wait, what?

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

Reunited

...and it feels so good.

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

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

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

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

I love this cornerstone.

jewish cowboys

The vast expanse of a night, bed, morning:

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

sorority rant.

Oh, how this has been building up.

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

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

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

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

Thanks for threatening me!

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

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

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

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

fodder.

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

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

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

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

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

There is a reason I grew up romantic.

schedule and coffee.

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

I will be...

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

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

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

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

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

Zen and the Art of Paying Attention

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Singing the blues.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now watch the film.

One or the other.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

oh, so this is journalism.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

South Bent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

moment of reflection.

I am feeling empty. I am empty of:

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

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

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

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

things that await

Schedule Update:

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

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

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

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

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

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

500-1000 words on life, please.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Onward.

Deletion.

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

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

The casualties:

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

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

At least my life is a little less cluttered now?

My favorite minimalist is...

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

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

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

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

I hafta.

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

It is perhaps time for a change.

not comfortable.

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

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

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

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

America is still enormously segregated, for many sinister reasons.

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

Victorian sexy magical realism (!)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah. Inspired and unfocused.

Back in the Saddle.

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

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

"Why do you do that?" he asked.

"So I can remember what I thought."

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

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

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

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

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

There you go, invisible audience.

Kajra re, kajra re...

And my self-discipline dissipates horribly.

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

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

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

three shots o' blue vodka

..they fade fast.

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

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

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

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

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

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

No need for white noise.

A word edgewise.

Before the Orange Blossom beer wears off..

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

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

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

another rainbow.

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

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

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

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

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

this post is for audrey.

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

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

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

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

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