the voices dying with a dying fall

Songs of the Hour: Trees Lounge by Hayden; Nick Drake, White Sulfur

First of all, I’m sorry I’ve been so incommunicado.
I’ve
gotten a few messages/emails in the last week or two to which I haven’t
gotten a chance to respond, or haven’t been in the right mindset to
respond properly. I did find myself watching two documentaries– Guys and Dolls, about 4 men and their relationships to their Real Dolls; and the Half-Ton Man, which is self explanatory.
I
generally don’t watch a lot of films during the semester, having a
zillion other things to do, unless it’s something I’m doing with Joss.
But I stumbled on these online, and my morbid curiosity compelled me
(like the power of christ, but different). Ethnographies of sorts for
the most part, they emphasize certain human behaviors and psychological
processes one might not ordinarily have opportunity to examine so
closely… But on a human level, it’s really sad. Which leaves me all
ruminatory and  thoughtful and socially withdrawn until I can adapt
to/internalize the perspectives and paradigms to which I’ve been
exposed.
I think I’m over it now… but I recommend them both, and
the links above go to the full film if you have the time/interest.
They’re about 45 minutes each.

School is steady as she goes.
It’s midterm time, and I completely blanked out on my Shakespeare test,
but hopefully rambled enough to get a passing number of points (which
of course means at least a B). Secretly, I’m loving the class. I wrote
a paper on "Wombs as Tombs" imagery in Romeo and Juliet, focusing on
the foreshadowing language for how they die… I really do love this
Literature business.  I envy you guys with the stomach for academia,
well, with the balls to teach, at least. I’d be far happier if I had
your courage. I’d be content to extol on the beauty of lit to apathetic
young minds for a living if I could only stand to address more than 3
people at any given time. So carry on, my loves, and let me live
vicariously through you.

When Joss started back to school 2
weeks ago, I made a dry erase chart of the things he needs to do each
night in an effort to help him organize his apparently overwhelming
amount of tasks. His teacher and school counselor recommended it, and I
thought why the hell not?  The first week, my little monkey transformed
into a complete angel. He knew there was some money/boons on the line,
and he made the unfortunate mistake of demonstrating what he was
capable of when he set his mind to it.  He said it was really hard, but
his teacher sent home a note saying he  was focusing in class, and for
the first time ever, consistently finishing his classwork. This last
week was a disaster. Well, he started coming around on Thursday, and
did ok on Friday, but the beginning of the week was the usual not
bringing home the books he needed to do his homework, and getting
negative behavior reports. The "let’s start over monday with a clean
slate" approach usually works best for him, keeping him from getting
too discouraged, so I’m hoping to get back on a productive track next
week. Meanwhile, I’m playing phone tag with UNC’s psych clinic trying
to get his evaluation appointment set up now that I’ve gone through all
the preliminary interviews. I think it’s going to be about $750; well
worth it if it helps figure out exactly what his issues are.

We
saw Transformers last night. I could go on forever about its mixed
criticisms and endorsements of the military-industrial complex; the 90
minute Hummer commercial; the glorification of the military, etc. etc.
But it also made fun of the faceless president, and showed a few
somewhat sincere consequences of violence… all around I don’t know
how to feel about it. It was edgy for a kid’s movie, and a little flat
for a grown-up movie, but Joss loved it. Afterwards he asked some
really insightful questions, so at least it was thought provoking for
him. I dunno how I feel yet. I’ll get back to you.

Every day or
two, I realize that I’m graduating in 2 months. It leaves me with the
mixed feelings of relief, panic, and melancholy. I really, really need
to get down to Career Services and figure out how to get the kind of
research job I want… but little things, like not knowing where the
building is, really slows me down. You know, stupid stuff. I’m also
reevaluating the grad school program options. Which leads me to
university websites, which makes me crazy. Like stark raving
frustrated. But I’m not going to get started on that again because I
have another midterm I need to be studying for, and script to memorize.
Oh, by script I mean an experimenters script, since I’ll be helping to
run experiments for my research director for the next few months.
Interpersonal communications have never been so exciting… I can’t
tell you more until the experiment is over, but I’m really enjoying the
research assistant stuff. I think, theoretically, when you do the sort
of stuff we’re doing, us lowly RA’s end up somewhere on the list of
researchers when the papers get published. Which, if true, looks lovely
on grad school apps. Hmm. I should look into that too.

Faulkner
calls. Sorry for the most boring post ever, but at least it’s
something. I’m alive and somewhat kicking. Also, foaming at the mouth.
No, I mean it. You know that can of stuff that you use to clean
computer equipment? It’s like an air power-spray? Well, it’s also used
for huffing, so some companies put a "Bittering Agent" in it to prevent
abuse. Having cleaned my laptop with it, and having not read the label
carefully, every time I touch a key it gets on my fingers, which
inevitable touch my mouth and this chemical spreads into your sinuses
and it DOES NOT GO AWAY and I can always taste it or smell it and no
amount of keyboard wiping cleans it off. So, fyi, be warned. Read
labels.

drooling bitterly,

love.