It’s November. I haven’t written anything for months, and obviously I haven’t been blogging. Things are rough but I’ve been crying tears of joy at least for the last 24 hours so maybe it’s time for an upswing. I don’t really have the words to talk about how amazing last night was. I couldn’t express it then, and I can’t do it now really either, but oh wow. Obama is president. Things feel different.
I’m now also dealing with the fact that I need to chose new classes soon, I need to start studying soon so I don’t fail the classes I’m currently taking, and NaNoWriMo is currently tempting me again even though I know down that path is an unnecessary mental breakdown. Thanksgiving is soon and although there’s not a chance in the world that I won’t go home, I’m pretty nervous about the whole thing.
This blog has, as of late, become a place I do not like to visit because it encourages me to expel everything currently in my head and I can’t see all that on a screen. It feels best at the moment to leave all of it in the dark recesses of my head where no one can see and even I can keep myself from visiting such thoughts. This is a pretty bad idea. I know that. But at the same time, I keep hoping that I’m drawing closer to this imaginary point in time when all of this stuff that’s bothering me will become moot. None of it will matter anymore because my circumstances will have changed. This is not true. Nothing like that is going to happen.
Sometimes I think I’ve achieved a form of happiness and then I assault myself with even more questions to be analyzed and answered. I wonder sometimes what I actually look like. Or rather, I know what I look like but often I wonder what other people see. Do people in my life think I’m beautiful or ugly; or do they not even see me anymore? The best times I think are when I’m able to answer the question to a certain extent; I imagine myself moving through life and looking completely different. Other times I feel like I’m getting closer to that ideal point when the question will become immaterial. Maybe someday, I won’t really care what I think I look like. I won’t care what other people think I look like. Maybe someday I’ll never have to think about looking at myself again.
I have not worked enough on my Snakes and Ladders game.
Things are not good right now. That is the best way I know how to describe what things are currently like. I wish that I knew how to change them back to being good or being peaceful, but I just don’t know how to do that right now. Not thinking about the bad stuff is helping a bit even though it makes me feel like I’m just avoiding problems. But maybe I’m not avoiding my problems. More and more I feel as though the walls I’m butting my head against just aren’t going to move—these are not walls but crazy undersea mountains that are miles high—and the best thing to do right now is to just stop thinking.
So I’m going to do other things that don’t involve the people or things that are making me feel so bad. I am going to try really hard to write more—jotting down words or phrases in my notebook shouldn’t count. If I have an idea, I should take the time to make something of it.
Last night I even cooked for myself and it wasn’t half bad. I’m not a particularly skilled cook so perhaps this shall be the first entry in a new photo series.
Not-A-Bad-Meal #1: Spanish Rice, Sausage, Green Beans
Would it be good or bad to know what one wanted out of life? Would that feel freeing or restrictive? I don’t know what I want out of tomorrow, let alone the next few months or years and so for the moment I fill my life with trivia. I read books that aren’t for class or related to my studies. I plan projects that serve no practical purpose. I fill my days but with things that are ultimately directionless.
In the next few months, I’m going to construct a giant game of Snakes and Ladders. I feel nearly as calm thinking about this plan as I feel when I fall asleep with all my homework completed.
I don’t really have all that much to say about life right now. It’s always hard to find that your existence has become dull and mundane without you ever noticing. Exams usually have that effect. I’m behind in my work (as always) and struggling to bring myself to care about the results of this summer program. I know I’ll be upset and disappointed with myself if I do poorly but of course right now I can’t imagine ever really caring about the results. I just want more sleep, a chance to go on really long walks again, or go book shopping. Soon, when I get that week at home, but not here and not yet.
Since at the moment I don’t have a lot going on, go off and read this brilliant essay on poverty by Heather Ryan over at Salon.com instead. It’s heartbreakingly simple and honest. Good stuff.
What did you ever do?
Please note that today I also took my first final exam of the summer. Two more classes, two more papers, and one more final to go! I was also supposed to write one of my papers today but I haven’t gotten around to that yet. Ah well, the night is young.
Dear Final Exams, Final Papers, Intensive Lectures, and Any And All Activity that Falls Under the Heading of ‘School’,
I can’t ever miss you if you never go away.
Sincerely,
Me.
The Democratic Party has presented its new platform language on choice, dropping the famous Clinton-era approach of “safe, legal, and rare.”
I like the new section. Something about “safe, legal, and rare” always got to me. It seemed slightly cagey about the whole matter of abortion, as though in order to convince those who were uneasy about Roe v. Wade, you should just rattle off this list as fast as you could until you got to “rare,” to something everyone could agree upon. It seemed like the kicker. Yes, abortions should be rare. But rare as a word choice seemed purposefully ambiguous in order to allow for a sort of wink in the direction of Roe v. Wade opponents. Rare seemed to say, why don’t we just promise you that the number of abortions will drop to zero and we can forget about whether the act itself is right or wrong, okay?
That shouldn’t be the approach of the Democratic Party. They needed to say that abortion is legal. We should give everyone better sex education, better access to contraception, better medical care for pregnant mothers and their children, and better funding and aid for mothers who are considering alternatives to abortions. But we must never stop declaring that abortion must be legal. I think that the new language is very successful. It’s not perfect, but it’s direct and simple. This is a policy that makes sense.
The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.
The Democratic Party also strongly supports access to affordable family planning services and comprehensive age-appropriate sex education which empowers people to make informed choices and live healthy lives. We also recognize that such health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions.
The Democratic Party also strongly supports a woman’s decision to have a child by ensuring access to and availability of programs for pre- and post-natal health care, parenting skills, income support, and caring adoption programs.
The 2008 Democratic National Platform can be found here; the section on choice is found on page forty-five.
This poem I feel for sure is definitely not deserving of the amount of love I give it. It is a nice poem, clever and funny, but perhaps the joke goes on too long. Doesn’t matter, I’m going to continue loving it too much, giggling and sighing on cue. Don’t blame the writer! The sestina made him do it!
Sestina: Bob
According to her housemate, she is out with Bob
tonight, and when she’s out with Bob
you never know when she’ll get in. Bob
is an English professor. Bob
used to be in a motorcycle gang, or something, or maybe Bob
rides a motorcycle now. How radical of you, Bob—
I wish I could ride a motorcycle, Bob,
and also talk about Chaucer intelligently. Bob
is very tall, bearded, reserved. I saw Bob
at a poetry reading last week—he had such a Bob-
like poise—so quintessentially Bob!
The leather jacket, the granny glasses, the beard—Bob!
and you were with my ex-girlfriend, Bob!
And you’re a professor, and I’m nobody, Bob,
nobody, just a flower-deliverer, Bob,
and a skinny one at that, Bob—
and you are a large person, and I am small, Bob,
and I hate my legs, Bob,
but why am I talking to you as if you were here, Bob?
I’ll try to be more objective. Bob
is probably a nice guy. Or that’s what one hears. Bob
is not, however, the most passionate person named Bob
you’ll ever meet. Quiet, polite, succinct, Bob
opens doors for people, is reticent in grocery stores. Bob
does not talk about himself excessively to girlfriends. Bob
does not have a drinking problem. Bob
does not worry about his body, even though he’s a little heavy. Bob
has never been in therapy. Bob,
also, though, does not have tenure—ha ha ha—and Bob
cannot cook as well as I can. Bob
never even heard of paella, and if he had, Bob
would not have changed his facial expression at all. Bob
is just so boring, and what I can’t understand, Bob—
yes I’m talking to you again, is why you, Bob,
could be more desirable than me. Granted, Bob,
you’re more stable, you’re older, more mature maybe but Bob . . .
(Months later, on the Bob-front: My former girlfriend finally married Bob.
Of Bob, she says, “No one has taken me higher or lower than Bob.”
Me? On a dark and stormy sea of Bob-thoughts, desperately, I bob.)
-Jonah Winter
I have not yet read all of T.S. Eliot’s poetry, so if I sound as if I’m speaking of things I don’t understand, I probably am. Apologies. Let’s call these “thoughts so far.”
I didn’t read “The Waste Land” until this spring. I have known and loved “Prufrock” since I was pretty small—my dad used to quote from that piece fairly often. ”Let us go then you and I,/When the evening is spread out across the sky/Like a patient etherized upon a table.” I don’t think there are many ten year olds who could have quoted you that line, but I could, thanks to my dad’s totally bizarre reading suggestions for me. I would probably defend “Prufrock” until my death. It’s been quoted to death, it’s trite at this point, and beloved mainly by pretentious folk who major in English and quote the line about coffee spoons to each other and smirk. Yeah, all of that’s true.
But that poem is beautiful nonetheless. I don’t think much about growing old, I don’t think much about the crisis of middle aged men, or of Edwardian England, but I cry when I read that poem because despite what some might see as its impenetrability, it lays out the tangled bed of emotions in the mind of a single individual and asks you if you’ve ever felt just this way.
To say that I love “Prufrock” is easy. I cannot much say that I love Eliot. ”The Waste Land” was hard going and simply removed. I smiled at familiar lines, finally in their rightful context, and wondered at the allusions and metaphors but ultimately I finished the poem and said, “Well, that’s it then.” No crying or moment of instant recognition. It was simply an interesting and nice poem. I didn’t much care for the rather grotesque sexual imagery. I can deal with poems that portray female sexuality as something fearful and rather violent (I actually wrote one this year which I’ve still got mixed feelings about.) but the images in “The Waste Land” just made me feel disgusting. I haven’t read “The Hollow Man,” I haven’t read “Four Quartets.” I will eventually but I wasn’t going to rush to read them, until just a little while ago. I stumbled across a line from “Four Quartets.” I like poetry that lays things out for me. I think that poetry should strive for bareness, not opaqueness, I value simplicity over frills, and I’m a little too fond of clever word play (Please note this poem from McSweeney’s which I haven’t yet stopped loving.). I don’t think these are elements that can be said to characterize Eliot’s poetry. And yet. And yet.
“You are the music while the music lasts.“
I may have to get around to reading “Four Quartets” sooner than I had intended. I didn’t think he had it in him.
