from Dear Sugar #60.

Dear Sugar,

You give a lot of great advice about what to do. Do you have any advice of what not to do?

*

Don’t do what you know on a gut level to be the wrong thing to do. Don’t stay when you know you should go or go when you know you should stay. Don’t fight when you should hold steady or hold steady when you should fight. Don’t focus on the short-term fun instead of the long-term fall out. Don’t surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn’t true anymore. Don’t seek joy at all costs. I know it’s hard to know what to do when you have a conflicting set of emotions and desires, but it’s not as hard as we pretend it is. Saying it’s hard is ultimately a justification to do whatever seems like the easiest thing to do—have the affair, stay at that horrible job, end a friendship over a slight, keep loving someone who treats you terribly. I don’t think there’s a single dumbass thing I’ve done in my adult life that I didn’t know was a dumbass thing to do while I was doing it. Even when I justified it to myself—as I did every damn time—the truest part of me knew I was doing the wrong thing. Always. As the years pass, I’m learning how to better trust my gut and not do the wrong thing, but every so often I get a harsh reminder that I’ve still got work to do.

Say that.

Say that you meet someone again and you realize. Say that the day is bright, and the wind is cold, and you look, and then you see it—or rather, you don't, but the words—those words, yes—those words flit through your head, and you think, There it is.

“Because desire just cheats you. It’s like a sunbeam skipping here and there about a room. It stops and gilds some inconsequential object, and we poor fools try to grasp it—but when we do the sunbeam moves on to something else, and you’ve got the inconsequential part, but the glitter that made you want it is gone.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Maybe.

The aesthetics--they're different. I can't write for this professor. Late at night, when I realize that my intuition is just not the same as his, that I don't think remotely the way he does . . . well, what then? I could slay the text to get what I want, but it'd be an act of calculation, not of love.

Nonstop.

Life is so rampant right now.

I'm really not paying enough attention to anything blogworthy this semester, so I think I'll cut myself some slack and return to productive rambling at a later date months from now.

Anxiety.

I'm so worried about everything.

[Exit stage right].

You don't notice the beginning of the end. You only notice after it's all over. Curtain call completed. Auditorium's empty, crushed paper cups strewn on the floor, across aisles. The lights have long been extinguished, and the night staff is wandering in with plastic brooms. You thought the humming in your ear was electricity. You thought the night was young.

But then you turn around, and your footsteps echo in the hollow air. Everything hums with a finality you were too busy to notice before. You step on a popcorn kernel, and it crunches beneath your feet.

Startled, you look down the rows of empty seats. You check your hands: empty. Fans: gone. Had they clapped? Had there been an encore? Autographs?

You think about asking someone what you missed. You need to know. You shove your hands in your pockets, approach the nearest janitor.

"So, what'd you think of the show?" you ask, feigning nonchalance. "Was it good? Were the people happy? Were they smiling as they left?"

He returns your look of desperation with a blank stare. Looks you up and down, suspicious, says, "Sir, I'm just here to clean. You best be going now. You really should go home.

"Show's over now, sir. Sir, the show's over. Sir?"

It is bizarre that I am myself.

Isn't it?

God, why are 5 a.m. phone conversations always the most elucidating, always the ones with the clearest conclusions? I was so frustrated, confused, lost, terrified, panicked when I picked up the phone an hour ago. And now I feel, strangely, satisfyingly, like I could wake up tomorrow and make rational decisions. Like I am once again a sane human being. Better to have someone else hold your train of thought up to scrutiny, to have your fallacies described to you in cringe-inducing detail.

I'm waiting for the period of my life during which I will deserve the title "Girl With Absolutely No Issues Whatsoever." Sadly, I don't think it'll actually ever happen.

This blog is evermore becoming a testimonial to the completely self-indulgent melodrama that has come to characterize my young adult life.

The Rumpus, spiders, etc.

Stephen Elliott of The Rumpus sends out daily emails full of random tidbits, mostly interesting, and I've started to think like him. When I journal I adopt the same sort of foggy nostalgia, as if everything is important but I've already forgotten all of it. As though every little mundane moment were significant in some universal way.

But it's true: some conversations bristle with subtext. I know exactly what I'm talking about, but I have no idea if my momentary companion has any idea. I speak every word as though it mattered the way dialogue does in a short story.

It's interesting -- the physics of every individual's world. The way they see themselves in their own lives, and how true it is for them. The specific way a friendship looks, a relationship starts, disagreements fester and resolve themselves. Why are we all repeats of ourselves? How do we manage to stumble on our own stories so often ("That would happen to you!") and not one another's?

When I despise someone, I despise the way he insists on seeing himself. I hate how predictable, how puny a life can be. It makes me feel trapped, just thinking about him inside the physics of his world. I can feel this repulsion toward anyone. This is why I will never be loyal to anything but an idea.

Five minutes ago, I saw a spider hanging out on my blinds. I considered it. Then I held out a glass for tea that I'd been refilling with water and scooped the spider into it. I stared at it while I typed, it's black-yellow legs struggling in vain to climb up the glass. I didn't know what to do with it. Then I opened my window and shook the bottle upside-down, until the spider fell out.

Two observations.

1) I like television shows to be funny, and movies to be sad. I want my micro-media (20-40 minutes per session) to be uplifting, and my macro-media (1.5-2 hours) to leave me questioning.

2) I've gotten to the point where I have constant run-in conversations with people that I recognize but about whom I don't actually know any other details (name, how we know each other, when we started knowing each other). I think it's related to my recent not-so-lucid weekend befriending. But how to ask someone, in the middle of a conversation, "Hey, how do we actually know each other? And what's your name?" x____x Never!

Law school vs. ???

So. I'm sitting on two internship offers, one at the local public radio station and one at a academic publishing house. I can't reasonably do both, though if this had been last year, I would have overcommitted myself and left future Shining to suffer the consequences. My semester thus far has been work-light and sleep-heavy, and I could probably swing it if I went back to my old sleep patterns and skimped on some readings in my other classes.

But this is my new leaf, and this is my promise to do everything well this semester instead of just doing everything. And I have my writing, and LSAT prep, and going to the gym, and actually having fun on weekends to consider.

On the one hand, I already adore public radio to death, but I'm not sure what working in public radio would be like (and really, is there a future in something so hierarchical and admittedly un-lucrative?). On the other hand, I heard from someone in my creative writing class that HarperCollins starts employees at $20-30k/yr, so would I actually go into publishing either?!

I've been thinking more and more about law school, and I think I'll no doubt end up there. It's so difficult aspiring to anything else when law school is tangible, is professional, is prestigious, is profitable.

My plan right now is to take a few years after undergrad and do something I "love" before going to law school. Somehow this seems like a compromise that falls philosophically flat. I want something like public radio to sweep me off my feet and convince me that money and prestige aren't important, but part of me also wants to realize that nothing is worth being passionate about. Then I could go to law school without any lingering what-ifs.

Maybe for someone who is easily immersed in an expertise and self-confident and consistent, it would be easy to choose ideals. But I'm overzealous and fickle, and my shelf life with any new endeavor is probably about a year or two, maximum. What am I chasing? Is it success? Is it passion? Is it influence? Something else? What, then?

Somehow this relatively unimportant decision has developed great tangential significance. I don't usually do this, but I would really appreciate advice, either via the comment box -- or anyone who reads this probably has my email address.

Creative un-writing.

I’m starting from nothing. The blank Word document scares me. I start thinking to myself, Maybe I should write by hand? Maybe that’ll distill some genius out of this fear. But I know it’s just an evasion tactic, and not even much of a good one. I’m scared that the words won’t flow, that I’ll spend the entire semester staring at the word count, hoping to eke my way to 2000 words. What a bummer.

I can’t handle the pressure, but I won’t write without it. The summer before last I was back home and writing a good 1000+ words a week (a decent amount for me, but pathetic by any real writer’s standards). My incentive was Write Club, a sort of slipshod group of sort-of-literary people I cobbled together out of high-school friends. It was probably the best writing summer of my life.

I just need to be less terrified. Some writers say they can’t help but write – everything they think or dream. But I can’t sit down to put words to paper, even electronically. Even when they’re not permanent at all. I don’t want to test myself. I don’t know want to know that my ideas aren’t original, that my sense of character and plot is weak or lacking.

Stare decisis.

We talked about stare decisis in class today.
In law jargon, it basically means the principle of following precedent, remaining consistent.
I could use some of that in my life: Consistency. Judicial review. Rational decision-making. You know, you know.

Even if it's a minor, small, inconsequential connection, this somewhat intellectual thought reminds me that others are coming soon.

FutureMe.org.

I occasionally send my future self emails. This is one I got today, from end-of-sophomore-year me:

Hi,

Life is a series of sadnesses.
True or false? Why always emotionally true?

Melancholy sneaks up at endings, transitions, destabilizations and uprootings.

Who are you? Are you still scared of being yourself? Are you nervous about the future? Are there prospects?

Learned this year: relationships involve more sacrifice than you knew; people are more difficult than you expected; school is not everything but the rest of it matters more than you understood before.

Forgot this year: selfhood, independence, solitude.

Summer: fully recover from relationship; read and write and fully involve self in literature; understand self-development.

For happiness, perhaps try to really know the importance of the things you care about. Stop being fickle. Stop being easily infatuated. Be level-headed. Avoid panicking.

Most importantly (and the thought that weighs most heavily right now) -- be over this last mistake, completely. Over it. Not even doubtful of any of it. It's not enough to be able to rationalize happiness. Coming to peace must be instinctive, must be earned.

Best friends: A and B and C. Has this changed? Hm.

Hope you're doing well. If not, things will get better. I promise.

Ever more so,
Me

Looking back, I think I was dead-on with this summer. And I should take my own advice: No rashness. Make decisions carefully.

I'm very ready for this year to be amazing.

Note to self.

Drunk me talks too much. Must learn to control nosy questions. Oh, hi. What are some really intrusive questions I could ask you, while we're sitting here buzzed?

Lost In Translation.

(Spoiler alert: If you haven't seen "Lost In Translation" and plan to, don't read this.)

Just saw this while waiting for my road trip buddy's sister to get home. I find my movie expectations to have changed in the recent past. I don't even like happy endings anymore. I actually find them unrealistic. So at the end, when Bill Murray stops his car on the way to the airport to find Scarlett Johansson walking in the street, I actually thought, "Oh no. Are they seriously going to--? Really?"

But no. And I liked the movie much better for that. It's more fitting, realistic. I thought about Bill Murray's character and instead of thinking, "Get out of your dead-end marriage, dude," all I could think was, "You have a wife! You have kids! You have a family and a home! Why would you throw it away for blond and busty?!"

Yeaaaah. Where did my inner kid go? Where will I find her again?

Nothing really makes sense.

I decided to ride my emotions to their ends instead of trying to moderate them. I have so many. I understand (so much more than I did before) what Foer meant when he wrote one of his characters' childhoods in these terms:

When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calender that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from the chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table.

I spent my life learning to feel less.

Every day I felt less.

Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?

I don't remember the page number, but the book is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and I think that I could be that girl, crying about everything tiny, acutely feeling the small tragedy of existing at all.

I think I wrote a paper to this effect once, but I don't remember any of it, and I don't think I meant then the extent of what I mean now.

It's difficult. I want to cry about so much--even the rustling of paper, even the silence between and question and its response, even the green of my copy of Mrs. Dalloway because it is such a vibrant lime-chartreuse, because the front of the cover is rough and the inside is smooth and---

Doesn't really make sense. I know, I know, I know, I know. But still I believe myself, the way I believe Woolf when she wrote these thoughts for Mrs. Dalloway:

Big Ben struck the half-hour.

How extraordinary it was, strange, yes, touching to see the old lady (they had been neighbours ever so many years) move away from the window, as if she were attached to that sound, that string. Gigantic as it was, it had something to do with her. Down, down, into the midst of ordinary things the finger fell, making the moment solemn. She was forced, so Clarissa imagined, by that sound, to move, to go--but where? Clarissa tried to follow her as she turned and disappeared, and could still just see her white cap moving at the back of the bedroom. She was still there, moving about at the other end of the room. Why creeds and prayers and mackintoshes? when, thought Clarissa, that's the miracle, that's the mystery; that old lady, she meant, whom she could see going from chest of draws to dressing-table. She could still see her. And the supreme mystery which Kilman might say she had solved, or Peter might say he had solved, but Clarissa didn't believe either of them had the ghost of an idea of solving, was simply this: here was one room; there another. Did religion solve that, or love?

The page number for that is 140-141, but maybe only in the Penguin Popular Classics edition--in any case, "here was one room; there another." What could Woolf possibly have meant by that, and yet I think I get it (if only in my own personal way), and yet it seems so plausible--Mrs. Dalloway's thought.

I'm just overwhelmed, I think, not that I can really justify it. Just: Colors. Eating. Gravity. Expectations. Glances. Age. A room next to another. How can it all be possible? And my emotions--the melancholy of a lazy afternoon, the delight of a brother singing off-key.

I am so influenced by the literature I read.

Ponderings.

I left my journal downstairs and am too lazy to get it. Oh, summer, what have you done to me? Just like how I drove around the parking lot today to find a better spot at the gym: inefficient energy conservation tactics.

Have been thinking lately about:

Death: how it happens, that it happens. A close friend's cousin died over the summer. Another close friend's dog just died (not the same, I know, but). My mother keeps talking about a friend who has an inoperable brain tumor. I watched The Fountain last night, completely unprepared for the questions it asks. I keep thinking about how I'm not ready for anyone I know to die. I keep realizing that this makes me naive and -- in an important way -- completely immature. Somewhere buried and psychological, I'm living a delusion where no one is mortal. I'm ignoring the end of the story. It's a morbid preoccupation, I know, but I used to think about death so much as a kid (a habit that seems to be genetic? my third-grade brother keeps mentioning his "fear of death" -- what a weird sibling similarity). And now I'm puzzled by my attitude toward it, or rather . . . my non-attitude.

Kids: I used to hate it when my parents told me that I'd understand something when I got older. I never believed them, always thought that people could mature in different ways, so why would I necessarily mature their way? But now I keep wanting to use that line on my brother. "You'll understand when you get older." It's just giving up, really. A cop-out when words don't do justice to the wisdom you want to impart. I really want to explain what I mean to him, to somehow find a way to use his language to express exactly what I mean. It should be possible, right? I think it should, it should, but then I see his eyes glaze over, and I know the game's up.

Baggage: How I Met Your Mother did this great episode about emotional baggage, complete with real suitcases that appeared whenever a character revealed his hang-ups. I can't stop thinking about it. I don't know why. I think it's because I keep trying to diagnose everyone I know, and part of me realizes how blind and/or arrogant I am to assume that I could know what makes even my closest friends tick.

Other disjointed thoughts -- not yet developed into anything substantive. The dregs of my attention-deficient mind. I should turn my laptop off, curl up with Mrs. Dalloway, and call it a night, but I feel oddly pensive. And kind of anxious. Not sure why.

[Edit @ 2:15 a.m.

Understand the weird fluttery feeling now. It's actually because of Mrs. Dalloway. I picked the book up and instantly felt like I was about to collapse of self-doubt. Oh, Clarissa. Oh, Peter Walsh.]

I really kind of love this poem.

Simple rhyme. Does it well. I'm respecting this.

Rain
by Don Paterson

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one big thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass,

and all things flow out from that source
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,

so when his native twang shows through
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from the play,

I think to when we opened cold
on a starlit gutter, running gold
with the neon drugstore sign
and I'd read into its blazing line:

forget the ink, the milk, the blood—
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain's own sons and daughters

and none of this, none of this matters.

Sights.

I'm deciding.
I'm setting my sights on Harvard Law.
Just ordered LSAT books.
Let's go.

It's actually kind of fun pretending to take this seriously.

"Have you listened to Radiohead ennui-ed?"

What I heard, not what was said.

What I found in Microsoft Word this morning:

IF I focus too much then I think that I’m normal. But it’s like I’ve been asleep. Asleep forever. And ever. And it’s a memory but it’s a dream. But it’s actually 60% dream until I realize it’s 100% memory. A real moment that I should ctrl+s as a MOMENT FROM MY FINITE LIFE.

I'll leave the rest up to your -- or my -- imagination.

I think it's here to stay.

The happiness, that is. The "nothing is actually terrible"-ness. The "my life won't end if I don't get this internship"-ness (though I would really, really like this internship).

Maybe it's called maturing. Realizing that angst isn't as appealing as it used to be when my future could conceivably consist of nothing but a job within a void of meaninglessness. Understanding that the biggest crises always end.

Or maybe it's called the end of summer. I always end the summer pretty well, full of new hope and delusions about how stressed I'll be during the school year.

But though I've always had something extremely tangible to look forward to (a boy, a position, a last hurrah before graduating), I don't think I've put my metaphorical eggs in any shaky baskets this time. I think I've actually learned something.

Human?

In today's list of shocking realizations (both mine and otherwise), someone told me that I didn't seem human? Or rather, he said that I didn't seem as human as I do now, after he read my blog. Which brings into question all sorts of things, namely: What am I projecting, through writing or otherwise? Am I actually developing a public/private persona divide? Exactly how personal/revealing is this rambling thing I do every once in a while (which I attempt to keep only minimally detailed -- I guess tangible details are less important and . . . thought details are more)? Should I even care what I or this seem like to anyone -- anyone being an "audience" of any sort? Onward with the over-asked, never-really-sufficiently-answered questions!

A Parallelogram.

At the Steppenwolf tonight -- saw A Parallelogram, which was either about time travel or agency or free will or determinism or existentialism or psychosis. Or all of the above.

Anyway. It was a good performance, and after intermission we snuck down to the first row. The change in perspective somehow made the female lead seem shrill and obnoxious. But the whole play was about that, sort of: perspective, subjectivity. (The other themes of the play -- the free will shenanigans -- were just a little too passé to be interesting. And the unanswerable "Is she crazy or is she actually time-traveling?" was Inception-esque. I hate it when storytellers don't want there to be answers.)

So went maybe the rest of Sunday too. Changes in perspective. The friend from high school I stayed with in Chicago -- I used to really respect and almost admire her. She was always well-versed in current events, knowledgeable about random trivia, less enslaved to the high school routine of "get good grades, collect leadership positions, repeat" than the rest of us. But last weekend, having both aged two years since we'd spent significant time together, I realized how dissimilar we are in the ways that matter.

I also saw a friend from college on Sunday. We haven't been extremely close the past year, mostly because we stopped agreeing about anything. Somehow as we wandered around the city, though, I realized that all the things we'd argued about -- in the end, really, she'd been a lot more right than I'd given her credit for. It'd just taken me a few months to understand things her way.

I am filthy. And happy.

Actually, I was filthy ten minutes ago. Now that I've washed the smell of Lollapalooza (a pungent mix of sunscreen, sweat, and marijuana) out of my hair, I'm not much less satisfied. A little more tired, maybe. And a little sore.

But worth it. So, so worth it. Performances in order of awesomeness:

1) Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes: performed on a minor stage and literally packed the entire grassy area around it. People were climbing in trees to get a better view. Such good energy. And NPR was right -- they're much better live than recorded. Must see again.
2) Phoenix: I wasn't a big fan until today. But wow. I was tired and dehydrated and dizzy from the pot smoke around me, and they still blew me away. Now must listen to "1901" for the rest of my life.
3) The xx: I saw them at Cat's Cradle last spring. Not quite the same vibe in broad daylight, but still contagious and supersensual.
4) Metric: Not much to say. A lot of hair-flailing.
5) Spoon: I'm not their biggest fan. But performance was on point. And gotta love the brass section.
6) Stars: A friend told me that Stars live is a disappointment, and I . . . can't not agree. Amy Millan was onstage in a shiny black dress and heels at least a decade too young for her. And it's just strange to hear her rhyming "ecstasy" and "sex with me" (to steal Pitchfork's observation) alongside a blue-violet-reflective-sunglasses-donning Torq Campbell.
7) Grizzly Bear: Okay, I know these guys can harmonize the shit out of everything, but they were really low-energy. And not interesting. And boring.

I need to make music festivals a habit. Actually, I need to make this summer a habit. Need to reflect on this more. Will be back when it's not 4:00 a.m. EST.

Chicago.

In a friend's room waiting for her to get back from Linear Algebra. Last night we randomly found a friend of a friend's small gathering and got there in time to see him break two wine glasses within an hour of each other. Then ran around looking at apartment renovations, heard everyone discuss Durkheim (more like Jerkheim, apparently) and complain about how many times they'd read Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics for their Core classes.

Really, really cool to see U of Chicago students going off on random professors and classes, knowing that if we were at Duke we'd do the same. Also made me 2% want to go to school here, but it's definitely a passing thought. More so maybe just made me miss everyone from school more and want late August to get here sooner? (Of course, I'd like school to start without classes starting -- ideal situation #1.)

Sometimes I think that I wouldn't even need to do anything with my life -- I could just wander around and observe other people living out their existences, maybe partake for a day or two before moving on. Maybe I could couchsurf forever. Probably not a sustainable idea. But I do so love a good adventure.

A person I generally despise always says she likes to do things for the story she can later tell (and she tends to tell these stories repeatedly and continuously, with or without your permission). I hate to say that I'm like her, but -- yeah, it's kind of like that.

Lists.

It was brought to my attention during my stay in China that I am an obsessive maker of lists. (Not to get all MBTI again, but this is probably the most J part of my otherwise extremely P propensities.) Not even just "To Do" lists either, though (to be fair) those litter my desktop, both in real life and on my computer. It's not enough for me to make lists of mundane tasks to finish, objects to buy, books to read, etc. No. I'm worse than that.

My lists extend into every aspect of my life. When I'm happy, I make lists of what's gone right, the songs I'm most into, the people I'm grateful for, etc. More often, when I'm a little put off, I make lists of exactly what characteristics of a person I can't stand, why my life is falling apart, what I need to improve, what I need to remember in the future.

In mid-June, while I was still mid-journal, I actually made a list of all the lists I'd compiled so far. I counted seventy-seven. That's seventy-seven in a little less than four months.

Oh wait. I was in the middle of making a Chicago list when I got . . . distracted . . . by . . . hm. Maybe making lists is actually P after all.

Sometimes you wake up and you feel better.

Sometimes it takes months. Years. Decades. Sometimes it takes an entire lifetime.

Sometimes it takes no time at all.

Right now Jason Mraz is making my anthology-editing a cheery experience. I've been surprisingly productive, considering. And will hopefully continue this productivity into the night.

This morning I woke up on my friend's couch and felt better. I looked around her basement. I scratched a mosquito bite on my foot. I answered a stray text message. I thought about my dying phone battery. I thought about my relation to the rest of the things that have happened to me.

I thought about the night before. About the beach, the bioluminescent algae glowing at our fingertips in the water. About sitting on the shore building sand mounds and talking while the boys had not-yet-men conversations in the water. About overhearing a discussion about whether cheating was appropriate if a girlfriend cheated with another girl ("Just because it's hot doesn't mean it's okay!"). About flying down I-40 at five in the morning at nearly one hundred miles per hour. About dozing off in the backseat with Stevie Wonder lyrics nudging the direction of my dreams.

Then I went further back, to the afternoon -- how I'd lied to get out of the house, how I'd feigned studiousness because it was easy, because it's always easy be That Girl, how comforted I am by the idea that a version of me is somewhere doing the things I should do. How naturally the image comes to me. But also how untrue it is.

Then I thought about how I'm scared, about how scared I am. About the conversation I had with one of my mother's best friends, whose house I'm staying at right now. About what she said to me: You will make mistakes. You have the space in which to make them. Not everyone is allowed that freedom.

None of this really describes what I mean. But how about this: Yesterday while we were walking along the shoreline in the darkness, my friend told me that I should look into taking advantage of the free counseling services on campus. Not because I'm crazy, but because everyone is, a little. And because it's never a bad idea to understand more. I can't yet place a name to my personal glitch yet, but I know it's there, a backseat driver to my neuroses. I'd like to find it and stare it down so we can finally part ways.

Last night was extremely surreal, but I think it allowed me a distance I needed. I talked to another friend today about her current state of spiritual constipation (crude yet apt analogy). This past week -- and especially the weekend before last -- allowed me to let go of petty grievances I was ashamed to admit I still entertained. But that's what a backlog is, right? Everything minor collects. And collects. And collects.

Until the dam breaks.

[Snow White].

I love this type of poem.

[Snow White]
by Lightsey Darst

      do you have
           scars / if not the hurt is mostly imagined.

slash of blood against snow and who would wish for a child
"red as blood"—pretty words,
but the daughter suffers.

When I was young I loved ____, now
I love ____, and in between
                salt air, eclipse, the tinny rust of each year's puncture.

"As white as snow as red as blood"—I'd include more news

                if I knew it. For she was a thin little thing,
hardly more than a peep coming from that carmine mouth—

                yes ma'am, I'd like to bite the shiny apple, please.
      A disease will fill the airwaves until spring and then a girl

and then a war. "And black as ebony." Mother,
you had your wishes, all three. And then you die and she

      is running through midnight woods while
           the most beautiful woman in the world
      salts and peppers the heart & lungs she leaves behind.

It's official.

I love Fridays. Lawless, lax. The rest of the week I think I should pretend to be productive, but Friday is beyond saving.

Moments:
1) Having dodged that bullet.
2) Two words: Retail. Therapy.
3) Bananas: the never-ending inside joke.
4) Road rage.
5) Packing up an apartment in 24 hours. Go.
6) Applying How I Met Your Mother to every angle of life.
7) Living in a sitcom.
8) Tipsy-apartment-cleaning.
9) Driving into the Duke forest at 2 a.m. and forgetting a flashlight and turning back.
10) Settling next to the Chapel, taking auto-timed pictures, listening to slam poetry, dreaming of school school school, being existentially and undeniably alive.
11) Right now.
12) "We're having a bondage moment right now."
13) Everyone. Everything. Ever.

The Archive.

Had dinner at my co-editor's apartment last night. I just let it sink in that I'm going to be running the show for this literary magazine next year. I haven't had this much responsibility in a while -- especially not with something I care about this much. And in high school, it was so easy to be merely nominal about things (-- especially when you're in charge of five other things and have your eyes set on Yale. Ugh okay admitting it yuck).

But I have high hopes for myself and for The Archive next year. I think we're going to make a few structural changes (walking that fine line between setting up useful positions and creating bureaucracy) in addition to working harder on fostering creative writing on campus. Idealistic, but possible?

Junior year is a year during which good things are going to happen. I can just feel it. And no amount of accidental sleeping-in (today) or rookie real-world mistakes (being really scared by the UPS man banging at the door whoops) is going to make me feel ill-prepared to meet the challenges of my near-future life.

And so.

Someone pointed out to me that I only write when I'm pissed, which is . . . true. But in my defense, when happy things are happening, what would you rather do: sit down and write about it? To twist a famous saying, isn't that like dancing about architecture?

To me, words are a heavy medium. They can be made lightweight and fluffy only through an extraordinary amount of effort -- and there's still always the risk of sounding cheesy, inauthentic, strained. I'd rather consume my happiness through music, movies, t.v. shows.

Plus (and maybe this won't make much sense), I think happiness is much more private than sadness. Everyone has insecurities and doubts, and most people wear these on their sleeves. But to really know what makes someone happy is something intimate.

(Also: A small part of me doesn't believe in happiness. It seems like bragging. Stagnancy. Complacency. It seems like not knowing that you should actually be sad. Possibly I'm just infatuated with struggling. My favorite images are those of suffering: Sisyphus rolling his boulder up the hill, Ophelia submerging herself in water (the same image, except replace Ophelia with Virgina Woolf), Zach Braff and Natalie Portman screaming in the pouring rain in the classic scene from Garden State.)

Nevertheless, this is my attempt at writing down happy thoughts: my mother is hands-down the wisest advice-giver I will ever know. And yesterday my roommate and I laughed until four in the morning about things that forced her to clear her browser history. And I keep getting to know amazing people. And I'm getting stronger, better (hearing the first beats of Daft Punk in my head now), more mature -- I've discovered so much about myself this summer. And I'm looking forward to the next few months of my life.

Unbearably gushy. Going to go wash the taste of cheesy sentiments out of my mouth by listening to some Radical Face.

What makes you think I enjoy being led to the flood?

(Apologies in advance for length and lack of structure. In other words, this is a self-indulgent, three-a.m. ramble.)

Wow. Became incoherent for a while, so must backtrack. Think again. I reached the clarity of having found conclusions during my run today, so I think I’ve made at least some sense of all of this.

First of all, the title of this post is a lyric from a song by The National. It doesn’t exactly sum up what I mean, but in a way it captures the resignation I feel about much of this topic. And I just find myself playing it over and over again, the way I do with new song obsessions.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t spend the majority of this weekend with my soul curled up in a fetal position, bawling my eyes out. I’ve needed it for a while, but the imperative to stay strong has always kept my guard up. But around certain people . . .

This is complicated. I had an ex-boyfriend visit this weekend. I guess this can be viewed as unwise, but we’d talked about it for weeks, and we’re both in between relationships, so under the rules of modern social conduct, it was as allowable as anything else.

I know that I should probably choose my company more wisely – inviting exes back into one’s life is generally frowned upon. But he’s never really left my life, and I don’t want him to. Terrible, terrible things have happened between us, and at times I thought I’d never speak to him again.

But. I’ve honestly never been as vulnerable around anyone else, and I doubt I will ever be. It’s a byproduct of having spent so much time growing together. So much of us is relatable, instantly understandable. And I wanted more than anything else not to have to explain.

In any case. In any case, what I needed was to spend a weekend with someone familiar, to remember at least a little of my previous confidence. What I needed was to drink and to cry, and then to drink some more, and then to feel sick in the middle of the night, and then to wake up completely disoriented and unable to remember what was so sad the night before – call it a twenty-first-century catharsis?

When people drink, their worst fears end up manifesting themselves in garbled clichés. I’m convinced everyone at their core has one of many generic insecurities. Which makes mine boring as hell, but also completely true for the time being – I was told that while whimpering pathetically on Friday night, I asked questions to the tune of “Am I actually a good person?” and “How do I know my life is worth living?”

Such age-old anxieties, I know, but I confess that they’re painfully accurate. Other people worry about being alone, about failure, about talent. Right now, my problem with my existence is so fundamental that I can say only this: I can’t understand how I became this person that I am. I can’t comprehend or support my own decisions. I feel conflicted about every choice I make.

This weekend, while we watched countless episodes of How I Met Your Mother, I tried so hard to adopt the emotional physics of the sitcom. And when we watched Rushmore, I fell in love (as I always do) with Wes Anderson’s understanding of life: so shitty, yet so uplifting by the end of every one of his movies.

I want to see existence the way Anderson does. I want to believe what he believes.

It’s such a struggle right now for me to make my mind up about even small aspects of my day. I’ve been grappling with this since last winter and I just don’t. know. what’s. wrong. I refuse to believe it’s just another bout of teenage-like angst. I want to think that it’s my real coming-of-age, when I learn to appreciate everything about my existence after all.

Was it a mistake to have him over? At first I felt a sort of bombastic shame about the whole ordeal, but I don’t anymore. Instead, I seriously think that nostalgia can be revitalizing, that maybe Lawrence was right about sex after all, that the transition between serious and casual isn’t quite so difficult to navigate.

Plus (and maybe this is what is the most important realization to me), I’m just sick of wondering what is expected of me in these situations. I’m so good at obligation, at should and ought – such a Thinking type that I try to squash what I’m Feeling. I’ve gotten in so much trouble for that, jumping into any romantic opportunity I think should work out despite my hesitations. And then staying in because I think the sort of person I want to be would be capable of dealing with it.

God, I should just listen to my instincts. Isn’t that the entire problem in the first place!?

In high school, one of my close friends decided to write me a series of puppy love letters, even though I was already in a relationship. And instead of doing what I felt – which would have involved being creeped out, getting the fuck out, and letting this inconvenience go – I was so overwhelmed by how nice and kind and earnest this boy was that I thought I owed him something. And I couldn’t extricate myself.

Yesterday I got a late-night phone call from a close friend that was so similar in sentiment that the phrase “eternal recurrence” flashed through my mind as I sat in the parking lot of my apartment complex, flabbergasted. Same nice, earnest, completely deserving guy. Same nothingness from me.

Later, I realized the situation wasn’t as dire as I thought. But it’s still not the best. What in me invites declarations of love from my closest friends? (Especially when I'm in the middle of considering myself so irredeemably foolish?) For a few minutes I actually thought it was my duty to love him. As though anything like this could be forced.

I’ve obviously not fully learned my lesson. I can’t feel bad about this. But even now the guilt is creeping up on me. And I think I should want what I don’t.

Ugh. This weekend I learned about myself that I can handle casual encounters relatively well (minus the crying jags, which are probably not permanent). Except what I think I should do is throw myself into a relationship the way I have for the past five years. Great.

Not now. Not now. Not when I actually literally have no idea what I’m doing with myself. Not when I really feel like using this period of my life to get myself together. I'm not scared of being unsure. I'm scared of not making my own choices.

I’m going to borrow a line from Jake & Amir, which I’ve also overindulged in this weekend. Instead of stressing about what I ought to do in situations like these, I’m going to go to bed and wake up tomorrow and make myself a big, nice helping of NOT GIVIN’ A SHIT.

Shoot me.

Option 1: I should start respecting views that are not my own, even when I think they're fucking ridiculous.
Option 2: These people are seriously fucking ridiculous.

Forms of communication.

I sat down today to write a few letters I'd been meaning to mail out for a while. I've never been a big letter-writer, mainly because I always selfishly wanted to keep all my documentable thoughts in my own personal journal, away from the prying eyes of someone who wouldn't appreciate them. Sending a handwritten letter out into the world means releasing a piece of yourself to float into someone else's hands -- someone else who probably didn't understand as well, who probably wouldn't respond in a way that would really make problems clearer.

I remember (it's shamefully funny now) keeping a journal for a high-school boyfriend, which basically consisted of reflecting every few days in a spiral-bound notebook about life, worries, progress until I could present it as a birthday gift. Basically just a series of more personal, more revealing letters -- but I was so stingy in what I wrote, would always make sure my best insights had been doubled in my personal journal, would still not even reveal the most honest sentiments despite the entire premise of the gift journal.

Words have the insidious quality of seeming more truthful than they actually are. I've been told that I write "earnestly," even though I'm often convincing myself as I go along. We should not assume that written language is more honest just because it's tangible.

Nowadays, like the rest of the industrialized world, I'm always typing up emails of various lengths, making Skype dates, texting notable life details, frivolously passing time on chat platforms, posting on Facebook walls. Everyone's more immediate -- accessible in case I find myself lonely at any given point during the day. For this, I am grateful. But (except for the occasional email ramble) these are all such short conversations full of nonexistent laughter-out-loud and trite slang, half-thoughts that amount to less than their summation.

In the middle of a letter to my best friend from middle school, I realized what I miss most of all: real phone conversations. Wandering around my bedroom cradling my phone between my neck and my shoulder. Lying on my bed aimlessly throwing a stuffed animal at the ceiling. Slowly shifting on a couch until my feet somehow end up on the headrest. Nearly falling asleep under the covers with a comforting voice as my only reminder of the outside world. Taking simultaneous breaks to go to the bathroom. Watching a thunderstorm together from the opposite side of town. Talking until someone's battery dies.

In a way, all close friends are the same on the phone: endlessly funny, sympathetic, full of one silly, debatable notion or another. And I miss them the way I would miss a confidante that quietly slipped out of my life without notice until it was too late.

I think I will make a greater effort to have these conversations in the future. It already makes me happy to anticipate them.

Zadie Smith is kicking my ass.

-- & other super summer success stories.

. . . Right.

In other news, I am underwhelmed by the amount of productivity that has occurred in my recent past. Do not understand post-structuralism -- so much academic gibberish. Compartmentalization of existence is going well, however. Also I think I have stumbled upon my next near-obsessive, almost-compulsive fix. It (ideally) involves the $15+ four-in-one avocado tool I saw at Williams-Sonoma last weekend. And I am planning something wicked, which is severely not in my best interest. I find my current locale charming, though I am paying through the nose for decent tomatoes at the farmer's market and Jell-O cups that remind me of kindergarten. My brother sends me two-line emails, ends with "please write back!", and takes a week to respond himself.

Courses for this fall currently include: magazine journalism, audio documentary, creative writing. On top of a column gig. Which means I need to cut something unless I want to run out of creative stamina two weeks into the semester.

My friend just sent me the line: "life in the fast lane." Sarcastically, I think, for her. But looking around, I wonder -- maybe not?

Unknown unknowns.

I absolutely love the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It basically explains everyone's life. Here, an excerpt from a recent Times editorial:

The notion of unknown unknowns really does resonate with me, and perhaps the idea would resonate with other people if they knew that it originally came from the world of design and engineering rather than Rumsfeld.

If I were given carte blanche to write about any topic I could, it would be about how much our ignorance, in general, shapes our lives in ways we do not know about. Put simply, people tend to do what they know and fail to do that which they have no conception of. In that way, ignorance profoundly channels the course we take in life. And unknown unknowns constitute a grand swath of everybody’s field of ignorance.

To me, unknown unknowns enter at two different levels. The first is at the level of risk and problem. Many tasks in life contain uncertainties that are known — so-called “known unknowns.” These are potential problems for any venture, but they at least are problems that people can be vigilant about, prepare for, take insurance on, and often head off at the pass. Unknown unknown risks, on the other hand, are problems that people do not know they are vulnerable to.

Unknown unknowns also exist at the level of solutions. People often come up with answers to problems that are o.k., but are not the best solutions. The reason they don’t come up with those solutions is that they are simply not aware of them. Stefan Fatsis, in his book “Word Freak,” talks about this when comparing everyday Scrabble players to professional ones. As he says: “In a way, the living-room player is lucky . . . He has no idea how miserably he fails with almost every turn, how many possible words or optimal plays slip by unnoticed. The idea of Scrabble greatness doesn’t exist for him.” (p. 128)

Unknown unknown solutions haunt the mediocre without their knowledge. The average detective does not realize the clues he or she neglects. The mediocre doctor is not aware of the diagnostic possibilities or treatments never considered. The run-of-the-mill lawyer fails to recognize the winning legal argument that is out there. People fail to reach their potential as professionals, lovers, parents and people simply because they are not aware of the possible. This is one of the reasons I often urge my student advisees to find out who the smart professors are, and to get themselves in front of those professors so they can see what smart looks like.

So, yes, the idea resonates. I would write more, and there’s probably a lot more to write about, but I haven’t a clue what that all is.

Home.

Home after being flung halfway around the world.

It seems as though you can't handle the fact that people exist independently of you, that other people are not doing exactly what you're doing right now.

. . . is what a friend said to me on the phone in the middle of the night. It's such a typical conversation for us to have, about exactly what we've always discussed, and even the way we hung up the phone (two and a half hours later) was predictable. Also the way he mentioned the predictability of everything, and the way that I felt the slightest hint of nostalgia before I heard the line go silent.

The same with my house, my street, my family -- though my brother is taller, tanner, better at piano than I remember. Everything is achingly, preciously how I imagined it would be.

You drive along the same highway and take the same exit for half your life, and everything on the way home (the bookstores, the restaurants, the gas stations and trees and lampposts) all start to mean something extremely important. The people, too, the ones fate has thrown you together with -- they all matter, they all mean everything you know about your life.

The economist's nightmare: endowment effect -- the over-attribution of value to something with only typical worth. Everything about coming home shows that we are all victims of it, and maybe someone rational is cringing somewhere at the thought of such a blunder.

But maybe the entirety of existence is just one endowment effect. After all, I was endowed with this subjective experience. Which brings me back to the quote above: How could I ever be okay with other people living their lives when I know that my life is just another moment happening among millions of moments right now, that my home is no more special than anyone else's? My friend was exasperated with me, but I maintain that it's a question worth fretting over.

Here is a problem.

Still have not written that goshdarn column. Four weeks offline untaught me how to deal with the internet, and my mindless-surfing tolerance is much higher than it should be. Result: will maybe push my deadline (again) and also have five or six really important personal emails sitting in my inbox to which I've already gone weeks without responding. I have always been terrible at keeping in touch, and every break just reconfirms this flaw. Why is it that my endless devotion to/affection for my friends never translates into long, thoughtful letters/emails? Why don't I ever call my parents? Why don't I ever expend the appropriate amount of energy on anyone or anything? I have no thoughtful thoughts right now -- everything about me feels mundane, sluggish, unproductive. Meanwhile the internet is full of interesting morsels of pseudointellectual babble, and I have little self-control.

Random city night #20something.

To stave off impending column-writing doom, a recap of tonight's events:

1) Ate a corn creamsicle after dinner: strange. Maybe being adventurous doesn't always pay off.
2) Met some of our students at the gate of the university. Dylan, who herded yaks by himself from the ages of seven to nine, reports being excited to "socialize."
3) Cab to Tibetan bar with students. Feigning proficiency at Chinese -- difficult to keep up.
4) Snow beer and toasting. Rounds and rounds of Psychologist.
6) Suggestive homoerotic long-sleeved dance performed by Tibetan guy with perpetual expression of orgasm (?!)
7) Belly-dancing performance (obviously not Tibetan, but).
8) Fifteen billion singers singing the same song ad infinitum/nauseum.
9) Packets of chicken feet flying everywhere (not worth explaining).
10) Immense boredom interrupted by random men toasting Mikael for being such a novelty around these parts.
11) Terrible worthless conversations back at the hostel.
12) Everyone is asleep but me + the other resident night owl.

Now my head is still full of the verb tenses we taught in class today and my hair smells like tobacco smoke and I am not finished with my duties. Summer reminds me that irresponsibility is always an option.

Not Tibet.

Not Tibet, but Chengdu. Tibet ended interestingly. I was guaranteed good stories out of this trip, but this was probably more than I bargained for.

China is always something familiarly foreign. No one I meet understands me when I say that I'm American.

Our Tibetan students amaze, inspire, and terrify me. Their diligence paralyzes me. They write down everything we say and memorize it overnight, and then ask for more the next day.

Our bathroom continues to smell worse and worse.

I grow increasingly fond of hot pot, milk tea, dripping ice pops snatched from a street vendor's freezer for less than one RMB.

Also have grown intensely fond of Tao Lin, whose poetry is among the pile of books we brought to China and includes sentiments like:

my favorite emotions include 'brief calmness
in good weather' and 'i am the only person alive'
without constant reassurance i feel terribly lonely and insane
i have moved beyond meaninglessness, far beyond meaninglessness
to something positive, life-affirming, and potentially best-selling
i have channeled most of my anger into creating and sustaining an 'angry face'
i have picked up a medium-size glass of coffee
and used it in the onventional way
because i am conventional in all situations, i'll be right back

It makes more sense at 2 a.m.

Strangest thought of all: I'll be home in two weeks, gone again in three. The future never seems close enough or far enough away.

Tibet.

My last computer access for quite some time.
I'm leaving for a six-week service project in rural Sichuan in five hours.
I find myself at the cusp of something thrilling and daunting. I don't know if I can handle it. I have such crises of faith.

I took a walk with a good friend today and we talked about the momentum of life. I find my life to be like a book to which I constantly forget the opening chapters. But once I spend time remembering the beginning, I've already lost track of what's actually happening. So much to wrap a mind around.

The point is that we learn something from everything, so I need to think about everything.

Reflection, reflection, reflection. Then, when I get back here, I will right some wrongs, make a few important decisions, be a better person. Good, solid plan.

How to fix a depressed person.

You can't.
You can try all you want, but you can't.

Damn it.

Writing: thoughts.

I had lunch with one of my favorite professors today, at a pretty popular Latin American café about five minutes walking distance from campus. She always asks me about my future in English, and I never know what to say to her: graduate school is so difficult (and not lucrative), but fiction writing isn't anything to hang your hat on--but maybe if I went to law school first and learned how to fend for myself in this big bad world and then went for my MFA?

Future's wide open. What I want most of all is to be published: She told me about her first published story, then about her slow journey upward--publication in The Kenyon Review, then being contacted by some random publisher to do a collection of short stories, then being reviewed in The New York Times, etc. etc. If only talent were so guaranteed, but more and more I really do think it's all just a matter of taste and whether or not someone important has the same aesthetic sense as you.

So maybe what I really need to do is develop my aesthetic, which is to say: develop myself. (It always comes back to this.) Do some experimenting. I admire my professor for her fearlessness--she told me about sending a snarky letter to an editor that hadn't gotten back to her about her work (only to find an acceptance letter in her mailbox that same day), but I'm far too timid for my own good.

I know right now exactly what sort of story I want to write (think: the emotional restraint of "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead," with the same undertone of disgust/calculated insouciance--taking my cues from Stars), but I don't know if I could pull it off. It'd be a perverse little thing, but that's how I like them.

God that was strange to see you again:
Introduced by a friend of a friend,
Smiled and said "Yes I think we've met before."
In that instant it started to pour.
Captured a taxi despite all the rain,
We drove in silence across Pont Champlain.
And all of the time you thought I was sad,
I was trying to remember your name.

♫ "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead" (Stars, Set Yourself On Fire)

Autonomy.

Actively changing my lifestyle has been so good for me. Not that I've changed much, but I think I've changed the most important parts. And -- I just realized this -- maybe it hasn't even been perceptible to anyone else but myself?

But I think most of the time what I need most is to know that I have control of the situation, regardless of observable circumstances.

There are many vague sentiments that I often believe life can be boiled down to, if we could ever reduce existence:

• Control
• Power
• Love
• Empathy
• Beauty
• Truth
• Self-knowledge
• Security
• Fear

These theories are, of course, all mutually exclusive, but I think I believe one of them at all times. How to avoid reductive thought? Can't.

Melancholia.

A phrase from my heresy class this semester that won't leave me alone/needs to be turned into something:

"a creeping empty glory."

Reminds me of:

Are the beating drums,
celebration guns,
the thunder and the laughter--
the last thing they remember?

(x many many repetitions)

♫ "Celebration Guns" (Stars, Set Yourself On Fire)

Utensils.

Today's Poem-A-Day:

Utensils
Richard O. Moore

An available palette thickened by air
words I hold and so fast lose.

A thunder so low       an inaudible present       its slow
cycles place me shaking in its throat.

Stare       and beauty opens like a work of fire
a made thing       a connection must be made.

This is to say necessity is a place made all of stares
come beauty       come the final ruin of the world. Stop   :

for what it may be       or was       a burned-in-after-flash of fire
over distance measured light years. The glamour of it all.

Friendship fatigue.

I grow tired of the people I know here -- so much that I find myself in the same building as they are but strategically avoiding them. Or even in the same room with headphones staunchly secured in my ears. I like not knowing what to expect from people, and I know exactly what to expect from these people.

I'm listening to an installment of This American Life about getting over the people in your life: relationships, mostly, but also just the idea of dynamics changing, the re-navigation of an emotional map. Recalibrating distance.

It's not just people here, though -- it's everyone I think I know well. I had a fight with my closest friend from high school yesterday, about something trivial, and after the fact I realized that I'd actually picked the fight so I could tell myself he no longer knew me anymore the way he used to in twelfth grade.

The perversity of this strikes me as surprising, especially given my otherwise incorrigible romanticism. After reading thirteen Shakespeare plays this semester, I now realize that I will never like comedy as long as it mocks true love or anyone who believes in true love. But the emotional involvement necessary for romantic love far exceeds that which is expected in friendship, and I can't even muster the patience for friendship.

Paradox, paradox -- I'm sure some consistency underlies this inner conflict, but I'm not sure I need to figure it out. Instead, I'll look forward to the summer: new cultures, then something like peace and quiet in Durham.

Shakespeare.

Note never to take a huge English lecture again.
Have definitely learned lesson: class structure so much more important than class content. More important than professor as well.

Will sleep when dead.

Infinite finite infinite finite infinite.

Must resist Tumblr-esque urges in the future.

Leontes.

I have too much believed mine own suspicion:
. . . Apollo, pardon
My great profaneness 'gainst thine oracle!
I'll reconcile me to Polixenes;
New woo my queen; recall the good Camillo,
For, being transported by my jealousies
To bloody thoughts of revenge, I chose
Camillo for the minister to poison
My friend Polixenes: which had been done,
But that good mind of Camillo tardied
My swift command, though I with death and with
Reward did threaten and encourage him,
Not doing it and being done . . . how he glisters
Thorough my rust! and how his piety
Does my deeds make the blacker!

In Act III, Scene II, you will always make the same, stupid, useless speech.
No matter how many times I read the play: this ever-recurring realization of an irreparable mistake.
Leontes, you son of a bitch, you.

Criticism.

A comprehensive list of all my current flaws:

1. Academics: I still don't know how to handle these well. In high school, the stress defined my existence. I never feel as tethered to anything as I do to my grades. This is unhealthy, but how do I undo years of conditioning?
2. Fear: goes along with academics, but may be an even more deep-seated issue. I worry, doubt, existentialize -- have been this way since the age of seven (rough estimate). I overreact and very easily succumb to myopia. I become irritable and petulant, lose intellectual curiosity, constantly feel unworthy, hate the future, have the constant urge to read Nietzsche. A philosophical weakness?
3. Toxicity: starts unnoticed, grows. Must keep a look-out for these cancerous tendencies, avoid resentment. Too many friendships have soured as a result of negligence to underlying annoyances.
   
4. Caprice: I might actually have no real opinions about anything. 'Nuff said.
5. Emotionality: cripples me from time to time, to my chagrin.
6. Independence: obnoxious. I balk at expectations, idealize apathy. I'm not yet brave enough to risk anything substantial on anyone.
   
7. Morality: Mine is very fluid, hardly consistent, and might even be so flimsy as to be nonexistent.
8. Love: a habit developed during young impressionability and never broken, a maladaptive instinct fed by romantic ideals but which actually contradicts the rest of my impulses. In combination with my volatility, this is what I distrust the most about myself. May be aesthetically appealing, but only in the most perverse sense and at the expense of my autonomy.
9. Stubbornness: momentary conviction about everything, despite long-term fickleness. In conversation, I never give ground. Unpleasant and unproductive.
10. Honesty: layers that I will never figure out.
11. Self-interest: thinly veiled.
    
12. Family: I pay lip service to family, but I ran away as soon as I had the chance, and I never call. How stupidly typical.

Others pending. Could add so many more. But I guess it can't be helped.

New: experiences.

Spoke too soon.

Always make me question my fundamental nature.

Instead, though: Shouldn't I just realize that I have no fundamental nature?
(Or no tangibly fundamental nature, that is.)

Something chameleonic about the state of things that excites/unnerves me. Lately have noticed how much I hate obligation, expectation, repetition. Wrestling with the idea that maybe I'm not so good at people -- at the real activity of people, that is: following through, patience, similar arguments couched in similar terms, "working" through issues.

Beginnings better than ends.

Ought I devote energy to fixing this about myself? Again: fundamental nature, or lack of maturation? Which, which?

Here comes a feeling you thought you'd forgotten.

In Twelfth Night, the social order comes undone--women fall in love with women, gender becomes malleable, nobles marry servants, servants imagine that they could become nobility. To parallel the end-of-Christmas festival after which it was named and at which it was performed, Shakespeare's play effects a mood of licensed disorder--and things get more than a little crazy.

Life mimics art. Not that our last day of classes (affectionately called LDOC by all those who care) is the same as Twelfth Night, but in a way it performed the same function: loosened everyone up, broke social customs, made everyone rethink friend circles and habits. People I knew in completely different ways found their way to my room and met each other and mingled, we played a stream of trashed up music, tried our best to stay in a comfortable stupor (difficult to maintain for more than five hours straight), etc. Rarely are so many people so willing to get completely messed up, and rarely do we all find ourselves so devoted to having a good time. In the end, I came out with new and unforeseen conceptions of everyone, of social relationships, of how life could be if only academic stress didn't interfere with the living of it.

And the effects have not worn off. Reading period has been a time drain: last night in the library until sun-up with hardly any work done (talking, instead, to good and new friends--rehashing the year in perspective), today four hours at dinner off-campus and bantering forever.

Now to study? But how could I? LDOC is still in the air and with it a sense of non-urgency. At the end of this journey, I feel very much the way I did at Oxford last summer--looking back on a period of my life with a vague sense of having grown in as-of-yet still inexplicable ways. But that time I was only able to construct the narrative months afterward (at the expense of having by that point already made a few missteps), and I hope I'll be a quicker study this time around.

Even if you knew.

Show the soul you never had:
a fad that will not save you.

♫ "Honeymoon" (Bombadil, Tarpits in Canyonlands)

Obsession continues. Time passing in increments of five-minute songs.

Falling slowly.

I don't know,
but I want you
all the more for that.
Words fall through me,
always fool me,
and I can't react.
Games that never amount
to more than they're meant
will play themselves out.

Take this sinking boat,
and point it home.
We've still got time.

[ . . . ]
You've suffered enough
And warred with yourself.
It's time you won.

♫ "Falling Slowly" (The Swell Season, The Swell Season)

For me, when everything is beautiful, life is music -- especially sad, sad music, especially soulful lyrics. This is why I think that I might be destined for poetry, not prose. Lately I've been looping the same few songs on my iPod, and it's put me into a strangely calm, reflective mood (despite finals in less than a week):

1. "Falling Slowly" (The Swell Season, The Swell Season)
2. "Broken Horse" (Freelance Whales, Weathervanes)
3. "Cosmic Love" (Florence + The Machine, Lungs)
4. "Honeymoon" (Bombadil, Tarpits in Canyonlands)
5. "Generator ^1" (Freelance Whales, Weathervanes)
6. "Melectric" (Ramona Falls, Intuit)

The Lollapalooza line-up seems really promising this year, and I'm tempted to fly out -- have at least one really good friend going, and another good friend is staying in Chicago for the summer.

Life & Times & LDOC.

"Do not throw these away. Though they are different, they are lovers."

Sums up one incredible, attention-deficient, too-substantive, and surprising end of the year.

Celebrate celebrate celebrate! (Much, much more later. Late-night Glee with roommate now.)

Sleep: Loss.

(Bill Hayes, for The Times)

It was the opposite of a shadow. Which is as clear a definition as I can come up with for the soul.

50.

Today is my father's birthday.

When I was little he used to lift me onto his shoulders and then "forget" where I was, and he'd wander around our two-bedroom apartment for almost an hour trying to find me while I sat way up high giggling with my legs hanging down onto his chest.

I called him this morning, and I miss him.

Twelfth Night.

And with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?

(Still so cruel?
Still so constant, lord.)

She is drowned already, sir, with salt water, though I seem to drown her remembrance again with more.

ENTP.

I'm always wary of the MBTI because I wonder why it takes a test for me to understand the answers I already gave.

Nevertheless, I spent more an hour today trying to figure out why the type I presumed I was (ENFP) didn't really make any sense. And then I realized it was wrong.

So here it goes for who I suppose I "actually" am, now:

ENTPs are usually verbally as well as cerebrally quick, and generally love to argue--both for its own sake, and to show off their often-impressive skills. They tend to have a perverse sense of humor as well, and enjoy playing devil's advocate. They sometimes confuse, even inadvertently hurt, those who don't understand or accept the concept of argument as a sport.

ENTPs are basically optimists, but in spite of this (perhaps because of it?), they tend to become extremely petulant about small setbacks and inconveniences. (Major setbacks they tend to regard as challenges, and tackle with determination.) ENTPs have little patience with those they consider wrongheaded or unintelligent, and show little restraint in demonstrating this. However, they do tend to be extremely genial, if not charming, when not being harassed by life in general.

In terms of their relationships with others, ENTPs are capable of bonding very closely and, initially, suddenly, with their loved ones. . . . ENTPs are also good at acquiring friends who are as clever and entertaining as they are. Aside from those two areas, ENTPs tend to be oblivious of the rest of humanity, except as an audience -- good, bad, or potential.

Source: Typelogic

The ENTP personality type is sometimes referred to the "Lawyer" type. The ENTP "lawyer" quickly and accurately understands a situation, and objectively and logically acts upon the situation. Their Thinking side makes their actions and decisions based on an objective list of rules or laws.

Under stress, the ENTP may lose their ability to generate possibilities, and become obsessed with minor details. These details may seem to be extremely important to the ENTP, but in reality are usually not important to the big picture.

With their thinking tied to the myriad possibilities they see in the world, they act swiftly and decisively upon those angles, choices and combinations scarcely noticed by other types, but through which they can build whole new frameworks or completely redefine an existing external situation in such a way that it appears new, revitalized and once again full of promise. Sameness, stasis, conservatism - even daily routine - can be loathsome to fervent ENTPs, whose drive is always to be into something new, different and full of fresh possibilities.

ENTP people measure their success by their “aha” moments, by the sense of satisfaction which comes as they spread their newly written maps before them and contemplate the new adventure, design, investigation or conquest which has now become their road ahead. What has gone before, previous achievements, ways of living - even people met along the way - are often now forgotten or considered passé, mere steps along a path which has now brought a new frontier to be exploited for its gifts.

Without a solid thinking function, the ENTP can easily discount or fail to notice the essential ethics of social and interpersonal relationship, often considering themselves “above” or untouched by such limiting values and often discounting the possibility that their actions might be or hurtful or seen as unethical by others. It is not that the one sided ENTP is deliberately hurtful, but simply ignorant of the effects which can flow from their often compulsive need for change or need to show how clever or individual they are.

Source: Personality Page

For ENTPs, falling out of love, which may not always occur, results when their vision of the relationship does not square with reality. Sometimes they will select someone who offers stability and comfort and ENTPs later will become bored with the stability. When scorned, ENTPs use their powerful and broadreaching analysis to explain the reasons why the relationship was not good in the first place; additionally, they may become competitive with their former partner and work hard to win. ENTPs do not like to lose at anything they undertake.

Source: Some random site

All right, enough of this nonsense.

But oh god, that look in your eye:

Trouble that does not search words.
It sprung from the biblical vine and
Awaiting to return to the dirt.

(But oh god, that curve in your spine:
A question mark, a doctor's sigh
Was framed by the windowsill.)

And you saw something I did not in the night.
You saw something I did not in the night.

♫ "Broken Horse" (Freelance Whales, Weathervanes)

Insults in academia.

A friend shared with me some gems from the research he's doing for some paper or other. Apparently two academics locked in heated debate can't help but lobby some rather immature insults at each other via their medical publications.

Academic 1

1. Regrettably, Fumento seems unclear on the concept of a "controlled randomized clinical trial," an unfortunate failing for a wannabe medical journalist.
2. Regrettably, Fumento doesn't seem to understand the critical point, and perhaps even the less critical points, and so makes us both look like idiots.

Academic 2

1. His use of insults such as calling me a "wannabe medical journalist" (I have published three medical books with major publishers; he's published two) speaks for itself.

<3 Love it.

Lab.

What I will miss most about lab: my postdoc and the lab techs.

I tried to describe my postdoc to a close friend today and all he said was that I had "tried [my] best to make her sound as boring as humanly possible." But I find her interesting precisely because of her lack of surprising quirks: she's steady, driven, singularly interested, diligent, trust-worthy, deferential. This, I think, is what a scientist should be. It's how my PI is too.

It's also exactly what I'm not. (Not a coincidence.)

One of the lab techs is anomalous. She's vibrant and affable and is reading Lolita right now and entertained us with stories about her previous romantic snafus today. Her eyes flash when she says she will never let a guy get in the way of her career. She has a way of smiling that I've never been able to master. I think she wants to be a pediatrician, but she doesn't find herself capable enough to go to med school. She really could be a great doctor--she seems to genuinely genuinely care about others instantly, upon meeting them.

I'm glad I met these people. I like adding character types to my repertoire of the human race. I just realized how creepy that sounds.

Typos.

From today's Schott's Vocab on The New York Times:

Rachel Olding reported on a very costly typo for Penguin Group Australia: “The publishing company was forced to pulp and reprint 7000 copies of ‘Pasta Bible’ last week after a recipe called for ‘salt and freshly ground black people’ – instead of pepper – to be added to the spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto.”

Definitely the funniest moment of my night.

Family ties.

When I called my mother today, to tell her about accepting the internship in D.C., did I detect a sigh of resignation on the other end of the line?

Has she just now relinquished me from my childhood?

Or am I being dramatic?

I'm most likely making too big a deal out of this -- but that's how life occurs, right? It hinges on pivotal moments, either recognized at the time or not.

The realization that I will be away from home for so long concerns me, especially given the very real possibility that my parents will be moving within the next six months.

Psychopaths, Poetry.

Went to two completely different speaker events today.

1) Exploring the Brains of Psychopaths -- Dr. Kent Kiehl
(Sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics, DIBS, the Philosophy Department)

Crazy economic analysis + fMRI data + diagnostic behaviors + anecdotes about serial killers. Apparently some treatments designed to instill empathy in prison inmates actually increase the likelihood of recidivism for psychopaths, because they learn how to fake empathy and therefore how to better commit crimes. Apparently psychopathy costs the U.S. $250-$400 billion/year due to prison costs, etc. (Crime costs $2.3 trillion/year?!) Apparently there is such a thing as a "vanilla in-mate," i.e. a non-psychopath, i.e. someone without the criminal versatility and sadism of a psychopath. Apparently psychopaths barely use their paralimbic systems, which Kiehl discovered after collecting data on 1000+ in-mates using his mobile fMRI trailer contraption (He plans to go to Alabama soon to collect more data. Difficult not to laugh at that).

2) Reading & Talk -- Dorianne Laux
(Sponsored by the 2010 Archive Literary Festival)

Poetry -- the rhythm of it. Laux has memorized tons of poetry and she recites it on command, to elucidates her points. Never have I thought of poetry so seriously. It was always an instinct, but I guess now I see how it could be a craft, how it could almost be a trickery of sorts -- a mastery of rhythmic effect and imagery.

A poem she recited for us, to illustrate the importance of syllables:

One Heart
Li-Young Lee

Look at the birds. Even flying
is born

out of nothing. The first sky
is inside you, open

at either end of day.
The work of wings

was always freedom, fastening
one heart to every falling thing.

Padgett Powell.

I wrote this in my journal during PP's talk last Thursday:

"My life has been, I guess, a slow discovery that I am an ass. Very slow."

"Learn to play your instruments. Then get sexy."

Quoting Barthelme: "We have wacky mode here. Does anyone know what wacky modes must do? Break their hearts."

And out of a strange anecdote about his relationship with his publisher: "The firing didn't take."

You think it's a secret, but it never was one.

I've been ineffectually trying to do something for hours without getting anything substantial done. The choice: to sleep now, or to stay up until I eventually finish one item of work? I guess I've opted for the second without realizing it.

I was not made properly to survive in this existence. I don't know what else to say except that nothing convinces me anymore of the things for which I never previously needed convincing. What I need is my family: My mother, scolding me for not focusing on schoolwork. My father, reminding me that I was once upon a time even less wise than I am now. My brother, pestering me to play cards with him. I need a house on a cul-de-sac in Ohio within a five-minute jog of my best friend's house, and I need her to squint at me when I show up breathless at her backdoor at two in the morning, and I need to giggle over horrible stories about middle-school crushes with her until the first hints of sunrise.

Acute nostalgia is my poison of choice, it seems.

I borrowed the title of this post from a poem by Ralph Angel, which has haunted me since last summer:

You think it's a secret, but it never was.
Sell the house, move to the beach, this isn't his closet,
there are no phantoms here.

You think that if you know the truth you'll forgive her. "I lied,"
she said. "I was afraid, afraid I'd be left alone."

Do we not each day leave this world
together, half asleep, a goodbye kiss steadying ourselves
against the seats of the train?

Do we not meet again and, always
dreaming, not find a word for it, the dream that would exclude us?

Someone remembers something that happened a long time
ago. She forgot it, it changed everything.

What can I tell you that you don't already know?
That life is sad? That this moment
brims with too-sweet wisteria?

And you, too, are sad. And hopeful. Adjustments
were made, the way they can be now.

You pick up your knife and almost
look at it, and put it down again. That she destroys
her life by keeping alive.

Botched politics.

What makes me laugh the most about the recent political scandal that just hit my college campus is the sheer ineptitude of it from all sides. It's completely hilarious: a politician known for his lack of diplomatic abilities ousted by the only student group on campus who would even conceivably make anti-gay slurs. And the insensitivity of two college newspapers. There is so much finger-pointing -- and so little productive discussion -- to be had.

So much being botched all the time. And right after we'd gotten so much good press from the NCAA Championship too. I've never cared much about politics, but boy is it a spectacle to behold!

The wind-up before the wind-down.

Skyped with a friend last night who I haven't talked to for weeks--he's been busy traveling Europe, and in that interim I find that I have grown to miss him.

I don't ever miss people, not really--not in a way that means anything more than "where are you so you can once again reassure me of myself?" So that in most people what I miss is a reflection of myself or who I think I want to be, but in missing him, I missed more than just companionship (I rarely see him anyway, and maybe will see him once this summer if at all). Our friendship has always been a process of my understanding too late everything he's already known for a while -- I think he realized we could be good friends long before the thought even entered my head.

Because I know my own deficiencies, I'm easily impressed by pragmatists, logicians, those level-headed enough to understand exactly how the world is not falling apart. With this friend, I find that I am instantly put at ease by his cool attention to solutions.

For it is important that awake people be awake.

I've never actually read this to anyone, but I think it might be a good idea to start.

A Ritual To Read To Each Other
William Stafford

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

Mess.

Everyone.

Embodiment.

Realizing more and more that I have intensely physical reactions to my emotions, becoming more aware of the whole mind-body phenomenon. After emotional trauma, I can't fully fall asleep for days -- a bizarre insomnia that somehow keeps me more awake and alert instead of tiring me out. Nowadays whenever I think of a memory that still bothers me or the imminence of the future, I feel queasy. When something exciting happens I find it more and more difficult to restrain myself -- the enthusiasm just kind of tumbles out of me.

Today I was at lab running my fifteenth PCR of the day and in a sudden bout of existential stress, I ran to the bathroom and stood gagging over one of the sterile white toilet bowls. I could control neither my thoughts nor my nausea, and in some way they were the same. I'm always perplexed, even in the moment, by how the world warps around me -- how stark, how unfriendly it seems all at once.

As a perversity, I tell myself to believe that my physical and emotional identities are collapsing in on each other, until I become nothing more than a passing ambience in the air. This is gimmickry, I know, but I'm good at entertaining such bombast. I like to think that I'm falling apart, peeling and crumbling like an aging Venetian building. It reminds me of Professor Moten's scholarly aestheticism, to which he is monkishly devoted. Or maybe of Professor Ruderman engrossed in D.H. Lawrence scholarship in her carrel somewhere in the corner of Perkins Library.

Various & sundry.

Back-burner thoughts:

1. My new claim to fame/shame is a random column (titled "Why I am not a neuroscience major") that I wrote for my college paper, which I thought would elicit just as much of a response as my other pseudophilosophical columns. Except I guess I actually managed to offend some people this time -- amazing what you can do when you decide to take a stance on a tangible issue. (Plus do I agree with myself? Plus what is this mutual animosity between the humanities and the sciences, and can anyone have any productive thoughts about the rift?)

2. Padgett Powell had so much more authenticity and grit to him than JSF. Still must understand this. Also: having drinks with a writer = most collegiate experience of my life.

3. Perspectives on dysfunctional friendships and barely functional people.

Writerly experiences.

Just got back from visiting a memoir-writing class -- I was invited by a professor on the assumption that I'd know something about creative nonfiction. A strange situation: because he teaches a continuing education course, I was the youngest person in the room by about two decades, and I talked to these people about memory and truth. I felt incredibly naive and potentially fraudulent, but they all seemed to take my personal essay well.

I am constantly being reminded of the humility of writers. The students in this class were middle-aged, with real stories and experiences to tell. Some of them had previously been journalists. They talked about families and townhouses and hospital visits. In a sense, they were much more real to me than Jonathan Safran Foer, who seemed to be playing at a life instead of living one. (Must think more about why this is my impression.)

One thing Foer and every writer I meet keep telling me: Writing is not glamorous. It's a keyboard and you and hours and hours (days and days and months and years) of painstaking effort. It's work. You can't be a coward for this, nor can you expect to be validated by anyone else. I should probably inspect my own level of commitment and fortitude before I so casually tell myself that I will write.

Everything, Illuminated.

Rereading one of my favorite books.

Three passages I never forgot, even though it'd been four years since I lay crying and crumpled in my bed at home (so much distance and time traversed since then, but I am essentially the same soppy mess, no?):

1. 4.517--The dream of falling in love, marriage, death, love. This dream seems as if it lasts for hours, although it always takes place in the five minutes between my returning from the field and being woken up for dinner. I dream of when I met my wife, fifty years ago, and it's exactly as it happened. I dream of our marriage, and I can even see my father's tears of pride. It's all there, just as it was. But then I dream of my own death, which I have heard is impossible to do, but you must believe me. I dream of my wife telling me on my deathbed that she loves me, and even though she thinks I can't hear her, I can, and she says she wouldn't have changed anything. It feels like a moment I've lived a thousand times before, as if everything is familiar, right up to the moment of my death, that it will happen again an infinite number of times, that we will meet, marry, have our children, succeed in the ways we have, fail in the ways we have, all exactly the same, always unable to change a thing. I am again at the bottom of an unstoppable wheel, and when I feel my eyes close for death, and they have and will a thousand times, I awake (53-54).

2. He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. . . . He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all (64).

3. And when she said, Father, I love you, she was neither naive nor dishonest, but the opposite: she was wise and truthful enough to lie. They reciprocated the great and saving lie--that our love for things is greater than our love for our love for things--willingly playing the parts they wrote for themselves, willfully creating and believing fictions necessary for life (114).

etc etc etc. I would quote the entire book if I could.