I am in love with a fictitious character. It's really quite pathetic. I suppose, at the very least, it's not quite so pathetic, since I am able to keep John Krasinksi and Jim Halpert separate in my head. Jim is..... sigh...... he's Jim. Enough said.
There is a hole in my oldest pair of jeans. I almost said they are my favorite pair, but since I got my new skinnies, it's a tough call. Sometimes I pretend to despise myself for being a wannabe hipster from the 40s, but then I get over it. Why fight it?
My little sister changed her Facebook relationship status before talking to the boy about it. I'm slightly ashamed of her. The announcement of the aforementioned fact was the catalyst to several seconds of open-mouthed horror shared with our other sister.
I read other people's blogs and gasp with their heart-rending angst and wish I were more compelling like that. And then I wonder, why would I want to be depressed all the time? Even if I weren't, why would I want to pretend to be?
Final project in Magazine writing: A Day in the Life. Subjects from classmates include a high school freshman who has cerebral palsy and is blind, a stripper from Philly, the guy who runs Suburban Home Records (used to be run in his basement), and a kindergarten teacher who is going blind while her husband goes deaf. I hung out with an ex-"drunk-a$$ college student" who works at the Children's Museum. It seems like a situation I should be laughing at. Like one of those super awkward jokes that only one person in the room laughs at, but only because it reminds them of another, more funny, joke.
I spent 60 bucks today on graduation announcements and a cap and gown and tassels. 60. There's a sticker on the gown that reads, "Do not wash. Do not dry clean." Hm. So, in other words, "Single use only. Place in proper trash receptacle, you taken-in idiot." Thanks a lot, University. I'm very glad to be leaving you, too.
Does anyone know of a job that includes creative writing, arts and crafts, making enough money to pay off college loans, and people who aren't boring? I'd like one.
16 November 2009
30 October 2009
Concerning alienation
A few months ago, a girl I knew decided to do a huge research project. She tried explaining to me about how it fit into her five-year plan and everything. Something about this and this and this will happen, and then grad school and then happiness. Pretty sure she also threw in a husband and a nice house. Or at least a boyfriend.
She was a great person and all, I just think she got a little obsessed. I mean, plans are awesome. They really can help if you're not quite sure of what you're doing. At least when you have a plan, you can make yourself believe that you're in control of things. The project was literally sucking her life away. I used to talk to her all the time, but after a summer of doing nothing but research on the computer and in the library at school, I hardly ever spoke to her. I don't know...maybe she was trying to push something out of sight and mind? Who knows?
I just thought it was insane; it was such a huge undertaking, and usually people do the kind of stuff she was doing with a year set aside for it. She was talking about finishing in half of a year. Maybe if I'd've kept up with her more, I would understand it better now. Any time I actually saw her, she had this wild look in her eyes, like a velociraptor was being reflected in the green of her irises. Actually, I think she sort of stopped communicating with some of her other friends, too. There's at least one or two specific ones that I know of. I wonder if she even realized what she was doing?
Probably not. I just don't get it. She finished the project and called me up a week or so ago; I could hear the grin in her voice and I knew she was back. When she called I was getting ready to go somewhere, and while we talked I looked in the mirror. Mirrors are funny things, you know. We look at them for a certain amount of time in the morning, and then expect our reflection to stay the same for the rest of the day. And when we realize that our reflection has changed, we flip out. It's like hearing your own voice in a phone message. Creepy. Unnerving. Jolting.
The best part about this all is the subject of this girl's project: alienation. I must have asked her twenty times ever since she started it to explain to me what it was she was researching. Something about a French dude and drugs and searching out "a state of alienation". This last time she called me, it finally clicked in my head. I let out a long, "Ohhhhhhhh..." and started laughing into the mirror.
She'd mentioned that she'd thought about trying drugs for the project, just to see how things really did change. The only problem is that she's completely anti-fake stuff, especially stuff that can be addicting or dangerous. So I guess it was more of an amusing idea than anything.
Back to the laughing..
So there I was, holding the phone in one hand and a tube of mascara in the other. Laughing into the mirror, looking straight into my own eyes.
It's hilarious, really, that a project about alienation, the purposive act of becoming "other", can lead to an actual alienation.
Green-gold eyes smile vividly in front of me as I give up on makeup and simply walk out the door.
She was a great person and all, I just think she got a little obsessed. I mean, plans are awesome. They really can help if you're not quite sure of what you're doing. At least when you have a plan, you can make yourself believe that you're in control of things. The project was literally sucking her life away. I used to talk to her all the time, but after a summer of doing nothing but research on the computer and in the library at school, I hardly ever spoke to her. I don't know...maybe she was trying to push something out of sight and mind? Who knows?
I just thought it was insane; it was such a huge undertaking, and usually people do the kind of stuff she was doing with a year set aside for it. She was talking about finishing in half of a year. Maybe if I'd've kept up with her more, I would understand it better now. Any time I actually saw her, she had this wild look in her eyes, like a velociraptor was being reflected in the green of her irises. Actually, I think she sort of stopped communicating with some of her other friends, too. There's at least one or two specific ones that I know of. I wonder if she even realized what she was doing?
Probably not. I just don't get it. She finished the project and called me up a week or so ago; I could hear the grin in her voice and I knew she was back. When she called I was getting ready to go somewhere, and while we talked I looked in the mirror. Mirrors are funny things, you know. We look at them for a certain amount of time in the morning, and then expect our reflection to stay the same for the rest of the day. And when we realize that our reflection has changed, we flip out. It's like hearing your own voice in a phone message. Creepy. Unnerving. Jolting.
The best part about this all is the subject of this girl's project: alienation. I must have asked her twenty times ever since she started it to explain to me what it was she was researching. Something about a French dude and drugs and searching out "a state of alienation". This last time she called me, it finally clicked in my head. I let out a long, "Ohhhhhhhh..." and started laughing into the mirror.
She'd mentioned that she'd thought about trying drugs for the project, just to see how things really did change. The only problem is that she's completely anti-fake stuff, especially stuff that can be addicting or dangerous. So I guess it was more of an amusing idea than anything.
Back to the laughing..
So there I was, holding the phone in one hand and a tube of mascara in the other. Laughing into the mirror, looking straight into my own eyes.
It's hilarious, really, that a project about alienation, the purposive act of becoming "other", can lead to an actual alienation.
Green-gold eyes smile vividly in front of me as I give up on makeup and simply walk out the door.
24 October 2009
Now
Now that it has been decided that I'm not getting honors, I'm finding it more than difficult to actually sit down and finish my paper. I just rewrote a few introductory paragraphs, one for each of my four-ish sections, and now...oh, now. Now I need to just finish the lot.
It's funny, a week and a half ago, I was in terrifying freak-out mode. I was scaring my friends and family, I'm pretty sure. I couldn't be awake without spending almost every moment thinking about my paper, and what I had left to do, and how much time a day I had to spend on it to keep the world from combusting. And now... It's like in the Bible, when people were kept from seeing things, and suddenly they were allowed to see and understand them, and it says, "And the scales fell from his/her eyes..."
I seem to have lost my scales, but I don't know that I'm going to go looking for them. I'm having quite the difficulty remembering a time when I really enjoyed writing my thesis. I love research (I'm good at it) and I love writing (again, small, albeit subjective, talent). But it seems that writing in English and writing in French have only the use of words in common. I should have known that. It was always so frustrating in France trying to explain things. Simple things like the story of my life, to complicated things about my emotions, were blown so completely and amazingly out of proportion that they became indistinguishable from near insanity.
So I should have known that French was going to kick my... butt. And I suppose God did try to tell me. It was hard enough convincing Elise to be my thesis adviser and to let me do credits over the summer. I can't even begin to explain the other hoops I had to jump through to find a committee. It was stressful even from Day One. And now... less immediate stress, I guess. I find myself hovering above a creepy pool of dampened emotions. I know they're there. They always are, no matter how much I try to ignore them.
I don't care to know exactly what is in the pool, but I have a feeling that if something else not-so-happy happens, I'm going to splash right in and be forced to find out how deep it really is. That's the now. The later, well, I'll worry about that later. Rather, I'll not worry about it later, because I'm tired of worrying. I'm tired of pushing myself to my limits. Just because Michaux did it (the subject of my thesis), doesn't mean I have to. I used to think that at least creatively, I was a little like him. He pushed himself, he wrote strange things that only a few truly loved. But he was trying to break himself up, pouring fragments of himself into an abyss that he imagined was in his mind.
Now I know better.
Why did I enjoy this past summer and all the work I did? I was spending 2 to 4 hours every morning after my run writing a story about a girl named Aralie who saves a dying magical forest.
It's funny, a week and a half ago, I was in terrifying freak-out mode. I was scaring my friends and family, I'm pretty sure. I couldn't be awake without spending almost every moment thinking about my paper, and what I had left to do, and how much time a day I had to spend on it to keep the world from combusting. And now... It's like in the Bible, when people were kept from seeing things, and suddenly they were allowed to see and understand them, and it says, "And the scales fell from his/her eyes..."
I seem to have lost my scales, but I don't know that I'm going to go looking for them. I'm having quite the difficulty remembering a time when I really enjoyed writing my thesis. I love research (I'm good at it) and I love writing (again, small, albeit subjective, talent). But it seems that writing in English and writing in French have only the use of words in common. I should have known that. It was always so frustrating in France trying to explain things. Simple things like the story of my life, to complicated things about my emotions, were blown so completely and amazingly out of proportion that they became indistinguishable from near insanity.
So I should have known that French was going to kick my... butt. And I suppose God did try to tell me. It was hard enough convincing Elise to be my thesis adviser and to let me do credits over the summer. I can't even begin to explain the other hoops I had to jump through to find a committee. It was stressful even from Day One. And now... less immediate stress, I guess. I find myself hovering above a creepy pool of dampened emotions. I know they're there. They always are, no matter how much I try to ignore them.
I don't care to know exactly what is in the pool, but I have a feeling that if something else not-so-happy happens, I'm going to splash right in and be forced to find out how deep it really is. That's the now. The later, well, I'll worry about that later. Rather, I'll not worry about it later, because I'm tired of worrying. I'm tired of pushing myself to my limits. Just because Michaux did it (the subject of my thesis), doesn't mean I have to. I used to think that at least creatively, I was a little like him. He pushed himself, he wrote strange things that only a few truly loved. But he was trying to break himself up, pouring fragments of himself into an abyss that he imagined was in his mind.
Now I know better.
Why did I enjoy this past summer and all the work I did? I was spending 2 to 4 hours every morning after my run writing a story about a girl named Aralie who saves a dying magical forest.
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