dopamine.

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

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

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

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

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

I'm just managing dopamine.

Confessional.

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

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

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

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

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

And you might be right.

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

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

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

June: hot and stormy, and a decent background.

confronting things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- - - - -

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

the damage.

I'm taking this physically.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doom.

Yep.

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

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

Meh.

Meh.

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

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

(This, in favor of writing something.)

Summer Reading.*

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

The Color of Magic - Terry Pratchett**

And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie**

The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow

Freedom - Jonathon Franzen

Fortress of Solitude - Jonathon Lethem

* * *

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

If anyone has recommendations, I'll take them.

------

*Subject to (many) additions and alterations

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

cupcakes and skinny-dipping.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dive dive down.

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

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

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

These are the thoughts of first-day freedom.

Help, I'm Alive.

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

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

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

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

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

Snapshots.

Something is telling me to record June.

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

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

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

Lost in translation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We'll let it rest for a while.

springtime sickness

Ugh.

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

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

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

A little bit harsh, Karma.

the fern unfurls.

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

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

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

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

We will call him F.

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

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

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

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

new home

For now, I am living here.

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

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

Bathroom:

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

Kitchen:

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

Living Room:

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

Miscellaneous:

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

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

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

I whine, and whine, and whine.

I am a whiny woman, in retrospect.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

in security

Last night I had the most banal nightmare.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Knowing that is something, anyway.

a date.

I went on a date. Sort of.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's talk about how

I am a massive failure at life.

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

Please, someone kick me in the face.

Swiiiine feva.

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

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

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

HEALTHY PEOPLE, ENJOY YOUR HEALTHINESS.

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

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

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

Expensive things I want

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

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

3. No negative moneys in my bank account.

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

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

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

Boo.

BAistan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am hopeless.

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

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

Epic intelligence fail.

lookit what I found

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

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

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

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