. . . . . entries for 29.4.09 . . . . .
I suppose the grumbly, unremarkable conclusion to my prior post is: there will be times when I will look at WWS students in my year and resent them, no question, because that is what I wanted, and I think I would have been good for it. But this is how things happened, and I don't imagine this turn of events to be anyone's fault but my own.
It will be so overwhelmingly strange to be learning such concrete, positive things next semester - nothing without answers, nothing that can't be studied in a lab, except perhaps the occasional truly ineffable question. I will have to find ways to complicate it, as I had planned to in the Wilson school. Or I will adjust and, for a time, learn things without holding onto illusions of solving great problems.
What I really need is not great problems. All I need are tiny escapes, doodles, stories, walks, sunbaths, hugs. It's not that complicated. But it's the uncomplicated things that I am so profoundly bad at.
It is not that it was chance. It is that everything leading up to those few nights, within and without, coalesced into those words, that will not strenuous, that vast ebb of the vast flow.
It is not that this was meant to be. It is that I was not who they wanted then. Who knows if I'm who they want now, or if I would have been?
Blarg. More ranting later, probably.
. . . . . entries for 28.4.09 . . . . .
A thought: my POL professor wrote a book on why Brazil's government reacted in a timely way to the AIDS pandemic, and why South Africa's did not. He points to many factors, but concludes that the presence of strong ethnic boundaries were the most salient factor that prevented an aggressive government response.
The idea is compelling because it seems true, and because it explains an action (or, as it were, an inaction) that seems plainly evil. I am so afraid for South Africa under Zuma, with his folklorish, denialist beliefs about HIV. I can't believe that the ANC won this past election so overwhelmingly - not as overwhelmingly but still overwhelmingly - but, at the same time, I fully expected it. I understand but I do not want to comprehend.
I want to see such a book written on why China's government seems to be absolutely unconcerned with climate change, because whenever I hear about their tunnel vision on GDP growth, I am floored by the same feeling of evil. But it can't be evil - it must be some irrational human dynamic that I don't understand yet, like the groupthink problems created by ethnic boundaries.
Certainly, the United States hasn't been active on climate change for the past eight years, but that's rapidly changing under Obama: he's trying to get a mitigation bill through Congress before Copenhagen this December, to avoid another ratification flop a la Kyoto. Hillary is on China's back to sign on, but so far as I've heard, there's no sign that they'll budge.
What changed here - what really, significantly changed here, and what is not changing in China? What is the force causing the inaction, causing the weekly advent of a new coal power plant, the algal blooms thick enough to walk on, the orange-sky days in Beijing? Is it just poverty? Is it central planning? Is it censorship? It can't really be myopia or evil. That's ludicrous. But something is so wrong - what is it? How can we try to fix it?
. . . . . entries for 27.4.09 . . . . .
. . . and I mean, I appreciate the opportunities this course represents, yadda yadda yadda, but the Lewis Center is seriously the capital of flaky prima donnas at Princeton - myself included! :P
My poor and anecdotal evidence: People got here at 7. Some folks stay here overnight when they have productions or whatever. At any Lewis Center event, the drama and self-importance is tangible.
Okay, so this is unfair. Most of this probably implies to the entire University. But I have not witnessed the engineers or the POL/WWS/ECO tools so plainly baring their sillinesses. Maybe that is a virtue of the art establishment, not a vice.
HOLY COW I'M BORED. I've been here (at 185 Nassau) since 8, and CWR sign-ups start in a few minutes (at 9). There are maybe 15 people in front of me, the lion's share of whom seem to be signing up for fiction, but mostly intro, I hope. There are many more people sitting behind me.
It's supposed to get up to 92 here today, but walking over, there was a sort of crack-of-dawn peace and coolness the the campus, despite the fact that it was well past the actual crack of dawn.
Some familiar faces in line. I hope my class is full of interesting, talented, but unpretentious people next semester. What more could one hope for?
. . . . . entries for 26.4.09 . . . . .
Not-very-secret fact: when I hear that someone my age drinks (or, worse, has been intoxicated in my presence), no matter what the degree of the behavior, I feel distinctly uneasy about that person and their relationship to me. It's not the sort of thing I think benefits from a great deal of rationalization, but if I were to try and rationalize it, I'd say that such an inconsistency of chemical state must bring about an inconsistency in the person - unreliability, some alteration from the person I knew before, a willingness not to remain the one I care for, and by extension, I guess, an emotional detachment from me.
So rationalized, such uneasiness is self-centered and neurotic . . . like the rest of me! :P
I do not think it should be 90 in April. It just seems wrong to me.
Donna Haraway, I understand you're trying to say something, but you just can't use phrases like pleasurably tight coupling and fail to make me feel SO UNCOMFORTABLE.
I have to read that for SOC/ANT. I'm about halfway through.
So yeah, I'm alive. I have been distracted by nice weather, lots of work, and pixel dragons.
I got funding for D.C. this summer, and into advanced creative writing for next semester, last Thursday. 'Twas a day of celebration and, yea verily, distraction. But such things I must do. Such things.
. . . . . entries for 22.4.09 . . . . .
It is Earth Day and, when I think about it, I realize I am somewhat of a failed environmentalist, at least on a local level. The ability to think about and understand the broad context of global warming or whatever else is great, but actually taking local action is different.
I wonder if next year will be the year for me and Greening Princeton.
The question becomes: will she attempt to do the POL reading? Or will she re-collapse in a puddle of exhaustion after picking courses?
Oh, my blogreaders: if I lose everything else, I will at least hold onto my dubious ability to know exactly who I am and where I stand. I think some people never get the hang of that; I think, even, it is a talent incompatible with "well-adjustedness." But I got it. I hope it's worth something, when they calculate the final scores.
. . . . . entries for 21.4.09 . . . . .
It is possible that this blog needs a makeover. Still with a black background - black is the new green - but, I dunno. I like my current header and so on, but the novelty has definitely worn off.
. . . . . entries for 20.4.09 . . . . .
ps. I slept for like three hours, so I don't think I'll die.
Hello again, blog:
I am starving so I am going to go get some cereal to bring back to my basement lair. It is not actually very lairish: I opened a window so it's refreshingly chilly, and it's very brightly lit. I can focus better here.
The paper is coming along reasonably well - I'm done with everything except the recommendations at the end, and with a section I'm not sure I'll actually include in the body before that. It's a bit tangential and who needs tangents in a 2000-word paper, anyway?
ps. I am going to be like this a lot for the next month. Like, quite a damned lot.
pps. I find out if I got into creative writing today, in theory. I do not think there is an emoticon for the face I want to make to that. There might not even be a face for the face I want to make to that. But we'll see, I guess. I don't know whether or not I think I made it.
Hello blog,
I had almost forgotten about you as a coping mechanism for procrastination and writer's block.
How are you?
I'm not particularly well, myself. I have a paper to write by 5 tomorrow (today, I guess, actually) that I have outlined reasonably well, but hardly written at all, and I am terrible at sticking to outlines, though I seem to need to write them these days. I am not tired, as such, but the brain is a block of lead. It does nothing but make my neck and skull hurt.
It occurred to me today that this is what I signed up for. I wanted to be "challenged." I guess I didn't know that being challenged would be so hard.
Just desserts are not tasty.
. . . . . entries for 15.4.09 . . . . .
I think I have not been properly taking advantage of the awesomeness that is Pandora. My Rachmaninov playlist is up, which is good, but I wish I could focus through music with words; I'd find new things about which to be happy.
ps. happy tax day.
. . . . . entries for 14.4.09 . . . . .
Lately, at least in colloquial "settings," I've started to sometimes write the way Rorschach talks in Watchmen. Straight and to the point . . . as it were. :P
The kind of thing I now write on POL reading response assignments, when I should be summing up major points:
"The way in which Bhagwati discusses the anti-globalization movement is very cursory and, I believe, uninformed. That the movement’s constituents may themselves be uninformed I do not deny, but he seems to misconstrue the nature of social movements themselves. If two interest groups (itself a problematic term) can no longer cooperate in the context of one movement, e.g. opposition to or support of the war on terror, that does not necessarily mean that they will cease to cooperate on other issues. On a related note, while he briefly mentions the cultural problems with capitalism, he makes no move whatsoever to defend capitalism against accusations of its being an agent of Western cultural hegemony; he seems to accept at face value the fact that development is good, even when cultural diversity is lost. I reject this denial of cultural value, and I’m surprised, in light of his conclusion, that he does not: he clearly sees the benefits of allowing diverse social approaches to problems. Diverse cultures may also have value that we currently do not understand; the cultural prescription that seems to me inherent in global capitalism threatens to, like an invasive species, crowd out native diversity to the ultimate detriment of the worldwide society’s resilience."
SOC/ANT and EEB/ENV have ruined me for traditional polisci forever.
Oh, dude, I'm a Hufflepuff. How did that happen? And I'm super un-Gryffindor. (71 Hufflepuff, 62 Ravenclaw, 61 Slytherin, and a puny 45 Gryffindor.)
I think it is because I am down on myself and not brave. The test does not conceive of houses the way I do - the way I do, the Jungian way, I am somewhere between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw. Oh wellsies.
. . . . . entries for 13.4.09 . . . . .
I wonder how many people lose everything after high school, in floods or trickles. And I wonder, too, after hows and whys and what'd I do wrongs. But in the end, I did nothing to deserve the kind of crushing guilt trip a certain someone is laying on me.
He's probably right, though. I probably do impose my desire to "help" on people sometimes. But sometimes, also, people really do want that and need that.
"How ya gonna save the world when the world ain't ready?"
I ended up submitting something - a kind of twisted take on a Nantucket flash fiction I wrote a few weeks ago - to CWR. We'll see how that goes. I just found a typo in the first paragraph, which doesn't bode well, but the rest looked okay.
My staying-up-late-writing-and-absorbing-motherly-advice-about-writing resulted in my being behind on SOC/ANT. Oh freaking well. I'll do it after dinner. Then onward to POL reading, for great justice.
And sleep?
. . . . . entries for 12.4.09 . . . . .
Using Endnote is a little bit intoxicating. But then, I always liked the finding-articles bit of research. The reading them bit is the hard/time consuming/oh gosh how will I ever get this done part.
So yeah, I've been siting in the psych library doing my WWS research for um . . . a couple hours? It's neat.
It's Easter, and for the first time in possibly forever (right?) I'm not with my folks. It's weird, but okay. I feel a bit of rebirth this Sunday, like maybe I can get this done and get sleep and not die of depression or stress.
"Bless us, o Lord, in these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord, who gave us chances to start over."
And tomorrow, Erin gets to hand in her (way too damn late) psych homework, and ninja-compose a "real outline." And read and stuff, of course. Oh BOY.
That one night of sleep sure was nice.
. . . . . entries for 11.4.09 . . . . .
Consolation to myself: being a psych major will not be like being in a psych stats class. It will not be staring at an Excel spreadsheet wondering where I messed up.
. . . . . entries for 10.4.09 . . . . .
Man, I'm tired, I'm starving, I'm frustrated. It looks like a nice day to jump off Fine Tower, at least relatively speaking.
I can't do this anymore.
Elaboration: I slept through my alarm, or rather, my alarm (cell phone) appears to have turned off - not just the alarm but the entire device - without my having any memory of turning it off. After staying up almost the entire night working and having something of a personal crisis, I miss my goddamn class.
FML.
Anyway, I can hand in my PSY homework a day late for only a minor penalty. ECO I am less sure about. Hopefully I'll hear from the Powers That Be on that soon.
I was personal-crisising partially just because of all the academic shit that's been going on this past few weeks, and partially because I was talking to someone about my writing, and I suppose the bottom line of that is, I don't care what you say, I'm not that talented or patient or committed, I don't know how to do something inspired that I can't put to use or make great, and I don't know that it's worth putting any more time into fiction writing for me. Contrary to the beliefs of many, I am nothing special when it comes to spinning a yarn. I don't want to disappoint them any more than I want to disappoint myself, but I just don't know if there's a way.
All I want to write is "On being asked, whence is the flower?" over and over and over again.
Who knew a 135-pound body could contain this much fail?
I might be too tired to finish this. I feel like your average Princeton student does not have nights and mornings like this.
. . . . . entries for 9.4.09 . . . . .
My presentation went reasonably well, but I slept through my stats class. Today was an epically poor day to sleep through stats, since I have a test on this stuff next week, and it's not in the textbook. We have review on Tuesday though, and lab tomorrow, so hopefully I'll absorb it adequately. Hopefully.
I am still tired and I do not feel that great. I have two problem sets and a "real outline" due tomorrow. I do not know how to get everything done on time.
I also have to decide whether or not to rescind the p/d/f option on micro. Don't know what I'll decide for that, either.
I enjoy "suggestive" as a word applied to writing. When people write "suggestive" on my papers, it implies that they see I was thinking, and that I was onto something, but not entirely there. Sometimes, though, suggestiveness is deliberate - it stops being indicative of something subconscious, and begins to be aware of itself, it begins to insinuate and raise its eyebrows.
This last essay in Goffman's Asylums is way the fuck beyond suggestive. It is beautifully, fascinatingly horrifying. And it is real, but great fiction could come of it.
Hm. . . fiction. Something for this weekend, maybe.
I wanted to ask "am I a complainer?" but since you read this blog, the honest answer is clearly yes. It'd be too unsubtle, to lacking in passive-aggressive verve to ask folks in real life, though, and it's from those people that I want the answer.
There is a complainer in my life, blogosphere. But then, we all have our little (inter, intra)personal fallings-out.
By Friday night I may be dead.
. . . . . entries for 8.4.09 . . . . .
We do have a way of ending up in the same place, don't we? Or don't you see it?
I want . . .
verbs:
. . . to go to Pizza Hut
. . . to shirk responsibilities
. . . to be happy with B+s
. . . to sleep
. . . to progress toward vegetarianism
. . . to visit beautiful places
. . . to be with the one that I love
nouns:
. . . assurance that I will be able to pull off my internship this summer, at least on a financial level
. . . a moderately sized, music-only iPod
. . . self-control
. . . a teleportation device
. . . a time-turner
. . . reasonably priced local/sustainable/free-range/organic food next year
. . . hard-and-fast belief in free will
adverbs:
. . . wearily
. . . lamely
. . . ironically
I feel awful. But I do not think I have what Kelsey has. I think I just don't sleep enough.
. . . . . entries for 7.4.09 . . . . .
I hate being a straight-B+ student. It's not even that I'm working my ass off for it, exactly - it's that I'm distracted all the time, I procrastinate too much, but when it comes down to the wire, I try to pour everything I have into my work. And I get a B+. All the damn time.
The distractions have to cease, somehow. But I need some way to get out the geist. Just not the old ways - they don't seem to do anything, really. I "don't know how to shut off."
Not that I have time, now, to mope about my mediocrity. I have a completely impossible amount of stuff to do for the rest of this week.
I remember - very very melodramatically - a line from a classmate's story in intro creative writing last semester, a story about her father, driving hours upon hours to an art show. Life utterly divided between his daughter and his art, he had nothing left for himself. He. Art. Heart.
It took another classmate spelling out the double meaning of the line for me to get it, actually - I only understood it the duller way on my own. The driver-artist was exhausted, needed to pull over and sleep, could not pull over and sleep. The story went, near the beginning, "his heart wanted to stop."
They make a dark purple Cadillac now.
Ohhh this is bad.
Someday, my favorite cars will cease to be terrible gas-guzzlers. Swoon.
I feel like April 7th should be a mischievous day, don't you?
Augh. Do not read this unless the day has blessed you with a particularly strong stomach.
We sure don't hear a lot about what happened "over there" "back then," do we?
. . . . . entries for 6.4.09 . . . . .
It is magnificently stormy outside - thunder and downpours in the middle of the 50-degree day - and quite a few Princetonians don't know how to deal. It's cute.
I direct you to Natalie's blog, on the sidebar. You will understand why when you go there.
. . . . . entries for 4.4.09 . . . . .
I lied - I went to the dance anyway. :P It was fun. Not the thrill of a lifetime, but fun. There are pictures on facebook, and more will appear over time.
. . . . . entries for 3.4.09 . . . . .
I am not going to the sophomore semiformal. My left leg is crampy, and I am sleepy - so sleepy I was nodding off during Mari's Folklorico show, despite the fact that it was totally awesome.
It is possible that I would like to be an anthropologist or sociologist. But I would not want to bugger around with Durkheim & co. Indeed, it seems as though I never can be bothered to bugger around with historical foundations of that nature; people keep showing me what's happening now, and I believe it, and that is where everything is going.
It's important to understand the brain, the mind, for everything. Pragmatic meta is what fascinates me about social-ecological stuff. And where else could we end up, as we climb Mt. Meta, but within our tangible-yet-intangible selves?
I suspect that, from here on in, the stress will not abate.
You would think I would learn.
. . . . . entries for 1.4.09 . . . . .
I wonder if there is a rule that applies to exceptions to rules, if there is something that India's democracy and Indianapolis's peace on April 4, 1968 have in common: all around them, chaos and violence, and by so many accounts there should have been (or should now be) a dictatorship, or race riots, or, you know, some conflagration comprised of the two.
But there was Gandhi, and there was Bobby. I think, sometimes, all it takes to stave off horror is the love and understanding of one extraordinary person.
Man, Kelsey and I have stark metaphysical differences over Watchmen. My life is silly.
come home?
.:people:.
{ting}
she looks like the real thing
{mari}
out and about
[kelsey]
THIS IS AMERICA
{yianni}
stop being depressed
{alisa}
other
[shannon]
close and far
{frank}
islands where no islands should go
[cassie]
eating knowledge
{colin}
my dm
[emily]
shoulder to the wheel
[brian]
nostalgic for fantasy
[nicole]
industry insider
{elle}
angry enviro
[matt]
never heard of miyazaki
[pirate dan]
are you reading this?
[olga]
distracted
[messiah dan]
messiah/believer
{max}
approach focus
[natalie]
wait a minute
[susan]
solitude
{greg}
manbeargreg
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.:skin:.
turtles! turtles! by araglas
(heavily modified by yours truly)