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Saturday, July 11th, 2009
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http://crescentdragonwagon.typepad.com/
I don't know why. I can't explain how--suddenly I am overwhelmed by a burning, uncontrollable hatred for Crescent Dragonwagon.
She was, at first, a joke to us. Just a joke. Not even sure she existed. When we read her name on the spine of a cookbook in the food co-op at school, we chuckled.
It was never a BIG DEAL.
Then Brian decided to look her up (dragonwagon.com) For some reason, when I looked at that page, out of nowhere I got this horrible angry feeling in the pit of my stomach...
...CRESCENT DRAGONWAGON
AHHHHHHHH
Maybe it's the way she writes. The awful dead look in her eyes in every picture. Maybe generational (Judging her because I'm a judgmental kid)... or political (her blog as far as i'm concerned radiates this infuriating look-at-me-i'm-a-liberal-who's-still-really-ignorant-and-proud kind of identity...thing...) Or her hair or earrings... the color schemes... the pictures... stupid things she's been into... books' titles... the fact that she holds workshops called "Fearless Writing," or is located in Vermont, or... I don't know... EVERYTHING ABOUT HER
I know. it shouldn't be a big deal... but for whatever reason...
I FEEL LIKE SHE'S MY NEMESIS...
I almost want to apologize to her for hating her so much. Then again I feel like if we ever had any kind of contact I would feel like a crazy stalker or hate-mailer or something. Feels weird to DESPISE a stranger so much. For me. These days. Especially a defenseless old fool.
AGHTHGHGDFGFGH Crescent. CRESCENT DRAGONWAGON. Eagfhdfhfghj.
Everything I would kill myself if I was?
Brian interjects something like, "She's not so bad. At least she tries to make conscious decisions in her life, like choosing a name... maybe it's better for people to make thoughtful decisions and stick to them, even if you & I don't like the decisions, rather than being thoughtless and apathetic about stuff like your name..."
I still feel like I don't care how thoughtful someone is, if I hate their conclusions. Am I stalin?
In high school I think I used to be charitable (fairly) in how I thought about people, even people who were assholes. Now I write everybody off and even get angry if someone is Crescent Dragonwagon.
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i hate the internet. i keep having dreams about the internet. nightmares because i hate the internet!
soon moving out of the greatest place. well, i think it's the greatest. the best house. i like this house a lot, but i'm moving out. maybe other people don't like it so much..
i've watched so many stupid movies in the past few weeks... i hate watching bad movies or movies i don't want to watch. it's like pouring hot sauce in yr eyes.
i want a blank page. but all my pages and projects and pens have baggage. i want to go out and look around. it's chilly today, and fewer and fewer people are home. even our colorful room is gloomy. i slept so well last night, but was alarmed when i woke up by how colorful everything was. bright red curtains..
i need to get going. with something. we might go to the diner later... yesterday i went to the dollar store, SIR + PLUS. "SIR" is wearing a crown on the awning.
so many terrible things have happened this year. makes my jaw just drop. even our last house show was... weird...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arSLDTWpRDg cheesy but endearing video of housemates & friends' bands performing last week at my school. made by someone's friend for a film class project? anyway, our lovely house & people & dog.
i hate livejournal. maybe i'll get rid of it, over the summer.
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Saturday, December 20th, 2008
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Tuesday, December 16th, 2008
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i just called kelly l. because me and brian wanted to hang out with her and her bunny bun-bun and ask questions about taking care of bunnies, since we really like them and wanted to get one.
but bun-bun died this morning suddenly. :(
very sad. poor bun-bun and kelly...
really sad...
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Friday, December 12th, 2008
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at least I have an octopus! an octopus! an octopus!
at least I have an octopus, so everything's ok!
i may not have an ice cream cone, an ice cream cone, an ice cream cone
i may not have an ice cream cone to bring with me today
but at least I have an octopus! an octopus! an octopus!
at least I have an octopus, so everything's ok!
i may not have a bicycle, a bicycle, a bicycle
i may not have a bicycle to send me on my way
but at least I have an octopus! an octopus! an octopus!
at least I have an octopus, so everything's ok!
i may not have a buffalo, a buffalo, a buffalo
i may not have a buffalo to help me out all day
but at least I have an octopus! an octopus! an octopus!
at least I have an octopus, so everything's ok!
at least I have an octopus, so everything's ok!
~~~
about a month ago, I was singing that song IN MY DREAM and woke up and REMEMBERED IT.
it was exciting. yep.
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Thursday, November 27th, 2008
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thxgiving with the russian, ukranian clan, the korenfelds and sukhonoses. huge huoji. music, video-interviews, quick joke translations, food, food, food. wish mother was there. warm, wonderful household--beautiful little leo and roma. great conversation to have, to listen to--all such interesting people. wish my mother was there.
judith and hastings tomorrow i think, then kaff/norax saturday for tea? new york. love home, just that it's weird now.
cats.
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Saturday, November 1st, 2008
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got my absentee ballot in the mail the other day. realized i don't know who i'm going to vote for.
mckinney or obama?
i haven't been following election stuff at all. i get too depressed, so i didn't watch the debates, didn't look anything up, really just tried to insulate myself against everything for more than a year.
my family is mostly pretty into obama. my mom definitely was. i think i wrote about this already--you can't blame people, i mean, i culturally would like to think there's a point in voting. that if you just make sure your team wins, something will be better.
that's not how i feel about it... i already made the decision to vote, though, for a lot of reasons... but now the fact that i haven't researched it at all and don't know what i'm doing. my vote doesn't make a difference in the election, but it makes a difference to me what i end up doing.... should figure it out...
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Friday, October 10th, 2008
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rest in peace, mom.
November 5, 1949 - October 3, 2008
i love you.
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Thursday, September 4th, 2008
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i'm taking this memoir class, and the teacher is a sweet lady. it's not her fault if she seems sort of like... uhh... 85 cent instant coffee, after the foamy cappuccino that was my english class last semester. she stuck me at first as a little shallow, a little insecure. really wants us to like her. and i don't know if she knows her stuff that much. but whatever, the class would be good for me. more practice always is, right?
hmm well today we were talking about the vietnam war. i try to ignore the babbling of most of my classmates in most of my classes... it's not their fault i'm easily irritated, not their fault i've turned into a judgemental butt over the summer. but yeah hearing all the pseudo-deep observations she and the class had about things like the my lai massacre got me really upset. hearing her talk about death made me really, really upset. again, nobody can help it if the things they say are things that are like outrageous and horrifying to MY mind... they should live, think, speak like they want to... it just sucked sitting there listening to that.
then we were talking about the extra credit assignment--write down a war story in our family. I did mine really carefully, because it's a delicate thing. Telling it wrong would feel really seriously disrespectful. I did the best I could. I don't feel as though I shouldn't tell it, I just needed to be careful. I think I did it right. Anyway, in class people were telling about theirs... and then I told mine.. I felt like she looked disgusted when I finished. That REALLY upsets me.
i don't know. i always feel this way, as though i become cut off from people. as though I become that girl, because the reactions I have to things aren't the same as they're supposed to be. things that are supposed to be casual become really big deals. she had the same look at another girl, when she said something serious, as though she'd brought something into the room that wasn't meant to enter YET.
i just feel like... down. about this. i always get upset...
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Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008
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I thought the "Mr. November" T-Shirts were taking it way, way too far. Then Brian sent me this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcRA2AZsR2Q
(NOOOOOOOOOO!)
Regular sappy, emotion-tearing-at political ad, or HEARTBREAKINGLY CYNICAL take on the election?
Or just an awful mistake?
"We're half awake in our fake empire..."
Well, The National themselves are apparently kind of into Obama's campaign, so maybe they thought the song was appropriate. So maybe only I would read it the way I did. After all, I'm getting to be cynical. Talking to a lot of older people these days (my parents, for example) who are letting themselves hope that if Obama is elected, maybe in another four years we might perhaps be considerably less collectively fucked than we are right now. And maybe they're right. Anyway, I still think people who have had to be that cynical for that long deserve, in my opinion, to let themselves hope as much as they want.
Don't think I can let myself think like that, though. No matter how good he looks now (and don't get me wrong, I'll most likely vote for him, worst case scenario I won't vote at all if he does something really dumb) i just can't really believe it. Sort of feel like we're fundamentally flawed, and having a president who's only like 34% douchebag rather than 100% won't significantly change our general misery... I care a LOT, I really do, I get really upset thinking about it, but I just can't feel comfortable believing a solution could be that simple.
At any rate. Fake empire? One of the most (if not the most) scathing songs on the album? Even if The National thought it was appropriate... WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? I mean it does sound really nice if you don't know the words.... but if you know the words!!! Ahh!!
Or is it appropriate anyway, and it's just MY cynicism that makes me read it like I do? Thoughts?
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Thursday, August 7th, 2008
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shaved ice is so nice. :)
i'm going to experiment. i have some things i'm almost sure will work, but the things i'm really excited to try are coffee/tea shaved ices. >>; i've never had anything like that but it's sort of the dessert food I always fantasize about. (omg i just thought of something--maple syrup! hmm... with walnuts, or almonds...)
yes.
hrm so summer is ending. :) it's been amazing. think it will continue to be.
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i'm having such a perfect summer. i haven't had one quite like this since i can remember. it's awesome.
i've been at home for two months, doing odd jobs, babysitting for people, going to free thingers, making sorbets and cobblers, seeing friends and hanging out with Brian. I feel so lucky to be able to live like this. I know no one can forever and some people never get to. But though I do get angry sometimes and do have reasons to be still i guess this time at home is making me back into a person. i felt like i lost my brains for the last howevermany years and now i'm slowly getting them back, a few ounces every day.
sometimes i just get worked up thinking about what a fool i've made of myself, so many times, so often, for my whole life. it's sort of comical actually from the state i'm in now to look at it but sometimes it's hard to live with. there are so many people whom i've made hate me. there are so many people who don't hate me, but just think people like me are disgusting. i don't have any control at all over how i present myself so i bungle it all the time. or maybe people like me really are disgusting. who knows.. but i sound too serious anyway.
not having had many real goals for this summer takes the pressure off, and it's made me happy. i'm able to just react to circumstances. to be careless. my writing right now is careless and i love it. there's so much around me i've been able to see, stuff i've been able to notice, like the weather and my neighborhood and my cats and the way i feel about my life, which i usually don't even register. i feel really lucky to have this time. :P
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| Time: | 11:32 pm. |
| Mood: |  furious. |
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sitting here in a see-through, ripped t-shirt minding my own business playing my stupid brainless computer game. fazzer comes in, somewhat inebriated, followed by a glasses-wearing ex-hippie like himself whom i can't see clearly without my own glasses. fazzer introduces him three times as "an old friend", but I know he's george, muzzer's ex-boyfriend before fazzer and the link through which muzzer met fazzer and hence created me. i try to smile and be friendly as i put on my own glasses and shake his hand simultaneously. fazzer introduces him yet again and he wishes me luck in school. stranger takes a gander at my stupid-looking anime-covered room and makes a (wowed? surprised?) face. i feel kind of violated. the two exit, fazzer to walk george to his car.
i've been thinking a lot lately about the way i present myself. (it can't be avoided, can it? not a day goes by without someone telling me I look, act, dress, etc. like an old woman.) i've always been evasive with clothing and accessories. by evasive i mean intentionally trying to evade presenting myself in one way while accidentally presenting myself in another, and all the while pretending i'm not (or am) thinking about it.
i don't want to be a limousine liberal pretentious airheaded materialistic white brooklyn girl with stereotypical ex-hippie parents. i avoid that one like the plague. i run from that look at all costs. i don't know if I even AM that, but I know it's the one catergory I probably fall into most quickly, and I run from it because although I don't mind people like that it strikes me as kind of gross and I definitely don't want to BE it. the skinny jeans and bangs are bad enough, but i try to soften it with my bags covered with cute-things or my somewhat grungy and unflattering jackets. really everything that could be coherent visually I avoid because I feel like I'm being turned into something. as a result, i'm sort of a mess. (TGS: wearing unflattering clooooothing?)
in high school i was always at risk of dressing like a prep school kid. well, i was a prep school kid, but I didn't want the world to know that--it felt so invasive, having people see the skirt and see me afterwards. or see the polo shirt. but it was almost liberating sometimes too because it felt like a costume: i was parading around in the garb of a character, in someone else's clothes, someone who I was obviously not in real life.
even if i wanted to, i can't now pass for a seriously classy person; even if I had the articles of preppy clothing, i wouldn't have the sensibility to put them together. i can't pass for working class either. with my jean jackets and piyo piyo bags, i think on the subway most people think I'm some kind of 30-year-old new york cliche businesswoman or 15-year-old nerd from the suburbs just visiting the city. I don't know how not to be these things; the whole phenomenon of dressing to reflect a character is SO weird to me. I've been told that in addition to dressing like an elderly person i also "hint" at being a lesbian. (how can you hint with your pants?) the whole thing is infuriating--i have to tell the world who i am with my clothing--and it's all such a waste of time... but I get crazy and paranoid, as just now, when i feel like i'm being judged or "read"...
i've always been evasive about this. i said it before. i intentionally evade what I think people are likely to think about me. it's a really dumb way to live, but there you go. when I was little (and still now actually) i avoided reading "serious" books even if I was capable of understanding them and would probably enjoy them; i stuck to my brands of colorful trash long after it was normal to be reading those kinds of books. my music, up until I found music which was art that I could enjoy, was intentionally eclectic and incoherent as a pool of things. my walls are covered with posters of terrible anime, some of which i don't even like very much, but I've always felt this need to surround myself in shallowness, cheerfulness and color rather than with reflections of the things I actually do consider "deep" and important. (it's weird because people also tell me i'm way too serious all the time. but when those people see my room I feel like I become a kind of joke.) I collect all kinds of random, useless things and can't throw anything away as long as I imagine it has some kind of significance; i've just recently been able to get rid of the dead flowers. and of course, i start to panic if I feel like the way i'm dressed says something (anything) about me as a person. i get really anxious if people can tell at a glance!!
even if they're different from mine, i've always really enjoyed looking at other people's walls and wardrobes. I like seeing the ways other people express their tastes and preferences. but when other people look at mine, i feel violated. i intentionally try to avoid being understandable through my decorations, with the result being that I look from my posessions EXACTLY like a person I'm not. but the idea that there's some connection between a person's identity and their objects seems so scary and wrong to me... i've never been able to be comfortable with that.
i'm not embarrassed by my anime posters, my ridiculous room or my clothing (well, sometimes I am by my clothing, but not enough to do anything about it) but I'm infuriated by the concept that they supposedly say anything about me. what right did GEORGE have to read into everything like that? i met him for two seconds and already he thinks I'm one way... but why should my room say anything at all? it's a ROOM! and, people don't really ever know who they are--what right do any of us have to be directing people to safe assumptions? i guess that right there is the relationship between consumerism and this trend that's been happening of us oversimplifying everything as much as we possibly can...
it makes me really... grr. ><
going to see the national in august. :D trying to get a job babysittin'...
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| Time: | 11:01 pm. |
| Music: | the national - ada. |
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"I feel like there's intensity in me, this dangerously weird creative energy, that doesn't have a way to get out. I used to attribute that repressed feeling to Chapin--the overwhelming feeling of being stifled, choked, threatened by everything. Now I think it's just the way my mind works. Maybe it started to work that way because of chapin, who knows. I dunno. Honesty... expression... irrational refusal to tolerate being told what to do..."
goooooooooodfrey daniel.
i'm out of it. really much. and also, i'm done with school. yay?
i want to be good at that thing that I like doing
oh and also, i'm really scared of the world
but i'll try...
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the fact that i'm not writing my essay which is due tomorrow is going to make me miserable in a couple of hours. well, at least now i'm typing, so my roommate can IMAGINE that i actually am trying.
whenever I go through the narcissistic ritual of reading that email exchange from so long ago and everything subsequent, I feel overwhelmed in a different way. I used to think of myself as such a brain. Maybe for a while I was indeed ahead of the curve. Now I've capitulated completely--now I'm emotion, all emotion, and he is a fool who thinks *I* think my ideas are worth a dime. Well, that's not completely true yet, but I'm moving in that direction. I'm now totally OK with mood swings and overreactions (things that never in the past really characterized how I viewed myself) and deeply uncomfortable sitting back and THINKING. Some might analyze this process of pushing away my competitiveness and my analytical strain in favor of this, well, lower standard for self-respect as a gender-related kind of thing. I guess that's right. I want to be feminine, want to identify just as a GIRL with all the stereotypes attached. Acceptance of that fallacy is my new self-destruction.
In fact, I know perfectly well that emotion and THINKING can't reasonably be separated. But to protect myself, to protect my sanity as I move from a super-charged competitive fishtank into the "real world," I have to stop being so grandiose in how I see myself. If I have to hold myself up against the many real people who are just naturally smarter and more capable than I, and constantly think (as I've been trained) that I could, should, would be doing better and more than them, i'll just lose it. So I sink into the background. I readjust my standards and sort of coast. I wonder how long it will last.
Reading that again, though, I became disoriented, as I always do. Often in the past I read it and winced at every grammatical flaw, every understatement, every ungraceful transition in all that I wrote; it destroyed my self-confidence to see that I wasn't perfect. But now, my writing from then stands out as astonishing and bold. It's rough around the edges, but the ideas were actually golden. In my new state, that shocks me. I wasn't (as I've adjusted to remember it) a bumbling, sweaty, awkward loser who ghoulishly just seeped up the drama and anxiety of what was happening. I was awkward, I made mistakes, but my heart was in the right place and my thinking was quite level. I saw things that were real, and I named them. I helped. I was sincere when not many people knew how to be.
Even all those personal confessions (which at the time even fried MY brain as I wrote them, since they almost seemed so unwarranted) were done gracefully and rightly. My uncertainty about my own writing, my own ambivalence about whether I had license to say what I said, is probably the reason I freeze up and stop being able to breathe every time I come into contact with that person. I can't believe that happened. I can't believe somebody agreed with all of my ideas.
Still can't believe it. It's shocking. I wonder if we'll ever be friends. I used to be too scared, too terrified by the person who had seen for themselves (although probably didn't care) all the trivial mistakes I'd made. But maybe now it would be OK. I'm all emotion now, I stopped depending on my brain for self-confidence, but I know that once upon a time I had really good, smart, insightful ideas and someone else saw them for what they were.
Today I set out with my Heelys (of course I have Heelys; don't you? Better investment than an ipod, anyway!) in the dark. I almost killed myself a couple of times, flying forward towards the concrete when I hit a crack, but I turned out OK. I was gliding through the Old and New Unions when I ran into Adam, who told me Coalition Against Hate was still going on, so I followed him up to the meeting.
Meetings here are like a return to middle school for me. I guess that's how it should be. Everyone else has better ideas, speaks more gracefully, and is more coherent. So I'm silent again. I haven't been so quiet since I was a lot younger, honestly. In the past I've been a leader in stuff like this, but here I feel like I don't know what I'm saying. The only difference is here I don't really have worshipful respect of the people running things. They're great, they impress me a lot and I like them, but they're human too. Again, I guess that's how it should be.
Well, the conversation today was funny and fascinating, so I was glad I went. I can't believe the Dean of Harpur is funding Dinesh D'Souza to speak. I can't believe he almost funded Ann Coulter. Holy shit. (The Dean is such a sad man. When I emailed him to say he should rethink this, he said he feels like he can't NOT fund the event, even though he hates it: he thinks it would be discrimination, for like political views or something. Paying $5000 to sponsor a lecture officially entitled "Some Cultures Are Better Than Others" doesn't associate you with discrimination?)
Bingaling. Better do homework...
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When i wake up in the morning, my back still feels like it wants to squeeze the life out of me. nevertheless, waking up at home has been so strangely, perfectly serene these past two mornings. it's almost hard to get used to...
there's a right time and a right place for exposure to things (books, art, media) that can change you. we don't acknowledge it, but every darn thing we come into contact with changes us, somewhat permanently. ever since I've been back I've been reading Tamora Pierce novels with a vengance. i feel like i need fast-paced narrative and simple characters to keep myself from drifting off like a darn balloon. my imagination runs away with me if i don't keep it grounded.
my dad is truly an excellent cook. I don't remember if he's always been so good or if this has just happened in the past couple of years. but he has a real talent, it's incredible.
I sometimes worry or feel bad when I think about the fact that for someone who paraded themselves around as such a smarty-pants all these years, I don't really read regularly. I'll pick up a book from time to time, and I *can* read "real" books if I pick them up, but usually I'm just kind of wary of that. after all, like I said, reading will DO something to you--and you don't always know what it WILL do. When I read "tess of the d'urbervilles" a few years ago it made me feel nasty for a month. Excellent book, but it made the world all slimy and tragic and uncomfortable. It's just simply not true that you can be living your life, then read a book or go see a movie or hear a song and then just continue your life as it was before. In a world where we're bombarded with so much STUFF all the time, we like to believe it won't really do anything to us, but it does. And it can be beautiful when art reveals something to you that was already there, just invisible, or when it expands what you see to include important things. All in all, though, I've realized that as someone who is a) easily influenced by whatever's going on around me and b) emotionally volatile in any case, I really need to limit, consciously, what I do and what I take in. That way I can pay real attention to what I'm doing, instead of just letting it sink in unexamined.
I guess that kind of sounds like I'm really a control freak... but I really think that going for quality understanding of what I do absorb is worth limiting the quantity of what I can.
and so i'm reading "young adult" fantasy again.
my mother has hidden 19 cards each with the number "19" on them all over my house. She says if I find them all she has a prize for me. So far I've found 9... but they were hidden really well. I wonder if I'll find them all.
knittin' stuff. jenji's neck warmer looks like an exploded pink tea cozy... but I think she'll like it. Like most of what I produce, it's funny looking but it has personality.
wonder what I'll do tomorrow...
SPRING!!! SPRIIIIING!!!
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Thursday, March 20th, 2008
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my 19th birthday came and went. i'm knitting a lot of things... monks and citizens are protesting the chinese government in lhasa and elsewhere... spring break is about to start. the wind howling outside kept me awake all night... it's still howling just as loud...
in an anti-war protest two days ago, some people I know were arrested and hit with pepper spray...
http://aboutconfusedkids.blogspot.com/ I wasn't at the march because I was in class & wasn't really feeling well... it just got really out of control. I was so upset that the police responded that way and then that the SA responded in the way they did... especially since a lot of community members and people in the school seem supportive of the students in what happened.
I'll be home soon... it's sort of been an exhausting week even though I have no work...
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Saturday, January 19th, 2008
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it's almost 6, but I've been up for two hours. at long last finished reading 'The Idiot'... I don't know enough about the context for it to make sense. So I should have waited to read it. I'm such an idiot. har, har...
after anything ends, I find myself feeling like this. I guess I'm just prone to this kind of feeling. I'm very volatile, needy, resentful. I don't want to talk to anybody except the people who experienced the trip with me, but I must make the assumption that they don't feel the same way as I do. At the same time, now that Brian went home again I miss him more than ever, and I'm mad at myself for how distracted and sleepy I was while he actually WAS here. I feel lethargic but thanks to the jetlag I can't sleep, I spontaneously burst into tears, I find myself just wanting to talk to somebody, but there's nobody around. I would say it's weird but it's a very familiar feeling. Like summer camp in 5th grade, like idea...
I just hadn't felt so happy and carefree for so long. I don't want to go back to school, I want to take a semester off, take a year off, stop doing anything, stop experiencing anything, because I just don't feel up to it. I realize now what a ridiculous person I am and it's depressing. I could chase that feeling forever, but I'd never find it... It's so cold here. I have to just get over it... Brian has been so good, so nice about it. It's unimaginable to me that he's not totally fed up.
i guess i shouldn't be so hopeless about it... i should try to be more active, and keep moving....
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Thursday, December 27th, 2007
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omfg golden compass
so the movie sucks, lol whatever but in the past week or so i've been re-reading the books... i think the last time i read them was sixth grade or so, this exact time of year, i was in texas i think, in austin... just finished amber spyglass like ten minutes ago, i was crying again... i remember when i first read it i was sobbing my head off. i don't think i'd ever cried over a book like that before. it wasn't as bad this time around because i knew what was coming. also i feel like i understood the whole thing a lot better now. it was kind of a hard read in 6th grade...
had a weird dream last night, i was back at my high school and i was crying and crying and a bunch of people in my class saw me, and I said I was upset because this girl in the grade below us had written this article in the newspaper (which is really there, btw, she's actually the editor of it or something now) about why we should invade Iran... in my dream i was talking to this girl I know whose politics are like... intensely... not the same as mine. and i was saying yes, opinions are fine, we should hear all opinions, but the iraq war you guys! people are dying! so many people our age are dying! and when they realized i was upset about politics they withdrew, i could see the sympathy going away, i was just getting myself worked up over nothing, they really didnt care. and i felt this sympathy with them, i understood why they didn't see the point of me being so worked up, why they even resented me a little for making them feel guilty for not being 'compassionate' or something, and why they withdrew... i could see it so clearly but i still wanted somebody so badly to say 'I understand why you're upset'. then i was in my room again, i was sneezing, everything was dusty..
when i got back a couple weeks ago (one? or two? can't remember) i started writing all about high school. i couldn't get it out of my head. obviously it wasn't pleasant, either. i wrote about ten solid pages single spaced... it freaks me out that i'm still thinking about high school, dreaming about it. i really just want to forget everything about it and forget it happened. that's what i resent most... that i have so many memories, it went on for so long, it was such a chunk of my life. twelve years. i was there since I was six. it will go away with time, but all the same... it was a place I hated from the beginning, but it was the only place I knew. i wish it were just high school, just four years, maybe intense but easily forgettable, easily detachable from other parts of my life. but not even my summers really ever happened outside the figurative shadow of the year that had just happened or the fall that was about to... for almost as long as I can remember it was just this single, horrible, monolithic, ridiculous force in my consciousness. it's totally ridiculous that i'm still thinking about it now. maybe binghamton isn't overwhelming my senses and occupying my life the way i had hoped it would. i have too much time to think. maybe even too little to do. Now more than ever it seems like I'm just obsessed with high school, like i secretly like to think about it or something. but in all honesty i try to distract myself as much as possible and it still keeps surfacing in my mind and I hate that. i just hate that there's so much i remember and that i'm still remembering it.
books are good... doing things with friends is good... air is good... new york is good. i'm going to vietnam next week. i need to take up drawing again... knitting is fun but i should produce more than scarves.
I can't stand that Brian is away. I NEED him to come back. I hope he's having fun though... I hope he's not bored, he's eating good food, he's enjoying himself. If I'm going to be driven crazy by his not being around, they damn well better be taking good care of him.
what am i going to do when i go to vietnam?
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Monday, December 10th, 2007
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should be studying for my chinese lit exam... it's too much of a hassle, though, my internet is bad so opening up all these files to make a list of stuff seems like a waste of effort. i'll be more productive tomorrow morning...
I want to recommend three stories from the second half of the course to everyone. My two favorites (I can't decide which I like more) are "1986" by Yu Hua and "Green Earth Mother" by Ai Bei. I remember getting chills when we first discussed "1986". Yu Hua's stories sort of annoyed/grossed me out for a while (or at least they were really unpleasant to read) what with the gratuitous, unmotivated violence, random abuse and scary emotionlessness, but I think this story is different. I felt like I didn't completely get the meaning when I read it on my own, but thinking about it in the historical context, it was sort of really moving. The character has the only rational reaction one could have to the horror and insanity of the Cultural Revolution, which is to say he loses his mind, and resurfaces a decade or more later as a physical reminder of this horror to his family and society, a ghost of the bloody past the now-commercial world is trying to forget. I have absolutely no stomach for violence (in movies OR books) so I'm really impressed whenever someone uses it well enough to convince me it makes sense. Yu Hua accomplishes that in this story. :) Craaazy. "Green Earth Mother" is a title which sounds weird in english but it was also a really moving story, really powerful... the words used & the way it's written are really beautiful. My other favorite story, sort of a runner-up to these two, is called "Love must not be forgotten," by Zhang Jie. It's a pretty old story and would probably seem really sentimental and mushy without the historical context. After reading samples from several decades' worth of non-literature, propaganda without feeling, depth or humanity, this was the first story I read that acknowledged emotional depth and human complexity again. It has a really cathartic feeling to it. The title kind of says it.
I had a really nice day today actually, despite the ice. there's ice on all the trees, but no snow or anything. They have this ghostly glow with the orange streetlights behind them, they sparkle and light up white like skeletons. Writin' zuowens with brian. watching flight of the conchords. cast meeting... i'm ASMing for a sort of stupid play in january. but i like the cast + the director a lot... its just the play is sort of dumb. little women. i don't really like it for some reason. And yesterday I had a really nice day too. I MET MY AUNT & UNCLE'S NEIGHBOR!!! This doesn't seem to be a big deal to anybody but me, him, and Brian. Actually it's funny, I've known him all semester and only realized yesterday it was him! we were so excited, we were telling everyone, "WE SORT OF KNEW EACH OTHER!" and people were like, "... great"... but it was exciting. The grad students' little kid (the blonde one who kept handing us a plastic spoon in september) was at this party yesterday. he's like 2 and only speaks french or something. soooooo cuuuute. I made hand puppets. People sang songs, made latkas and perogies. It's such a nice environment there.
i've started knitting again. i made a scarf for brian, a scarf for may, and i'm in the middle of a scarf for my dad. i'm mid-scarf. i'm scarfing right along.
I've realized if i listen to music right before i go to bed, the music i usually find boring during the day makes sense. everything makes sense. and i sleep better. i'm going to vietnaaaaam. i'm taking an exaaaaaaaam. tomorrow. heewon is coming to stay with me in december for a few days!! yay tourguiding!! new yooork! I miss it. except my suffocating house. that'll be interesting... it's so coooold here. my feet are freezing, i'm shivering...
i've wanted to write more lately, but i can't bring myself to for some reason. i don't know who i'm going to be living with next year. my roommate & friends were all going to move to university plaza (shitkiiins) and I was going to be here alone, refusing to live in an overpriced off-campus parking lot surrounded by chain outlets, but now they're probably not going to move so they want to get a suite in this building next year. i want to stay in this building but i have this sense that none of them will want to be my roommate. maybe i'm just insecure, though. i keep thinking everyone's talking about me and everyone hates me, which i know is not explicitly true. whyyyy don't we have gender-blind dorming? i should just go live with brian... easier for everyone...
cold feet. lucky to have access to hot showers...
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