the voices dying with a dying fall

I only have a few minutes, but I have to share one of those classic moments that fell upon us last night.

We
all went out for dinner, and I was behind Joss in line at the Mongolian
grill. He was piling some raw pork on some noodles, and he dropped some
pork on top of the beef in the next container.

"Joss, pick that
up and put it back. Some people eat beef, but not pork. You wouldn’t
want them to put it on their plate by accident. It’s might be against
their religion."

"I know. Lesbians. Lesbians don’t eat pork," he says knowingly, offhandedly.

I stared at him blankly for a second, awed. "Wait, you mean Muslims?"

He moved on to the pineapple. "Yeah, Muslims and Lesbians."

I
debated for a minute, and concluded that the Mongolian food bar was
not the place to interrogate Joss as to how exactly it is he defines
"lesbian". I couldn’t keep a straight face about it through dinner,  so
I just didn’t bring it up again. I’ll get to it this afternoon, when I
can be composed and mature about it. I’ll let you know what he says.

more tomorrow.

Songs of the Hour: It’s unquestionably a Leonard Cohen day.

On
my way out the door 20 minutes ago the latest in the
I’m-moving-and-so-are-you saga occurred. This one has left me weak and
teary-eyed. I hate to be redundo-girl and I know you’re dreading the
next 75 installments of the saga; but so am I and I’m just absolutely
at my wits end.

Thursday night I took home a list of every
Clinical PhD program in North America and showed it to my dad. I’m
willing to work with him on choosing where to apply. He asked a zillion
questions about how things worked but was otherwise kinda quiet. My top
choice is now UVA, UNCG is my "safety school", and I wouldn’t mind
going to Temple (PA) and of course if you twisted my arm I’d settle for
Duke.

Tonight my dad relaid out the plan where I go to school and he takes care of Joss until I graduate. 

-Daddy I’m not leaving Joss. We’ve been over this.
-Honey, the second you take that boy outta here my heart’s gonna break.
-I
know daddy, that’s why you have to move with us. We’ll find you
somewhere nearby. You’ve been wanting to sell the house anyway. What’s
wrong with buying a new one in Virginia?
-I’m 67 years old.
-So?
-There’s still a lot I want to do. And it don’t involve moving.

I
didn’t have much to say to that. The look on his face when he spoke of
his age was rending. I wasn’t prepared for such a frank and imploring
admission of mortality. Not from pop. Too humbling for both of us. But
there is was– pale and pleading blue eyes nestled in a face of
stoicism. I have no idea what to do. Seriously.
The only way out is to get into Duke. I just can’t commute to Greensboro again. I don’t think he’s going to budge. And I cannot
leave him alone. This just sucks.I know I’ve always been a Daddy’s
girl, but this is beyond that. My dad’s insanely lonely as is, and to
take Joss out of reach is too cruel for me to live with. Alright, moral
crisis stated and rehashed beyond tolerable limits. Enough of that.

Joss
has been at camp, and he got back yesterday. He came home sunburned and
exhausted and slept from 4 pm to 9 pm. Then, of course, he was wide
awake. He woke up wanting to watch Star Trek, which we watched in his
room until midnight, when I was literally trying to prop my eyelids
open. He talked me into sleeping on his bottom bunk.

I had one
of those moments. Whether it’s due to exhaustion, or genuine
bizarreness, I had one of those 40 minute blocks that feel so surreal
the whole question of life and what we do with it, or what we’re doing
here, or whatever questions plague you in the surreal moments, hung in
the very subtext of the silence.
The time between midnight and one
was spent staring up at the bottom of the top bunk, answering Joss’ 247
questions about The Borg (a star trek villain). How do they work, what
are all those wires, what’s the big deal, how come if Picard could have
surgery to stop being a borg, why couldn’t all the others? Why did that
one borg have a name? What’s a Hue? Isn’t it "Hugh"?  And then I’m
explaining the difference between the android Data and his brother
Lore, and what those words mean and how their names are reflected in
their different personalities. And then it’s science and technology and
magic legends like werewolves and vampires and where they come from and
how people believe in things that aren’t real because they’re scared of
them. It was exhaustive. I guess what made it really surreal was how my
dad was awake, and playing hymns on the harmonica the entire time. Not
little melodies mind you, but professional style (if there’s such a
thing) harmonies and these complicated weavings and medleys from one to
the other where he manages to elicit full symphonic levels of music
from this tiny 7 inch peice of metal.  Does that sound surreal? Well,
it was. And let me tell you, bunk beds aren’t nearly as cool at 30 as
they were at 10. Is my exhaustion showing? My exhaustion’s showing.
Sorry, let me tuck that back in.

I have Joss’ B-day pictures, I’ll post them when Brian gets back from Hawaii with my camera (lucky bastard). 

I’m getting my delirium outta here. Thanks for the patience with the redundancy. Next post will (hopefully) be better.

love

  Songs of the Hour: Moby Porcelain, some Mazzy Star

I fell asleep last night with words marching through my head in unit formation. Apprehensive, apprehended, prehensile, comprehensive, reprehensible…
I woke up this morning and they were still there, but in a single helix
spinning like pinwheels, hinged on "prehen". Just… spinning. Glowing
blue times-new-roman twirling in closed-eye darkness. What do these
words have in common? To grab, maybe. To hold.  I
think about this sort of thing constantly, in the background, and
ultimately I’m never certain. Obsessive? Perhaps. I got so obsessed
with "hap" I actually bothered to look it up. Hap. Hapless. Happy.
Happenstance. Mishap. Haphazard. It happens to mean luck, fortune, or chance. Oh. Of course it does. It’s obvious now. That makes sense.

I had to know.

 It’s
one of the things I love about Japanese (and subsequently Chinese)
[sequence, consequence, subsequent, sequel… nevermind.
Inconsequential].  You have a kanji character
that has a meaning, and probably several different ways to pronounce
it, but the meaning is modified by the other characters in the word.
Just like the Greek, Latin and German roots of English words are
modified by the prefixes and suffixes around them. But there are only
so many pre/suf-fixes in English. In Japanese, everything revolves
around combinations [evolve, revolve, revolution, volume, convolute,
volatile, volunteer]. The combination of meanings is crucial [I'm
resisting the power of "crux"].  

 My
personality professor implied to me an email, kindly, that I was
obsessive. As obsessive as he was in college. I had written something
about seeing cross-disciplinary patterns in the things I learned. How
history, science, art, math and literature are all interdependent
through time.  I take it for granted how obvious
this is, but he took the opportunity to imply obsessive tendencies
[tend, pretend, attend, tender, tendon, intension, intensive,
detention]. I suspect we’re both right. Ultimately, a lot of what I see
is science shaping paradigm and how it manifests in all the other
areas, but the power of metaphors shaping science is also pervasive.
It’s in the terminology. Stem cells. String
Theory. Metaphor is the very foundation of cognitive science and
artificial intelligence. The solar system as a model for the atom. And
working the other way, damn near anything can be put on a graph. These
metaphors aren’t always accurate, but the dominant use of them, to me,
is wholly indicative of the way humans think.

I’m not exactly sure what it is that
I would say I’m obsessed with. I could argue that it’s metaphor. But
that’s not quite right, it’s something beneath metaphor. It’s the
concept beneath, one thing representing another. Or perhaps, as with
the linguistics, it’s simply a matter of what things mean outside of their symbols. What words mean. How we communicate. How
phrases like "You don’t have to rub my nose in it" come to common use.
Obviously, it comes from house-training puppies. But when you say it or
hear it, are you thinking about puppies? Probably not. It’s a concept
of blatantly reminding one of one’s mistake. But how often do you say
"stop reminding me of, and punishing me for, my mistake"? As I "cut"
and "paste" this post from Word to Friendster and Myspace, will I give
the terminology, and its implications about how the species
conceptualizes, a second thought? Should I?

 
Perhaps
I’m just trapped in a cycle of deductive and inductive reasoning.
Deducing core meanings and applying them in generalizations to humanity
at large in an effort to better understand. Perhaps I’m thinking about
twenty separate things at once and getting them all muddled up
together. Roots and meaning and metaphor and human processing. I’m
obsessed with gesture. What your fidgeting during a particular
conversations indicates about you. I’m obsessed with the power of a
peculiar glance. I’m obsessed with Wing Biddlebaum’s hands.
I’m obsessed with your word choice, and what it implies about your
values and schemas. I’m obsessed with the analysis of implications. And
currently, I’m contemplating what that obsession indicates about me
[Indicate, predicate, predict, indict, verdict, vindicate, syndicate,
dictator, contradict, addict, benediction]. Ok. Enough.

Joss
went fishing with my dad this week, and we took some time to clean
before they left. I put hundreds of dollars worth of toys in a box
labeled "free toys" on the curb and hauled everything else to the
trash. It was a lot to get rid of. Ten years worth of accumulation of
buzz lightyear dolls and happy meal toys. I was surprised Joss was
willing to let it all go, keeping mostly just transformers and magic
kits and little kid-science things. "On Turning Ten" is haunting me as
I write this. Four days away. Jeesus.

I had
my dad’s truck while they were out of town, so I took the opportunity
to put a few things in storage. I looked at all my mom’s expensive
antique porcelain dolls, her life-size Raggedy Anne and Andy dolls
(orphans, just like my brother and I, that’s why she liked them—they
represented the two of us), the 3 foot stuffed Little Orphan Annie
(same principle), and a fuck-ton of silly antiques that have crowded an
already overpacked house. The antique butter churn, the glass-top
wagon-wheel-on-a-barrel table, the four-hundred pound wrought iron
safe, wrought iron sewing bench, the antique "ice-box"  full
of Joss’ books and art supplies. 85% of our furniture is antique, and
half of it so old I’m scared to put a glass of water on it lest it
crumble. Secretly, I hate it. Every bit of it. I always have.

I
started thinking about what these things indicated about my mom. It
paints an easy portrait of a woman from a small town who grew up poor
and when she came into her own, wanted to populate her home with
expensive things. She was a romantic in her way, antiques heralding
back to an idealized past of privilege and class, traditional family
values and gender roles in her choice of dolls and the zillion
cross-stitched pictures on the wall—half of which she actually did, the
other half paid for, and paid to add my mom’s initials to the bottom
where she humbly took credit for the masterpieces of my and my
brother’s stitched in portraits. She was insanely sentimental. Little
poetry books "From a Mother to her Daughter" full of fluffy
monosyllabic iambic pentameter are stuffed into every antique drawer
beside permutations of "Chicken Soup for (some poor bastard’s) Soul".
Taking it all in, I think the person she wanted to be was the type of
woman you can only find in "Touched by an Angel" reruns or old country
novels about rural southern gentry.  

It
doesn’t say as much about who she was, as it does about who she wanted
to be. But that’s definitely worth knowing, maybe even moreso. Isn’t
that how we’d all rather be remembered?
 

I don’t know if this analysis was a result of my usual obsession, or an afterthought related to one of Marco’s posts,
but it’s lengthy and detailed and I’m going to spare you the rest
because I love you all and it’s probably awkward to read about. And for
the love of the gods, this is long. Well, Amanda, be careful what you
wish for. J You’ve got 3 weeks worth of gibberish to pilfer through.

Outside
of my incessantly churning head, I’ve spent a couple more weeks playing
spades and looking at grad schools. I had one job interview, with those
who Didn’t Call Back probably due to my unnecessary honesty, and one
interview for an unpaid research assistant position next semester that
went pretty well I think. I’ll know next week. The rest of my time has
been spent with the baby biscuit, and seasons 1 and 2 of Battlestar
Galactica, the commentary on which will just have to wait. Because I
love you. And you’ve been listening to me too long already.
 

Love.

Songs of the hour: Starman by David Bowie, assorted Liz Phair

I have finally managed to put the cards down and focus on life a
little. I spent yesterday afternoon researching grad schools– and  I
say again, University websites are the bane of my existence. They tell
you nothing.

I’ve decided (as much as I decide anything) that I’d rather go into a
PsyD program than a PhD program. The main difference is that the PhD
prepares you for research as well as practice, while the PsyD focuses
on practice. It’s also about a year shorter on average. The problem is,
there are far less PsyD programs out there. Looking at ranked
universities, Widener in Philadelphia seems to be one of the best. The
the others are in MA, NJ, MI, IN, CT, CA and there’s one in VA at The
College of William and Mary. Point is, none of these are in NC.

It’s not that I’m averse to moving. I just can’t imagine leaving my dad
all alone. I brought up the subject yesterday in a roundabout fashion,
somewhere along the lines of  "So daddy, how do you feel about moving
to Philadelphia?"  He stopped what he was doing and stared at me,  in
one of his characteristic eternal pauses, "Not so good."
"Dad, I don’t want to leave you here alone."
I explained the situation and his immediate response was, "Well, you on
to where you need to go and do what you got to do. We’ll be fine here."
Meaning of course,  him and Joss. 
"Daddy, I’m taking Joss with me."
"No you’re not either."
"Dad, I’m not leaving him for years. When I move, he moves with me."
Long pause.
"Jenny, I can’t get along without that little boy."
"I know it. That’s why you’re moving with us. So where do you want to live? Philadelphia? Massachusetts?"
"Naw, it’s cold up there."
"What about Alabama? or Florida? You tell me where you want to live,
and I’ll work something out. There’s just nothing here. Not in NC."

He started playing the harmonica and I let it drop. But I’ve planted
the seeds of his uprooting, I need to give them time to take hold. I
really don’t know what to do. Given the choice between skipping out on
grad school, and forcing my dad to live out of Joss’ reach, I’m
skipping school. I don’t think I could leave Joss and be content
flying/driving back on weekends. Of course there are a zillion
financial considerations no matter what happens, and I have no idea
what kind of schools I’ll even be able to get into, and the whole
goddamn thing’s sketchy as hell to me, but this is the biggest hurdle.
I’ll have to see how he "figures" it.

On a different note, I would like to share with you my latest
discovery. Here we have Vojo’s citrus energy mints. Sugar free,
contains some amount of vitamins  caffeine,
and comes in this sleek
box. Very exciting. But when I opened it, lo and behold, it revealed itself to be the ideal, cutting edge cocaine carrier that it is. Not only does it contain a nice amount of space convenient for any shape substance, it also has a mirror inside the lid. Obviously, I do not involve myself in narcotics of any sort. however, I can’t help but wonder what other purpose such a mirror  would serve in such a container.

   

The mints themselves, being a connoisseur of mints, are a little tart  and have that bitter vitaminy aftertaste. I, however, love them. They taste just like baby aspirin. And when I was a child, I loved baby aspirin.

Actually, I ate half a bottle of baby aspirin once. I had just watched that cartoon "The Littles" about little people about the size of mice that lived in walls and had to hide all the time so that no one found out about them. There was an evil man  that suspected their existence and was always hunting them. Anyway, that episode, they
were doing a don’t do drugs thing and the immediate danger of some kid who was on the verge of doing some kind of drug was enough to make the littles REVEAL THEMSELVES to the kid to talk him out of it. I may be misremembering, but I think that’s the gist of it. So I, in my tricky 8 year old cleverness, went back to my room with a bottle of baby aspirin and narrated loudly and at length what I was about to do to an empty room. When I had finally consumed half the bottle in slow, dramatic, narrative gestures, I finally concluded– what’s that? You think I concluded that they didn’t exist? Don’t be silly. Of course they exist. I concluded that they didn’t care if I lived or died.

what a brat. my god.

love.

Song of the Hour: I Hear the Bells by Mike Doughty, assorted Okkervil River.

Due
to a recently reborn spades addiction, I have been unavailable for
comment. If you would like to wave at me, I can generally be found at
pogo.com nilling some poor unsuspecting Canadian retiree to death. I
have a problem. It’s not gambling, but you do win lottery prizes and of
course there’s your all important ranking system. Who needs to research
grad schools or study for the GRE? There hands to be played, dammit, and if i don’t play them, who will?

It’s
nostalgic, really. Spades, and Suzie’s porch are forever linked. Gin
and Kool-aid (what was wrong with us?), and the meth lab next door
(what was wrong with everybody?). I’ve
spent more time chatting with online spades partners than I have the
people around me. I can only hope I grow bored with it soon.

I
bowled a 125 today. Which isn’t stellar by any means, but it’s my best
since class started. I’ve found bowling to be as much a lesson in
anatomy as in physics. By pulling different muscles everyday, I get to
learn about muscle groupings and the length and breadth of each. This
is high quality, hands on education that I couldn’t have come by at an
earlier age. Thirty is still young, but bowling didn’t feel like this
at twenty, that’s for damn sure.

Wow. I seriously have nothing
exciting to report. It’s all spades and bowling alleys and Joss. And
Star Trek TNG. We’re on season 3 now, and I feel this bizarre mingling
of guilt and pleasure as Joss gets more and more interested in it. I
subjected him to Harry Potter, LOTR, Star Wars, X-Men and now Star Trek
with equal dedication. It’s as though I’m going out of my way to shape
a bona fide geek, such as I am. I even got him to watch the D&D
cartoon that I watched growing up. Should
I feel guilty? You can’t force someone to like something. As much as my
parents tried to force me to like more "normal" things, the influence
of wanting to please them only went so far. I think Joss genuinely
likes the sci-fi/fantasy stuff I throw at him… I hope so at least. I
hope he isn’t just trying to please me. Last night he was very
insistent that we watch the next episode, and completely without
prodding. He obviously doesn’t get all the science jargon, of which
there is a copious amount if you’ve never watched the show, but he
wants to watch it anyway. I don’t know, should I feel guilty? I guess
he’ll grow out of it soon if he’s only doing it for my sake. I stopped
watching all the sports/wrestling crap that my dad and brother watched
when I was about his age. It wasn’t worth it anymore.

I also
spend about 7 hours a week playing Joss’ new favorite video game, Jak
III. It’s like this weird cross between Road Warrior and Sonic the
Hedgehog where you’re fighting a losing war against an army of powerful
machines fueled by "dark ego" and you have a series of missions to
accomplish that are fairly difficult. I’ve never been so interested in
the actual story of a video game before. It’s kind of dark at times,
you’re wondering through a town and there are raids by the enemy and
your character mumbles "we’ve already lost this war"  when the battles
are over, even though you won. I was skeptical at first that Joss
would, I don’t know, "get it"– but one of the allies says some really
harsh things about "acceptable losses" that has spawned some
interesting conversations between us. Insights into human nature come
from the strangest corners I guess. Regardless, it’s something fun to
do together. And since Joss is doing his "end of grade" testing all
week, he doesn’t have any homework.
let’s see how this "no child left behind" thing goes.

Alrighty. Time for one more spades tournament before I meet the jossling’s bus.
I really, really hope I get bored with this cards thing soon. It’s worse than The Sims.

love.

You can’t post videos on friendster, but for one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen, tied up in a 4 minute video, go to my myspace blog and watch it.

Song of the Hour: Crazy by Gnarls Barkley
                                    Assorted G’s from Grandaddy to GLB

So,
in all this silence, I’d like to tell you I had accomplished great
things. Joined
Greenpeace, or signed up as a Cancer research assistant,
maybe even picked up roadside litter. But no. That would be lying.


I
spent last week watching 3 seasons of Veronica Mars so I’d catch up in
time for the
finale on Tuesday. Which I did. Which has left this gaping
VM shaped hole in my life. The other shows I’ve watched from beginning
to end– Buffy, Angel, X-Files, Star Trek TNG– had all known they were
canceled in advance, and thus provided an ending. VM didn’t, and left
its fans with a tricycle-tassel-full of hanging threads. I’m not going
to rant too much, but it was VERY, VERY DISAPPOINTING. More
disappointing than Carnivale. More disappointing than the Matrix
trilogy. More disappointing than finding out that Howie Day was dating
Britney Spears. Very, Very Disappointing.

I’ve started summer
school, and my intense, high stress, 4 day a week Bowling class is up
and running. There’s a science to Bowling, and I am its mad scientist.
There is a textbook. There are angles and linear fulcrums and slippery
soled shoes. There is form, force, tilt, and balance. There are balls
and pins and gutters. For the low, low price of $220, you too can bowl
4 hours a week with teenagers dressed in stylish NCSU fashion wear; you
can listen to the instructor use titillating military jargon as you
attempt to "deliver" the ball and "execute" a strike. You, too, can
escape having to take the only remaining available PE at UNC,
"Lifeguard Training" by stealthing your way into another university’s
summer program. You, too, can benefit from my genius.

In other
news, the social overload from my last post left me in a cocoon of
anti-sociality that I have yet really to shake. I did take some time to
finish a short story. It’s not good for anything other than an
exercise, but it was nice to finish something on my own that had
nothing to do with school. Andy has determined that we will both get
published somehow somewhere this summer, and his enthusiasm is
infectious so I’m on board. It demands a level of courage to which I’m
not accustomed, but I’m trying.
As a testament to my growing
pro-activity, I managed to overcome my overwhelming and overwhelmingly
bizarre social anxiety last week, and took care of a problem I’ve put
off forever. 2 1/2 years ago I joined a gym and signed a 1 year
contract. The next day I fucked up my back trying to lift a 6×12 Uhaul
trailer at a bad angle, and didn’t go back to the gym. Eventually
months passed, and honestly I was just too embarrassed to go back in
general for not having gone at ALL, so I never went back. The gym
auto-renewed my contract for a second, and then a third year, so that I
have now spent $500 on a membership I never even picked up my card
for.Why didn’t you just go by there and talk to them about it, you say?
Why, because I’m retarded, of course. That kind of confrontation is the
bane of my existence, and in my screwy mind it was worth the monthly
fee just to avoid it. So I did. But something possessed me the other
day, and I drove straight there and went in and was as nice as I could
possibly be and worked it out. Of course, it was a piece of cake and I
feel ridiculous for having put it off for so long, but well, that’s how
I roll. Point is, score 1 for pro-active me.

I have a Joss story
I wanted to share, but it’s going to have to wait. Now that schools out
we’ve been spending a lot more time together, and it’s been a little
rocky. I think the child genuinely believes that the word "No" means
"Ask again in a either a more demanding or more pleading tone". It’s
very, very frustrating. Anyway.
We went outside yesterday to toss a
football around, and I was shocked at how good he was. He throws
straight and the ball does that twisty spirally thing.  The last time
we went to the  park (last summer) to play he didn’t want to catch it
because it hurt his arms and he’d curl up and duck when I threw it to
him. I don’t give a damn about sports really, but he’ll get no end of
torture if he employs the duck-and-hide strategy playing with other
boys; so I tried to coax him out of it but he got mad and stopped
playing. But he seems to have grown out of it now, and says "Watch this
mom!  I’m the all time QB!" every time he throws. I have no idea what
that means exactly, but he’s determined to be a quarterback. Except
when he misses. Then he says "I’m really a soccer player, you know."
What
a goof. Well, at least he won’t get beaten senseless during recess for
cringing. What the hell am I gonna do when he tries out for a varsity
team? Have a heart attack, I guess. My kid the football player. Jesus.
Well, they’re his knees, his choice.

Ok, enough for now.
Sorry for lameness of post. I think the interesting part of me died
during the VM finale. Ah, Logan, I’ll miss you so.

Song of the hour:  Mojo Pin by my baby Buckley via jukebox. Not my quarter. Never my quarter.

    I’m surviving social overload.
   
I’ve been to 2 parties this weekend, which is 2 more than the last 3
months; not to mention being already jaded from "Tuesdays with Andy" at
Mitch’s with even more social contact… the kind that involves loud
explicit sexual content that makes me cringe as it echoes.

   
Marco’s birthday was a success, in that he’s now 30. The party, too,
was fun. It was more mature than other birthday parties that spring to
mind, the ones where people get slobbery drunk and make out with people
they didn’t make out with the day before, nor would they tomorrow.
Wait, that was my birthday. My bad.     Anyway. even though I knew
maybe 4 people there, I managed to not hide in a broom closet… though
if I had seen one I may have caved. I felt like I knew a lot of the
guests just from listening to Marco’s work stories, which includes a
full cast of characters in the tongue-in-cheek sense, so it wasn’t
quite as intimidating to the socially terrified such as myself. As with
most things that make me nervous, it was fine by the time I left. How
he manages to absorb the bizarre and eclectic types of people into his
life that he does fascinates me. Engineers and writers and trapeze
artists and everything in between. It was a beautiful night to spend on
a porch, which is what we did and it was wonderful. Happy birthday
Marco, hope you had a great time. One day you should tell me who those
other 30 people were.

     Amanda, however, had to endure
the more reclusive me. After driving through that major monsoon that
saturated raleigh, 4 hours ago I made my way to Amanda’s door and then
through Amanda’s kitchen and living room and then I proceeded to hide
in her office/library for the next 90 minutes. It was FASCINATING to
see her parents again, who I haven’t seen since Joss was born, so far
as I can remember. I know she has a great relationship with them now,
but when I see her mother I can’t help but think of the white sofa we
ruined, that one goddamn beer cap after the party that gave it all
away, and mental institutions for teens. I can’t help it. The
church-going doesn’t make it any better. I’m going to try to figure out
what 10 years means to other people’s lives and get over this, but if I
didn’t see them grow and change it’s like it never happened somehow,
you know?
    So I hid in the office/library. Amanda’s bookshelves
are a tangible reminder of all the books I know I should have read by
now but haven’t. I was in lust. I reread parts of The Hanged Man. I
read parts of Election. I looked at the original art for V for
Vendetta. I read some Borges. Pyncheon. Collins. Plato. It was my
little idea of heaven, except for the part where there are windows. My
heaven is in a cave and it has one of those ashtrays from a 1970’s
airport. Otherwise, it was perfect. And she was kind enough to abandon
the other party goers (comers?) and talk to me and Brian while I left
thumb prints on everything she owned in paper format. Her house is
adorable and I plan to start tracking her movements so I can slip in
while she’s out and pretend I live there. Wait and see.

   So,
again, sorry I’m such a social spazz. Everyone was really nice to me
and maybe if I had consumed some alcohol or had a less social week I
would have been interesting and participatory. My dad kept calling me
though, so I bailed without talking to anyone for longer than 3
minutes. But, as a step above Sara’s wedding, at least I said goodbye. For the record, Amanda’s new sister-in-law is friggin’ gorgeous, and
Mr. Paul Straw is as adorable as ever.

Okay, it’s wind-down
time for jenny. If anyone needs me, I’ll be alone in a dark room with
the shades drawn curled up in a corner either reading with a flashlight
or watching Veronica Mars with my head under a blanket.

(as she
finishes writing, the Jukebox sneaks up and spits REM’s Country
Feedback at her like sound wave tear gas. Holy shit. How long has it
been? Seriously. It’s crazy what you could of had, I need this… what
are the chances? )

night all.
love.

Song of the hour: Whiner’s Bio by Mates of State (how appropriate)

It is finished.
I
just took my last exam, and I’m proud to say, I enjoyed it thoroughly.
I wrote profusely on the role of belief systems in: Scarlett Letter,
Moby Dick, Gatsby, Invisible Man, Sound and the Fury, and Tracks. I
wrote like there was nothing else I would rather be doing. Because
there wasn’t. Which is impressive considering it was 8 am and all. I
loved that class, I loved that instructor, and dammit I loved every
exam.

So, I have 2 weeks before my rigorous summer school class
of "Beginning Bowling" begins. Can you imagine? Oh my god, how awesome
is my life?

As you may be able to tell, I’m in a pretty good
mood regardless of the toilet the rest of the world is swirling down. I
got my grades back, and whether or not I get a 3.93 or a 4.0 for the
semester depends on whether or not my 16th century lit teacher counts
93.3 as an A- or an A. As much as I slacked off this semester, I’m not
complaining. About anything. For a while.

For the next week,
I’m going to be writing submissions for a writing contest, deadline
5/15. Andy’s been very encouraging (threatening, really, with the dead
rabbits and 2 am phone calls of "are you done yet?" but whatever,
that’s friendship, right?) and I’m working on something new that I’ve
never tried before on the short story front. What with the 4 stories
I’ve ever finished in my life. Anyway, that’s what I’m doing, that’s
how I’m feeling, that’s where I’m at.

I don’t want to be one
of those people that only writes when they’re sad. So, I’m happy and
excited and relieved and I have a story to finish.

love you guys. Hope you’re remotely as happy as I am today.

Song of the hour: Trying to drown out juke-box-drivel with
               
    Lonely Soul by Unkle, via Youtube b/c my itunes is screwed up. again.

Where to begin? I’ve written so many papers lately I feel like I need to blog in essay format. Score 1 for higher education.

School: I’ve finished all my finals but one, and the one left (american lit) I’m actually looking forward to. How Hermione-sick is that? Looking forward to a final? that’s just obscene. My math final was stupid-easy. My final for psych was a lab report on an experiment I ran, and it about killed me. My 16th century lit final, the worst of the bunch, was atrocious and I’m sure I did atrociously but right after the final we took our professor out for drinks and that made everything ok. I’ve never hung out with such cool undergrads for such a long period of time. And drunk, talking about Moby Dick when no one can quite say "Queequeg" properly will go down as one of the highlights of my college life. Hopefully I’ll find my grades out soon before I pull what’s left of my hair out. My Invisible Paper has me anxious– I didn’t tackle Ellison to the best of my ability.Anyway.

More importantly, Brian, Joss and I saw Spiderman 3 last night and screw the critics, I loved it. I knew it was going to be darker than the others, and that it was 2 and a half hours, and I worried about Joss– but he loved it and sat through it like a trooper. I understand why it got a lot of bad reviews, but the varied look at vengeance and forgiveness on such a  psychological level made up for the weak plot points. I give it a thumb up.

[Oh, and cuteness: During the credits, I said to Brian, "Did you notice that the Venom suit was way more powerful on Brock than it was on Parker? What's with that?" and before Brian could even say much of anything, Joss piped in "That's because Spiderman was still trying to be a little bit good. The other guy wasn't fighting it, he wanted to be bad, so he was stronger." And you know, I completely hadn't thought of that. And for Joss comprehension, it was astounding. Seriously, astounding. My little baby bit is growing up. ]

I had a moment during the movie, that when I thought about it later helped me to verbalize a lot of my political issues. So, NYC is throwing a parade for Spiderman, and  there’s a camera shot that has him posed against a gianormous american flag; he lands, and somewhere soon after it cuts to a shot of cheering NYC firemen. I rolled my eyes, and I couldn’t stop laughing at the ridiculousness of it.

Now, I realize that of course there would be firemen and such at a parade. It makes perfect sense. Nevertheless, it aggravated the shit out of me. Every time I see a NYC fireman/policeman with a flag, it makes me violent. I’ve been very perturbed by this aspect of myself, because I couldn’t understand why I had such a violent gut reaction to it. Baseball, apple pie, mom, the american flag, and firemen– it goes together, right? But the only other thing, well, two things, that make me have that reaction are Jesus Camp style fundamentalists, and the Bush administration. Being perfectly honest, the word "hero" (or "patriotic") has had a similar effect on me. I hear the word on the news and my jaw clenches. I can’t help it. And it’s bothered me immensely. The WTC travesty, and the risks and sacrifices the fire/policemen  endured justify the term by definition. So why the violence?

Later last night it clicked.          

I think of the 9/11 aftermath, and the government agencies and spin machine, and how amazingly quickly the whole clean-up operation was subsumed by the administration, and you know what it is? Classical Fucking Conditioning. I know this is probably obvious to everyone else, but I was too angry to even formulate it, so I just got angry and then mad at myself in an endless cycle and never bothered to work out my exact feelings. It’s the way the Administration swept in like a pack of goddamn vultures to claim any "noble deed" done by any citizen as their own, and made sure that every single publicity operation they concocted was contrived to put every victim and every victim’s family as being in full support of the administration, so that to question the administration was to insult the grieving. I think we all realize this. it’s the exact same shit as what they’re doing with the "heroes" of Iraq. But my distaste for the administration was so strong it just ended up working the other way– my disgust with the Bush admin. was transferred to every other citizen in a 5 foot radius of a flag. Heroes, patriots, soldiers, firemen, policemen, New Yorkers in general, all got sullied with the Bush taint. And that’s not fair, and I knew it; and then to exacerbate the situation, everyone bought the conditioning bullshit, enough to reelect him at least, so I got even angrier at everyone.

Writing this out, I feel like I’m explaining an elementary school multiplication table. I guess what I’m getting at, is that I got had. Feeling hostility towards anyone I have no experience with is ridiculous, and demonstrates how I fell just as much to this conditioning bullshit as the people that voted for him– I just fell the other way. This makes me horribly ashamed of myself, and I’m trying desperately not to react violently to these "power words" created by the media monkeys and spin machines. I keep seeing Wag the Dog and "old shoe" every time I think about it. To be fair, I think the whole contrivance of such icons and bullshit manipulation techniques is enough to justify some amount of hostility, but I hate that I do it so automatically… like I’m drooling at the sound of a bell. Because that’s what it’s like.

Ok, this is long enough and embarrassing enough for now. Thanks for enduring. Please let me know if you think I’m crazy or if  I’ve offended your sensibilities. This is a learning experience, and I welcome insight.

On a side note, I wanted to compliment everyone’s high school albums list. Beautiful stuff, and Amanda I hate you and your imagery and I hope your thighs inflate until you’re stuck in a wheelchair (ok, so maybe a little jealous…).
I’m glad you guys remembers all the things I’ve forgotten. For those that haven’t done them, I wish you would.