. . . . . entries for 30.4.10 . . . . .
I didn't get into the creative thesis program. I'm a bit sad and disappointed but not very surprised. The polite rejection letter had an interesting spin: they think I would be best served by writing a thesis in my home department. Well, doubtlessly. But I also would have liked to write one for you. :P My writing is not right for them. Until now I could say "it's not literary enough" with something like a flippant tone, brushing off "literary." But when I think about what one classmate of mine in particular has written, I realize that, yes, it is not literary enough - not what I write lately. It is not dramatic enough, the events not violent or strange enough. I've been skeptical of other writers with uneventful lives, but I suppose my life, too, must be terribly uneventful. There's too much my classmates write about that I could not write about.
But anyway. That particular window has closed.
During recent blog archive reading I noticed I'd occasionally bring up writing with a kind of surprise and idle wonder in my voice, like "hey, I really like this and am not all that bad at it." I've even written such things lately. But I suspect it'll always be something I return to with that idle wonder, something for late-at-nights, and maybe occasionally, amidst the occasional returns, I'll hope for it to be more than that. But unless I change myself drastically, it won't be.
I think reading all these Neil Gaiman stories involving the undead must've gotten to my unconscious. o.O
. . . . . entries for 29.4.10 . . . . .
I find it phenomenal that I seem to know more about the bill involved in this disaster than most of the people writing about it professionally. Pays to be at Princeton I guess.
That said, no one knows shit about what will happen re. the disaster itself. It looks like Obama has chosen the first way out mentioned in the article linked above: totally alienating Hispanic voters and potentially dooming his party. He had better have good reasons, not just excuses.
It's not that I'm having a melodramatic flipout - I'm not "dwelling" in the ordinary sense - but when I look in the mirror and see a vast empty stretch just below my collarbone, it gives me another jolt of the panic I felt two days ago when I woke up and realized I didn't know where the necklace was. It's almost physically painful.
The only place I can think to look with some hope of finding it, other than strange corners of the quad, is my creative writing classroom. I'm going back there today and I confess my hopes are not very high.
I also wish I'd written more for class today; I'm afraid JCO is going to grill me about why the story's so short (about 600 words) and why I didn't expand it more. The answer, weirdly, is that I want it to be readable, like a monologue. Actually, before now, I hadn't thought of explaining it that way. So that's not so bad after all.
And I am sort of hungry but more tired than hungry and there is a guy that works in the kitchen these days and it's super awkward with someone else always there, in a cooking space, doing something that is not cooking but that it nevertheless feels weird to interrupt. Blarg.
Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc.
. . . . . entries for 27.4.10 . . . . .
I think I am less deeply wounded by losing the necklace this time, which I think is a good thing - not because I'm not sad and anxious about it, because I still am and I really really hope I can find it, but because it speaks to my higher level of confidence in what the necklace symbolizes - more confidence in the signified apart from the signifier.
Jesus H. Christ where is my necklace?
Strange dreams of hijacking government ships in order to jam some kind of sensor network signal and getting caught, sort of. o.O
. . . . . entries for 26.4.10 . . . . .
Reading blog archives is crazy. CRAZY.
I was so whiny the summer after senior year. And I so rarely understood how lucky I was. But I still had some kind of vim or vigor or whatever - I wrote more musically, although honestly I wrote more musically still earlier on in high school.
The thing I'm afraid of is that I am not actually any less whiny, any more mature in important ways. But when I think about it, I believe I've gotten more tolerant, I believe I have a wider perspective. But whiny? Yes. I am certainly still a whiner sometimes.
And a procrastinator. Shit.
And no one reads this blog anymore!
. . . . . entries for 25.4.10 . . . . .
| You Scored as Slave Prince |
My Aliases |
 Your movie star name: Curried Anything Julian Your fashion designer name is Erin Munich Your socialite name is Erbear DC Your fly girl / guy name is E She Your detective name is Bat Niskayuna Your barfly name is Chocolate Not Beer Your soap opera name is Elizabeth Rosendale Your rock star name is 70% Dark Whale Your Star Wars name is Erimax Shefra Your punk rock band name is The Zonked Nunchucks |
Or: Why I hate congressional electoral politics.
. . . . . entries for 24.4.10 . . . . .
I doubt I will ever be a totally proper or comfortable American. I seem to have a constant case of "there but for the grace of God go I" - and now, here and not there, I step on the shoulders of those who are there and don't know how to get down or pull them up or stop walking on the plane into which I was born.
The point of the grace of God, one would imagine, would be happiness, a sensation of blessedness. And it's true I feel those things sometimes. But parts of me remember certain cohorts of my genes, in other, older bodies, doing violence to earn me grace. And I am not as afraid of acknowledging that violence, though it does violence to me to feel it, as most people seem to be. Are you as afraid as you seem to be?
But let me be concrete. When you say bringing the developing world into a play about climate change, or climate change negotiations, can only hurt the situation and reduce the impact of such a heavy and morally ambitious action, you repulse me. It's not because you're lying. It's because you're telling the truth - because people don't want to see that violence, including you. Because there is something in us worthy of that repulsion, that disgust, and that something does violence to other human beings every day - quietly, by omission, and (we must imagine) therefore permissibly.
I don't care whose fault it was. Or - no. I do care. I care because we who are the children of those who did violence so much more explicitly, brashly, horrifyingly are also those who grind away at the descendants of the violated, at their rights, their freedoms, and their survival. And for that, most of us feel nothing - or, worse, we feel justified, because it isn't our fault. Our ancestors earned what we have and that we will joyously recognize, but never who they took it from. And they took it. They stole it. Humans are so notoriously talented at theft, especially from creatures they imagine not to be people.
I don't want to live in the city. I don't want to go out for drinks. I don't want to buy new clothes. I don't want to eat steak. I don't want to drive a car. I don't want to want to learn anything I don't have to, but I think I need to sometimes, to avoid breaking.
I want to give it back.
. . . . . entries for 21.4.10 . . . . .
don't know if I'm gonna go to Maaaaiine
(mad at you)
(or not)
(sorry, inside joke)
Oh, it was such a beautiful gathering-storm moment as I walked back from class, and now all the beauty is intact but the storm waited until I got inside to come down - straight down, pouring, soaking April rain like we've been missing for weeks.
And lightning!
"Even if you feel forsaken," . . .
And thunder!
"The sky will open up."
1. Life is complicated.
2. I noticed my preceptor is left-handed today. Hm! Acuriousing.
3. I am a good writer. I can write. I like reading what I write, given a cool-off period. It is worth it to me to pursue writing.
Why do things gotta be so hard?
. . . . . entries for 20.4.10 . . . . .
It may turn out that my deepest academic enthusiasm will turn out to be without purpose, without the unending end I had imagined. And that I can live with, because there is always some new academic enthusiasm to be developed, or a different lobe of the current one to be expanded - and anyway, as with any do-gooder, it is my deepest wish that my calling should become obsolete or at least much less urgent.
But that other commitments of mine might have such different ends I do not know if I can live with. I at least can't live the same way.
. . . . . entries for 19.4.10 . . . . .
Well, childrens, I am officially enrolled in courses for my senior year. And not quite done with my junior paper. GRRRRARRHRGL
. . . . . entries for 18.4.10 . . . . .
Oh, lol, it's a little bit like my life.
So I currently have no dragons growing on my damnable dragon website, which means I don't have to visit there or walk them, which essentially means most of my Internet slackery is now more pointless than usual and therefore motivated purely by habit. I am trying to let habit not be enough to motivate it but it is weird, and has resulted in my lying around in bed reading for CWR and napping for much of the day after the departure of my parents. And a kinda weird dream involving a video game of some kind - more of an "I'm in the game!" experience - and a sort of greengrocer figure who may or may not recur in my dreams, I'm not sure, and who is kind of fascinating but perhaps totally sketchy.
ANYWAY
My big JP is due tomorrow. So the final bits and bytes will be underway soon.
And my parents have been here all weekend, for to see The Great Immensity and swap cars, and those things are done and they are safely ensconced back home.
. . . . . entries for 17.4.10 . . . . .
"Yellow Warrior is a conduit for cosmic communication, offering access to the universal web of consciousness. This is the web of the Mayan mystic spider that weaves intergalactic threads, the conduit of interconnected consciousness. Yellow Warrior is the spider in the web, the grid connection for divine communication. Receive these ripples of knowing from Yellow Warrior's web through the central axis in your spine, your staff. Accept this gift of knowing in grace, as you would receive the morning light by turning your face to the Sun. Grace is an unexpected touch, a blessing given in love, a natural gift from the universe. Use the power of love like an electrical current to serve the light. Open fully to feel and receive it!"
I sense I may have found a new and interesting preoccupation.
. . . . . entries for 15.4.10 . . . . .
It is not that conservatives are wrong all the time; it's just that they're likely to be wrong when the situation is complicated, with lots of unknowns. Unfortunately for conservatives, the real world is complicated, with lots of unknowns. So I guess actually they are wrong pretty much all of the time, at least when it's, you know, most important.
. . . . . entries for 14.4.10 . . . . .
On my summer to-do list, after reading Tolkien: learn how to use R.
I has a phone interview about a job in Maine thwacking invasive aquatic plants next week. This is good. This is progress!
Somewhat apprehensive about the whole thing, especially the logistics, but we'll see.
I could seriously use a massage, of my brain in addition to my shoulders and back.
. . . . . entries for 13.4.10 . . . . .
I think my political psych professor may have accidentally lied to me. Arg.
All right. Tonight it is go time. After I nom I am going to shove off to probably Lewis (Lord help me, and the patron saint of acoustics, whoever that is) and write this damn JP.
Incontrovertible fact: fandoms are weird and gross as often as not. o.O
(Seriously, guys? Squeenix gives you Balthier and Fran and you do WHAT?)
. . . . . entries for 12.4.10 . . . . .
. . . . . entries for 11.4.10 . . . . .
I trust you.
And all those are hot words, of course. I didn't give myself time to cool off. But while letting hot moods slip away, "sleeping on it," and so on are all recognized as common sense, virtuous things, I'm not so sure. I think you should understand how I feel in those places. I think it might help stop it from happening over and over and over.
And it is worth saying: I wish you would say something, and not leave me to figure you out the way I try to figure out so many other people. I wish you would not make of yourself a thing to predict. I wish you felt something other than tired at this time of night, because this is as bad as you coming home silent and exhausted and too late.
I wrote a poem about that once, would you believe it? But before you. And the poem is pretty terrible. But other people seem so much more likely to sleep, and less to dream, than me.
I am always trying to find reasons and I swear, I try so hard to find them, if I didn't think one was almost within reach I would stop. But they are never quite in hand. One of the things I can almost manage to believe is worth living for is beauty, and another is other people.
God damn it I wish I lived one of the lives I lived for, a beautiful life. But I am not and barely know how to begin and am not, in any case, the person for such a life. If only I were bigger. If only that.
. . . . . entries for 10.4.10 . . . . .
Oh. And I am getting the bureaucratic shit kicked out of me for telling the truth about the Caddy accident. I do not remember if I told you about the origin of all that, blog, but look, I didn't want a reason to believe that rigid laws and bureaucracy don't agree with me. I do not want to be pushed to the chaotic end of things. I do not want my faith-in-humanity gauge to go ticking downward.
- and I should mention: meeting fail, car problems with a different car, and new yet usual doubts. And a JP draft due next week, of course, and plenty to do between now and then, and it never does get easier.
Sometimes I think I'd be best off without all these real people to worry about, living in fictions and alone and possibly without many of the things usually considered modern and convenient. But I don't know. It is probably just a mood.
Man . . . the whole Avatar: The Last Airbender crew would grow up with such intense psychological issues after all that shit. And the relationships would NOT work out in pretty kissy sunset scenes. Maybe Katara and Aang would be together for a while, but Katara would get bored, or realize she didn't feel for Aang what she always thought relationships were supposed to be about, and leave him, and Aang would inevitably end up sulky and deep and single.
If only Katara weren't such a mothering type - if only they'd actually gotten her right for the relationship in the series.
(okay so this is clearly not what I need to be thinking about right now)
. . . . . entries for 8.4.10 . . . . .
So I met David Kelley a week ago in creative writing class. Prof. Oates tells us that he was impressed with the work and discussion he heard (including a wee smidgen of mine). It was neat/weird - I didn't really know who he was at the time. My college master is very jealous though. I'm not actually sure if I told him the context in which I met him, but it'd be weird by now, wouldn't it? :P
. . . . . entries for 7.4.10 . . . . .
I love the sound of typing, when I am not typing and not trying terribly hard to focus. Hell, even when it IS me typing - not all that bad.
. . . . . entries for 6.4.10 . . . . .
People often say of my protagonists that they're very self-conscious. Sometimes I want to say, aren't you all just as self-conscious? Is it so remarkable, really?
In the immortal words of a not-yet-loquacious youngster: uh oh, Geico.
Seriously. I do not know how I will deal with bureaucratic mishaps when my parents decide I am grown up enough not to need them jumping to my rescue. No one is ever grown up enough for that.
Oh man, guys, what if I want to do a PhD at NYU? But I don't WANT to go to grad school in the city. GAAAAH
^^ resulting from reading the linked article - assigned reading for my political psych class, coauthored by my professor, and identical on several dimensions to the kind of thing I want to do with my independent work - and from hearing my advisor say that reading my JP draft made him think I should go to grad school for this stuff. AAAAAAAH
On the flip side, one of the coauthors is from Reed. Um?
What I'm saying is, I need to make a new grad school spreadsheet, this one not for enviro masters programs (the only one I currently have) but for conservation psych PhD programs. GRAAAAAAAAAH
. . . . . entries for 3.4.10 . . . . .
Yesterday: good advisor meeting, good random chat with Pacala, minor sunburn at Woody Woo, good experiments.
Today: more good experiments, awesome Easter basket, good lounging, delicious quesadillas.
I am missing some snuggles and some more honest free time, but whatever. I love spring.
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
.:past:.
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.:skin:.
turtles! turtles! by araglas
(heavily modified by yours truly)