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.