. . . . . entries for 28.1.11 . . . . .
Have I mentioned that I can't focus and want to punch something and/or scream, cry, etc.?
I am so frustrated, so frustrated, so frustrated. AAAAAAAGH
When o when o when will I have IRB approval, o when!? AAAAAAGGGHGHHGHGHGGLHRGlskfsa
. . . . . entries for 27.1.11 . . . . .
So hey, it's been a while. o.O
I'm boot camping with my thesis. It is going all right. There is so much snow outside it's comical; we would've had a snow day today had classes been going on.
Anyway, what I really came here to say is that I watched most of Death Note with Yianni and sometimes Ting a few days ago, and now whenever I find myself playing with my lip or feeling like my posture is especially curled and detrimental to my spine, I think of L and how adorable (adorkable?) he is and how much I miss him. The love of fiction dies hard.
I think I am going to attempt an Amazing Ninja Visit! to Rochester this weekend. That will require some Logistics and Planning, probably tonight, really. A challenge but I think a worthy one.
. . . . . entries for 20.1.11 . . . . .
And at the same time I'm so ashamed of being that carried away with a work of fiction. I'm supposed to be sober-minded and concerned with real things, I guess is the reason. But the book does such odd and tricksy things with "real" and in any case involves reality in itself so much that, well . . . I would rather stop feeling bad about loving it than forget about it.
Today is a housekeeping sort of day.
When I started to read about Emerson in Anathem, I started to cry, and I started to think "I will copy it all over into my blog" - like Bible verses, like prophet's words. There is too much to say about this book. But here is a short quote, a cute quote, because typing out huge passages would be too much:
"The rule of thumb we've been using is that Deolaters [the religious of Arbre] are welcome so long as they're not certain they're right. As soon as you're sure you're right, there's no point in your being here." -Fraa Erasmus, speaking of the _______ of Saunt Orolo, Day 0, Year 0 of the Second Reconstitution
- and earlier, on the train, returning after a day in the city thinking about becoming something that this book lacks (a psychologist-as-theor), I just wanted what - or rather, whom - the Arbrans have - or, as it were, what they might have had. I wanted the blessing of the conscious guardian, the human living in many possible worlds, delicately altering the course of the future through the power of mind and careful action. We should all have that in us, no matter what side of the wall we inhabit - whether we be cloistered or extramuros.
Saunts Orolo and Jad: some will say they are fictional. But I wonder every day what fiction is to a living mind, and if the facts of it could save real life. They found me at a time when I needed them, when I still need them, so much - when this whole world needs them so much.
"You must have this and hold to it or you'll die. By the time I awoke the next morning I could not recall whether this was something Orolo had said in so many words, or a resolution that had formed in my own mind. Anyway I woke up exhilarated and determined."
. . . . . entries for 19.1.11 . . . . .
It's Preemptive Columbia Visit Day. I feel woozy but I think that is not from Columbia, moreso from drinking two glasses of milk and eating three cookies last night and being a girl and never sleeping enough.
My logistics are all planned out, I'm bringing some articles to read on the train, I'm dressed in a somewhat respectable manner . . . so let's hope nothing goes terribly awry. *knock on wood* Kind of nice to be in that "don't mess up getting there" frame of mind; maybe I'll worry less about actually talking to my prospective advisor.
. . . . . entries for 18.1.11 . . . . .
There is freezing rain and normal rain poured over the snow, and it is the closest thing I will have to A Week Off probably until the end of spring semester. Proper Princeton winter, indeed.
We have an additional pod in the quad. I have an interview today and a, um, I-don't-know-what - a meeting with a prospective advisor, which I suppose is a lot like an interview - tomorrow. Life is weird and feels unlikely, or at least as though it will be more and more unlikely as these next few months roll onward.
. . . . . entries for 14.1.11 . . . . .
I made my Gaia avatar an avout. Never let it be said that I am difficult to please.
. . . . . entries for 13.1.11 . . . . .
Letter I wrote, as one does when procrastinating:
"Dear Mr. President and Secretary Vilsack,
I reached this page through a nonprofit organization's plea to contact you about your impending approval of a new GMO crop, but I have to tell you that their reasons for opposing this move are not my reasons, not exactly. I am writing to ask that you very carefully consider this decision not only for its political immediacy and direct impact on our current economy, but for its long-term political, economic, ecological, and moral ramifications.
Monsanto and other GMO-producing companies are holding small farmers hostage not only within our nation's borders, but throughout the world. At home, seeds spread to fields planted by farmers who did not buy them; when Monsanto's ferocious legal arm discovers the company's sequences in crops raised by those who did not pay for GMO seeds that year, they often attack key members of local farming communities and dissolve what remains of our country's once-thriving rural middle class. The legal issues surrounding GMOs are very complex, but to allow the great to systematically take advantage of the small is morally wrong, not just legally questionable.
The situation is even more dire abroad, where sellers of GMOs do not allow subsistence and cash crop farmers in the developing world to save seed from year to year, effectively binding them to corporate seed sellers with chains of debt and dependence year after year. Is this administration so callous as to ignore the hunger and exploitation of some of the poorest people in the world to the benefit of a few wealthy corporations?
My reasons for supporting "organic" crops - which are threatened by the spread of GMOs - are quite different from my reasons for opposing GMOs themselves. I put quotes around "organic" because I believe the USDA organic standard, along with other organic standards worldwide, is shortsighted in its categorical disallowance of GMOs. I believe that GMOs, like any other chemical or genetic substance, should be carefully regulated and allowed into our food supply on a case-by-case basis - including foods sold to environmentally conscious consumers. For example, in an age of growing populations in the world's poorest and least agriculture-friendly places, it seems irresponsible to disallow yield-enhancing sequences from the crops that, due to their hardiness in organic growing situations where pesticides, herbicides, and commercial fertilizers are against regulations, would be ideal for use by farmers who cannot afford these additional inputs year after year. But this is an "orphan sequence," like the potentially life-saving drugs for orphan diseases that pharmaceuticals happily ignore while chasing profits elsewhere. Indeed, the concept of allowing GMO seeds to be saved from year to year has been disowned by the United States government, the power that could feed much of the world if it had the courage of conviction to stand up to corporate interests.
We, the generation who brought you to your current office, believed in your courage of conviction when we elected you, when we made phone calls and canvassed neighborhoods and slapped on bumper stickers for you. Although we have been hardened by the realities of Washington along with you, we still believe that, sometimes, that courage of conviction must shine through above the petty politicking world in which you must maneuver. We believe that. We hope, fiercely, that you do too.
These are my reasons for writing to you. I hope you will consider this choice very carefully. I know that both President Obama and Secretary Vilsack are busy, harried men - especially Secretary Vilsack, who works both for a historically liberal administration and a traditionally rural, anti-environmentalist department. I witnessed him being so harried myself two summers ago in an agriculture committee hearing concerning the Waxman-Markey bill.
It's a tough town and these are tough times. We expect you to make tough decisions, and to make them well - even if, as you promised us on the campaign trail, they aren't terribly popular, either with your public or with your colleagues' corporate allies.
Good luck,
[me]"
You know, I don't think I ever make my friends apologize.
. . . . . entries for 11.1.11 . . . . .
Also, re. the DMing of the Almighty: definitely did some rug-pulling today. FMProcrastinationHabit and FMDamnableToo-LongNap.
Well, children, this has not been my Dean's Date. Fingers crossed and God save me.
I never do have the time when I need it. I burn it up when I don't, thinking inane things about candles melting to puddles inward to the center, although not in so many words.
If God is (a) real and (b) a DM it seems like he keeps fixing my opposed rolls in my favor, or I don't understand myself and what I do with time. Maybe he is eventually going to pull the rug out from under me utterly and/or force me to slay a red dragon. Because usually I say I fool everyone but myself; but gosh, I seem to fool even myself, lately.
The sky is gray, the snow is lavender. It must be crusted with ice. I wonder how the crackle would feel if I dropped myself in.
What I am like when overcaffeinated and slightly dehydrated, at a somewhat advanced stage: pink and hot in the face, cool in the hands (but not cold), no longer jittery, in pain if I try to chew anything particularly hard due to aching teeth, experiencing a strange sensation of my entire body being a light-colored bruise that hurts quite a bit if pressed on.
Earlier in this process I am far more jittery and my hands are very cold, and I do not hurt, although I am even more easily distracted/brought to despair. This is a reasonably good place to visit for this purpose but I look forward to getting the fuck out.
Also I should really stop making it so necessary to visit this place, but strangely enough, my time here seems to have made me worse, not better, at that sort of thing.
. . . . . entries for 10.1.11 . . . . .
It's Dean's Date Eve, and life seems busy. It often does, and when it doesn't by your ordinary metrics, all my mind is busily running away from banal things that will wear and tear and become busy again. The longer the delay until that, the longer I can shun that, the better.
At least this is not a bad busy. This is a busy under my control, mine to make or break.
My attitude toward the affection of others, except my immediate family and boyfriend, is usually one of surprise. (This is related, I promise, although some may not - may never - know how.) Even close friends - I am just baffled when people attend to me and like me. And usually I am okay with people not particularly attending to me and feeling ambivalent toward me, except when I am feeling stressfully or hormonally morose and fragile, because I do not find myself terribly remarkable or worthy of comment. I am normal to me.
That doesn't mean I don't like my friends: just that I feel fine without them, or fine enough. That is probably why, when a friend and I fall out of touch, I am unlikely to be the one to hunt that friend down online or on the phone and reestablish contact. I'm okay, and I am not so interesting-seeming to myself as to think that I'd be interesting enough to others to justify reminding them of me. "Oh hi! I understand you're living a different life from four years ago, and certainly a different life from mine, but I am terribly awesome and you oughtn't forget about me." That is how I feel about it. I would sense that I was imposing on someone who has grown up and away, were I to try to catch up in earnest now.
Oh, people are busy. They are fabulously interesting but so busy. And I get tired - physically, psychically tired, in need of sleep - easily, from busy things, and I feel too big to fit into anyone's schedule, sometimes including my own.
So what I mean to say is that I don't understand, not the way you must deserve to be understood. All the other people who I have tried to understand and love from a distance have not minded, or have seemed not to mind, that I generally stay in my corner until called - and by called I mean IMed, spontaneously, when I have tons of other stuff to do, and "the first shall be the last" so I would stay up all night for you if you needed me, even now, on Dean's Date Eve. I have done things about as, well, whatever-that-is in the past.
But to fit into a schedule - I guess I am busy running from busy and I forget. I am not civilized or courteous the way I ought to be toward my friends. Courtesy just never seemed a going concern with friends; it was for other people.
More for myself than for you now, I imagine, to explain to myself (and you if you would like an explanation, or reason, or excuse) why I am bad at being your friend. Also neurotic and anxious enough to be certain enough to write this, believing that you think I am bad at being your friend.
. . . . . entries for 9.1.11 . . . . .
I am going to start adopting terms from Orth into my everyday speech, okay? Okay.
Add-ons so far: fraa, upsight, bulshytt - upsight being especially relevant at the moment, as I would truly like to have one about how to intervene in the system that makes it very damn difficult for Black men to rise into and keep leadership positions on the national, interracial stage. It is looking terribly bad.
I need to think of it in a more Lewinian way, probably . . .
. . . . . entries for 8.1.11 . . . . .
Man, I just wanna read Anathem all the time.
. . . . . entries for 6.1.11 . . . . .
I got invited to interview at Columbia! Dance party!
. . . . . entries for 4.1.11 . . . . .
I need to meet some people who both weren't insanely privileged before coming to Princeton and ended up in Woody Woo. I'm skeptical. I've realized that when I look at WWS folk there is probably some "grrr you got in and I didn't" resentment there still but, moreover, there's some "my gosh you don't even need this your parents are rolling in it you're just perpetuating the status quo of the privileged being heard and everyone else falling off" resentment too. More, I think. It's the hundreds-of-dollars watches and suits, the looking so put together. I was not born to it; I do not know if it's in me.
But it's awfully low, isn't it? I can justify it with "rarrrrr you're The Man" all I like, but still - it's petty, its underlying motivators are petty. I wish that were not in me, but there it is anyway.
. . . . . entries for 3.1.11 . . . . .
Well, I'm back on campus to wrap up my penultimate semester. Yikes. Like serious yikes.
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)