. . . . . entries for 31.5.10 . . . . .
I am terrible with Memorial Day, and more terrible when, on Memorial Day, Israelis attack aid ships trying to break the blockade to Gaza. I can hardly articulate a thing but I can cry, and cry, and cry.
The barbecues and in-ground pools are not the freedoms they die for. And they do not all die on the battlefield - some have years, decades, to remember the things they saw and heard and did, sometimes in their dreams. Some wars make the entire country sick and sardonic and tired of caring, or twist their cares all wrong. If we could care as much for every death, and for the innocent people dead because of the directions given by unbloodied hands, whether or not those dead are American or young or beautiful - if we could care so much at every instant of our lives as we purport to care today, what then of these wars? And what then of Israel and Palestine? And what then of the barbecues and in-ground pools, and the wasted moments exerting endless effort just not thinking about the real world outside?
. . . . . entries for 30.5.10 . . . . .
My old notebooks - if you can believe it, blogreaders - are even funnier than this blog's archives. EVEN FUNNIER. It's truly remarkable.
. . . . . entries for 27.5.10 . . . . .
I wonder if "mine" is too strong a word, anyway. Mostly you're your own, and if not completely, then plenty of others - en masse, in the fold - could lay claim to you, too.
God help me be less attached to the idea of me, as though I had any gestalt. Help me feel in my heart (in my amygdala, even) what I know in my mind (or cortex, whichever corner it is), that I am only the sum of many columns of calculations, and that it means nothing - for better or for worse - if the net result changes due to a chemical tweak or a thousand. There is no soul to flee. There is no essence to betray. There is no homunculus locked up and weeping in anyone's skull when one self is overcome by another, fueled and made strong by an outside force. There is no outside or inside at all.
Except that I find myself needing to believe in that inside to bother preserving its fleshy shell, the billions of fleshy shells - and even then, as though I could. As though, by sheer force of imagined will, I could help anyone or anything at all - as though "helping" were more than the imagined will itself.
. . . . . entries for 23.5.10 . . . . .
I would like to stop remembering vivid and somewhat creepy dreams now, thank you, brain. It's been like two weeks. Finals are over. RELAX.
It is somewhat strange to be home for two weeks.
To do:
-laundry!
-figuring out why I can't log onto SCORE or the VPN :\
-high fantasy-readin'
-vitamin D-acquirin'
. . . I dunno, some other stuff doubtless. :P
. . . . . entries for 21.5.10 . . . . .
I am very worried.
. . . . . entries for 19.5.10 . . . . .
So: I'm done with junior year, though not a rising senior yet, for lack of a vacancy in the class "senior" at the moment. So far I passed both p/d/f classes and got an A- in a third class, others two still pending, best guesses A- and B.
Now I have an application to write, packing to do, and the ordinary terrible and weighty things to think about, internal and external, near and far. Many perplexed faces to make and hours to sulk. And also some cuddling to do, which is completely uninvolved in the perplexity and sulking.
I'm not feeling particularly prepared for this rising senior business. I am not sure I've done all this right. But I prefer not to worry about it, insofar as I can manage. Worrying has never gotten me anywhere.
it's too laaaaaate to pathologize
yeah it's too laaaaaaate
(and what good does it do, anyway - you will have to tell me what good does it do?)
. . . . . entries for 18.5.10 . . . . .
I have decided that the order Pilosa is amazing, and I want a silky anteater. I want one bad.
They curl up into balls to sleep because they look just like the fuzzy seed pods of a particular tree when they do, so nothing attacks them. Nature WANTED them to be ADORABLE.
This is their threat display:
NO JOKE, OKAY?
. . . . . entries for 17.5.10 . . . . .
- okay, so that said, this weekend was very lovely and I enjoyed basking in the intellectual and magnificent glow of my boy, both in the context of his intellectual magnificence's overt celebration and in snuggling and strolling and sipping lattes in our local silly indie coffee shop. I am rather fond of this boy. I know this comes as a shock to you.
Dear uterus,
Inconsiderate. Poor timing. No respect.
Signed,
your owner, who has a final on Wednesday
. . . . . entries for 14.5.10 . . . . .
It is nice to be home.
. . . . . entries for 13.5.10 . . . . .
So I - schemingly! - am going home today so that I can then go to Rochester this weekend for some serious gloating about my boy. Unfortunately I forgot until I checked my email that this would entail missing the last lab meeting of the semester. :(
. . . . . entries for 12.5.10 . . . . .
More Events in the Unconscious Life: two odd dreams, one involving hearing about some kind of weird roleplaying location (thread? house? I dunno) that had been used intergenerationally (as in, "my parents have such fond memories!" but not my parents, just someone's), walking around a vaguely suburban part of a city with my navi for a long time trying to find it, realizing I'd probably overshot it, then getting on the subway, which was THE SKETCHIEST subway in the history of subways - it legit flipped over at times, like a roller coaster, and gave me the severe impression I would fall into some kind of black abyss unless I scrambled like hell to cling to my seat. That kind of thing - or sharp banked turns, whatever - happened several times and it was pretty horrifying. Everyone assured me, when the ride was up, that it wouldn't have, that there was always something right beneath me, and by "everyone" I think I mean my parents and godfather and sister who, for whatever reason, were all on another train nearby when I got off of mine, I think maybe to rescue me because I'd been gone forever. My godfather ended up bodily dragging me along the ground, up a hill, after that, as we all walked to wherever we were walking, presumably because I was too messed up from the train ride to walk myself. And I think my sister was getting dragged too, which we realized belatedly might be problematic because she - what the hell - was pregnant.
OKAY SO THAT WAS ONE DREAM. The other one basically just involved some kind of weird after-normal-lecture section of neuroscience for people who were super into it, and I had never gone before but sort of accidentally stumbled in because it took place in the girls' bathroom for some reason - granted, it was a huge bathroom - and my prof assured me I could still join the section if I did an enormous final project. I think the section had involved being subjects in some kind of experiment and analyzing the data but I don't quite remember what the experiment was - it involved physical activity, I believe.
I'm supposed to be done with stress dreams. This blows. :P
. . . . . entries for 11.5.10 . . . . .
One more exam and I'll be a rising senior. Creepy.
I wish I knew how much of my grade this paper counts for.
. . . . . entries for 10.5.10 . . . . .
- that by way of saying, consider Some Item On There (certain ones, definitely, but I'm not telling) on my birthday list. :P
Also on the list:
-a Munchkin deck, or several
-new copies of Final Fantasy VIII and X
-D&D core rule books (DM's guide, player's handbook, and monster manual) for 3.0 or 3.5
-music!
-neat organic/sustainable/fair trade things!
-books you think it would truly behoove me to read - and I have read strikingly little
-Neat Things for the Suite Next Year (e.g., posters, organic dish towels, adorable throw pillows and/or stuffed animals, shiny things like suncatchers - and, in the "probably gonna get this stuff in September on my own" department, a spice rack that would not require major wall mutilation, a very large poster of Colonel Hans Landa, and a serious vacuum cleaner)
I feel unusually acquisitive this year. I wonder why.
Have I told you yet how irked I am that this website sells stuff in pounds, not dollars? :P Well I am irked. Because so much of it is so pretty.
Whoa, ego-trippy dreams. o.O With lots of strange bits of pseudo-realism like getting ludicrous JP comments, a barrage of text messages from Gaians who observed my prophetic guess at what a new avatar item would be (and my cell number isn't on Gaia), and some kind of weird honorarium involving over-detailed singing and riding a horse and things? The lattermost at a school which was neither of the schools that frequently appear in my dreams, and a teacher who reminds me, in retrospect, of Mischa but who was more phys ed-ish at the time.
It feels like my unconscious is trying to tell me CHILL OUT, I GOT THIS.
Cooldown after outline and intro writing. Nomming. Sleep, possibly. Then back, and a race to the finish!
This is neat.
. . . . . entries for 9.5.10 . . . . .
I think, over these past few days of blogging, I have somehow managed not to mention the massive oil spill/leak/fucking terrible thing in the Gulf. Well, it's happening. The stuff they're trying to stop it isn't working especially well. And it has borked the climate debate, or at least complicated it a lot, above and beyond the immigration stuff.
As I type and probably as you read, so much has died - and so much is still dying.
Do I have secret Princetonian blog readers? Just wondering. :P
Fun and funny fact about this Dean's Date runup: I am using my notes and memoranda from this summer at IUCN as SERIOUS SOURCES for my paper on the ideology and motivations of ag state moderates in the context of Waxman-Markey (and, one assumes, current climate legislation).
Now, to pin down the date of the conference call . . .
Oh lol. I was doing better four years ago.
| This Is My Life, Rated | |
| Life: |  6 |
| Mind: |  5.1 |
| Body: |  7.7 |
| Spirit: | 5.4 |
| Friends/Family: |  3 |
| Love: |  6.9 |
| Finance: |  4.2 |
| Take the Rate My Life Quiz | |
. . . . . entries for 8.5.10 . . . . .
Most recent weird dream: strange parlor chat and much stranger circumstances involving a certain high school friend who ended up getting profusely slapped, navigating weird hydropower international border with Yianni, and Halloween on DragCave. WTF.
. . . . . entries for 7.5.10 . . . . .
And sometimes I shock myself, in seeing myself again and remembering the moments of seeing strung on the cord before.
Thoughts to which I have burst into tears in the last hour or so:
"Then it all should be left to die."
"The Earth is enough."
and another, between them, I forget now. I was so afraid of forgetting, because I always do forget.
I want to make my life an enthusiastic pursuit of the pastoral and the georgic, of beauty and truth and also of justice and compassion. And I think being the eye, the seeing and thinking thing, the pastoral and beauty-and-truth kind of thing, is more intrinsic to me, but there is no getting around the other. And that has been true of all of us, generation upon generation, lit down in fiery trial after fiery trial in honor and dishonor alike. I want to know and to do, and to do right by all the life my eye can see.
Two eyes to see with, for inspiration: this one and this one. And twelve billion more eyes to nourish in their six billion faces, theirs in ours appearing. Nothing sees like a human sees. And maybe that is enough, if eyes were made for seeing.
Man . . . religion. Just ain't no civil way to talk about it, seems like.
It's reading period! I am therefore insane. I even feel more insane than usual, for reading period, because I am not nearly stressed out enough abut all I have to do. So I have imposed a couple of artificial deadlines today - fingers crossed for their effectiveness. If you see me online please tell me to GTFO.
That is actually unrelated to what I meant to write, but I still felt it needed pointing out.
What I meant to write was that, before falling asleep last night, for some reason some serious Frank Nostalgia hit me. I think when some people hear "almost four years" they think "oh Jesus that's practically married for kids that age, they must be terribly serious, all the spark gone, boring, boring" - and that it has been over such a distance must just make us seem insane. But there is a lot to having been together since our 17th birthdays (give or take a week, depending). It is not that we are terribly boring (although I guess, by many standards, we must be) or that there are saccharine "firsts" and awkward moments and common experiences to be remembered and recounted; it is not even the shooting stars.
Some of the things I remember bear writing in other places, because they're not only remembered, not only buried in a past to which we cling (pathetically, some must imagine), but recurring, spiraling, not quite the same each time our lives pass them but still recognizable. Last night, it was that familiar-strange realization of how audacious my shy boy is - how audacious he always has been, though in his coy quiet he often lets me forget. It was so many moments strung together.
I wonder if it becomes not a string of pearls but more a flowing and fluid thing when two are together all the time. I suspect that, soon, we'll begin to find out - and that, after almost four years, is truly strange and, if I may be so trite, exciting.
. . . . . entries for 5.5.10 . . . . .
My junior year classes are now totally over, and ended with creative writing. I confess I was getting a little tired of reading about disenchanted girls having sex with never-enchanted boys, and, you know, some of the other recurring themes of the class. So hey! Time for forced march! . . . which may not actually be much less repetitive, but whatever. :P
Well, I didn't get the Maine internship, so I basically have a blank slate sitting in front of me for the summer and very little time to "go back to the drawing board" on it. Hell.
. . . . . entries for 1.5.10 . . . . .
I found my necklace. (:
This is especially nice because earlier I was thinking of blogging: finding my necklace would matter more to me than this CWR business. Lo and behold!
Relatedly, maybe it's just because I've lost one opportunity that I'm thinking this way, but where I am academically - psych/enviro with my heavy dose of policy savvy - seems to be "where I belong," for lack of a less corny term. I work well, where I am. I'm not worried about my empirical thesis being less than adequate in any way.
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)