the end of a third

Good grief, is there a more complex feeling in the world than the feeling you feel after you have submitted your last piece of written work for the quarter? relief hasn't come just yet. i am still worrying fit to tear my hair out. my last paper is in, though. all 13 pages of it. some parts i am ashamed of, some parts i am proud. i think that's what does this to me. my papers are like my children. anything i write in all seriousness, with a beginning, middle, and an end that also serves some kind of purpose and will be exposed to public scrutiny makes me feel like i'm at the top of some absurd precipe, beaten by winds, afraid to fall all those leagues but exhilirated by that feeling of being at the top. THE TOP. where you feel that anything is possible because you're so high. high up and just euphorically high. i can't even explain myself, i'm so frazzled. a few minutes ago i was frantically writing, writing, writing. about inherent blackness and how it manifests itself in African drama and poetry. i am so afraid that he will read it and know that i have no idea what i'm talking about. but if this ruse works, then all the better for me. i have no idea what to believe in anymore, least of all in myself.

my insides are like oil in a fryer. they're fizzing and popping and won't lay quiet. something's cooking somewhere in me. i'm done and yet i'm still so anxious. even remembering makes me anxious. i knew after work today that i would have to seriously skidaddle on home. as fate would have it--as fate would always have it--when i'm in a hurry everything goes wrong. there was this really nice couple at the store who needed book suggestions and they stayed past closing time. of course my boss wouldn't force them out because we needed the sale. i had to contend with my own anxiety and the impulse to do everything at top speed in order to mask my worries and serve these demanding people. and my demanding boss who does not know me at all even though she thinks she does. when i finally get out, i have to walk leagues to my car because i parked in the netherlands. then i get onto culver and there's 1. a stalled car and 2. a car accident. i decide to turn off of culver onto a parallel street and take that home. well that parallel street a block away from the street which had an accident and a stalled car that i was trying to get away from had no electricity whatsoever. i was PISSED. from one holdup to the next. i had to reroute out of the area with no electricity and promptly got lost which did not improve my mood. i found my way home 45 minutes later. then i ate and went right to my paper which would be due at midnight tonight.

and that paper...i hope with all the goodness in me that it is coherent and with the semblance of the effort and intelligence i do my best to put in my other work. with the time i had to do it, i did what i could. and i suppose that is all he can ask for.

i did have a couple of thoughts, though, while i was away slaving over schoolwork.

of the first: physical attraction is narcissistic. half of being attracted to someone else is seeing how they are attracted to you. i mean reciprocal attraction, that is. there are many instances where attraction is wholly one-sided but that's a-whole-nother barrel of apples. reciprocity is what i'm talking about. if i am attracted to someone and they are attracted to me, that someone is like a mirror, like narcissus' pool of water. i look at him and what i see in him, in his face, are my own attractive qualities. he likes me because i must look beautiful because i must sound intriguing. and i am his mirror, his pool. he sees in my face that i like his looks that i like his style. the attraction we see in ourselves, that we feel for ourselves, we see in that other person--and that, you could say, is what makes them so attractive. they allow us to see how attractive we are. don't so many women say that they like this man, that man, those men, because he makes her beautiful. that is what it is about. physical attraction is not about the other person its about you seeing your beauty reflected in that other person's face, in their eyes. there's probably some freudian term regarding this that i don't know of but i think its disgustingly fascinating--that inherent selfishness and vanity. and yet--and yet--what comes out of this initial attraction is chemistry and then, maybe, love. it's a noble sentiment, nothing i can say can reduce love in any way. but i don't know how love, which requires so much self-sacrifice, can be born from that inherent vanity. can anyone deny that love does not involve physical attraction? i have learned, i have been taught, that without that physical attraction, without the physicality of love, love shrivels, shrinks and is become dust. it seems that the search for self leads one only to others. selfishness to selflessness. how like a soup life is. you may pick and choose what you don't want to eat (the carrots in chicken noodle, the bits of bacon in split pea), and yet you can still taste it there in the broth. there is no escaping it.

of the second: pulse. a lot of things about your body tell people who you are. your skin. it is old, young, black, white, tan or pale, dry or moist. your eyes. close-set, wide-set. green, blue, brown, black. large, small. even the things inside your body. jaundice is a very clear example. you would be hepatitic. that would be who you are. cancer, leukemia are also very telling. in a lot of cases, you are your body. but what about those things about your body that you don't even think about? what about your pulse? i sat in church on sunday half-listening to the announcements when i decided to take my pulse. i checked at the carotid artery and at the radial--for good measure and because they say the radial is preferrable. i don't remember why. all i know is that you shouldn't use your thumbs. anyway, as i sat there feeling the glub glub glub of blood flow through my body i knew that i had no control whatsoever over it. if i run it will speed up, sure. but i can't control to what speed it will speed up. if i hold my breath it will slow down. i have a sort of inducement over pulse, but no control. it goes on without me having to will it. your pulse doesn't say anything about you except perhaps your age, since the older you get, the slower it gets. the same thing with breathing. i suppose if your nose is plugged up, your breathing would tell people your congested. but that has to do with the state of your nose, not with the state of your breathing. if you're diaphragm is especially muscular than you know how to control your breathing--i'd assume an opera singer's diaphragm would be rather tough. but again, the state of the diaphragm, not the state of your breathing. they're invisible these things. you have things about you in your physical form that are invisible. i don't know why that struck me as a little frightening.

of the third: i find it a little unjust that i can never appreciate my own abilities. no one ever tells you how truly, truly perverse the idea that the grass is always greener on the other side is. it means never being able to satisfy yourself, because whatever you are, whatever you do won't compare to whatever everyone else is, whatever everyone else does. it's hopeless. what's the point of having any grass if it will never be as green? i admire so much the talents of other people but when i look at myself there's nothing i am pleased with. there are times when my writing is something to be proud of. at other times, i wish it would be more like this or that or these or those. sullied. our own talents are sullied in the face of others. envy is born from the opposite of narcissism.

i am tired. i am done. goodnight.

Jacob and the Angel

i think that if you added up the number of people i have exchanged casual conversation with at this university, it would be a rather large number. is it like this anywhere else in the world? we are all students here, whether grad or undergrad, and we all are ground by the same stones. but few things unite people like misery. if you were in a place where only the happiest people in the world lived, i'd think you'd be rather lonely. not that no one would ever talk to anyone--everyone would be genial and good-humoured--but you'd have nothing to share. happy people are selfish, in a way, because they exist within their own haze of happiness and while this happiness may cause them to be kind to others, they do not leave that haze. they give kindness with a sort of absent, benevolent air and the miserable people they are helping know that that happy person doesn't understand anything about you, anything about your misery, and anything at all but their own happiness. there are always exceptions but for the most part happiness requires you to form a sphere around yourself to guard you from the misery of the world and in doing that you are alone. perhaps this is why few people are ever really happy because happiness isn't everything that one would desire.

i am already hoping that next quarter will be better. it's been lonely these past ten weeks. i've had no class with old friends, no old classes with old friends. i miss french and writing most acutely. but i suppose this is my own fault since i decided to drop the french minor. it was a moment of weakness that i do regret. if i had just stuck it out, dealt with the professors scattered ways and the extra work and the shaky deadlines, i could have had so much fun. then i see a friend who tells me that she is glad i dropped because the class didn't improve after i left. til this day i don't know if what i decided was right or better. should i have stayed and dealt with everything? or should i have really left and spent a lonely quarter? i did do the latter, but the possibilities of the former still seduce me. i suppose the fact that they are possibilities make them seductive. reality and certainty are in no way appealing, but they are what they are. i'm sure if i had stayed i would have had some regrets too. there's no escaping them when decisions have to be made one way or the other. i'm not taking a french class next quarter, but i am taking a writing class, which might perk things up a bit. i don't know which instructor i will get, but whoever it is, i am already wanting to impress them. it is time for me now to return to some of the things i began last spring quarter but never finished. i have files and files of stories i'd begun but never ended. we shall see if they will still strike me as clever now when i go back and read them with eyes freshened.

and really its like high school again. i miss the seniors that have already graduated and realize too that i will be leaving soon and in my own time. except here, a lot of students that should have graduated are still here, like ghosts reluctant to leave the places where they've spent the best years of their life. they are alum now and still here. taking classes and organizing meetings and writing papers. to think that they would do all that just to remain. and to pay the heightened tuition fees. they must have money to burn or else loans piling up. i am glad to see them, though, when i don't think of the sacrifices they have had to make to stay. i am glad to see that they had so much fun that they too are having a hard time grappling with the idea of leaving. i was told once by a woman that i should stay in school for as long as possible because the real world is no fun. but i don't believe in delaying the inevitable. in this case, anyway. as dark and uncertain and disheartening as the future seems, i will have to face it and pass through it and come out the other end a self-determined woman. then maybe i can return and get my graduate degree. the more time passes, the more i think this is a good idea, that this is what i want to do. i told a friend, rather vehemently, that grad school wasn't for me. i told her this not three months ago. yet now i think of it with a strange sort of longing. i was more ignorant then, those three months ago, and thought i knew what i was doing, what i was going to get myself into. but i realize now that i don't and that what i want from life can be found in higher levels of education. at least i think so now. perhaps as more time passes i will change my mind. as i am apt to do--if you haven't noticed.

but most of all, most of all, i want to write. i want to do this so badly that i ache sometimes. i don't want to spend my days in cubicles and offices, fetching and carrying, calling and faxing, copying and meeting. i want to write. and i wonder if years from now i will look back at this entry and laugh at myself for being so naive, laugh at myself from some lofty corporate position where i make $70 or 80 or 90,ooo a year. when i think of it, i shudder: when i think of a life where i've had to give up my writing. is that fate really in my future? whatever becomes of me i want one thing wholly and absolutely. i want to be...moving. i want to be going from place to place, idea to idea, new school of thought to new school of thought. i want to be active and invested and passionate--but of a temperate kind. i don't want to sit somewhere and rot. i want to travel the world and always, always learn. i want to live a whirlwind life, a life full of places seen, things heard, people met, works written. i want to be able to do it all and to be able to say that i have done it all. i want a full life. whether this means being happy, whether this means being successful, whether this means being rich. i want always to be moving. so that when i am tired i can rest easy knowing that i have done my fare share of living life. but if you know me, this doesn't mean getting drunk night after night or going to strip-clubs or wandering the country comme jack kerouac. i am a wholesome person, a little naive, a little more conservative--but that doesn't mean i can't live life to the fullest. i want to learn how to play instrument after instrument. i want to learn multiple languages. to reach the fullness of life through knowledge. is that so disgusting a desire? does my wholesomeness disgust you? if you told me so, i wouldn't mind because its what i want and to hell with what you say.

it is time now for my Jacob to wrestle with his angel. and believe me, he has. i think constantly of all i want to do and all i have to do. these thoughts turn themselves over and over in my head--but we shall see, in some time, what will become of me. i will have a hand in it, i'm sure.

twilight

the smell of oranges sticks to your skin like nothing else. they say that the oils from orange peels are used to create explosives, that it is acidic enough to dissolve sticky substances.

i wanted to write sometime in november since this past year i've not been writing for months at a time. my 2007 archive is woefully bereft of months like august and september. now that the year is ending and i have nothing to show for it here, perhaps i should provide a synopsis.

my sister is getting a divorce. she and her husband separated sometime during april or may. she left him, in essence, for another man. only she did it in the worst possible way and he was fool enough to believe all her excuses, fool enough not to know what she was doing. they never even made it to their second year anniversary. this blog outlived their marriage. sometimes i think the reason couples get married so young is so that they have time for other marriages later on. they know in their heart of hearts that they are too young to marry, that who they will marry now is not necessarily the one they are willing to spend the rest of their life with. they know it, but they want that instant gratification. they want to be married now and that is all that matters, nevermind til death do us part. and after their first divorce they find someone new and find someone new and find someone new until all that's left of them is a sprinkling of children and three ex-wives, ex-husbands. people these days are incapable of foresight, incapable of considering the longrun, they have no patience to endure. there are books out that my friends read about our generation and why we are so unhappy. these books say we are selfish, more selfish than other generations, and i believe it. marriage, and this even i know, is about heartache and hard work. its about self-sacrifice and patience. and while i fear in some parts of me that i will never find someone to marry, i know i would be better off unmarried than married to someone who wasn't in it for the long haul. such a waste. if i am to marry, i want to be married. i want to have children and celebrate anniversary after anniversary. i suppose other people don't feel the same way.

we never did go back to Europe like we planned. we didn't have the resources. so after coming back from Santa Cruz and Monterey and Los Olivos in June to celebrate my 21st birthday, my mother immediately made plans for us to go on an Alaskan cruise--our very first. we went in september and it was...grand. cold and brisk and clear. it amazes me, that place. i never knew that people from all over the US travel up to Alaska during the summer to work then return to their states after the cruise season is over. i met a lot of college students working up there on tour buses and in tourist shops. to spend a summer working in Alaska. the thought would never have occurred to me. the ship itself was something rather fine. one old man joked, as we passed him in the narrow hall on deck 3, that there needed to be a shuttle to get from one end of the ship to another. and really it was rather difficult when the seas were rough. but most of the time it was new and bracing and utterly, utterly fascinating. i was like a kid, running up and down the stairs from deck to deck. running down the promenade in circles from port to starboard. running back and forth from fore to aft. it was ridiculous how much fun i was having by myself wandering around that ship. and i never even got to see everything. i know because i watched the crew go places to which i could not follow. if i close my eyes, i can still hear it and smell it: there is the sea smell and the fog smell and the ship smell. and all the wildlife around that i never really got to see but was there all the same. i just caught the dorsal fin of an orca whale and though i looked and looked through those blasted binoculars i never saw the grizzly bear with her two cubs that the people at the rails on either side of me were exclaiming over. the landscape was full up of glaciers, though. and ice. God, it was beautiful. the ship's crew was very clearly divided. all the upper officers were Danish, Swedish, British. in one word: white. all the lower crewmembers that worked in the mess and as housekeepers were Asian. being Asian myself, these crewmembers felt at liberty to eye me as i was one of the only single young ladies around. it was annoying at first, but they did give me the best of everything. at afternoon tea they always made sure i got the best table by the window, or if this were not possible, the best seat at the table, facing the window. i always got the hottest pancakes off the griddle (oh those pancakes!) and complimentary drinks and things. i smile secretly when i remember them, the walls of the Lido Deck: they were blue with doves. they were more than appropriate--they fit.

and this is my senior year. half the time i'm busy trying to keep everything together before i graduate and the other half of the time i'm worrying, worrying, worrying. some people know what they want to do when they get out of college. they want to go to grad school, they've already got a number of jobs lined up that they've applied for, they'll take a year off and go backpacking around the world. lucky for them, i say. for the first time, i am at a disadvantage because i have no idea what to do. i knew when i graduated from high school where i was going to go and what i was going to study. not so after college. until a few months ago i told myself i was going to get into the publishing business. this was what i was going to do. i lied to my writing professor when i said i wasn't really interested in writing, that i was more interested in getting into publishing. what i wanted then was a stable job and an in, a way to get my work published if i ever write something worthy to an editor. but now...the more i find out about that beleaguered industry, the more i realize its not what i want. i want to write. i don't care about working in publishing if it won't serve me as a way to get my work published. at an entry-level position at a publishing house, i wouldn't have time to write and i wouldn't make the kind of money i want to be making. i need a job that will pay enough and that will leave me time to write. no matter that i won't be true to my degree. i'm rethinking my priorities and it doesn't matter that i won't be working in a scholarly, bookish environment--as long as i have time to write. because once this opportunity, this ability is broken to make way for a demanding job like editor's assistant, who knows whether i will ever return to it? but, oh how i wish i could do both. make enough money and continue to work with intelligent people and still have time to write. and i have so much left to do. i can't even begin to think how much i will miss it all. there are days when i doubt that this will be so. i won't miss the assignments, the biased professors, all the provoking foibles of a university. i won't miss the politics and the activists and all the injustice. but i will miss the people i know and the teachers i have come to respect and admire and all the intelligent people i have found or who have found me. i will miss the time inbetween classes just for myself. the literature i am forced to immerse myself in. just the knowledge and the learning, the use and practice of the mind. my classmates grumble, and i have grumbled, that textual analysis won't help us in the everyday world. but i will miss its challenge, the challenge of thinking up original theses and writing up papers. i fear my mind will dull when i leave. that i will become as unintelligent as the people i hear one enounter's in the typical office. can anyone ever have it all?

it is week 10. this quarter is coming to an end and then i will have only two remaining. i will try, i will very much try, to keep every week that much longer in my mouth, on my tongue, to savor every shade of flavor. there are certain things i wish to take with me, wherever it is i will end up going.