I'm pretty sure I'm in love. With M. Ward's voice & sweet guitar strumming & ethereal lyrics. It's perfectly contained comfort, an earthenware mug of tea, a 4AM autumn breeze. I have trouble listening to Iron and Wine anymore due to repetition. Maybe he's my this-year's Sam Beam.
Listen to "Lullaby + Exile". For your own good. Right now.
Oh, and classes start tomorrow (today). Excited? Yes. Also I sewed a patch in my favorite pair of jeans (though I had to sacrifice my favorite bandana) and made a lovely tomato soup.
WHAT A PRODUCTIVE WEEKEND!
Monday, September 24, 2007
Saturday, September 22, 2007
a film review
Do not go see "Across the Universe"--just don't.
I wanted this film to succeed, I really did. The trailor was well-done; it charmed me. But it didn't happen. I was not charmed. I was embarrassed.
Maybe it was the way the film expected one to feel for a movie's characters based solely on events, neatly dusting the concept of "character development" under the rug. Or the way everything became so ridiculously formulaic while pretending not to be--while parading around as art (now that is pretension.) Or the character Prudence, who apparently exists solely so the song "Dear Prudence" can be used, and as the token gay.
I watched metaphors painfully constructed on the screen. The most cringe-inducing: a group of Vietnam soldiers literally carrying the Statue of Liberty through the fields.
The movie relies on our knowledge of the "craziness" of the 60's and creates a bloated and cliched vision of the time without bothering to make it personal. When the characters actually speak instead of sing, they tend to be unoriginal and corny (like when Lucy sees off her war-going boyfriend, or Jude uses the phrase "bun in the oven" without any humor.)
Watching this movie, there were several times I actually cringed. I felt insulted.
The last movie I saw that tried to call itself art and failed this miserably was "A History of Violence".. if you want to gouge out your eyes, have a marathon. Watch both.
I wanted this film to succeed, I really did. The trailor was well-done; it charmed me. But it didn't happen. I was not charmed. I was embarrassed.
Maybe it was the way the film expected one to feel for a movie's characters based solely on events, neatly dusting the concept of "character development" under the rug. Or the way everything became so ridiculously formulaic while pretending not to be--while parading around as art (now that is pretension.) Or the character Prudence, who apparently exists solely so the song "Dear Prudence" can be used, and as the token gay.
I watched metaphors painfully constructed on the screen. The most cringe-inducing: a group of Vietnam soldiers literally carrying the Statue of Liberty through the fields.
The movie relies on our knowledge of the "craziness" of the 60's and creates a bloated and cliched vision of the time without bothering to make it personal. When the characters actually speak instead of sing, they tend to be unoriginal and corny (like when Lucy sees off her war-going boyfriend, or Jude uses the phrase "bun in the oven" without any humor.)
Watching this movie, there were several times I actually cringed. I felt insulted.
The last movie I saw that tried to call itself art and failed this miserably was "A History of Violence".. if you want to gouge out your eyes, have a marathon. Watch both.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
the british are coming...!
Last night I went to my first frat party of this school year. Save for the first-years and some off-campus people who were early coming back, the undergrad student body is not back yet, which means dealing with the awkwardness of big gaping spaces in big party places.
It was all right though, last night. My other permanent roommate, U., is back--to my sheer and utter joy--and I never really feel too uncomfortable if I'm near her. We sat on the porch and talked for a while, some friends (and friends' friends) around us. Even not talking, looking around contentedly and remembering what my classmates are like, was really enough for me to enjoy the night.
What I love about parties is this: you can meet people, randomly introduce yourself and talk, and not have to feel awkward about it. Few places offer that opportunity. You can't do it at train stops or bus stops, restaurants or movie theaters.
And so I met a small group of international students who came up, introduced themselves, and sat down. It amounted to one German guy and three British guys, all grad students in business. Here's something I'll admit, though it might be embarrassing or annoying: I love talking to foreign people. I love comparing countries and getting an outsider's perspective on America--you'll hear a lot of surprising things that way. And it's more fun to expand on differences than try to find similarities with the sloppily drunk, hovering stranger from New Jersey.
Hans (let's call him Hans) ended up being an excellent conversationalist. He wanted to know how I possibly entertained himself in Hyde Park, as there apparently is only one pub and I can't legally drink anyway. The drinking age was something he for some reason found endlessly amusing, and kept bringing up ("What do you do?!") and I tried to explain that it doesn't really stop anyone (I mean, come on, we were at a frat party) but he wouldn't have any of it.
I didn't pay much attention to any of the British guys until I realized, sort of strikingly, that I don't think I've ever even talked to a British guy. They were like an exotic species, suddenly, and I started trying to listen to them and Hans at the same time, which meant I spent a fair amount of time looking blankly at Hans as he talked, and pausing to register what he said before I replied.
When H. came out on the porch to join us I got sort of excited. "They're British!" I said, indicating the guys, remembering H.'s love for England. Hans started talking some more, but I caught the phrase "proper football" and a few other snippets. Like H. pointing out, "Hey.. you colonized my country" and the measured reply, "Yeah; sorry about that."
The British were, I guess, exactly how'd expect them to be: sarcastic, dry-humored, unimpressed. Mr. Darcy without the class maybe, a cynical Hugh Grant without the bumbling cuteness. Incredibly fun to talk to probably, but Hans was very attentive and they were very inattentive so I didn't really find out.
A short while later I found myself accompanying Hans, one British, and two Americans to an apartment party somewhere, and then I found myself halfheartedly playing something called "Flip-Cup" with the seven other people who comprised the party. Hans became increasingly comfortable and the increasingly handsy, so I used work this morning as an excuse, slipped on my shoes, and fled.
I hadn't told them that my apartment was literally 3 buildings away, and when I got inside one minute later it seemed very funny to me, like it was such a secretive thing to do, my own private joke.
Let it be known that frat parties are now redeemed in my mind.
It was all right though, last night. My other permanent roommate, U., is back--to my sheer and utter joy--and I never really feel too uncomfortable if I'm near her. We sat on the porch and talked for a while, some friends (and friends' friends) around us. Even not talking, looking around contentedly and remembering what my classmates are like, was really enough for me to enjoy the night.
What I love about parties is this: you can meet people, randomly introduce yourself and talk, and not have to feel awkward about it. Few places offer that opportunity. You can't do it at train stops or bus stops, restaurants or movie theaters.
And so I met a small group of international students who came up, introduced themselves, and sat down. It amounted to one German guy and three British guys, all grad students in business. Here's something I'll admit, though it might be embarrassing or annoying: I love talking to foreign people. I love comparing countries and getting an outsider's perspective on America--you'll hear a lot of surprising things that way. And it's more fun to expand on differences than try to find similarities with the sloppily drunk, hovering stranger from New Jersey.
Hans (let's call him Hans) ended up being an excellent conversationalist. He wanted to know how I possibly entertained himself in Hyde Park, as there apparently is only one pub and I can't legally drink anyway. The drinking age was something he for some reason found endlessly amusing, and kept bringing up ("What do you do?!") and I tried to explain that it doesn't really stop anyone (I mean, come on, we were at a frat party) but he wouldn't have any of it.
I didn't pay much attention to any of the British guys until I realized, sort of strikingly, that I don't think I've ever even talked to a British guy. They were like an exotic species, suddenly, and I started trying to listen to them and Hans at the same time, which meant I spent a fair amount of time looking blankly at Hans as he talked, and pausing to register what he said before I replied.
When H. came out on the porch to join us I got sort of excited. "They're British!" I said, indicating the guys, remembering H.'s love for England. Hans started talking some more, but I caught the phrase "proper football" and a few other snippets. Like H. pointing out, "Hey.. you colonized my country" and the measured reply, "Yeah; sorry about that."
The British were, I guess, exactly how'd expect them to be: sarcastic, dry-humored, unimpressed. Mr. Darcy without the class maybe, a cynical Hugh Grant without the bumbling cuteness. Incredibly fun to talk to probably, but Hans was very attentive and they were very inattentive so I didn't really find out.
A short while later I found myself accompanying Hans, one British, and two Americans to an apartment party somewhere, and then I found myself halfheartedly playing something called "Flip-Cup" with the seven other people who comprised the party. Hans became increasingly comfortable and the increasingly handsy, so I used work this morning as an excuse, slipped on my shoes, and fled.
I hadn't told them that my apartment was literally 3 buildings away, and when I got inside one minute later it seemed very funny to me, like it was such a secretive thing to do, my own private joke.
Let it be known that frat parties are now redeemed in my mind.
Monday, September 17, 2007
wake me up when september begins
School starts in a week. This is my second taste of UChicago's idea of summer - an endless expanse of time that ends around the time you're double-layering socks and seeing on your breath on breezy, misty-blue mornings. Even the leaves are changing.
A late summer is not really something that warrants complaint, except that it's made up for by the absence of early summer.. we take our finals on hot, bright blue June days that take one back to baseball with the cousins, even if you don't know how to play baseball and know your cousins even less.
Anyway, this prolonged summer is shifting my nerdism into overdrive. Being home this past week has only worsened my symptoms. I barely survived the 3 1/2 hour car ride from Leelanau to Hastings with my entire family. I calmed myself down by writing a to-do list.
Later, I not only printed out my schedule, I used Excel to make a lovely visual. I adjusted font sizes and colors. I color-coordinated similar classes (Hindi is lavender, Hindi discussion is a darker mauve.) I then printed out all the information on majoring in both International Studies and Environmental Studies. I know that I must earn 13 credits in each/either. I now know that I possibly cannot double-major, thanks to the combined powers of the Core and Mandarin (why did I take you, Chinese, why did I invest so much time in your illogical scrawls?)
You'll imagine my excitement, then, when I checked my email this morning and found an email from my Environmental Studies prof (subject: "Hi Class"), saying he'd put a draft syllabus and our first week's homework online. I immediately went to Chalk. I combed joyously over the syllabus, as though it were a love letter. I opened and checked the size of each reading. I barely stopped myself from starting the reading for next Monday. I know, deep down, that I'm going to print it out when I get home. I know that I won't start it because I've yet to go get.. school supplies. Notebooks and neon highlighters, folders and pens. School supplies.
This is bad.
I wasn't even this bad last year as a dizzy first-year in sudden neo-gothic bliss, rescued from the dullness of rural public school. And that, my friends, was euphoria.
Vaulted ceilings and heavy wooden tables in the dining hall (dining hall!) in the place of lemon-scented linoleum and avocado-colored plastic chairs. Ivy instead of brown brick & plaster. The Middle Ages instead of the 1970's! And more: first-years instead of freshmen, serious readings instead of definition lists, profs instead of teachers. People might complain about pretension, but after spending time in apathy, pretension is like a beautiful thought.
But even then... I wasn't this excited about homework. Terrified, yes. But there was a lot going on. Excitement was being channeled in every direction. It was evened out. Now I know where I am.. the school, and the city.
Oh, UChicago. I have my complaints, but I love thee.
A late summer is not really something that warrants complaint, except that it's made up for by the absence of early summer.. we take our finals on hot, bright blue June days that take one back to baseball with the cousins, even if you don't know how to play baseball and know your cousins even less.
Anyway, this prolonged summer is shifting my nerdism into overdrive. Being home this past week has only worsened my symptoms. I barely survived the 3 1/2 hour car ride from Leelanau to Hastings with my entire family. I calmed myself down by writing a to-do list.
Later, I not only printed out my schedule, I used Excel to make a lovely visual. I adjusted font sizes and colors. I color-coordinated similar classes (Hindi is lavender, Hindi discussion is a darker mauve.) I then printed out all the information on majoring in both International Studies and Environmental Studies. I know that I must earn 13 credits in each/either. I now know that I possibly cannot double-major, thanks to the combined powers of the Core and Mandarin (why did I take you, Chinese, why did I invest so much time in your illogical scrawls?)
You'll imagine my excitement, then, when I checked my email this morning and found an email from my Environmental Studies prof (subject: "Hi Class"), saying he'd put a draft syllabus and our first week's homework online. I immediately went to Chalk. I combed joyously over the syllabus, as though it were a love letter. I opened and checked the size of each reading. I barely stopped myself from starting the reading for next Monday. I know, deep down, that I'm going to print it out when I get home. I know that I won't start it because I've yet to go get.. school supplies. Notebooks and neon highlighters, folders and pens. School supplies.
This is bad.
I wasn't even this bad last year as a dizzy first-year in sudden neo-gothic bliss, rescued from the dullness of rural public school. And that, my friends, was euphoria.
Vaulted ceilings and heavy wooden tables in the dining hall (dining hall!) in the place of lemon-scented linoleum and avocado-colored plastic chairs. Ivy instead of brown brick & plaster. The Middle Ages instead of the 1970's! And more: first-years instead of freshmen, serious readings instead of definition lists, profs instead of teachers. People might complain about pretension, but after spending time in apathy, pretension is like a beautiful thought.
But even then... I wasn't this excited about homework. Terrified, yes. But there was a lot going on. Excitement was being channeled in every direction. It was evened out. Now I know where I am.. the school, and the city.
Oh, UChicago. I have my complaints, but I love thee.
Friday, September 07, 2007
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
of diversity, disconnect & disappointing desserts
I had a surreal experience with multiculturalism last night.
I should first note that if you're in Chicago and you really want to see different cultures, you should go to Devon Street. Not the South Side. Not downtown. All of Chicago, of course, is a land of different ethnicity, but one place to really get that sensation of immigration (that just popped out.. I should write brochures) is in the far North and West, neighborhoods that typically get less travel but are extraordinarily interesting. Far more interesting, in my opinion, than the Jamba Juice on the first floor of the John Hancock.
We (T., A., and I) took the Red Line out to Morse, the third to last stop on the North Side. Almost nothing was there (note: if you're going to Devon, get off at Loyola, not Morse) so we got on a bus. A bus with some strangely loud Latinos and lots of brown people in bright colors.
Devon (if you're reading this and not from Chicago) is an Indo-Pak neighborhood (more precisely street) that caters heavily to its community. It's covered in Indian and Pakistani restaurants, grocery stores (and delis, and bakeries..), clothing shops (mostly full of rainbowy-colored and sequined and silky-looking clothing), and on, and on. Compared to other neighborhoods in Chicago, Devon feels very alive. It seemed like everyone was outside, walking around, or else huddled in groups, sitting on benches and crates, shopping bags in hand, talking. Seeing it made me feel something almost akin to nostalgia.. like that's what cities were like before the internet happened.
We ate in a restaurant that was comparatively less formal than the rest (no white tablecloths & dim lighting) but still very clean and obviously modern (it had distracting and entrancing flat screen televisions in each wall playing over and over the same Bollywood music videos and movie trailers and commercials). A. and I ordered sweet lime sodas. We had no idea what anything on the menu was, so we just ordered three random meals and a side of samosas. I ended up with a very homey lentil dish, A. got something spinachy and sweet, and T. got a sort of spicy okra thing.
Afterward, we went to a very popular-looking fast-food-but-still-classy kind of place for dessert. As with the dinner, we didn't recognize anything, so we stared through the glass and decided based on names and colors ("What do you think that green stuff is? Pistachio?"; "I don't know, but I really want one of those pink things") -- in the end we had an assortment in a darling little box and went out to a bench to try them. We were all pretty amused by the "chum-chums", so we opted for 3 pink and 3 "sandwich" chum-chums. Afterward, we found it didn't really matter, as all of it, according to our palattes, was sort of flavorless and unsweet and wet. One thing tasted a little to me like old cheese. The brown thing tasted strongly and a little revoltingly like ginger. There was an orange thing, but no one could figure out the flavor.
We took the bus back to the Loyola stop, and waited for a train. Standing around at the stop, I noticed suddenly that the same guy on our bus was waiting for the same train. An Indian guy. In lightly-colored jeans and white shoes. Carrying a baggy. T. and A. and I discussed our chum-chums and the guy kept looking, and I kept looking back. When the train came, we got in the same car. By this time everything felt a little hilarious and I was feeling kind of inexplicably manic.
Lots of distinct-looking people got on and off the train. The guy crossed his legs at the feet and leaned his head sleepily against the plexiglass pane. I glanced, looked away, glanced back. Occasionally he'd glance back, and in my head it felt like the shared glance seemed to ask the same thing: "Are we going to the same place?"
I looked at the people around me, felt strange, looked harder. Then I realized: nobody around me was sticking to their cultural stereotypes. I sat across from an African-American guy with a fedora-like hat, black leather shoes that were almost feminine, and he had his hands politely folded in his lap. A young East Asian couple got on the train looking... stereotypically black. The guy wore big, puffy, colorful shoes and baggy pants and an oversized shirt and a loud, shiny belt buckle and a big, multicolored, backwards Sox cap. The girl had neon yellow & orange Nikes and big sunglasses. They were really, really loud. The fedora guy got off the train and was replaced by another black guy, this one wearing an almost dainty white knit cap. He looked peaceful, Buddha-like.
I glanced at the Indian guy, turned to T. "Hey," I whispered, "Let's bet which stop the guy is getting off." T. was quiet for a second. "Belmont," he said. "Or else Fullerton." I watched everyone in the train, read the ads, glanced. I started to think maybe he'd fallen asleep, but then I'd see him adjust his feet, sit up just slightly. We passed Belmont & Fullerton, and T. reguessed. "Clark."
"Lake," I said.
And so it went all through the nine or so downtown stops, until it became clear he was headed for the South Side. I felt a little excited, and started laughing. "He's totally getting off at Garfield," T. said, poking me. I couldn't stop laughing. "You like him," he added suddenly. "He's like 35," I pointed out. "So what? You're thinking about jumping him, aren't you?"
Sadly, the guy got off the train at 47th, one stop short of Garfield. When we got off at Garfield, I was smiling uncontrollably, like I'd just fallen in love or something... which is what T. kept accusing me of. But that wasn't it.
I think it was a city-loneliness syndrome. We went from the same bus to the same car on the same train, and I hoped the pattern would continue, that he'd be going back to Hyde Park too, that we'd start a conversation, go get coffee somewhere and talk about interesting things. I wanted a connection amongst all the disconnect in the city.
Today I ate lunch in Ex-Libris and after I momentarily left my table with my newspaper, a table with something like 6 other chairs, someone else sat down at the opposite end, thinking it was empty. I came back and he apologized in a quick, jerked, rabbity kind of way and started frantically gathering his things. "It's OK," I said and laughed slightly, "You can stay." I don't think either of us were really starved for privacy, but in the city, public-privacy is everything.
Last night I wanted a sudden lack of privacy. But it was okay. It was somehow exhilarating enough that me & the guy shared a bus followed by a train, that our destinations were separated by one stop. (And yet I wonder: Whither goest thou, Indian guy, with thy little baggy into the night?)
T., A. and I took the bus back to our apartment and stood outside H.'s window, doing a briefly choreographed song-and-dance routine about chum-chums. After he let us in, A. one-by-one fed him about 5 or 6 sweets. "Mm," he said of the chum-chums. "It's beautiful."
I should first note that if you're in Chicago and you really want to see different cultures, you should go to Devon Street. Not the South Side. Not downtown. All of Chicago, of course, is a land of different ethnicity, but one place to really get that sensation of immigration (that just popped out.. I should write brochures) is in the far North and West, neighborhoods that typically get less travel but are extraordinarily interesting. Far more interesting, in my opinion, than the Jamba Juice on the first floor of the John Hancock.
We (T., A., and I) took the Red Line out to Morse, the third to last stop on the North Side. Almost nothing was there (note: if you're going to Devon, get off at Loyola, not Morse) so we got on a bus. A bus with some strangely loud Latinos and lots of brown people in bright colors.
Devon (if you're reading this and not from Chicago) is an Indo-Pak neighborhood (more precisely street) that caters heavily to its community. It's covered in Indian and Pakistani restaurants, grocery stores (and delis, and bakeries..), clothing shops (mostly full of rainbowy-colored and sequined and silky-looking clothing), and on, and on. Compared to other neighborhoods in Chicago, Devon feels very alive. It seemed like everyone was outside, walking around, or else huddled in groups, sitting on benches and crates, shopping bags in hand, talking. Seeing it made me feel something almost akin to nostalgia.. like that's what cities were like before the internet happened.
We ate in a restaurant that was comparatively less formal than the rest (no white tablecloths & dim lighting) but still very clean and obviously modern (it had distracting and entrancing flat screen televisions in each wall playing over and over the same Bollywood music videos and movie trailers and commercials). A. and I ordered sweet lime sodas. We had no idea what anything on the menu was, so we just ordered three random meals and a side of samosas. I ended up with a very homey lentil dish, A. got something spinachy and sweet, and T. got a sort of spicy okra thing.
Afterward, we went to a very popular-looking fast-food-but-still-classy kind of place for dessert. As with the dinner, we didn't recognize anything, so we stared through the glass and decided based on names and colors ("What do you think that green stuff is? Pistachio?"; "I don't know, but I really want one of those pink things") -- in the end we had an assortment in a darling little box and went out to a bench to try them. We were all pretty amused by the "chum-chums", so we opted for 3 pink and 3 "sandwich" chum-chums. Afterward, we found it didn't really matter, as all of it, according to our palattes, was sort of flavorless and unsweet and wet. One thing tasted a little to me like old cheese. The brown thing tasted strongly and a little revoltingly like ginger. There was an orange thing, but no one could figure out the flavor.
We took the bus back to the Loyola stop, and waited for a train. Standing around at the stop, I noticed suddenly that the same guy on our bus was waiting for the same train. An Indian guy. In lightly-colored jeans and white shoes. Carrying a baggy. T. and A. and I discussed our chum-chums and the guy kept looking, and I kept looking back. When the train came, we got in the same car. By this time everything felt a little hilarious and I was feeling kind of inexplicably manic.
Lots of distinct-looking people got on and off the train. The guy crossed his legs at the feet and leaned his head sleepily against the plexiglass pane. I glanced, looked away, glanced back. Occasionally he'd glance back, and in my head it felt like the shared glance seemed to ask the same thing: "Are we going to the same place?"
I looked at the people around me, felt strange, looked harder. Then I realized: nobody around me was sticking to their cultural stereotypes. I sat across from an African-American guy with a fedora-like hat, black leather shoes that were almost feminine, and he had his hands politely folded in his lap. A young East Asian couple got on the train looking... stereotypically black. The guy wore big, puffy, colorful shoes and baggy pants and an oversized shirt and a loud, shiny belt buckle and a big, multicolored, backwards Sox cap. The girl had neon yellow & orange Nikes and big sunglasses. They were really, really loud. The fedora guy got off the train and was replaced by another black guy, this one wearing an almost dainty white knit cap. He looked peaceful, Buddha-like.
I glanced at the Indian guy, turned to T. "Hey," I whispered, "Let's bet which stop the guy is getting off." T. was quiet for a second. "Belmont," he said. "Or else Fullerton." I watched everyone in the train, read the ads, glanced. I started to think maybe he'd fallen asleep, but then I'd see him adjust his feet, sit up just slightly. We passed Belmont & Fullerton, and T. reguessed. "Clark."
"Lake," I said.
And so it went all through the nine or so downtown stops, until it became clear he was headed for the South Side. I felt a little excited, and started laughing. "He's totally getting off at Garfield," T. said, poking me. I couldn't stop laughing. "You like him," he added suddenly. "He's like 35," I pointed out. "So what? You're thinking about jumping him, aren't you?"
Sadly, the guy got off the train at 47th, one stop short of Garfield. When we got off at Garfield, I was smiling uncontrollably, like I'd just fallen in love or something... which is what T. kept accusing me of. But that wasn't it.
I think it was a city-loneliness syndrome. We went from the same bus to the same car on the same train, and I hoped the pattern would continue, that he'd be going back to Hyde Park too, that we'd start a conversation, go get coffee somewhere and talk about interesting things. I wanted a connection amongst all the disconnect in the city.
Today I ate lunch in Ex-Libris and after I momentarily left my table with my newspaper, a table with something like 6 other chairs, someone else sat down at the opposite end, thinking it was empty. I came back and he apologized in a quick, jerked, rabbity kind of way and started frantically gathering his things. "It's OK," I said and laughed slightly, "You can stay." I don't think either of us were really starved for privacy, but in the city, public-privacy is everything.
Last night I wanted a sudden lack of privacy. But it was okay. It was somehow exhilarating enough that me & the guy shared a bus followed by a train, that our destinations were separated by one stop. (And yet I wonder: Whither goest thou, Indian guy, with thy little baggy into the night?)
T., A. and I took the bus back to our apartment and stood outside H.'s window, doing a briefly choreographed song-and-dance routine about chum-chums. After he let us in, A. one-by-one fed him about 5 or 6 sweets. "Mm," he said of the chum-chums. "It's beautiful."
Thursday, August 30, 2007
caution.
Last night, our neighbor's apartment got broken into, and a laptop and X-box were stolen. This is two or three nights after we heard sirens going off, and then got a call from H. "Someone just ran by my window," he said. "Followed by two cops." I had been drinking tea and listening to music and looking at my atlas.
"Oh, right," T. placidly responded. "There've been policemen lining 53rd St. for a while now. Apparently something was going to go down today."
A few days ago, another friend's input: "Apparently during the party on Friday there were something like six gunshots on the next block."
Oh; yeah. We live on the South Side of Chicago.
Hyde Park is an interesting neighborhood, historically and presently. Sandwiched in between Kenwood on the north and Jackson Park on the south, it literally runs the gamut of millionaires with small princessy dogs to toughened street gangs. I've never been anywhere with as much economic and quality-of-life variation in one neighborhood. The most nervous I've gotten yet living here has been walking back from the 63rd Green Line stop at dusk, back when I lived in B-J on 60th Street. Conditions were not good--police surveillence lights blinked from the top of electric poles.
Alternatively, from 54th Street, I walk 4 blocks to the north to where A. babysits and feel like I'm in England, with the houses all set back in the lawns, with ornate brick & stone architecture and fountains on the front lawn. She points and says, "That's where Muhammad Ali lives. That's where Barack Obama lives... I think."
Things can be tense. Race relations are historically and famously poor. UChicago is a beautiful and gothic campus built beside blocks where people sleep in doorways. It's just... a lot, in one place.
I've rarely felt scared for my own safety. Hyde Park doesn't have the impact on me. I've walked back from the 6 past midnight, beside Nichols Park. There aren't really gangs of people standing around, looking shady. Granted, I always have at least one person with me, and we walk 53rd Street, where everything is located. Cops patrol the area. You'd have to be stupid to stand around and look shady.
Anyway. Things are much scarier a few blocks south & west of here. We live on the third floor, and we've got protective bars on our kitchen windows. It wouldn't be worth the time & energy.
..in other news, I realized a few days ago that if we'd taken the first apartment we looked at, we would have been neighbors with Barack Obama. Strange, awe-struck neighbors. We would have lived on the same block.
"Oh, right," T. placidly responded. "There've been policemen lining 53rd St. for a while now. Apparently something was going to go down today."
A few days ago, another friend's input: "Apparently during the party on Friday there were something like six gunshots on the next block."
Oh; yeah. We live on the South Side of Chicago.
Hyde Park is an interesting neighborhood, historically and presently. Sandwiched in between Kenwood on the north and Jackson Park on the south, it literally runs the gamut of millionaires with small princessy dogs to toughened street gangs. I've never been anywhere with as much economic and quality-of-life variation in one neighborhood. The most nervous I've gotten yet living here has been walking back from the 63rd Green Line stop at dusk, back when I lived in B-J on 60th Street. Conditions were not good--police surveillence lights blinked from the top of electric poles.
Alternatively, from 54th Street, I walk 4 blocks to the north to where A. babysits and feel like I'm in England, with the houses all set back in the lawns, with ornate brick & stone architecture and fountains on the front lawn. She points and says, "That's where Muhammad Ali lives. That's where Barack Obama lives... I think."
Things can be tense. Race relations are historically and famously poor. UChicago is a beautiful and gothic campus built beside blocks where people sleep in doorways. It's just... a lot, in one place.
I've rarely felt scared for my own safety. Hyde Park doesn't have the impact on me. I've walked back from the 6 past midnight, beside Nichols Park. There aren't really gangs of people standing around, looking shady. Granted, I always have at least one person with me, and we walk 53rd Street, where everything is located. Cops patrol the area. You'd have to be stupid to stand around and look shady.
Anyway. Things are much scarier a few blocks south & west of here. We live on the third floor, and we've got protective bars on our kitchen windows. It wouldn't be worth the time & energy.
..in other news, I realized a few days ago that if we'd taken the first apartment we looked at, we would have been neighbors with Barack Obama. Strange, awe-struck neighbors. We would have lived on the same block.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
"Bitch."
Last night, T., A. and I got into a very, very long and complicated discussion about the word "bitch", hip-hop, African-American culture, and racism.
It started when I heard a song playing - rap, or hip-hop, something - and said something off-handedly after hearing the word "bitch" (or maybe just being reminded of it), something general and controversial, like "This is what bothers me about black culture."
Having had experience at a public school in St. Louis, A. is highly sensitized to stereotyping and segregation. Hearing my blanket statement was understandably not OK to her. She looked at me, concerned, and asked why I would say that.
"When I hear the music that's mainstream and popular, it's almost always about how money is great, and women are 'bitches', and all of these things I just don't agree with. I feel like the values are really strange," I said (sounding like somebody's grandma.)
"Yeah, but 'white' pop music doesn't exactly represent white people," T. joined in.
"Right, and tons of white suburban kids listen to rap music. But the thing is, that's what's being consumed. So that's what's being allowed to represent black music, and African-Americans in general. It's what's being chosen," I said.
A. pointed out that she felt this was mainly a low socio-economic thing, which led us into a discussion of the problem of poverty in the black community. It got really charged really quickly. A. said she was just concerned that I was approaching black culture with a negative attitude, which is destructive because equality still hasn't been achieved. She said it was easy to see something I dislike and apply it to the whole group of people. That it's easy just to turn off.
This is true, I said, but how can I approach something I find negative with a positive attitude? I don't like the word "bitch", and I don't think it improves things to use it more broadly, so why support it?
A. and T. argued that I shouldn't support use of the word, but I shouldn't tune out the musician either. Then it became a more linguistic conversation, about how the word "bitch" is different when I hear it from my white small-town background than it sounds from the perspective of someone in the black community.. that in the latter situation, it is less stigmatized. I can have my opinion, but I should understand the difference and approach it with respect.
Basically, T. said, it can be something I dislike but not disrespect. Respect implies a kind of openness--not turning one's back. This was, I think, his main point. A. wanted to emphasize that one should approach an entire group of people positively, even with negative associations. I wanted to stress that I don't think racism should be destroyed at the cost of sexism being allowed--that to be accepting of people shouldn't mean being accepting of things you don't respect.
I think we all got somewhere, although it was sort of loud and passionate toward the end. When you start talking about sexism in a multi-gender context, or racism within the American context, automatically everything requires great care. And we were doing both.
It started when I heard a song playing - rap, or hip-hop, something - and said something off-handedly after hearing the word "bitch" (or maybe just being reminded of it), something general and controversial, like "This is what bothers me about black culture."
Having had experience at a public school in St. Louis, A. is highly sensitized to stereotyping and segregation. Hearing my blanket statement was understandably not OK to her. She looked at me, concerned, and asked why I would say that.
"When I hear the music that's mainstream and popular, it's almost always about how money is great, and women are 'bitches', and all of these things I just don't agree with. I feel like the values are really strange," I said (sounding like somebody's grandma.)
"Yeah, but 'white' pop music doesn't exactly represent white people," T. joined in.
"Right, and tons of white suburban kids listen to rap music. But the thing is, that's what's being consumed. So that's what's being allowed to represent black music, and African-Americans in general. It's what's being chosen," I said.
A. pointed out that she felt this was mainly a low socio-economic thing, which led us into a discussion of the problem of poverty in the black community. It got really charged really quickly. A. said she was just concerned that I was approaching black culture with a negative attitude, which is destructive because equality still hasn't been achieved. She said it was easy to see something I dislike and apply it to the whole group of people. That it's easy just to turn off.
This is true, I said, but how can I approach something I find negative with a positive attitude? I don't like the word "bitch", and I don't think it improves things to use it more broadly, so why support it?
A. and T. argued that I shouldn't support use of the word, but I shouldn't tune out the musician either. Then it became a more linguistic conversation, about how the word "bitch" is different when I hear it from my white small-town background than it sounds from the perspective of someone in the black community.. that in the latter situation, it is less stigmatized. I can have my opinion, but I should understand the difference and approach it with respect.
Basically, T. said, it can be something I dislike but not disrespect. Respect implies a kind of openness--not turning one's back. This was, I think, his main point. A. wanted to emphasize that one should approach an entire group of people positively, even with negative associations. I wanted to stress that I don't think racism should be destroyed at the cost of sexism being allowed--that to be accepting of people shouldn't mean being accepting of things you don't respect.
I think we all got somewhere, although it was sort of loud and passionate toward the end. When you start talking about sexism in a multi-gender context, or racism within the American context, automatically everything requires great care. And we were doing both.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
bee inspired!
I've been feeling inspired lately, in a muted, stuck-in-a-routine, late-summer kind of way.
So here's an update: I've been thinking about possibly double-majoring in Environmental Studies. Relentlessly thinking about it. There are some pros & cons. Allow me to list them.
PROS:
-I would get to take a lot of really cool classes about which I'm already excited... i.e. Introduction to Population, Environmental Law, History of Ideas of Nature, Is Development Sustainable?, U.S. Environmental Policy, etc.
-I could easily get an environment-related job in the future, which I'm thinking I might want.
-It goes (very) well with International Studies. Environmental + International = Interesting.
CONS:
-I would have to take a few classes I'm not quite so excited about, i.e. economics & statistics. And after I'd thrilled at finishing math second quarter. I think I may also have to take chemistry, which, uh.. I haven't ever before.
-No more room for extra classes.
-Lots of work at the end of year four.
I am playing very tentatively with different plans. Poking at them, really. Trying them on. Taking them back off. Staring at them.
There's the Year-In-India Plan, still in idea-form, backed by my starting Hindi classes. There's the current tangible evidence of Plan with my Teach Yourself Hindi book. My parents have been informed of Plan. I am alternately thrilled and frightened by its significance. I have dreams about it.
There's the lovely idea of finding a way to spend the next summer in Boulder with my sister (who has yet to be informed..) perhaps by way of getting an internship or good summer job. The University of Colorado is out there, and the Center for Atmospheric Research. They like the environment. Me, too.
There's the vague and distant "Law School?" idea, which doesn't really go anywhere, just sits there, waiting to be explored or discarded. Always with the question mark.
It's funny that now with my lack of spending money, I keep finding things I really want to do. Probably because now I have lots of time (my job offers some hefty down-time, hence my prolific posting) to look for things to do.
For example, I have a sudden gnawing desire to take music lessons at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Lincoln Park. Why? Mainly because it's so cool. They don't offer just your standard guitar, drums & bass. Oh no. I could take lessons on the tin whistle. I could learn Brazilian guitar. Lessons are reasonably priced. Maybe I'll look at it again in winter or spring quarter.
And then there's photography. I've become sort of obsessed with taking pictures. If I could afford a lovely camera with a fast shutter-speed.. ohhh.
Of course, school will start soon, and so will great masses of homework, and that just might put a little damper on my inspiration where extracurriculars are concerned. What a sad thought. I'm very big on the ideas lately, very small on the action.
But I did manage to walk through the grass at the Point on Sunday, step too close to a bee, and get stung in the side of the foot. I haven't had a bee sting in 10 years. There's some action.
It itches like crazy, now.
So here's an update: I've been thinking about possibly double-majoring in Environmental Studies. Relentlessly thinking about it. There are some pros & cons. Allow me to list them.
PROS:
-I would get to take a lot of really cool classes about which I'm already excited... i.e. Introduction to Population, Environmental Law, History of Ideas of Nature, Is Development Sustainable?, U.S. Environmental Policy, etc.
-I could easily get an environment-related job in the future, which I'm thinking I might want.
-It goes (very) well with International Studies. Environmental + International = Interesting.
CONS:
-I would have to take a few classes I'm not quite so excited about, i.e. economics & statistics. And after I'd thrilled at finishing math second quarter. I think I may also have to take chemistry, which, uh.. I haven't ever before.
-No more room for extra classes.
-Lots of work at the end of year four.
I am playing very tentatively with different plans. Poking at them, really. Trying them on. Taking them back off. Staring at them.
There's the Year-In-India Plan, still in idea-form, backed by my starting Hindi classes. There's the current tangible evidence of Plan with my Teach Yourself Hindi book. My parents have been informed of Plan. I am alternately thrilled and frightened by its significance. I have dreams about it.
There's the lovely idea of finding a way to spend the next summer in Boulder with my sister (who has yet to be informed..) perhaps by way of getting an internship or good summer job. The University of Colorado is out there, and the Center for Atmospheric Research. They like the environment. Me, too.
There's the vague and distant "Law School?" idea, which doesn't really go anywhere, just sits there, waiting to be explored or discarded. Always with the question mark.
It's funny that now with my lack of spending money, I keep finding things I really want to do. Probably because now I have lots of time (my job offers some hefty down-time, hence my prolific posting) to look for things to do.
For example, I have a sudden gnawing desire to take music lessons at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Lincoln Park. Why? Mainly because it's so cool. They don't offer just your standard guitar, drums & bass. Oh no. I could take lessons on the tin whistle. I could learn Brazilian guitar. Lessons are reasonably priced. Maybe I'll look at it again in winter or spring quarter.
And then there's photography. I've become sort of obsessed with taking pictures. If I could afford a lovely camera with a fast shutter-speed.. ohhh.
Of course, school will start soon, and so will great masses of homework, and that just might put a little damper on my inspiration where extracurriculars are concerned. What a sad thought. I'm very big on the ideas lately, very small on the action.
But I did manage to walk through the grass at the Point on Sunday, step too close to a bee, and get stung in the side of the foot. I haven't had a bee sting in 10 years. There's some action.
It itches like crazy, now.
Monday, August 27, 2007
a cautionary tale
Called "Never Set Your Laptop On the Floor".
My roommate and I are playing a game. It consists of seeing how long we can go without buying food.
Buying a $430 laptop, inexpensive though it is, has wiped my savings nearly clean. It's like paying rent 2 weeks early. I am financially fragile; I'm feeling the quick, sharp sting of a $7 dinner in Pilsen, even when the leftovers serve as tomorrow morning's brunch (and $7 covering 3 meals is pretty decent.)
There still exists food at home; therefore, we theorize, we needn't shop. There is pasta & sauce, which was both last night's dinner and this morning's breakfast. (This is, by the way, a new talent I've developed--making one big meal cover two.) There are something like three bags of rice. There are a few eggs left. Some tortillas. Orange juice. Thai red curry. No milk. No cereal. No soup. No tofu. It forces creativity.
T. has lucked out--he works in a bakery and gets one sandwich per 7 hour shift, which he turns into lunch or dinner, depending on the shift. If working the afternoon shift, he also brings home a few of the day's unused baguettes. We still have olive oil, so it works.
Worrying--nay, even thinking about money is a new & exciting exercise for me. That isn't to say I've been richly spoiled.. I've been buying my own clothes and entertainment since mid-high school & my needs aren't really outlandish. But switching from public education to the University of Chicago, as snooty as it gets in the Midwest or anywhere short of the Ivies (and even snootier due to the current administration, who happens to be so concerned with basically making us Harvard that it will increase tuition by $5,000 apparently for the hell of it) has hardly been an entirely smooth financial transition.
Suddenly, I am dealing with guilt. I am expensive. The guilt is bearable for a few reasons; at least one-half of my parents believes the price tag is worth it, and I will be overtaking the loans in tolerable but everlasting payments in a few short years.
Of course, my darling alma mater still has some beliefs (delusions?) about money that I am at a loss to correct. Like that I should be making circa $3,000 in summer money toward tuition. The fact that I have to make rent & feed myself sadly are not factored into the equation. Perhaps they want me to go home.
How can I explain that I could never find a full-time, $10-an-hour summer job in Hastings? Or, more importantly to me, more extraneous to them, that I simply don't want to spend almost 4 straight months in Hastings..?
And so... pasta for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I was a bit more lavish earlier in the summer. I ate chocolate mousse once or twice in Greektown. I saw a couple movies. I carefully started revamping my wardrobe. But for the next month, prior to my rent being subsumed by my parents, post entire-paycheck-spent-on-laptop, ..PASTA.
My roommate and I are playing a game. It consists of seeing how long we can go without buying food.
Buying a $430 laptop, inexpensive though it is, has wiped my savings nearly clean. It's like paying rent 2 weeks early. I am financially fragile; I'm feeling the quick, sharp sting of a $7 dinner in Pilsen, even when the leftovers serve as tomorrow morning's brunch (and $7 covering 3 meals is pretty decent.)
There still exists food at home; therefore, we theorize, we needn't shop. There is pasta & sauce, which was both last night's dinner and this morning's breakfast. (This is, by the way, a new talent I've developed--making one big meal cover two.) There are something like three bags of rice. There are a few eggs left. Some tortillas. Orange juice. Thai red curry. No milk. No cereal. No soup. No tofu. It forces creativity.
T. has lucked out--he works in a bakery and gets one sandwich per 7 hour shift, which he turns into lunch or dinner, depending on the shift. If working the afternoon shift, he also brings home a few of the day's unused baguettes. We still have olive oil, so it works.
Worrying--nay, even thinking about money is a new & exciting exercise for me. That isn't to say I've been richly spoiled.. I've been buying my own clothes and entertainment since mid-high school & my needs aren't really outlandish. But switching from public education to the University of Chicago, as snooty as it gets in the Midwest or anywhere short of the Ivies (and even snootier due to the current administration, who happens to be so concerned with basically making us Harvard that it will increase tuition by $5,000 apparently for the hell of it) has hardly been an entirely smooth financial transition.
Suddenly, I am dealing with guilt. I am expensive. The guilt is bearable for a few reasons; at least one-half of my parents believes the price tag is worth it, and I will be overtaking the loans in tolerable but everlasting payments in a few short years.
Of course, my darling alma mater still has some beliefs (delusions?) about money that I am at a loss to correct. Like that I should be making circa $3,000 in summer money toward tuition. The fact that I have to make rent & feed myself sadly are not factored into the equation. Perhaps they want me to go home.
How can I explain that I could never find a full-time, $10-an-hour summer job in Hastings? Or, more importantly to me, more extraneous to them, that I simply don't want to spend almost 4 straight months in Hastings..?
And so... pasta for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I was a bit more lavish earlier in the summer. I ate chocolate mousse once or twice in Greektown. I saw a couple movies. I carefully started revamping my wardrobe. But for the next month, prior to my rent being subsumed by my parents, post entire-paycheck-spent-on-laptop, ..PASTA.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
so stereotypical.
Yesterday I purchased a new laptop, for ~$400. Quite inexpensive (especially for a Toshiba), but I don't really need to do anything fancy anyway. All I do is write. And troll people's heavily-congested, frequently too personal myspace pages.
Sometimes I get into themes. For example, perhaps you didn't know that blogs among army wives with small children are extremely common. I sometimes come out of those either feeling nostalgic in a WWII, Rosie-the-Riveter kind of way, or longing for a baby in a kittenish, unrealistic sort of way. It makes sense that people with babies would have a nuclear-familyesque blog, especially if the rest of their family lives far away. I can even see myself doing something like that, in the cloudy, comfortably-far future, from some vague place like New Zealand. It can be done well. I came across the blog of an American woman living in Israel, detailing her pregnancy and displaying pictures of various picnics and hikes in pretty countrysides with her Israeli husband. It seemed very happy. I'm a bit fascinated with pregnancy.
I realize now that last paragraph might make me seem creepy. Too much qualifies as creepiness, in my opinion. Which, of course, is something no one can say.
There are other themes. The Emo, for example, still in existence and boasting several intoxicated and exhibitionist posts which say things like "Do you know how often I cry about you?" (direct) or else something a little more artful. Emo blogs can occasionally seem artful.
The self-conscious hipster myspace pages, the display photograph being maybe a close up on the person's nose ring or something. Also artful, pretty. But the writing is often so jaded & cool that I feel a little dull inside after reading.
My, I'm full of labels and accusations today. It does seem a little too methodical though, the way people stick to their types. I feel sometimes that had some things been just barely adjusted in my earlier teenage years, I might have assumed the position of hipster. But I'm not that cool. I don't have a tattoo or piercing, and I've grown somewhat critical of Kerouac, and my own cynicism. I'd like to be sarcastic less.
Does everybody need to identify with some particular culture or counterculture? Sometimes I feel like an Old-People. I have some Old-People tendencies, like listening to a lot of bluegrass and old country-folk standards and drinking a whole lot of tea and drawing enjoyment from rearranging my books & quiet weekend nights.
These sort of thoughts are starting to give me a headache. Labels are an overused and trite topic, especially for the internet.
...
T. gets out of work in a few hours, and I think we may go to the West Side and explore various Middle Eastern bakeries and Korean cafes. I can't spend any money, but I can take pictures and absorb moods, which is really why I get into the city anyway. Though money will get you chocolate mousse from Artopolis..
Here's a good song: The Pirate's Gospel by Alela Diane.
Sometimes I get into themes. For example, perhaps you didn't know that blogs among army wives with small children are extremely common. I sometimes come out of those either feeling nostalgic in a WWII, Rosie-the-Riveter kind of way, or longing for a baby in a kittenish, unrealistic sort of way. It makes sense that people with babies would have a nuclear-familyesque blog, especially if the rest of their family lives far away. I can even see myself doing something like that, in the cloudy, comfortably-far future, from some vague place like New Zealand. It can be done well. I came across the blog of an American woman living in Israel, detailing her pregnancy and displaying pictures of various picnics and hikes in pretty countrysides with her Israeli husband. It seemed very happy. I'm a bit fascinated with pregnancy.
I realize now that last paragraph might make me seem creepy. Too much qualifies as creepiness, in my opinion. Which, of course, is something no one can say.
There are other themes. The Emo, for example, still in existence and boasting several intoxicated and exhibitionist posts which say things like "Do you know how often I cry about you?" (direct) or else something a little more artful. Emo blogs can occasionally seem artful.
The self-conscious hipster myspace pages, the display photograph being maybe a close up on the person's nose ring or something. Also artful, pretty. But the writing is often so jaded & cool that I feel a little dull inside after reading.
My, I'm full of labels and accusations today. It does seem a little too methodical though, the way people stick to their types. I feel sometimes that had some things been just barely adjusted in my earlier teenage years, I might have assumed the position of hipster. But I'm not that cool. I don't have a tattoo or piercing, and I've grown somewhat critical of Kerouac, and my own cynicism. I'd like to be sarcastic less.
Does everybody need to identify with some particular culture or counterculture? Sometimes I feel like an Old-People. I have some Old-People tendencies, like listening to a lot of bluegrass and old country-folk standards and drinking a whole lot of tea and drawing enjoyment from rearranging my books & quiet weekend nights.
These sort of thoughts are starting to give me a headache. Labels are an overused and trite topic, especially for the internet.
...
T. gets out of work in a few hours, and I think we may go to the West Side and explore various Middle Eastern bakeries and Korean cafes. I can't spend any money, but I can take pictures and absorb moods, which is really why I get into the city anyway. Though money will get you chocolate mousse from Artopolis..
Here's a good song: The Pirate's Gospel by Alela Diane.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
theories of love
It has been storming all night. I thought the power went out, but really T. turned out the lights and lit candles while I was on the deck. When I came in I got excited, felt happy. It's nice when the power goes out.. feeling submissive to the weather, instead of all-powerful and domineering.
We had dinner and talked about love. We understand each other about love. Really. I feel like there are few people I can say that about. Everyone's got some idea of it. There are some people who say they fall in love all the time. To them, I say: you're either wrong, or astoundingly, ridiculously, unbelievably lucky.
T. discussed with me a theory, and it went like this: let's say you're represented by a dot. Life is the movement of your dot from one side of the chart to the other. Every other person is also a dot, and everyone's moving together from one side to the other. The state of being in love occurs when you intersect another person. Your dot and their dot literally overlap. You are ready, in the state of being ready, for the exact same thing, that thing being the care you are about to give one another. And together you buzz along happily, until one dot crosses over the other. One person (let's say Dot #1) has moved in a direction, developed new and different needs. (It is conceivable, though rare, that the dots cross over at the same time.)
There are some corollaries to this theory. For example, being in love is a happy thing. It is burdened with occasional, but conquerable, problems. The real misery associated with heartbreak occurs after the separation of the dots. No longer are you in love.
Corollary #2: (HOWEVER:) If you have been in love, you still love the individual after the intersecting completes. Why? Because in-love love is unconditional love. You have been nakedly emotional, silkily comfortable, one open, experiencing unit. If you move in a direction, that still exists. It exists in time.
Really, I suppose it may be more of visualization than a theory. But I get it.
I have had experience as Dot #2. But not Dot #1. The two experiences, I believe, are very different. I have very little patience with people who claim to've been in love, but haven't felt ravaged by it. Who haven't felt deeply confused about their identity because of it. Who haven't felt stagnant & pointless & unsatisfying due to it.
But I don't know your side, Dot #1. How does it feel to eclipse a person, bask in the warmth and then desire to crawl away? I have thoughts that may not be congruent. I see Dot #1 as invigorated with a confidence to surpass people. I envision a pity that may or may not exist from Dot #1 directed at Dot #2. I understand intellectually Dot #1, but am powerless to navigate the tangles that are its feelings.
The upside to the dot theory is that you are by no means limited to one intersection. It is well known, though, that the odds of two dots intersecting are rare. Let's say we're tiny little dots, molecule-sized almost, and it's a big grid. Also, it's possible for two dots to re-intersect, but don't bet on it.
Science has said that the state of being 'in love' typically lasts for three years. You can't be all seritonin-overdosed forever, I guess. Me, though, I think I might be able to last longer. But I'm hypothesizing.
I feel good, though. I am a dot, free-floating. I have so much potential for an overlap. Like a tennis ball on the edge of a hill, or something.
And in the meantime there's hot tea. Snowstorms. Kittens. Towels hot out of the dryer. You know the drill.
We had dinner and talked about love. We understand each other about love. Really. I feel like there are few people I can say that about. Everyone's got some idea of it. There are some people who say they fall in love all the time. To them, I say: you're either wrong, or astoundingly, ridiculously, unbelievably lucky.
T. discussed with me a theory, and it went like this: let's say you're represented by a dot. Life is the movement of your dot from one side of the chart to the other. Every other person is also a dot, and everyone's moving together from one side to the other. The state of being in love occurs when you intersect another person. Your dot and their dot literally overlap. You are ready, in the state of being ready, for the exact same thing, that thing being the care you are about to give one another. And together you buzz along happily, until one dot crosses over the other. One person (let's say Dot #1) has moved in a direction, developed new and different needs. (It is conceivable, though rare, that the dots cross over at the same time.)
There are some corollaries to this theory. For example, being in love is a happy thing. It is burdened with occasional, but conquerable, problems. The real misery associated with heartbreak occurs after the separation of the dots. No longer are you in love.
Corollary #2: (HOWEVER:) If you have been in love, you still love the individual after the intersecting completes. Why? Because in-love love is unconditional love. You have been nakedly emotional, silkily comfortable, one open, experiencing unit. If you move in a direction, that still exists. It exists in time.
Really, I suppose it may be more of visualization than a theory. But I get it.
I have had experience as Dot #2. But not Dot #1. The two experiences, I believe, are very different. I have very little patience with people who claim to've been in love, but haven't felt ravaged by it. Who haven't felt deeply confused about their identity because of it. Who haven't felt stagnant & pointless & unsatisfying due to it.
But I don't know your side, Dot #1. How does it feel to eclipse a person, bask in the warmth and then desire to crawl away? I have thoughts that may not be congruent. I see Dot #1 as invigorated with a confidence to surpass people. I envision a pity that may or may not exist from Dot #1 directed at Dot #2. I understand intellectually Dot #1, but am powerless to navigate the tangles that are its feelings.
The upside to the dot theory is that you are by no means limited to one intersection. It is well known, though, that the odds of two dots intersecting are rare. Let's say we're tiny little dots, molecule-sized almost, and it's a big grid. Also, it's possible for two dots to re-intersect, but don't bet on it.
Science has said that the state of being 'in love' typically lasts for three years. You can't be all seritonin-overdosed forever, I guess. Me, though, I think I might be able to last longer. But I'm hypothesizing.
I feel good, though. I am a dot, free-floating. I have so much potential for an overlap. Like a tennis ball on the edge of a hill, or something.
And in the meantime there's hot tea. Snowstorms. Kittens. Towels hot out of the dryer. You know the drill.
stormy weather
According to weather.com:
"Throughout Chicago, there have been damage reports of widespread felled large trees (some over 100 years old), blown out windows in skyscrapers, power poles and lines down, semis and cars blown off roadways, roof collapse, building collapses, and finally home and building damage mainly due to fallen trees."
Time for haiku.
Permanent lightning.
At home. Alone. Waiting.
Maybe I'll make tea.
"Throughout Chicago, there have been damage reports of widespread felled large trees (some over 100 years old), blown out windows in skyscrapers, power poles and lines down, semis and cars blown off roadways, roof collapse, building collapses, and finally home and building damage mainly due to fallen trees."
Time for haiku.
Permanent lightning.
At home. Alone. Waiting.
Maybe I'll make tea.
Monday, August 20, 2007
why i like music
"i'm just something else he tried
a catalogue of interests
in a catalogue of lives.
i hid myself from him
i wouldn't say it was a lie
but hiding worked its way
into the way we lived our lives"
a catalogue of interests
in a catalogue of lives.
i hid myself from him
i wouldn't say it was a lie
but hiding worked its way
into the way we lived our lives"
Sunday, August 19, 2007
oh hey, you
Well, I'm alone for the night and that's usually when I get my worst ideas. Nothing drastic, mind you--just your typical calling-the-wrong-person, eating-an-entire-pint-of-ice-cream, sitting-through-all-of-Dumb-and-Dumberer stuff. It's borne of night-loneliness, which is why I should never live all by myself.
Anyway, I've thought of a fun exercise to release my communication skills without any of the consequences! I shall, right on this very blog, construct a dozen or more anonymous letters to people as close as family and distant as my 3rd-grade gym teacher, but without identifying when I've switched to a new person and when I may have whimsically backtracked to an already addressed individual.
It will be honest! It will be freeing! oh, the drama.
Dear...
You would get more girls if you actually paid attention to them. Personality can stain good looks. I wish we spent more time together, even though that's sort of impossible because of location & age. I hope someday we end up talking on the phone a lot. You're the most beautiful person I've ever met; how inconvenient. Sometimes I can see kissing you but other than that we don't really make any sense. When I'm around you I think much more rationally--you manage to be balanced and not boring and I think soon someone will fall madly for you.
You're not quite human--I think you're part star. You lied but that's OK because sometimes I lie too. As time goes by your faults become clearer but you still bring me so much comfort. I think the faults are harmless. I haven't seen you since I was ten and we never actually talked and I can't remember what you look like but I still think about you sometimes.
I used to be so angry at you but now I'm not sure what to make of you, which is better I guess. You're in a relationship now and it makes me really happy to think about it. There's more to me than I'll ever be able to make you appreciate. You're a better friend than me.
You might be my only adult friend and your strength is impressive. You're always more understanding than I expect: thank you. I wonder much of the time which of what you said was true, though it can't be much. I love how unselfish you are; I like being around you. There must be a lot in your head that you don't say, and I wish I'd think of you more often or even call you once in a while.
It's weird that we were friends, we couldn't really talk about anything. I wonder what I based infatuation on before I knew you. You were wonderful and I could tell even though I never knew what you were saying.
I think you suck as a person, and I'm glad I think of you as little as I do... it's funny I even thought of you now.
All I ask is that you see me and think that I'm better than you. More respectable, smarter, anything really--that's my dirty little wish.
I talked to you for only a few minutes but I'm glad you were there to make me talk. I think you're a hypocrite and confused and if I could boggle your mind and make you see how elegantly I can identify that, I'd feel so empowered for a few minutes.. I WANT TO SEE YOU CLEARLY.
I'm wearing your shirt right now; it's real comfy and smells like you.
You're kind of a shitty friend.
I think you analyze even more than I do, or maybe I analyze less than I used to. I used to show you the stupidest poems and for that I'm sorry and embarrassed. You're way prettier than you think and I like that you don't spend much time on your appearance. You don't get me, but worse, you don't care to and I'm not sure you ever really did--a shame, that.
I love you.
Sincerely,
me.
Anyway, I've thought of a fun exercise to release my communication skills without any of the consequences! I shall, right on this very blog, construct a dozen or more anonymous letters to people as close as family and distant as my 3rd-grade gym teacher, but without identifying when I've switched to a new person and when I may have whimsically backtracked to an already addressed individual.
It will be honest! It will be freeing! oh, the drama.
Dear...
You would get more girls if you actually paid attention to them. Personality can stain good looks. I wish we spent more time together, even though that's sort of impossible because of location & age. I hope someday we end up talking on the phone a lot. You're the most beautiful person I've ever met; how inconvenient. Sometimes I can see kissing you but other than that we don't really make any sense. When I'm around you I think much more rationally--you manage to be balanced and not boring and I think soon someone will fall madly for you.
You're not quite human--I think you're part star. You lied but that's OK because sometimes I lie too. As time goes by your faults become clearer but you still bring me so much comfort. I think the faults are harmless. I haven't seen you since I was ten and we never actually talked and I can't remember what you look like but I still think about you sometimes.
I used to be so angry at you but now I'm not sure what to make of you, which is better I guess. You're in a relationship now and it makes me really happy to think about it. There's more to me than I'll ever be able to make you appreciate. You're a better friend than me.
You might be my only adult friend and your strength is impressive. You're always more understanding than I expect: thank you. I wonder much of the time which of what you said was true, though it can't be much. I love how unselfish you are; I like being around you. There must be a lot in your head that you don't say, and I wish I'd think of you more often or even call you once in a while.
It's weird that we were friends, we couldn't really talk about anything. I wonder what I based infatuation on before I knew you. You were wonderful and I could tell even though I never knew what you were saying.
I think you suck as a person, and I'm glad I think of you as little as I do... it's funny I even thought of you now.
All I ask is that you see me and think that I'm better than you. More respectable, smarter, anything really--that's my dirty little wish.
I talked to you for only a few minutes but I'm glad you were there to make me talk. I think you're a hypocrite and confused and if I could boggle your mind and make you see how elegantly I can identify that, I'd feel so empowered for a few minutes.. I WANT TO SEE YOU CLEARLY.
I'm wearing your shirt right now; it's real comfy and smells like you.
You're kind of a shitty friend.
I think you analyze even more than I do, or maybe I analyze less than I used to. I used to show you the stupidest poems and for that I'm sorry and embarrassed. You're way prettier than you think and I like that you don't spend much time on your appearance. You don't get me, but worse, you don't care to and I'm not sure you ever really did--a shame, that.
I love you.
Sincerely,
me.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
sicknesses
I shouldn't be here in Chicago; I should be in New York. But I have an eye infection, which for some reason feels like a bigger deal than it is. When I went to the eye doctor yesterday morning I missed my flight so I could figure out what was wrong. They poked my eye a lot and then I started to cry, and the doctors argued over cellulitis or allergy. Then they gave me a prescription for antibiotics and I left and started to sob. I fumbled with insurance information at the pharmacy counter for maybe twenty minutes, all the while dabbing at myself with squares from a roll of toilet paper I'd taken along in my bag. After I got my antibiotics, I walked back across the hall to the doctor to see if they'd prescribe pain medication; they wouldn't. So I walked home haphazardly, as it was sunny and my eyes were dialated and puffy.
It was really just intensely pathetic.
I feel better now, medically speaking. I'm 4/28 tablets through my antibiotics and I imagine the infection as strange white spots on the inside of my eyelid, slowly shrinking. I'm keeping my eye closed, so it doesn't really hurt much now. I'm sleeping a lot, but I keep having nightmares, which I almost never have. Also dreams that feel like nightmares but for reasons I can't identify.
I watched a lot of TV today via the internet. Episodes of Friends, and Monty Python's Flying Circus, and Scrubs, and then A. and I finished The Godfather. I practiced Hindi for a little while.. I like writing certain things. Like "Indian" (hindustani). I'm almost through the first chapter of "Teach Yourself Hindi", and it's a relief compared to Mandarin. It's so logical.
Ach, I wish there were a few more people around. And I was a little more functional. Being even a little sick, in a way that requires one to take care of oneself, feels unnervingly reminiscent of being old or being a little dead. It's too much sleeping and being inside and not being hungry.
[Admittedly depressing segue:]
I get really terrified sometimes, about the future. Not my future ("what will I be?") but the future in general. I've written about it in posts before but I usually delete them within a 24-hour period because I feel they're too depressing and don't make fit well with my normally-upbeat-or-at-least-containably-sensitive writing. Fear about the future is a bigger ballgame. More serious and expansive. Overwhelming, really, as a worry. It's about a lack of context. I had a dream a few months ago, in which I was in a perfectly normal and banal situation and suddenly the law of gravity began to disappear. Everyone started to lift from the ground and drift away. If you just picture it, it seems more interesting, but if you actually try to feel yourself into that position, imagine the feeling of context entirely disappearing--that's the horror of it. The depth of the fear, I guess. It's really hard to see it if you don't believe for at least a second or two that it's happening.
It happens to me every so often, maybe an hour or so a week if I'm really concentrating on things bigger than my life. Not nearly that often when I'm focusing on me, food, happiness, sunsets, history, paychecks, my future. I feel like it's something universal though, or at least now universal for my generation. Something not just about being 19, but about being 19 right now, at this time, in this world. With all of these things bearing down and cynicism and selfishness being prominent cultural institutions.
It's freaky.
Not to depress anyone reading this... I just had to express that, as the feeling struck. I hope it's an extreme, as I usually manage to convince myself. It's such a broad, modern topic.. but hope isn't terribly far away. Sometimes it's comforting to know the human race is "in it together." You hug someone and you're melding, you're made from the same stuff. As much as people feel isolated and lonely, maybe we do understand each other. Maybe we just can't communicate it.
One apartment over, my neighbors are singing "American Pie" and laughing. I don't really know them, but they're profoundly comforting.
Yeeah, I probably wouldn't have been much fun in New York this weekend anyway.
It was really just intensely pathetic.
I feel better now, medically speaking. I'm 4/28 tablets through my antibiotics and I imagine the infection as strange white spots on the inside of my eyelid, slowly shrinking. I'm keeping my eye closed, so it doesn't really hurt much now. I'm sleeping a lot, but I keep having nightmares, which I almost never have. Also dreams that feel like nightmares but for reasons I can't identify.
I watched a lot of TV today via the internet. Episodes of Friends, and Monty Python's Flying Circus, and Scrubs, and then A. and I finished The Godfather. I practiced Hindi for a little while.. I like writing certain things. Like "Indian" (hindustani). I'm almost through the first chapter of "Teach Yourself Hindi", and it's a relief compared to Mandarin. It's so logical.
Ach, I wish there were a few more people around. And I was a little more functional. Being even a little sick, in a way that requires one to take care of oneself, feels unnervingly reminiscent of being old or being a little dead. It's too much sleeping and being inside and not being hungry.
[Admittedly depressing segue:]
I get really terrified sometimes, about the future. Not my future ("what will I be?") but the future in general. I've written about it in posts before but I usually delete them within a 24-hour period because I feel they're too depressing and don't make fit well with my normally-upbeat-or-at-least-containably-sensitive writing. Fear about the future is a bigger ballgame. More serious and expansive. Overwhelming, really, as a worry. It's about a lack of context. I had a dream a few months ago, in which I was in a perfectly normal and banal situation and suddenly the law of gravity began to disappear. Everyone started to lift from the ground and drift away. If you just picture it, it seems more interesting, but if you actually try to feel yourself into that position, imagine the feeling of context entirely disappearing--that's the horror of it. The depth of the fear, I guess. It's really hard to see it if you don't believe for at least a second or two that it's happening.
It happens to me every so often, maybe an hour or so a week if I'm really concentrating on things bigger than my life. Not nearly that often when I'm focusing on me, food, happiness, sunsets, history, paychecks, my future. I feel like it's something universal though, or at least now universal for my generation. Something not just about being 19, but about being 19 right now, at this time, in this world. With all of these things bearing down and cynicism and selfishness being prominent cultural institutions.
It's freaky.
Not to depress anyone reading this... I just had to express that, as the feeling struck. I hope it's an extreme, as I usually manage to convince myself. It's such a broad, modern topic.. but hope isn't terribly far away. Sometimes it's comforting to know the human race is "in it together." You hug someone and you're melding, you're made from the same stuff. As much as people feel isolated and lonely, maybe we do understand each other. Maybe we just can't communicate it.
One apartment over, my neighbors are singing "American Pie" and laughing. I don't really know them, but they're profoundly comforting.
Yeeah, I probably wouldn't have been much fun in New York this weekend anyway.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
ew, dreaming.
I don't really like dreams all that much. They're so, for lack of a more descriptive word: powerful.
And therefore capable of deeply regressing one's emotional progress. You've moved to a new city and started a new phase of your life, you're feeling productive, and then you dream of bad nostalgia. You think you've stopped thinking about someone and that's when you have a beautiful, wrenching kind of dream about that person. Someone died a year ago and you've stopped crying? Time for a surreal re-enactment!
So there you go. I hate dreams.
Here's to waking life, reality. It's not so overrated, really.
And therefore capable of deeply regressing one's emotional progress. You've moved to a new city and started a new phase of your life, you're feeling productive, and then you dream of bad nostalgia. You think you've stopped thinking about someone and that's when you have a beautiful, wrenching kind of dream about that person. Someone died a year ago and you've stopped crying? Time for a surreal re-enactment!
So there you go. I hate dreams.
Here's to waking life, reality. It's not so overrated, really.
Monday, August 06, 2007
save the point
I found the perfect beach yesterday.
I rank this beach up in my Top Ten Beaches - not that I'm a real beach afficionado, and not that I have a Top Ten Beaches. But this one had everything a good beach needs. Completely smooth, sandy bottom. Very deep within fifty ft of shore, for optimal swimming. Lovely view of downtown. And... barely any people.
I found this beach not on the well-dressed shores of the North Side, but rather in my very own Hyde Park, out at the Point. People, myself included, have made the mistake of colonizing the sand of the 57th Street Beach due to what must be lack of knowledge. That beach is loud about its beachiness. It features a long expanse of sand, and a building for changing and showers. It also features, on any beautiful summer day, a miserably large crowd of Hyde Parkers desperate for heat relief slash tan skin.
Nameless Amazing Beach, on the other hand, is discreet. It doesn't advertise itself with sand, or showers, or its own changing building (clearly, just use the old Point building... where on any given day one can walk into a wedding reception and change in a stall with a giant purple bow wrapped around it and wash one's hands with lavender-scented soap provided by said reception's decorator.) In fact, the only way you can tell NAB is a beach is due to the four or five No-Boating buoys anchored a considerable distance from shore, and the four or five quiet college students who figured it out before you (but don't worry, there's plenty of room.)
My swim yesterday with H. was so good it gave me a bit of an epiphany: this is summer. It can be easy to forget when you're paid to spend 7.5 hours a day in a building so air-conditioned it gives you goosebumps. And when you wake up at 7AM in order to do that. And when things consequently are somehow even more routine than they were during the school year. Swimming, though, is like campfire--something very simple with a profoundly blissful effect.
Last week, in my dark room and with brilliant aim, I stepped on my laptop, cracking an enormous spiderweb into the screen and rendering it not usable. I was overcome with panic, and with something worse than panic, something really heavy and frightening and big. It was as though, damaging my computer and witnessing my resulting fear, I felt that my life was sort of small and meaningless. Even to myself. It took me a while to figure out what that feeling was.
People can be so silly.
I rank this beach up in my Top Ten Beaches - not that I'm a real beach afficionado, and not that I have a Top Ten Beaches. But this one had everything a good beach needs. Completely smooth, sandy bottom. Very deep within fifty ft of shore, for optimal swimming. Lovely view of downtown. And... barely any people.
I found this beach not on the well-dressed shores of the North Side, but rather in my very own Hyde Park, out at the Point. People, myself included, have made the mistake of colonizing the sand of the 57th Street Beach due to what must be lack of knowledge. That beach is loud about its beachiness. It features a long expanse of sand, and a building for changing and showers. It also features, on any beautiful summer day, a miserably large crowd of Hyde Parkers desperate for heat relief slash tan skin.
Nameless Amazing Beach, on the other hand, is discreet. It doesn't advertise itself with sand, or showers, or its own changing building (clearly, just use the old Point building... where on any given day one can walk into a wedding reception and change in a stall with a giant purple bow wrapped around it and wash one's hands with lavender-scented soap provided by said reception's decorator.) In fact, the only way you can tell NAB is a beach is due to the four or five No-Boating buoys anchored a considerable distance from shore, and the four or five quiet college students who figured it out before you (but don't worry, there's plenty of room.)
My swim yesterday with H. was so good it gave me a bit of an epiphany: this is summer. It can be easy to forget when you're paid to spend 7.5 hours a day in a building so air-conditioned it gives you goosebumps. And when you wake up at 7AM in order to do that. And when things consequently are somehow even more routine than they were during the school year. Swimming, though, is like campfire--something very simple with a profoundly blissful effect.
Last week, in my dark room and with brilliant aim, I stepped on my laptop, cracking an enormous spiderweb into the screen and rendering it not usable. I was overcome with panic, and with something worse than panic, something really heavy and frightening and big. It was as though, damaging my computer and witnessing my resulting fear, I felt that my life was sort of small and meaningless. Even to myself. It took me a while to figure out what that feeling was.
People can be so silly.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
move on, move on
I bought two shirts the other day.
I know, I know, my whole simplify philosophy. My whole "I'm poor" thing.
Well, I still stand by it to a degree. They were cheap shirts, for example. And I'm going to bring a box of things I never wear to a thift shop or Goodwill soon, so I guess it's more of an exchange.
But yeah, I didn't buy them because I needed them. I bought them because they were very sweet in a 1960's babydoll kind of way, and I'm tired of wearing uninteresting things. I'm tired of feeling plain.
And, quite frankly, I'm a bit tired of myself. I want change. I want it now.
I'm growing out my hair, not cutting it again. I'm also thinking (somewhat seriously) about getting my nostril pierced. Because a) I like how it looks (obviously) and b) people would be surprised. (Any thoughts?)
I'm hoping this desire to change my appearance is due to a certain personal funk I'm in, wherein I feel myself inwardly changing, rather than a possible inadequacy crisis. But I think I've been wanting to do this for a while. If I got a tattoo, which I sincerely don't want, I might have reason to worry.
I want to be forceful about who I am, and the easiest way to do that is through physical change. I will not be predictable or rigid. I am whimsical, my friends.
Oh, and I smoked my first cigarette last night. Laugh, but I've just never had the desire before. And you know what? It wasn't bad. It also wasn't worthy of the sophistication and snobbery most smokers assume in the face of never-having-smoked-ers. It was tobacco rolled up in paper, placed between my lips and the smoke thereupon inhaled and then exhaled. Simple. Silly. Not amazing. Not bad.
A relief.
I know, I know, my whole simplify philosophy. My whole "I'm poor" thing.
Well, I still stand by it to a degree. They were cheap shirts, for example. And I'm going to bring a box of things I never wear to a thift shop or Goodwill soon, so I guess it's more of an exchange.
But yeah, I didn't buy them because I needed them. I bought them because they were very sweet in a 1960's babydoll kind of way, and I'm tired of wearing uninteresting things. I'm tired of feeling plain.
And, quite frankly, I'm a bit tired of myself. I want change. I want it now.
I'm growing out my hair, not cutting it again. I'm also thinking (somewhat seriously) about getting my nostril pierced. Because a) I like how it looks (obviously) and b) people would be surprised. (Any thoughts?)
I'm hoping this desire to change my appearance is due to a certain personal funk I'm in, wherein I feel myself inwardly changing, rather than a possible inadequacy crisis. But I think I've been wanting to do this for a while. If I got a tattoo, which I sincerely don't want, I might have reason to worry.
I want to be forceful about who I am, and the easiest way to do that is through physical change. I will not be predictable or rigid. I am whimsical, my friends.
Oh, and I smoked my first cigarette last night. Laugh, but I've just never had the desire before. And you know what? It wasn't bad. It also wasn't worthy of the sophistication and snobbery most smokers assume in the face of never-having-smoked-ers. It was tobacco rolled up in paper, placed between my lips and the smoke thereupon inhaled and then exhaled. Simple. Silly. Not amazing. Not bad.
A relief.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
the apartment children.
I didn't go to work today, simply because I didn't feel like it. And my job allows me to make this sort of decision in a quick and guilt-free way. And it's summer. And I was tired.
Instead, I slept until 9, read for a little while, and then went with A. to the Med bakery where I joyously consumed an apple croissant and an iced coffee, for less than $5. I figure someday I'll really like coffee, and very soon I'll definitely need coffee, so it's a good idea to start drinking it now. Going out for breakfast is maybe the nicest way to start a Day Off, and A. and I discussed angry mothers and also Harry Potter, which we're going to go see tomorrow night.
Then she went to Oak Park, and I walked back, looked at our messy kitchen, and made the very domestic decision to clean...
When I was in the second grade, I loved the Boxcar Children books. In said books, the four orphaned siblings -Henry, Jessie, Violet and Benny (shocking how effortlessly that just came back) - are homeless and poor until they find this old, abandoned boxcar in the woods. Deciding this would be the perfect place to live, they make literally everything they use from materials they find in the area (sleeping on pine needles, for example) and I think the two older children work doing chores and babysitting in a neighborhood nearby. Then they buy food - mainly bread and milk, if I remember - bring it back to the boxcar, feed everyone, and, I don't know, I forget. They probably do something heartwarming before they go to bed. (Also, they eventually build this kickass swimming hole, but that's really not the point.)
The point is that simple living is in many ways far more attractive than the complicated living the modern adult in a capitalist society is inevitably drawn toward. Having more money usually amounts to having more objects, preferably ugly, hulky, plastic objects, that collect dust and are utterly unnecessary. Just watch the 2-in-the-morning infomercials. Buy a REALLY CONVENIENT can opener for $19.95, and they'll throw in four other ugly, plastic, unnecessary objects for free! ...because you still have some unused closet space.
At home, I was surrounded by Stuff. We weren't rich, but we never got rid of anything either, which meant we had about 5 billion of everything - 5 billion dish towels, 5 billion bathroom towels, 5 billion Tupperware containers, 5 billion magazines. There are so many drawers in my parent's house that you literally can't close, because they're bursting with things that never get used. Why do they keep acquiring? Because they keep making money.
Here in my apartment, we aren't Boxcar Children poor, but we are College Student poor with Chicago-style rent. So that's where the money goes. It's all very simple and practical, and I like it that way. We save most of what is left, and spend the rest on food. Lentils are 89 cents. Pasta and sauce can be less than $2. We buy rice in bulk, and T. brings home unsold French bread everyday from the bakery. When there's too much bread, we put some in the freezer, and let some dry out to use for bread crumbs.
And so I channeled the Boxcar Children today as I rinsed out aluminum cans to recycle, and boiled water on the stove, using a gallon-jug from store-bought tea for newly made iced tea, and washed dishes and dried them.
We turn off the lights and leave unused appliances unplugged and take short showers. I haven't purchased new clothing in half a year, because I have enough clothing. We suffer through heat without air conditioning, old-fashioned style. That way, it feels genuinely hot. It gives me real reason to complain. It makes me appreciate today, which is much cooler. It makes me appreciate, and notice, difference.
I'm so glad I have no television for my mind to be colonized by MTV, I'm so glad I'm sitting in a perfectly good chair that someone else wanted to throw away, and I'm so glad I get to deal with inconvenience.
Having just enough money is wonderful. A really big part of me hopes I'll always be a little bit poor.
Instead, I slept until 9, read for a little while, and then went with A. to the Med bakery where I joyously consumed an apple croissant and an iced coffee, for less than $5. I figure someday I'll really like coffee, and very soon I'll definitely need coffee, so it's a good idea to start drinking it now. Going out for breakfast is maybe the nicest way to start a Day Off, and A. and I discussed angry mothers and also Harry Potter, which we're going to go see tomorrow night.
Then she went to Oak Park, and I walked back, looked at our messy kitchen, and made the very domestic decision to clean...
When I was in the second grade, I loved the Boxcar Children books. In said books, the four orphaned siblings -Henry, Jessie, Violet and Benny (shocking how effortlessly that just came back) - are homeless and poor until they find this old, abandoned boxcar in the woods. Deciding this would be the perfect place to live, they make literally everything they use from materials they find in the area (sleeping on pine needles, for example) and I think the two older children work doing chores and babysitting in a neighborhood nearby. Then they buy food - mainly bread and milk, if I remember - bring it back to the boxcar, feed everyone, and, I don't know, I forget. They probably do something heartwarming before they go to bed. (Also, they eventually build this kickass swimming hole, but that's really not the point.)
The point is that simple living is in many ways far more attractive than the complicated living the modern adult in a capitalist society is inevitably drawn toward. Having more money usually amounts to having more objects, preferably ugly, hulky, plastic objects, that collect dust and are utterly unnecessary. Just watch the 2-in-the-morning infomercials. Buy a REALLY CONVENIENT can opener for $19.95, and they'll throw in four other ugly, plastic, unnecessary objects for free! ...because you still have some unused closet space.
At home, I was surrounded by Stuff. We weren't rich, but we never got rid of anything either, which meant we had about 5 billion of everything - 5 billion dish towels, 5 billion bathroom towels, 5 billion Tupperware containers, 5 billion magazines. There are so many drawers in my parent's house that you literally can't close, because they're bursting with things that never get used. Why do they keep acquiring? Because they keep making money.
Here in my apartment, we aren't Boxcar Children poor, but we are College Student poor with Chicago-style rent. So that's where the money goes. It's all very simple and practical, and I like it that way. We save most of what is left, and spend the rest on food. Lentils are 89 cents. Pasta and sauce can be less than $2. We buy rice in bulk, and T. brings home unsold French bread everyday from the bakery. When there's too much bread, we put some in the freezer, and let some dry out to use for bread crumbs.
And so I channeled the Boxcar Children today as I rinsed out aluminum cans to recycle, and boiled water on the stove, using a gallon-jug from store-bought tea for newly made iced tea, and washed dishes and dried them.
We turn off the lights and leave unused appliances unplugged and take short showers. I haven't purchased new clothing in half a year, because I have enough clothing. We suffer through heat without air conditioning, old-fashioned style. That way, it feels genuinely hot. It gives me real reason to complain. It makes me appreciate today, which is much cooler. It makes me appreciate, and notice, difference.
I'm so glad I have no television for my mind to be colonized by MTV, I'm so glad I'm sitting in a perfectly good chair that someone else wanted to throw away, and I'm so glad I get to deal with inconvenience.
Having just enough money is wonderful. A really big part of me hopes I'll always be a little bit poor.
Monday, July 09, 2007
you weren't meant for me.
Because our apartment has a guitar, it also has a theme song. The song changes weekly, and is always according to T.'s interest at the moment. Once he's zeroed in on something, he looks up the chords and works at it until he can recreate it for the purposes of this home.
(It started back in the dorm as a sort of player-listener relationship - with him teaching himself Portuguese songs and me pressing him to play them - but has now progressed into something more interactive. I have learned four chords to clumsily strum along to a very short Italian celebration song. I have been shown rough diagrams of the mouth and T. has explained how the air resounds on the roof of the mouth. I have sung along, and timidly alone.)
Sometime last week, T. decided to give Jewel a try, old-school and hippie-ish of course, before her albums were dotted with "u" and "r" and likely "w/e" and "lol." "Who Will Save Your Soul?" was the first to get strummed, and it lasted for a couple days. Strangely, however, it was "You Were Meant For Me" that won the round, and for several days now it's all any of us can sing.
Back when I went through a Jewel thing for a couple weeks at about 16, I never really gave this song the attention I find myself paying it now. I am surprised by my own sincerity as I wash the dishes and cry with increasing volume, "Besides, what would I say if I had you on the line?"
The theme song always reflects my mood, T. is mysterious that way. What would I say? It's a good thing people move, thereby changing their numbers and protecting those without any sense.
"Don't Worry, Be Happy" just wouldn't cut it right now.
(It started back in the dorm as a sort of player-listener relationship - with him teaching himself Portuguese songs and me pressing him to play them - but has now progressed into something more interactive. I have learned four chords to clumsily strum along to a very short Italian celebration song. I have been shown rough diagrams of the mouth and T. has explained how the air resounds on the roof of the mouth. I have sung along, and timidly alone.)
Sometime last week, T. decided to give Jewel a try, old-school and hippie-ish of course, before her albums were dotted with "u" and "r" and likely "w/e" and "lol." "Who Will Save Your Soul?" was the first to get strummed, and it lasted for a couple days. Strangely, however, it was "You Were Meant For Me" that won the round, and for several days now it's all any of us can sing.
Back when I went through a Jewel thing for a couple weeks at about 16, I never really gave this song the attention I find myself paying it now. I am surprised by my own sincerity as I wash the dishes and cry with increasing volume, "Besides, what would I say if I had you on the line?"
The theme song always reflects my mood, T. is mysterious that way. What would I say? It's a good thing people move, thereby changing their numbers and protecting those without any sense.
"Don't Worry, Be Happy" just wouldn't cut it right now.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
i am a troubled man
So, Audrey recently showed me a clip so catchy, so fantastic, that I can't get it out of my head.
The Rules of the House is a song from a homemade movie called Family Business, created by two guys that went to school with a friend of Audrey's. The movie is around three hours long, poorly edited and shot, and utterly bizarre and nonsensical. But the comedy of it is spot-on.
It was apparently shown to the school, or a sizable portion of it. Their goal, A. informs me, was to make it creepy enough that nobody would talk to them afterward. By the end of the showing, almost no one (save for A.'s friend) was still watching.
High school.
I want to meet them. Le sigh.
The Rules of the House is a song from a homemade movie called Family Business, created by two guys that went to school with a friend of Audrey's. The movie is around three hours long, poorly edited and shot, and utterly bizarre and nonsensical. But the comedy of it is spot-on.
It was apparently shown to the school, or a sizable portion of it. Their goal, A. informs me, was to make it creepy enough that nobody would talk to them afterward. By the end of the showing, almost no one (save for A.'s friend) was still watching.
High school.
I want to meet them. Le sigh.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
ennui and ravioli
I am not sure how I feel about regret. It is true that it's a waste of time, and also seemingly counterproductive. It makes more sense to turn an experience into some positive lesson. Usually I'm good at that--I'm ridiculously optimistic enough to manipulate a personally bad situation into something character-building. But now, at the end of my rope, I feel regret.
It would be nice if logic played a larger part in how one felt. For once in my life, I think, I could use the detachment.
Ah, well. Enough of my summer despair.
Instead, I will display the beautiful ravioli my roomie and I made from from scratch last night.
...followed by dessert, guitar, and good company. Food heals.
Maybe I should become a chef.
It would be nice if logic played a larger part in how one felt. For once in my life, I think, I could use the detachment.
Ah, well. Enough of my summer despair.
Instead, I will display the beautiful ravioli my roomie and I made from from scratch last night.
...followed by dessert, guitar, and good company. Food heals.
Maybe I should become a chef.
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