. I will bring them." He is gone.

Sure enough, the three others, all looking confused, are herded into place in front of me as I am in the process of buying a few boxes of 10-rupee Jasmine and White Rose insense.

"I'll explain it later," I tell them as we walk away.

lonely sentences.

2009-02-01T20:33:00.003-06:00

This has inspired me to be more resourceful with my writing. It has also made me starkly self-conscious about writing this.

Today has been surprisingly productive, I've gone so far as to finish things that are due Tuesday. I haven't finished things that are due tomorrow, but I'm getting there.

I started this weekend overwhelmed with my workload, of both the academic and extracurricular variety, but between the baking of a cake and the pub-hopping... well, a soft sense of calm has settled over me.

We take steps forward. No need to worry.

a pitcher or two later.

2009-02-01T01:52:00.004-06:00

Tonight was Kyle's birthday and I'm 21, so I got to experience two Hyde Park haunts I'd never seen before; the pub in the basement of Ida Noyes, and Jimmy's. Both have their regulars and their reputations, and it all felt very novel, as though I were in a completely different city, as though I were suddenly a quasi-adult with the right to be sitting in a worn wooden booth with a pitcher of foamy beer in front of me. Not that I feel too young for it, no--this is the perfect time for it, all things are running on schedule.

Sitting there, though, listening to a New Person talk about Antarctica (where he's been) and around-the-world plane tickets and all the rest, I just kept walking back to a main point, inside my head: dating. Those I should date, I do not want to; I want to date those I should not. It's a common theme. I am beginning to grow seriously skeptical of my own ability to decide who I should and should not date. I wrestle with myself for long and drawn-out periods, confusing certain people with my alternating warmth and distance. I decide I will catch certain others, who end up being otherwise engaged and responding coolly. And then there's a friend who seems inwardly terrified of the prospect of my re-falling in love, that's a fun dynamic. There's some really unbalanced stuff going on. I suppose my only hope is that this world balances itself out while I concentrate on different things.. and there's a lot to concentrate on.

Tomorrow I'm going somewhere else in the city, alone, with some homework and my self and I'll hit up some tea. Not coffee, tea. Not bad company.

meme me, mimi

2009-01-29T00:34:00.002-06:00

(I don't know if five people read this blog/would admit to reading this blog, especially since I deleted the link from my profile. But I'm intrigued by this. And in the mood for this sort of thing lately. I be all about creatin'. [Also I incurred this moral obligation upon responding to Connie.])

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
1) I make no guarantees that you will like what I make;
2) It'll be done this year;
3) You have no clue what it's going to be. It could be anything. Jewelry, knitted stuff, something sewn, a poem, a contract, a mix CD, a photograph, baked goods... anything, really; and
4) I reserve the right to make something extremely odd.

However, by responding to this post to be one of those five people, you are incurring a moral obligation to repost this and pass it on. So. Caveat emptor.

One should write daily.

2009-01-27T23:55:00.003-06:00

I don't know if this is a uniquely American thing, or if it applies to other Western/developed/white peopled nations, but... we are a weird breed, socially speaking.

As y'all (side note: how did this Southernism work its way into my mind-vocabulary?) know, I work at the library, both monetarily speaking and homeworkily speaking. Because the entirety of my university is composed of poor, drained souls, and because the Reg is at the center of campus, I see plenty of people there, intermittently reading and walking in some direction and weeping into their coffee. This school is relatively small (5,000 undergrads) and there are many ways to meet people. In a class. At a party. Maybe you lived in the same house first year. Maybe you have a mutual friend. Whatever; the point is, as a college student, you have a lot of acquaintances.

Now here's where it gets weird. When and why does it suddenly become not only acceptable but the norm to stop acknowledging someone you've met? Are our memories so short? Because maybe I'm special and in possession of magical powers, but unless I was really drunk, I remember you. And you and you and you. I remember all of you. I remember specific things you said and did. I might remember your major and a broad outline of your likes and dislikes. I remember that time we went to dinner with the same group of people.

(This is going to be one of those times in which I say, "When I was in India...")--I really don't think this would have happened in India. Maybe it's because I had the perspective of a foreigner, and therefore I was distinct, but I think that there, if you meet someone once, you make sure to acknowledge each other from then on. If you meet someone once, the next time you see them, they're your friend, and not your acquaintance.

Maybe it's because I was gone for six months. But recently, I'm passing by lots of people without so much as a smile or a nod. I don't expect long embraces and hour-long catch-ups, but even the postman deserves a nod. It's as if people fade back into the faceless masses if you haven't spoken to them in a year. Logically, it seems like there's a social pecking order involved with this--like some people consider themselves important enough to forget a certain level of acquantanceship. But in terms of who acknowledges and who doesn't, there isn't really a detectable coolness factor.

The people toward whom I am warmest are usually those that have no discernable reason to be exceptionally kind or inclusive, but decide to be anyway--rejecting the establishment of their own personal significance.

happy ox year

2009-01-27T00:15:00.003-06:00

Celebrated Chinese New Year by bringing Tsingtao to a dinner party and eating lots of tofu.

My regimented tomorrow:

9AM-10:20AM: Middle East/North Africa class
10:30AM-11:50AM: Russian lit class
1:30PM-2:50PM: States and War class
3PM-5PM: Work
5:30PM: Pick up my lost phone from Mr. X at Starbucks
6PM-6:30/7PM: CW Meeting
8PM-10PM: Battle of Algiers screening for M.E./N.A. class
10PM-??: Discussion of BoA

...I'll just do my homework at 3AM and become an automaton.

beautiful words.

2009-01-22T00:55:00.002-06:00

President Obama.
President Obama.
President Obama.
President Obama.
President Obama.
President Obama.
President Obama.
President Obama.
President Obama.
President Obama.
President Obama.
President Obama.

Let's reflect on some of the headlines of the day.

"Obama to Close Foreign Prisons and Guantanamo"
"California Expects Fast Obama Move on Car Pollution"
"Obama Orders Military to Start Planning Troop Reduction in Iraq"
"Obama Blocks Some of Bush's Last Minute Environmental Decisions"
"Obama: Government Should Be Transparent"

It's like... a dream.

OK, I know that personality cults can be dangerous, I know he's not a god. But for just one second, can we just..

siiiiiiiiiiiiiiggghhh.

long weekends.

2009-01-19T02:02:00.004-06:00

A truly lovely weekend. Long, long and lovely; never having classes on Fridays this quarter (best choice ever? maybe) means consistently having three-day weekends, and tomorrow being MLK Day means a four-day weekend even before third week.

I hatched the idea of a dinner party in A's brain early last week, which she enthusiastically embraced and which we sort of haphazardly prepared for but still ended up with fourteen people altogether and a number of excellent dishes -- including roasted red pepper lasagna, fancy little tomatoes, asparagus with hollandaise sauce, feta-apple-walnut salad, and garlic mashed potatoes. Six bottles of wine were guzzled, including an extra-large Yellow Tail. Best of all, though, people seemed very happy with it, my musical selection was appreciated, and as I was told, the last people left at 2am. I could see hosting these more often, maybe once every couple of weeks.

After the dinner party, T., H., another friend and I went to a party where I overhead interesting gossip (such interesting gossip I've heard lately!--such is the structure of my social life right now) and got to hear H. recount the story of our meeting to an acquaintance, which could only make me smile. Come to think of it, there are always stories between two people that so often other people never know. Everyone lives in a number of secret worlds.

I went back to A.'s Saturday morning to eat leftovers for lunch and help with the cleaning; it was a cozy morning full of soft white light and hot tea and others milling around. I have fairly fallen in love with her place, as it's so conducive to dinner partying and hot tea drinking and there are usually people around. She lives with three of her friends, and all four of them have boyfriends. The atmosphere is much different from my own very quiet and frequently empty apartment.

The rest of the day was a bit lazy, though I did some work in the form of reading my current Russian novel -- Fathers and Sons, by Turgenev. Although reading Russian novels has come to feel less like work and more like being at a U of C party... discussions of nihilism, depraved romantic situations. I rather like it.

Eventually there was Thai food and I crashed in her living room, stayed for a most delicious couscous lunch this afternoon, and finally left around 2pm today. Connie came over for dinner and I went to her place for an annual watching of Pride and Prejudice ("the new one"), a movie that always gives way to wanting a Mr. Darcy who never comes. Not so intense this time, though. My theme now is all assertiveness, and I follow through. The first two weeks have been surprising enough, but certainly nothing to regret. I think a modern Lizzy would sympathize. Would laugh. The dances of her time are the parties of mine--the dancing is a little crazier, the wine is likely worse, but beyond the trends I think she'd agree that the character and the communication still exist and matter more than the style.

productivity and finding it in corners.

2009-01-14T22:37:00.002-06:00

Today, after going back and forth for two weeks with cover letters and scheduling phone times, I have finally secured an internship position doing research with an non-profit environmental organization downtown. Next Wednesday I'm going in to scope the place out and hopefully get my first "project." And meet the people. And pick up my handy dandy "research kit."

I found my way into this organization through the university's handy dandy career networking and resources website, where you can arrange to have your resume sent to different organizations advertising positions... I cringed when T. told me about it, but did it anyway. Anyway, it was extraordinarily easy and now I have an internship and that is productive.

On the other hand, I have finished none of my readings for tomorrow (although I have been enjoying a few of them, like the one about the Peloponnesian War or Gogol) and I watched a Grey's Anatomy episode with A. tonight. One I'd already seen, even. Not so productive.

Due to my seniority, I got "promoted" at work to the less horrible position of checking things in and doing lots of tasks less repetitive than shelving. Productive.

I took the day off of work today to read and mostly danced around and then put a braid in my hair. Not productive.

I am restless, but happy. Productive. Also, important.

on again, on again

2009-01-11T23:03:00.002-06:00

Two glasses of wine at dinner led to a mysterious bottle of whiskey led to the finishing of the whiskey led to party one led to cranberry-vodka and sitting on the kitchen floor with Connie and T. led to party two led to "dirty girl scout" led to A.'s apartment led to pictures in tights led to a walk home I don't remember and a very long day today--such alcohol consumption can only happen a few nights a year, last night was one of those.

I believe the evening is best encapsulated in A.'s and my text communication:

A: Come to our party!! (12:36am)
A: This party is we are drunk (12:55am)
Me: i am coming? will you still be tjhere in 29 mins (12:57am)
A: um i dunno i don't know (12:58am)
Me: well DECIDE or else i wont come (12:59am)
A: Come over it's fun please please. Don't even think about it (1:00am)
Me: ok STAY THERE (1:01am)

Hmm, yes. This quarter is on.

Because I'm insane, I'm getting up at 5:30am tomorrow morning to participate in Kuviasungnerk/Kangeiko, a UChicago winter festival celebrated with freezing early morning yoga. I get a free shirt at the end.

So night.

those crazy Russian winters..

2009-01-10T01:56:00.004-06:00

Remember the good old days, last year, when MAC overheated my apartment to the point of my donning boxers and tank tops and using a fan in mid-winter? Remember how quickly I'd shed my coat and boats for fear of sweating, and how cozy and nest-like our little apartment with its boho-sympathetic tendencies was?

We got our gas bill last week--it was ~$244.

Now... I don't consider myself to be an irrational person. But that is an absurd price. That is the price of a fancy new iPod. It's the price of a fancy new dress. It's the price of a plane ticket, all of my books for two quarters, one-quarter a month's rent.

I acknowledge that our apartment is extremely energy-inefficient. The "sun" room is lined with windows and sucks the heat out like a vacuum. My bedroom also has windows all along one side, and, in here, I almost never actually feel the heater's output. The building itself is an old Hyde Park apartment building with six apartments, two on each floor. It was probably built in 1940 or earlier, and the heating system is unlikely to have been updated recently. There are worn wooden floors in every room except the kitchen, which, while aesthetically pleasing, is not all that insulating. It may be like pouring heat into a strainer. So yes, People's Gas, I admit there is a problem with our apartment.

But I'm more than a little suspicious and angered for a number of reasons. For one thing, this bill was for the month of December, during which our apartment was only occupied for about two and a half weeks. It was completely empty by the middle of the month and I came back on the 26th. Additionally, the heat is turned off at night, and when no one is home, which is more than half of the 24-hour day. This means that the heat was actually in use for about one week of the month. Had we been here the whole month and continued turning off the heat during the night and when no one was home, we still would have gotten billed, it seems, around $500.

I understand that things cost money, even that things cost quite a bit of money (imported chocolate, for example). The difference is, I don't need imported chocolate and so I don't often buy it. U. and I do need heat. Paying my share of the bill, about $122, is almost my entire paycheck for a whole week working maximum hours (15). I work 14 hours, which is pretty decent on top of four courses and their homework. And I really don't want to see all of those hours going toward basic heat. Especially when I still need to feed myself and take care of other extraneous costs that jump out from behind the Trees of Adulthood. So far my bank account is taking heavy advantage of the up-to-$500 loan function, where you can dip into fake money as long as you pay it back in reasonable time. My parents are sending me emergency money, I owe U. for several things, and I don't get my first paycheck of the quarter until next Friday.

Despite all of this, I'm feeling zen enough. I have foregone buying books, and am using the library instead, hoping it comes through for me all quarter. I am now finally making money again and things will go back to equilibrium in a couple of weeks. But $122 is more than I am able or willing to pay each month for gas, and so we're now using it almost never, save for an hour or so in the morning and maybe for a short stint in the evening. Even so, we don't put it higher than 68.

U. and I got space heaters and we're becoming reliant on those instead. I double and triple-sock my feet, take hot baths, chain-drink hot tea. My one warm spot is in my bed, cocooned in blankets, with the space heater blowing on me. With this, and the incessant snow outside the window, and the Russian novels I'm reading for class, I get the sensation of either a Depression Era or Soviet Era hovel. I imagine myself as Kira Argounova in "We the Living", coming back to my cold little apartment out of the freezing and gusty Russian winter, taking comfort in a jacked-up social life as an escape from the bleak outside world. Well, okay, maybe not the last part.

We'll get by. We are the living, after all.

listen, plz

2009-01-08T23:12:00.003-06:00

An album you need to listen to in order to make your life better: Leona Naess, Thirteens.

winter quarter night one: check

2009-01-05T23:15:00.003-06:00

make yourself couscous

2009-01-04T23:29:00.002-06:00

Today I ate couscous for dinner for the second night in a row. Most delicious.

I think six months in India managed to peel away a certain self-consciousness that clung to me for years before I left. This I realized especially tonight.

Things weigh on your mind and make you terrified and intermittently start despairing but if you keep reading the New Yorker and cutting the tomatoes and talking to people and eating the couscous, you continue to learn new things and unearth bits of wisdom. As long as you're learning, you're not going horribly wrong.

And that's tonight's three-second bite.

Otherwise engaged.

2009-01-04T00:19:00.002-06:00

A lot of people seem to be getting engaged lately.

Maybe this is largely a symptom of Facebook. Or maybe I'm actually at an age where I start to see people my age committing "for life" and then reproducing, like waiting for any reason is just too much work, and moot besides. Biology tells us this is partially the right answer--we're just about ripe for propagating the species...we have been for a while now. But biology also tends to hesitate when it sees us doing the commitment thing at twenty. Evolutionarily speaking, there should be lots of sex with lots of people, lots of wonderful gene-spreading. Culturally speaking, picking out the person whose adult diaper you're willing to change at 88 before you're legal to drink... well, if the evil statistics are any indication, it's a bad idea.

I shouldn't side with the statistics, but I'm realistic, so I do.

I just recently became okay with the idea of wearing mascara, finding a way to reconcile it with certain feminist ethics to which I'm attached. This was a big step. I don't see engagement in my near future.

But really now, just for a minute here: honestly?

freecycling

2009-01-02T23:49:00.002-06:00

On the way from my new apartment to campus, I always pass what looks to be a free newspaper stand--you know, the kind where you lift the plastic lid out toward you and there's a stack of something. Except the stand isn't for complimentary newspapers, it's for complimentary books. It's there for anybody to leave and take books. I've been checking it every day. Usually there's either nothing or nothing very exciting. Yesterday there was a informational brochure on being black and getting a job.

But this morning the thing was full of economics books. I grabbed one on South Korea for T., shoved it in my bag, and moved on.

About a block later, I started wondering--what if that book was for somebody else? What if it's not as random as it looks, and instead it serves a function of deliberate delivery from one person to another? Was I thieving?

It's strange that the thought even crossed my mind, and stranger that it stuck with me and I started to feel like I was carting around stolen goods. Who would paint "Free Books" on a container meant for specified people? Why did I feel so implicated?

My theory is that my institutionalized mind was subconsciously anxious over the lack of capitalism involved with my completely legal book-snatching. The idea that I could take something from a willing stranger in the name of community is that alien.

U. confirmed tonight over peanut butter and tea that it is perfectly acceptable to take things from the box. You can take and not feel guilty, give and not feel deserving. It's all non-expectant, unknown relationships between people.

Tomorrow I'm going to leave a book I got free from the Reg when it was dumping its collection a year or two ago--"Men and Aggression." I think I'll start freecycling a lot more from now on.

hold your head up high, like you think I do.

2009-01-02T00:19:00.003-06:00

I've thought about this much less in-depth than I usually do... I seem to think still keeping a New Years resolution I made in 2007 has forever excused me from the process of making more promises. But no; stagnant we are not.

Some things I could do this year:

1. Write every day. EVERY DAY.

2. One word: assertive.

3. Ten new Hindi words a day.

I enter this year far more terrified somehow than ever before. More terrified, more serious, more indecisive. One day at a time. More to come.

Golden Temple room.

2008-12-20T22:10:00.004-06:00

Tonight was nice.

Kristin, who is back, and I decided to go to Grand Rapids and buy things from an Indian grocery store we'd Googled. We both have connections to the food now, given that I was just in India and she (to be brief) is engaged to a Pakistani.

After the soul-crushing (that's the second use of that term in two consecutive posts--coincidence?) and endless parade of expansive chain stores that is 28th Street, we turned onto Division, drove a mile or so, and ended up outside the address of a small and generally unremarkable little Indian market. Outside, a bored, preteenish brown boy and his younger brother were playing on a snow mound. "You can use that door," the boy kindly pointed out, gesturing at the discreet back door. As we walked inside, a turbaned and aproned man behind the counter looked at us skeptically before coming forward.

"You're from Punjab?" I asked.

He brightened immediately. "How did you know?"

"I just came back from six months in India. I was in Punjab for a short while. Amritsar--"

"Amritsar!" He looked overjoyed.

"I really liked the Golden Temple."

At this, he became very passionate. "The Golden Temple--" (pause), "--is the best place in all the world."

The next 10 or 15 minutes we were there were a little emotionally compacted, with strangely complex-feeling cultural truths and sentiments clawing at me. I feel like I've become trained in --1) the true chasm of cultural differences --2) the meaning of home --3) understanding what it means to be who I am where I am. In this little grocery, we silently shared our reflections of India, and his appreciation that I knew something of his home was apparent in his quick and persistent change of attitude. He put on Bollywood music. He showed us different products he was especially proud to carry. He asked questions. After we paid at the counter, he produced two apparently illegally burned soundtracks from behind the counter and placed them in our hands. "For free?" I asked. He nodded--"Some good, some not so good."

It was a tiny taste of India again, in the little shop. Touching interactions and hospitable behavior, the kind of communication that makes you want to seal it up immediately and walk out, for fear something (a realization you're being cheated, as happens on occasion) will break the unexpected intimacy of the moment.

I got home and placed my red dal and powdered coconut milk on the counter for tomorrow. In the living room with the tree, I started a Nick Hornby book about reading books I bought today (post-Hesse, light and funny is the prescription of the moment). I poured a glass of red wine that, well into 9PM and without dinner, rushed into my bloodstream quickly and gave me that feeling of vague and easygoing warmth. I put out 100 pages and felt good about it, and followed it with a bowl of French onion soup (made with vegetable broth, even).

Yes, it was enough for today.

big jumps

2008-12-16T21:38:00.003-06:00

It's been snowing all night and it looks pretty outside, dark and white and frosty.

I lack the patience to write much of anything really, I just promised A. I'd post. Maybe this takes a long time to become natural again.

I turned 21 a couple days ago. I have literally no friends here, and with the addition of a family Christmas party, it was shaping up to be a pretty depressing day. My extended family on my dad's side are a bunch of strangers. They enjoy and feel comfortable in this town; I find it soul-crushing. I am pretty sure I know how I appear to them: the antisocial and stuck-up, hyperserious city liberal. They communicate. I sit down and pull out a book. I know it looks bad, but as my mother has said, "You can't make a family close if it isn't close." We don't get each other and that's okay.

Anyway, luckily Marla extended a hand and I ended up in a bar in East Lansing with her and her friends and consumed throughout the course of the short night two gin and tonics, one delicious beer, and one amaretto sour. With the jetlag (still!), I was pretty much falling asleep by 12:30am, and I crashed on her couch with a very antsy cat and was up at 7:30am the next morning and reading. This sleep schedule is not very good for the nightlife.

My birthday could have sucked but it didn't. I guess it depends on what you do with yourself.

One of my goals for next year (always wait for the completely arbitrary date of January 1st!) is to become far more assertive than I already am. Assertive enough to do the things I want to do--get to know the people I want to know, go the places I want to go, and be involved the way I want to be involved. If you're curious about the person you sit next to in class, ask that person to coffee. If your birthday appears destined to suck, step in and make it not suck.

Just... be involved in your life. Don't wait to be pushed. Push yourself.

I say this wishing I'd been a lot more productive today. Ah well. Looking out the window, the snow is burying today.

achin'

2008-12-12T19:20:00.002-06:00

Debilitating headaches. Always. Since last year. In this town. The headaches. Pounding right through two Aleves. And three Ibuprofens. Can't even think. Past tiny phrase sentences.

Good news:

1. Today I got my driver's license renewed as the letter that came in the mail instructed. Very short process involving my height, weight, corrective lenses requirement, signature and two photos--the second looking exactly like the first, not horrible, but I guess I just always have a tilted smile.

2. Bought vegetarian food. This concept (food not involving meat) eludes my father, who approached me a few days ago looking confused and said, "You're going to have to help with this whole vegetarian cooking thing." The first day home, his attempt to adapt to my diet resulted in fried fish, which, of course, doesn't exactly fit. But having given over my refusal to eat seafood on the Indian coasts (the breaking of the seafood rule being an interesting story for later), I bent one more time and ate the perch, because my family had tried, and it was already cooked. The next day I gently explained that fish was meat.

3. Bought a Teach Yourself German book. I've been vaguely wanting to start German for a while now (chalk it up to ancestor sentimentality), and now I've got a resource. Hallo!

4. Got a new keyboard installed. One with a functioning 'a' key.

5. Got work for tomorrow: 8am-3pm, back in the one place I like in this town, brewing coffee and baking muffins and making money and making time go away.