it feels like autumn.

Today is a tofu-soup, Joanna-Newsom, black-sweatpants, fetal-position, drink-tea-in-the-rain-on-the-back-porch, finish-my-old-homework, kiss-someone-on-the-head, slow kind of day.

In case you were wondering what kind of day today is.

oh, and

Marla and I started a vegetarian/vegan food blog.

It'll probably be updated spottily, randomly, occasionally. But the food will be good.

kthxbye

dude.

Al Gore just won the Nobel Peace Prize.

....that's kind of awesome.

just me and the bump.

I keep having pregnancy dreams. The number has probably exceeded five in two weeks. If you ask me, that's pretty excessive.

Usually I'm pregnant in the dreams, though one time it was my sister and another time my mother (with twins!). The premise goes like this: I am pregnant. There is no precursory sex; I'm (or they're) always already pregnant. In every case, the baby is a girl and this is already intuitively known. (In the twin case, there was a boy and a girl.) I always experience the anxiety of knowing I can't raise a child in college, and that my life and plans are suddenly irrevocably ruined.

Last night in my dream, I barely realized I was pregnant (very pregnant) before BAM, the baby was suddenly there. I realized, panicked, that I didn't have a name ready; I think I decided on Bridget, which is a name I used to like. The baby had big hazel eyes and I was very fond of her. Then suddenly I was in Mexico with some friends and the baby, and it was very exotic and there were lots of people. In the crowd I lost the baby, got very scared, and started looking everywhere for her.

I don't know why I have this apparent pregnancy fixation. I know some people who are expecting (someone any day now) and maybe it's working its way into my skull: the fact that my peers are now having babies.

Needless to say, I woke up early this morning extraordinarily relieved that I was, in fact, childless and my only worry was getting to Bio on time. I felt so.... independent.

God. Am I a woman now or something?

September CDX

I am a part of a CD-exchange group with eleven other members (including my sister). Each person is assigned a month to burn eleven identical CDs to send out, and every month you receive a CD. It's very nifty. I'm the youngest person in the group, and also probably the least obscure in music knowledge, which means that every month my taste and knowledge are improved slightly more.

My month is September. Instead of writing tonight, I'm going to post my 2007 track list, and link whenever possible to the song on the internet. Trust me--it's a good mix.

1. "Monochrome" : Yann Tiersen (youtube: Angsty-Emo homemade video)
2. "Green Bird" : Yoko Kanno (youtube: Cowboy Bebop-themed video)
3. "Weather and Water" : The Greencards
4. "City Hall" : Vienna Teng (myspace)
5. "A Better Wife" : Erin McKeown
6. "The Next Step You'll Take" : Club 8
7. "Draft Dodger Rag" : Kind of Like Spitting
8. "Wild is the Wind" : The Second Band (myspace)
9. "She Moves in Her Own Way" : The Kooks (myspace)
10. "Some of Them Were Superstitious : Midlake
11. "Shy That Way (feat. Jason Mraz)" : Tristan Prettyman (youtube: live and ridiculously cute)
12. "Tiger, My Friend" : Psapp (youtube: grey's anatomy video)
13. "The Pirate's Gospel" : Alela Diane
14. "Ashes on Your Eyes" : Deb Talan
15. "Serenade" : Emiliana Torrini (youtube: live with pretty dress)
16. "Rue des Cascades" : Yann Tiersen (youtube: on some french movie)

Here are some notes:

1. "Ashes on Your Eyes" may lack an internet outlet, but that doesn't mean it's not required. It's absolutely required. If you can't find it yourself, I will email it to you. The rest of the album (A Bird Flies Out) is highly recommended. It's all I seem to want to listen to lately, in fact.

2. While I couldn't find the Midlake song either, their myspace music must not be overlooked. They also have a variety of interesting music videos on youtube, including one for Roscoe which is somewhat bland but wonderfully historically Midwestern. It seems to awaken some weird ancient nostalgia in me, like the part of me that really wants to believe that when I was little I played in wheat fields and used wooden toys. Some things did exist, like hayrides (which poke like hell but smell lovely), but really it's Michigan and you can't expect too much in the way of prairie. Really this is all beside the point. Which is: I'm shamelessly promoting this band because I love them.

Happy listening.

autumn is for l<3vers

There's something about autumn--a new breeze, the leafy smell--that drives people into each other's arms so quickly I can't keep track.

Forget what they said about spring. Spring is when people break up.

So while everybody and their uncle are all giddy and blushing and lovingly poking each other, I'm craving ice cream and feeling too sensitive and dreaming about the past. Two nights in a row.

I am having an off week.

I measure the on- and offness of my weeks by how often the past interferes with the present. Which is immeasurably more likely when even my mailbox has a significant other.

You can't manipulate the past to make it more friendly. You can't deny it into submission. You can't change the past's opinion of you, no matter how articulate a letter you write. You can't make the past understand you. You can't make the past want to.

Even if all you want to do is invite the past over for tea, and talk to the past until everything starts going in a forward direction for you again.

In conclusion, the past is a filthy dirty bastard. And it's best just to forget about it.

In other news, apparently I turned 21. I received a letter from the state of Illinois congratulating me on that fact and strongly discouraging me from drinking and driving. Now I guess I'm living in the future? Does that mean Bush is out of office?

I need a pint of ice cream. I need Amelie. Then I might return to the present.

historical connexions

Today I realized, as I was walking home, that one of the houses I walk by daily is the (previous) residence of Enrico Fermi.

Viva la nuclear weaponry, I guess. :/

Family Values...?

In case you didn't catch it, the president just vetoed a bill that would expand children's health insurance.

Read about it here.

Excuse me while I go burn a flag, then kill myself.

Because I'm Tired of Colonization Readings

I'm feeling a bit spastic and incredibly unfocused right now (it's only second week!) so I don't think this post will have any theme tying it together. I just wanted to note a couple things.

• I recently decided to make the transition from washing my hair daily to washing it every other day. It's much healthier for your scalp, much more au natural, so it's what I'm doing. The problem, of course, is that once you've decided to wash your hair less, your scalp gets all confused and continues to overproduce oil for a while. This is what my friends (who are all every-other-day people) tell me. It takes a month or two to phase it out, I guess. I feel a little awkward the every-other-day my head is oily, but also sort of liberated. Sort of: "Look at me! I've got oily hair and I don't care! Now watch me go root around in the dirt and then swim in the river!"

• I don't know how to cook very much, but I'm starting to adjust my diet in different small ways. I want to slowly fade out certain habits. I want to stop buying canned soup and more frequently actually make soup, for example. So far, I can make one: a pretty standard tomato soup. But I want to increase my capabilities. Pretty soon I'm going to try a tofu soup (the results of which I will describe). I also, in general, want to eat more fresh food. On Thursday, T. and I are going to the farmer's market over on Harper. A few days ago I made Brussels sprouts with Hollandaise sauce. U. made (amazingly amazing) corn pudding. I have the advantage of having roommates who both love to and know how to cook. T. makes red Thai curry with things like bok choy and bamboo shoots, and U. makes a South Asian curry with chick peas and lots of different spices. I need a specialty. I may need time, but I'll find it.

Pad Si Ew and Chanel.

I am eating last night's leftover pad si ew and reflecting on what it means to be a girl.

It's not easy to forget I'm a girl. It is, however, easy to forget what being a girl normally entails, especially here. For anyone unfamiliar with UChicago's infamous (lack of) social life, let me fill you in: We're nerds. Nerdy nerdy nerds. We're here because we like to study. And because we're attracted to other nerdy nerds.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm not good at being a girl. I don't know how to do make-up. I don't have various smelly things to smear on myself, only deodorant and occasionally some perfume my mother brought me from Germany. I like jewelry, but never think to buy it and therefore have very few things with which to adorn myself. I've gotten my ears pierced several times, and I always forget to wear earrings frequently enough to keep the holes from filling back in. I can't dance. The list goes on.

Tonight some friends and I had Girl's Night. We ate dinner with fancy cheese and grapes and pita and hummus [Note: the Nile's hummus is amazing] and watched Sex and the City. Watching Sex and the City with friends is a bit of a common thing for me. Even so, watching Carrie Bradshaw strut around in expensive shoes and go into bathrooms to fix her hair was strange. I had forgotten. This is Girl Behavior.

What does it mean when you want to be attractive, but you want to be utterly world-conscious at the same time? The gap between girl-vapidity, even girl-normality, and Real Human Life sometimes looks vast. My mother swears by her millions of Liz Claiborne lipsticks and foundations, her small arsenal of Coco Chanel perfumes. And yet somehow I still grew up on the other side of the divide. Beyond my patterned blouses and one designated pair of Cute shoes (which bloody up the backs of my heels, incidentally), I can't do Girl.

I came home and changed into laundry-doing clothes: a gray shirt with a hole in it that I've had since 9th grade, and a pair of secondhand sweatpants. This is the time T. chose, in his loving-roommate way, to call me beautiful.

There's a reason there's a chasm between Girl and real life. Make-up makes me look like a strange plastic doll. There have been times I've made an effort with it.

Otherwise I look like me, which I think I prefer.

half hippie

I am turning into a different creature than the one I used to imagine, than indeed the one my parents want to imagine.

I am about to divulge a fact about myself. It isn't necessarily a fact I like. It's not one that holds any value in meeting people in terms of charm or interest. For a long time, it's not something I wanted to believe, but I think I've become comfortable with it:

I am not extreme.

This applies to probably every aspect of my life.

Despite this fact, I always imagined myself when I was younger, thirteen maybe, as basically normal. But I am not that either. More and more I feel separated from society, or American society, in ways I couldn't have imagined before. More frequently I am disgusted and disheartened by people. Comments that used to seem to me innocent or friendly bother me because of their implications... you may have purchased something cheaper, but it doesn't mean a price isn't getting paid somewhere else. If I see someone drinking with a straw, I might not think about it. But I might also wonder what the hell sort of purpose a straw serves besides making someone at the end of some line a bunch of money and carelessly depleting a resource.

It's not a fun attitude, obviously. Actually, a lot of the time I feel like a grandpa. An embittered, enviro-conscious grandpa.

The thing is, once you're aware of your own values, and the values you desperately want other people to share, you can't shed them. I can't just shake my head and laugh and say, "Oh, those straws" because I know somewhere oil is being converted to plastic and shipped a thousand miles in some direction so people can use straws, and somewhere 700 million McDonald's straws are sitting in the dirt, trying desperately to become dirt themselves. Which will take a while.

And capitalism? Not a big fan.

The thing is, in our society, you can't really have this sort of view, an environmentally-sensitive, socially-critical point of view, without being lumped into the counterculture that ends up being so homogeneous most of the time that I just end up feeling alienated. Must I be physically exotic and tattooed to be a person with radical ideas? Because I find it hard to feel comfortable in any circle sometimes.

Really, though, this is just a small rant at the little things that pop up occasionally and leave me feeling isolated. The old friend that feels more experienced and looks at me only superficially with a how-can-I-help-you? expression, for example. The hypocritical nature inherent in everyone, even those on your side.

I also just wanted to note how hard it is to relate people.

And proclaim that I need a cat.

love will get you in the end

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!

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.

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.

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.

CHUM-CHUMS.

(For explanation: See September 4.)

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."

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.

"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.

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.

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.

so stereotypical.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...

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

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

thursday night's storm

 

theories of love

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

stormy weather

According to weather.com:

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

Time for haiku.

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