. . . . . entries for 30.8.10 . . . . .
How exactly does one prime oneself to swing into the new school year with nothing but POSITIVE ATTITUDE! ?
. . . . . entries for 29.8.10 . . . . .
I am home and in that unenviable position of needing to sort out a number of important things before returning to school, or upon returning and before class, or whatever. Today my parents and a parent of my boy are up in the mountains, frolicking as one should in the mountains, and I opted to stay home to work on sorting out this number of important things.
And this week in the world: a Russian scientist claiming that wildfires in his country, floods in Pakistan, and earthquakes in Haiti happen because of American military weather-controlling devices; Glenn Beck holds a massive religious revival rally on the anniversary of Dr. King's speech outside the Lincoln Memorial; the American body politic winds up for election season; and autumn sets in in the Northern hemisphere, not officially, but in the touch of the air and fading of the leaves.
I wish I were of a disposition to just go about what needs going about.
. . . . . entries for 26.8.10 . . . . .
I wish I had better quality footage, and video editing experience, and stuff against a blue screen, and hrgl.
. . . . . entries for 24.8.10 . . . . .
A lot of radio silence from the internship people, I don't think for want of my trying. Hrgl.
. . . . . entries for 23.8.10 . . . . .
PEI asked me some questions about Gus Speth's book, The Bridge at the Edge of the World. Here they are, with my answers.
"In the introduction of Speth’s book, he presents a series of graphs illustrating humanity’s impact on the Earth over the past 250 years (what he calls The Great Collision). What reactions did you have to these graphs showing the timescale and amplitude of environmental degradation? In your view, is there a point when it becomes too late to reverse damage to the environment?"
The graphs alone didn't phase me much - I'd seen them before. But Speth's tone throughout the introduction and first chapter left me with a sense of enormous dread, depression, and hopelessness. It was incredibly difficult to read, because environmental issues are not an idle curiosity or academic interest for me - they are the single most important complex of problems facing the human race, and anyone who realizes it has a moral obligation to assess and follow through on how best they can help solve them. I was frankly amazed and appalled that he chose to lay this heavy psychological burden on his readers right off the bat, without any glimmer of hope to sustain them. I do not think it was an effective choice on his part; if I had not felt obligated to read through I would have dropped the book and never returned to it. Perhaps more to the point: I was much more hopeful about my generation's ability to mitigate and possibly reverse climate change and other environmental problems before I read the introduction and first chapter. And in light of this summer's events in Pakistan, Moscow, and Greenland, who are we to say that the point of no return has not come and gone long since?
"Referring to Speth’s book, what are some of the impacts of global climate change that are likely to affect us locally? Have you had an experience in which you’ve witnessed the effects of global climate change? Which effects do you foresee being the largest threat in the next 10 years? 50 years? 100 years?"
You're trying to get me to be afraid of climate change - I know because how to get people to be afraid of climate change is what I study. Well, I'm already afraid. So don't worry about it. Personally, I'm concerned that you ask if I've "witnessed the effects of global climate change," since the effects at our latitude mix so thoroughly with weather or shorter-span climate phenomena that it's impossible to say "global warming did that!" - and if you do, you're as bad as those who say "global warming doesn't exist!" with the first blizzard of winter. But I'm guessing our rain patterns will change - maybe more, maybe less, maybe just more concentrated in large downpours and therefore more likely to result in flooding and crop damage. The local flora and fauna will change too. We may eventually get malaria in Princeton if heat and humidity turn out to be where the trend pushes us. But the effects on me, personally, in the short term, are those of seeing events that might be connected to climate change - the fires in Russia, the floods in Pakistan, etc. - and, further, the utter disaster of the human response (or lack of response) to such events, and teetering on the brink of despair for our species and everyone in it. For me, something doesn't need to be local or imminent to be dire and horrifying. I'm weird like that, I guess. A lot of enviros must be.
"What in this reading relates to the work you are doing for your internship this summer?"
Most prominently? The emphasis on reaching young people, although I think OurEarth does this better than Speth, because Speth vehemently pushes away the young, hopeful, and doe-eyed before he tries to draw them close and teach them, whereas OurEarth says "here everything is, for you to find - now use it as you will, to act on the knowledge and fears and hopes you already possess. I trust you. I am not trying to scare you. I am trying to lift you from your despair to a point of action and courage." Honestly, stuff like Speth's book, that piles on the horror before showing even the tiniest glimmer of hope, is both the reason we need outlets like OurEarth and why it may be too late for them - because so many people think it's too late to do anything about climate change, if they allow themselves to believe or acknowledge that it's happening at all.
"In his book, Speth acknowledges that the changes necessary to secure a sustainable future may be overwhelming, considering the current period of economic uncertainty. Yet, he remains hopeful that humans, particularly young people, will carry forward their motivation to bring about this transformation. In your view, how can we become effective agents of change both individually and socially?"
Demand more of everything - demand better than what Speth depicts. Demand more responsible political action, better commercial products of all kinds, more conscientious consumption on the parts of your friends and loved ones. And don't look for solace in material things: look for solace in other people, emotional experiences, beautiful places that may soon be gone forever. These are the things we can never manufacture, and that we should have been valuing all along. I don't quite know how to manufacture the social movement to make the change Speth wants happen, though, other than to be a cog in its frame once it forms. Maybe a sociology or anthropology major would know that.
I have been with my Frank, not doing, strictly speaking, as much as I had planned to do, but still doing plenty of fairly productive stuff. Like making ready for video editing! And researching grad schools! And studying for GREs! And being relatively sane!
. . . . . entries for 17.8.10 . . . . .
I think because of blog archive trolling the other day I REALLY REALLY REALLY want to play Dark Cloud. O.O
. . . . . entries for 16.8.10 . . . . .
I could just do everything on google docs. You know?
In related news, my school has its own data recovery place. Weird. Well, I'll try it, I guess? Maybe?
People are writing grad school advisor letters! Personal statements! How can I catch up to make a respectable effort this late? Hrgl.
ps. today (by now yesterday) was a Big Day which, like the kids, was All Right.
pps. my mother tells me that in 4-7 years, when I'd be getting a Ph.D. if I went for one now, the world will have changed a lot and conservapsychs will be in high demand because people will want to retroactively solve the problems that have just recently become visible. So I guess if I did it maybe I'd have a job, a livelihood, all that jazz.
But, risking soppiness - would I have hope? I am sure I don't understand money and how much I need it very well, but I understand so well that I need hope. Without it there is no next footfall, just the fall.
. . . . . entries for 15.8.10 . . . . .
When I get back to school please yell at me to go to career services. Thanks.
Arrogance: when you are feeling it, even in pinches, take raised-nose note and ridicule it in others. When you need those others, feed it in them. Sometimes both will happen at the same time. It's terribly awkward but STILL not as awkward as The Kids Are All Right, holy crap, dude, seriously.
. . . like maybe I should be thinking about getting some kind of Real Job and doing something like this in addition to it. For getting my head on straight. I dunno.
Researching grad schools is hard. :P I don't know if I want a Ph.D. badly enough to go through this straight out of undergrad.
. . . . . entries for 13.8.10 . . . . .
There's a poem we read, or someone read, in 8th grade English class, that made its way to all of us somehow. I can't find it online, but one line from it is knocking around in my head, in a not especially surprising or unfamiliar way. It's just it didn't, for all those weeks. And it doesn't when I'm not here, most times.
I'm tired now, like dead already.
I didn't white rabbit anyone this month. Coincidence, probably, but still irritating and there.
There is just no way I can afford to dwell on my immediate surroundings, what is immediately wrong, because I must immediately address things that do not seem very immediate at all.
But here is a note on my day, sort of: I don't know whether I'll have a car this fall. It's more or less up to me whether or not I will, but so far I don't know what my choice will be. I like the car, and it's convenient to have one's own wheels, but very little else recommends it.
In my dreams last night: the cat papacy, and dream-me's machinations to unseat a foul-faced little creampuff Persian, and my utter horror to find that he had slain my favorite feline cardinal in combat. Also some people doing some elemental blasting of unknown varieties, and intrigue regarding why a respected man would write enormous checks from Harvard to a hoodlum of some kind - against a tuition that did not exist? Also some vaguely creepy implicitly racist things. Sigh.
. . . . . entries for 12.8.10 . . . . .
There is so much to do before I even get back to school. Finishing internship stuff. Studying for the GRE. Preparing for my PEI presentation. Trying to figure out what the hell I'm doing after I graduate, even in the loosest of all possible senses.
Here are Things I Am Thinking About Doing, Levels of Plausibility and Interest Many and Various but in Approximate Descending Order:
-spending a year or two in the marketing field, THEN pursuing a Ph.D. in conservation psychology
-getting a post-graduate fellowship of some kind - maybe Princeton-related, maybe at an enviro nonprofit, and either way perhaps abroad somewhere (Kenya? Britain? Germany?)
-editing, either popular-scientific or creative stuff - though I have little especially resume-able experience
-pursuing a Ph.D. in conservation psychology
-getting either an M.S. in environmental science or an M.A. in . . . something (English? psychology? "social studies education" broadly construed seems like a bad idea), either concurrent with or in preparation for trying on high school teaching
-writing a bestselling vaguely allegorical/witty fantasy novel
-spending a year or two in the marketing field, pursuing a degree in marketing/business, then starting up an eco-driven marketing operation
-becoming an Irish folk singer
har har.
I used to count an environmental masters degree among my options, but I don't anymore. It seems silly to do when I could learn as much on the job, getting paid rather than going into debt, living in a realer world than the ivory tower.
. . . . . entries for 10.8.10 . . . . .
All right, I think I am done moping. I think I am just very tired.
I hardly ever realize that I'm hurt or offended anymore unless someone reminds me I should be.
What I had thought to be a kind of pilgrimage, a very solemn and important event, felt like an errand. I wish it were as easy as I am used to, from these past summer weeks, to connect with just one person and to understand, and be understood. But the subtext escapes notice, and the miles and the waiting (with or without others), until people become items on a to-do list. Things to check off.
But there's no helping that now. I am all checked off. I am away, a long way, and for a long time.
I'm sorry. I don't mean to just be more stupid Internet drama. But I am so tired and so sad.
. . . . . entries for 6.8.10 . . . . .
Maybe it's that I value a kind of grim succinctness. Like a sense of rejection, or paranoia, accompanied by overfamiliarity, overthinking - there is so much flying around in my brain at such a thought but, whether about the severest and most horrible subject or the tiniest trifle, I will land at
"I do not think I am what you want."
Gah, I never write beautifully here. I don't know that writing beautifully was ever exactly a priority of mine on the blog in any case, and something in Washington Irving convinced me that "beauty" in writing is a fairly ridiculous notion. The ways in which I write have become so constrained to what is needful (to the place in the story; the event in the life; the points of the paper; the tasks of the team) that whatever natural writing-urges I had are probably fairly dead, by now.
I had some thoughts about my forced march writing, before it was consigned to pseudo-oblivion. Parts are still on the google group. I'll get those and make a better beginning: less drama, more that obligatory time-in-the-Shire when you learn to love the oddnesses of the world and its people. Drama is cool and all, but fantasy is hard-pressed to start with it and carry it, in both arms, for miles before rest.
There are a lot of novelists. Do you even realize how many novelists there are? It's somewhat ridiculous. I don't quite know why anyone (including myself) would bother writing to catch someone else's attention, some anonymous buyer of novels - I only write because the latticework of the world is built inside me already, and in case I suffer a hard drive failure, I want a backup.
. . . . . entries for 5.8.10 . . . . .
Realizing that some of one's acquaintances are sort of insufferably arrogant and only talk to you to assert their superiority over you: creepy and disheartening. I wonder if I'm that way to anyone. I hope not.
Legions of hellfire. I lost at least an entire year's worth of school files in my hard drive crash. I really really hope I'll be able to recover them for a non-insane price.
. . . . . entries for 3.8.10 . . . . .
My hard drive died.
. . .
. . .
D:
. . . . . entries for 2.8.10 . . . . .
I am back from eight weeks in Baltimore with my castle/cabin/instant pleasure dome, and I must wrote something longer and coherent and blog-respectable about it, but it is somewhat late and I am supposed to be working in a bit over eight hours so . . . not now.
But it was a good eight weeks. I think, all in all, my internship will not have been the most important thing I did this summer.
Now for a month I am left to (a) stress about my thesis/lab stuff (b) stress about grad school (c) lack my home in my house, and these are not great things, but these are my way of life for a while. And for a long time I have been used to things similar - just not anymore. It was a good eight weeks. There will be more of them.
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)