self – Page 10 – Words' End

September 19, 2003

Hello, biological clock.

I thought I was too young for this. A combination of events – a fertility-in-Europe project at work and an ongoing conversation about family structure and childrearing with a friend, not to mention a couple of close friends about to get married and thinking kids – has been rekindling my thoughts of having a child. Won’t be for a while; I’m not ready yet in many respects. But I’m so curious to know what it feels like to be pregnant! It’ll be an adventure.

In other news, the book review I submitted to RCCS, apparently, doesn’t suck. This is wonderful news, as I was nervous about this one: the book’s kind of seminal, and was published a while ago. It took a lot of work to write the review; but then, I’ve no idea how long others spend on writing them, so this may be normal. I’ll let the world know when it’s published.

September 17, 2003

Happy? anniversary, darling.

Thirteen years ago today my parents and I got off the plane in JFK and immigrated into the U.S. After we and our documents were thoroughly checked, the NYANA rep took a cab with us to our hotel. “To freedom,” he said, as we were exiting the restricted area.

In other news, my wrists and forearms are hurting in a typical RSI fashion. Tendonitis, more precisely, said my doctor this morning. I’m not entirely sure what this will mean for this Web log, but “laconic” does come to mind. I’m fascinated to find out whether I can actually stand to be laconic.

September 7, 2003

back, in color.

No matter how hard you try, it is impossible to unpack and clean and generally feel a grip on life in one day.

I AM PROVIDENCE, says H. P. Lovecraft’s gravestone. Gunther and I did find it, with a little help from our Google.

I’m cosmically exhausted, but battle with illness is proceeding better now that driving hundreds of miles is not daily reality. My mind is laced with things and people, tied tight with the largest ball of twine in the world. (Photos to phollow, when developed – ah, analog cameras!)

I’m also finding myself all too ready to revert to old, frustrating, poor time-management patterns; so about ten minutes ago Cox agreed to disconnect my ‘net service from home. This means I’ll be doing everything internet-related from the university, which should suffice. Home will be quiet, and the inside of my head will be quiet, and sanctuary is an appealing prospect. This is a long-winded PSA: in short, e-mail is no longer the most efficient way to get in touch with me (although I’ll still likely check it every day). If you don’t have my telephone number(s) and want them, uh, e-mail me.

Exhausted or not, tomorrow is a work day. I’m not ready for this.

August 17, 2003

Belated

[Wrote this during the blackout, was utterly unable to post it, made the connection to being unable to retrieve my e-mail, checked others’ blogs for news, hunh! half the east coast is blacked out, and I’m blissfully unaware. Of course, had ifMUD been up, I’d have found out in no time; but it, as my ‘net space provider’s servers, lives in New York City.]

—–

Just yesterday I wrote the following in an e-mail:

“I’m doubting myself heavily, finding myself restating others’ truths over and over again, not saying anything new. I draw parallels that others have not drawn, but don’t feel that this is enough. It’s difficult to have faith in this monster project while in the midst of it, while unable to see the whole, the whole does not exist yet. I return again and again to the thought that I’m much better suited for the role of facilitator, or feeder of the masses, creator of an environment in which cool things happen; not one who makes cool things happen. This makes me sad.

“I cannot wait [to be back home], but will come back to an unreal backlog of work, and fear that I will drown in it. I will cancel my digicablemodem ‘net service from home, as an attempt to create some quiet inside my head…”

Today, while driving back from an errand that took an hour and a half instead of the fifty minutes it should have, I saw a police car with a rainbow sticker on it. It was like someone had suddenly shone the sun on my abysmal mood: there’s hope for tolerant humans yet, hmm? I thought nothing more of it, until Joseph Campbell shone his eyes at me from the TV screen and spoke about following your bliss in a rebroadcast of The Power of Myth on a public television station. The universe is telling me something again.

August 10, 2003

Return of the

Well, I wasn’t planning to take a hiatus this long, but there we are. The past month was spent too busy living to update; now, the schedule has calmed a bit, although I’m not sure how long that’ll last. In 15 days, I’m off to Burning Man, and after that will drive back to Providence with a friend. Although there’ll be a bit of a rush to get back to the place H.P. Lovecraft called home, I’m looking forward to several days in a car with Andy, chatting and eating fruit and listening to music. Plus, he can drive too. Big plus.

Right. So what’s happened? The whole last half of July another friend was houseguesting here from Britain. He’d never been to Los Angeles; this was Jon’s second ever time in the States. We took advantage of relative freedom of action and did the following:

– allowed ourselves to be attached to hard bodysuits and harnesses for the privilege of being hoisted Really High Up by a rope, our bodies parallel to the ground. After which he pulled on a string and we hurtled forward and down, swinging at “up to 60 miles per hour.” There were two of us in this thing (maximum is three), and at the end of the first swing we had gone so far forward that for a few moments we were suspended vertically in the air many meters above ground. It was quite easily the best thing I’ve ever experienced in an amusement park.

– hiked up a little residential hill to see a house built like a Mayan temple, which was used in the filming of Blade Runner.

– watched several movies. Rented Blade Runner and Christopher Nolan’s Following on DVD. That last one was excellent. Beautifully shot, good use of black-and-white, good acting. Also saw Tomb Raider 2, god help me (no, it really wasn’t *that* bad, indeed I quote enjoyed myself, but would’ve never gone to see it on my own), as well as Chicago which, to be fair, received a lukewarm review from Jon.

– shopped in a good bookstore in Venice Beach, in which I bought my first Harry Mathews book. Human Country is a good solid collection of short stories. I like Harry Mathews enough that I would say I’ll seek his work out some more, except that realistic expectations of dissertation workload prevent me from making foolish promises.

– lounged about the house. glorious.

– took an afternoon to lounge on the beach in Malibu. Cold, cold ocean water and warm sun, with burritos afterwards which were so good, even Adam might have approved of them.

– attended a João Gilberto concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Be still my beating heart! That man seems in love with his guitar, still, after all these years.

– spent time at the Getty Center, where I gawked most of all at the medieval bookmaking exhibit and all the manuscripts. You’d think I’d have gotten this fascination out of my system by now, but no.

– went to Las Vegas. Another thing I’d never have done on my own, but this is the way to do it: with a Briton fascinated by its gaudy Americana, whose comments make you laugh even when it’s ungodly-hot, at midnight.

Good visit, that was. My grandmother thought he was great, and was duly impressed with his obscure mathematics book. Every morning, they re-introduced themselves to each other. (sigh.)

Besides this, I’ve been working on an online journal (of which I’m the techincal editor – watch this space for the grand opening), and on a book review. As well as cooking, cleaning and taking grandma to sundry doctors. Mom’s away on a well-deserved week-long vacation, and I do hope that she’s having a fabulous time. It’s quiet here.

June 18, 2003

California ain’t N’awlins, I can tell you that.

Whatever time I take for myself, here in California, comes directly out of the time available for [academic] work, or for regrouping my forces and preparing for the next day. Nevertheless, distracting myself from family life with unrelated activities (such as writing) seems to ground me. I’ll try to write often. Every day. We all know how such intentions work out.

I tried to write chronologically, but there’s just too much. So I’ll post entries as things occur to me. Road trip interspersed in other.

For the record, I think every human before the age of, say, 35 should spend some time caring for an elderly person, or anyone unable to fully care for themselves. It really does provide a different perspective. In the last week, my thoughts have turned to: death and dying; mental degradation with age; why exactly it is that one’s sense of shame persists more strongly than other mental faculties; the importance of a living will (please, someone put me to sleep if I’m ever struck with irreversible illness); a [re]new[ed] appreciation for nurses…

Continue reading “California ain’t N’awlins, I can tell you that.”

May 3, 2003

Untitled.

This is a repeating cycle in my life: I make myself a one-person support network for others, regardless of whether they’d ever think of doing the same for me.

It’s partly a problem with my own expectations of the surrounding world, but really. I’ve got to stop putting energy into situations like this with people who, as a rule, show no interest in me on their own initiative.

Partly this is surely stress talking, but another part is this perception I’ve been trying to articulate for years. If it seems to me that I could do something to make others’ life easier, I do it, for the most part without thinking much about being inconvenienced. My innate assumption is that others think that way too, in general as well as specifically with regard to me; except they don’t. It’s not their fault, it just doesn’t occur to them, but it hurts me because I do not separate tasks from people. I keep putting myself in situations where I wait for someone to remember my existence, and one of two things happens: either they do remember and I am really, genuinely thankful (even if I did them a favor in the first place), or they never do remember and I feel somehow left out.

My god, I’d kick so much ass as an administrator. But I’m nobody’s administrator, even if I do act sometimes as though I were.

Here’s the thing that makes me most bitter: I wouldn’t mind being support girl. That’s what people do, right? Wrong: in my experience, this sort of attitude is not reciprocal.

(There are individual exceptions, of course. I’m talking in ranty generalities, here.)

Mm. I’ll get in trouble for this, but here goes: I perceive this… I don’t know, lack-of-thoughtfulness? oblivion? to be more prevalent in the U.S. than elsewhere I’ve lived. “Elsewhere” being USSR, Italy, Britain, so I feel that I’m not completely talking out of thin air here.

“Yeah, well, you’re in the States now, so deal.”

Yeah, well, I am not blaming anyone in particular, and will leave this country first chance I get anyway.

The easiest answer is, well, you owe nothing to people. Stop volunteering your energy. The fundamental flaw I see with that argument is that it is devolution. So, most likely, I’ll continue doing what feels good and right to me, and continue to be disappointed.

I’m so tired of being disappointed.

April 11, 2003

Death dreaming.

People keep posting about personal things lately, and I’m wanting to record this dream.

I was in my homecity. I probably took a trolley bus. I remember where this set of buildings was in relation to where I used to live, in the Telecenter quarter.

I was delivering something, money? and books to someone I barely knew. Don’t remember why; this isn’t the important part anyway. The same set of buildings contained a morgue. I was in this woman’s apartment, leaving the delivery for her – there was nobody else there. Then, suddenly (or rather, I don’t remember the transition), my mother was there, and my brother too, and it was a morgue-cum-burial ground.

People were being exhumed. I didn’t want to look, but my grandfather insisted on speaking to me, kept talking until I looked at him. He looked familiar, almost exactly as I remember him – except that his hair was disheveled, he had a hyoooge belly and was completely green, everything the same shade of lightish green, clothes and all. He was wearing a plaid flannel shirt, the large checkers of which must’ve been other colors, but now they were different shades of green. (The shirt looked suspiciously like one I have that used to belong to my dad. Except this one is red.) He wasn’t frightening; we talked.

My dad was also there, but I do not remember him.

I remember being frightened, in general. Spooked. And here I am, wanting to believe that I am not afraid of death.

What I hate most is lack of knowledge of what happens after.

April 7, 2003

work ethic

Four weeks from today, prelim. If I pass it, I’ll be ABD. I should be nervous, twitchy, frantically studying, and I’m not.

There is a lot of work to do, but mostly it isn’t overwhelming. There are times, hours or days at a time, when I find myself unable to work, and put aside books and computer in favor of other activities. I’ve enough experience with my own work habits to know that if the time ahead doesn’t feel productive, it won’t be; so there’s no use in trying. So I read books, see my friends, then dive in again.

The question is always there in the back of my head: is this wrong? Am I overly cocksure, setting myself up for failure? Is this feeling of “there’s only so much I can learn in a given time period” an excuse to not push myself?

Perhaps it is unsettling that this research is not as difficult as the research I did in the Italian Studies track. Yet, I am learning more now. Perhaps it isn’t as difficult because I seem to have found my Subject. But there are no guidelines, except for what my committee and I have come up with. There is no trial by fire, no hated rite of passage, only work.

I push, when I need to. (It gets me in trouble sometimes, this toeing of the dead-line.) I sleep and work at odd hours. I navel-gaze in a public forum (this one) and then go back to work. The hard part is, work is never certain. There is little to compare it to, there are few standards. But then I shrug, and decide again and again that I am willing to make a fool of myself.