My walls are crumbling. As the hours pass, I am losing my anxiety that is so deeply rooted and my innards are exposing themselves. It feels so swell. I have been more present, and that is what allowed me to dive for so many low discs in the freshly mown grass as thrown by Ben, mowed by Just, just this morning. The grass is so supportive, and I always roll out a couple times round my hips. For gratuitous good measure. So we got mad sweaty, and then went to the quarry. Me, Ben, and Emily. "Clothing optional." I kept my pants on, because I am a boy, and can bare my chest. When we went out to toss, one of the salsa dancers was "sun-dipping-skinny-bathing" as Ben described it. I jokingly made a comment along the lines of "she wants you" and surprise of all surprises, Ben took off his shirt and said "bring it on!" heh. well. what a lookcomer. After throwing and cutting and laying out and general bliss, we winded down, and went to the quarry for a swim. Which i mentioned. Above.
Another instance of crumbling inhibitions:
I wandered into the kitchen where chocolate chip cookies were being made. Keren spontaneously danced, and so did I , and so did Just. I could describe it in detail, but I don't want to. You want to. Maybe I should consider this lifestyle. Maybe I shoulld consider more fads, like Obama.
Tuesday 25 August 2009
Autism and nature.
This is an excerpt from an email I just wrote to the father of one of the kids I tend to/teach/ hang with.
I've been feeling like there has to be more similarities between me, and the other people here (inasmuch as we have communicated these enlightened and mutually understood feelings) and people with autism. I don't know what is different between us, but someone who acts in such a bizarre way as Alex does, must have something ese going on. I don't think it's a quanitity issue, but rather a difference in flavor, or even language. But the difference from an actual language, is that thus far, the various "autistic languages" have not been thoroughly uncovered.
Time for lunch and a staff meeting in a house made of twigs. Here is the excerpt:
"anyway it has me thinking, about alex. Mainly prompted because the head chef has been playing that bob marley album when he makes the meals, and ive been helping him. So it's really different here, obviously it's the wilderness. I think it is worth a try for Alex, as much or little as anything else, and it might even be less costly than some pie-in-he-sky medical treatment (im not meaning to discount anything, just to paint what i am saying in a positive light.)
I mean, you can see stars here. And when it is dark, it is so dark that you cant see even the darkness. It's thick. I'm sure you have felt it sometime. And there is so much less stimulation, and distraction. I mean, there is the inside, where it is simple, and we cook the food. And the outside, where there is grass and trees and woods and a quarry (water). I guess I have 2 ideas about why this might be good for alex : the obvious, calming, meditative, therapeutic of being in nature and away from all the things that are simulated in the city. I mean, let's face it - Alex acts pretty primal. The inhibitions just aren't on his radar, and things are more like that here. I'm not saying we eat with our hands caked in mud, but there are readily available reasons for doing everything we do, and none of them are related to disipline, or chastising for being physical with someone else (that said, there is respect and this is a dancey-yoga-ish place, but im thinking that maybe there wo
uld be less stimuli for Alex's meltdowns over here, since there is less stimuli to begin with.
2nd point: It is humbling, deafening, and beilttling. I feel beittled being around all this nature,because i am reduced to being a thing / creature of nature as well. especially at night, with the stars - it is scary, but because it is "the way it is" - there is nobody to go to to request a light be turned on. When I let that notion sink in, then it becomes more calming than scary, because it is just howthe world is supposed to be. I don't think that everyday life for a kid in the city, especially an autistic kid, is anything how life is 'spposed to be'. I mean, everyone has to be able to wait in lines, but where there are naturally fewer people, there are fewer lines. That is just a tiny example. I also read this book where this teacher/mentor went camping with an autistic nonverbal boy for a week and didn't feed him until the boy made the correct hand signs for the food, and other neccesities. I am not saying that you should dump Alex on a wagon with some gluten free pretz
els and a chew toy and call it a vacation week, but as far as a real transformation happening, it might be beneficial, or at least worth trying, a huge environmental change. Arguably, the insides cannot change no matter how much environmental altering and enhancement goes on. But the try. At the very least, he will be aware of his limits in relation to the greater natural forces out there.
I've been feeling like there has to be more similarities between me, and the other people here (inasmuch as we have communicated these enlightened and mutually understood feelings) and people with autism. I don't know what is different between us, but someone who acts in such a bizarre way as Alex does, must have something ese going on. I don't think it's a quanitity issue, but rather a difference in flavor, or even language. But the difference from an actual language, is that thus far, the various "autistic languages" have not been thoroughly uncovered.
Time for lunch and a staff meeting in a house made of twigs. Here is the excerpt:
"anyway it has me thinking, about alex. Mainly prompted because the head chef has been playing that bob marley album when he makes the meals, and ive been helping him. So it's really different here, obviously it's the wilderness. I think it is worth a try for Alex, as much or little as anything else, and it might even be less costly than some pie-in-he-sky medical treatment (im not meaning to discount anything, just to paint what i am saying in a positive light.)
I mean, you can see stars here. And when it is dark, it is so dark that you cant see even the darkness. It's thick. I'm sure you have felt it sometime. And there is so much less stimulation, and distraction. I mean, there is the inside, where it is simple, and we cook the food. And the outside, where there is grass and trees and woods and a quarry (water). I guess I have 2 ideas about why this might be good for alex : the obvious, calming, meditative, therapeutic of being in nature and away from all the things that are simulated in the city. I mean, let's face it - Alex acts pretty primal. The inhibitions just aren't on his radar, and things are more like that here. I'm not saying we eat with our hands caked in mud, but there are readily available reasons for doing everything we do, and none of them are related to disipline, or chastising for being physical with someone else (that said, there is respect and this is a dancey-yoga-ish place, but im thinking that maybe there wo
uld be less stimuli for Alex's meltdowns over here, since there is less stimuli to begin with.
2nd point: It is humbling, deafening, and beilttling. I feel beittled being around all this nature,because i am reduced to being a thing / creature of nature as well. especially at night, with the stars - it is scary, but because it is "the way it is" - there is nobody to go to to request a light be turned on. When I let that notion sink in, then it becomes more calming than scary, because it is just howthe world is supposed to be. I don't think that everyday life for a kid in the city, especially an autistic kid, is anything how life is 'spposed to be'. I mean, everyone has to be able to wait in lines, but where there are naturally fewer people, there are fewer lines. That is just a tiny example. I also read this book where this teacher/mentor went camping with an autistic nonverbal boy for a week and didn't feed him until the boy made the correct hand signs for the food, and other neccesities. I am not saying that you should dump Alex on a wagon with some gluten free pretz
els and a chew toy and call it a vacation week, but as far as a real transformation happening, it might be beneficial, or at least worth trying, a huge environmental change. Arguably, the insides cannot change no matter how much environmental altering and enhancement goes on. But the try. At the very least, he will be aware of his limits in relation to the greater natural forces out there.
EarthDance
I am spending a week at earth dance. earthdance.net. It is 45 minute drive away from the nearest town (Northampton) and thus it is different from anything I have ever done. I am not really doing it. I mean, I am doing it. I just went to the creamery. a little shoppe. down the road, a lot of miles. we picked up an order of yogurt from sidehill farm in vermont, where we get our yogurt [apparently.]
This week is different from most weeks here at Earthdance - its salsa camp/week/ convention. 50 women are here from all over the world (I know this because a handful of them don't speak English, and I can't understand when they try to request butter knives or spare towels or jugs of water, or an amalgam of the 3.) So I am a staff member here, and that entitles me to be here. I have a shift or 2 or 3 a day, cleaning, sweeping, taking out the trash, cursory bathroom cleaning (obligatory grimace) and burning the burnables! In every bathroom there is a bin for burnables. It means burnable things. Like toilet paper rolls or paper towels used to dry off your hands. No bodily fluids, please! Those are NOT burnable here. So this morning, Ben (head honcho-type) and I headed off through the woods to the furnace/sauna / quarry place and lit some fire in a fireplace-type-place and kept stuffing the burnables in and watched their edges curl in iridiescent orange flamules, as they became ash and char, making way for the rest of the burnables to burn.
I have been asking a ton of questions here, becuase I am not afraid to ask, and I have questions. Nothing that goes on here is typical of the supposed world that I was brought up into. I helpedCalyan, the head chef, make dinner last night. from 4-7 pm I chopped, peeled, diced 'n' sliced veggies, and then stir fried them in a wok, which all resulted in a sore arm and fingers, and a small sliver of skin sliced off of my left middle finger, and a hot splash of safflower oil on my wrist. But all is well, and we created a mean meal for 65 people. 50 salsa dancing women and 10 staffers. Fish chowder, Sweet potato Lentil stew, kale, veggie stirfry, and some other stuff that I can't remember right now. Everything is made in these huge bowls. Late last night Calyan came into the kitchen and made granola from scratch. I watched him make it. I don't think he is terribly fond of me, as I was asking him lots of questions and every time he said something to me I had to say "what?" because it was hard to hear his soft lyrical voice over the bellowing vocals of the tribal celtic / what-have you alternativish music blasting from his arcane laptop perched directly about the 10-burner oven. So calyan made granola. So much granola. We ate it for breakfast this morning. I had it with milk and maple syrup and cinnamon. Heavenly. I want to do some intense outdoor manual labor and frisbee today. I was teaching this woman who is bou 34 years old but certainly feels more like a 12 year old jumping around in a freeing new world, how to throw a flick. I was kind of impressed at my frisbee throwing knowledge, I suppose in comparison to the layperson. We got sweaty, we cut for each other, we climbed trees. There's a guy here, he made a commitment to live here for a year - he is the "buildings and grounds" guy, his name is Justin, but people call him "Just" or "Just one". Yesterday I pulled out weeds with him around this apple tree for an hour and a half, and we had a nice, albeit a bit forced, chat. He told me he has a younger sister who is 28 with special needs, and about a place he has been considering for her to live once their mother is no longer able to care for her. It's called ploughshare farms, and apparently its a self- sustainable community based heavily on the tenet that it is a bunch of people living together, and not in a hierarchical way - the people who need the support of the neurotypical "Staff" are meant to feel equal to said helpers. Would I maybe want to spend sometime working and living in a place like that? Maybe.
The more I think about it, or allow myself to submit to the different way of life here, the more I realize that I don't always have to be busy. I just wrote "busty" - I also don't always have to be busty, but that is less in my control than my business. It is quite a frightening sentiment, to have free time, and be in a rural place, as I have been used to the opposite for so long. This summer went pretty much like this for me:
Take care of kids, fret about various issues surrounding the respective babysitting jobs, play sports, think about the sports and the pickups and the people and myself in relation to everything else going on, take lots of subways, and play more sports on weekends, and spend time with friends. Oh, and fend off / appease the family. But I must say, my nephews and neice are definitely the sweetest, cutest babies ever. Albeit every baby is the sweetest and cutest. Well, every white baby. (!!) But really, the soft skin, the undifferentiated eyeball pigment, the wispy thin short hairs, the barely shaped nose, the limbs that flail arbitrarily and get more padded week by week from suckling just milk. It is all of those things but also, and most key-ly, the idea of a baby that is so powerful. The whole responsibility, extension of self, amalgamation of 2 people in love (sometimes), the we-made-this-life, or God-made-this-life-through-us thing... kind of makes someone with an ounce of sense just shut their mouths. Not me though. I can't shut my mine, apparently. It is time for me to do a cursory cleaning of the bathrooms here in the main Earthdance Farmhouse.
Needless to say, I am proud of myself.
This week is different from most weeks here at Earthdance - its salsa camp/week/ convention. 50 women are here from all over the world (I know this because a handful of them don't speak English, and I can't understand when they try to request butter knives or spare towels or jugs of water, or an amalgam of the 3.) So I am a staff member here, and that entitles me to be here. I have a shift or 2 or 3 a day, cleaning, sweeping, taking out the trash, cursory bathroom cleaning (obligatory grimace) and burning the burnables! In every bathroom there is a bin for burnables. It means burnable things. Like toilet paper rolls or paper towels used to dry off your hands. No bodily fluids, please! Those are NOT burnable here. So this morning, Ben (head honcho-type) and I headed off through the woods to the furnace/sauna / quarry place and lit some fire in a fireplace-type-place and kept stuffing the burnables in and watched their edges curl in iridiescent orange flamules, as they became ash and char, making way for the rest of the burnables to burn.
I have been asking a ton of questions here, becuase I am not afraid to ask, and I have questions. Nothing that goes on here is typical of the supposed world that I was brought up into. I helpedCalyan, the head chef, make dinner last night. from 4-7 pm I chopped, peeled, diced 'n' sliced veggies, and then stir fried them in a wok, which all resulted in a sore arm and fingers, and a small sliver of skin sliced off of my left middle finger, and a hot splash of safflower oil on my wrist. But all is well, and we created a mean meal for 65 people. 50 salsa dancing women and 10 staffers. Fish chowder, Sweet potato Lentil stew, kale, veggie stirfry, and some other stuff that I can't remember right now. Everything is made in these huge bowls. Late last night Calyan came into the kitchen and made granola from scratch. I watched him make it. I don't think he is terribly fond of me, as I was asking him lots of questions and every time he said something to me I had to say "what?" because it was hard to hear his soft lyrical voice over the bellowing vocals of the tribal celtic / what-have you alternativish music blasting from his arcane laptop perched directly about the 10-burner oven. So calyan made granola. So much granola. We ate it for breakfast this morning. I had it with milk and maple syrup and cinnamon. Heavenly. I want to do some intense outdoor manual labor and frisbee today. I was teaching this woman who is bou 34 years old but certainly feels more like a 12 year old jumping around in a freeing new world, how to throw a flick. I was kind of impressed at my frisbee throwing knowledge, I suppose in comparison to the layperson. We got sweaty, we cut for each other, we climbed trees. There's a guy here, he made a commitment to live here for a year - he is the "buildings and grounds" guy, his name is Justin, but people call him "Just" or "Just one". Yesterday I pulled out weeds with him around this apple tree for an hour and a half, and we had a nice, albeit a bit forced, chat. He told me he has a younger sister who is 28 with special needs, and about a place he has been considering for her to live once their mother is no longer able to care for her. It's called ploughshare farms, and apparently its a self- sustainable community based heavily on the tenet that it is a bunch of people living together, and not in a hierarchical way - the people who need the support of the neurotypical "Staff" are meant to feel equal to said helpers. Would I maybe want to spend sometime working and living in a place like that? Maybe.
The more I think about it, or allow myself to submit to the different way of life here, the more I realize that I don't always have to be busy. I just wrote "busty" - I also don't always have to be busty, but that is less in my control than my business. It is quite a frightening sentiment, to have free time, and be in a rural place, as I have been used to the opposite for so long. This summer went pretty much like this for me:
Take care of kids, fret about various issues surrounding the respective babysitting jobs, play sports, think about the sports and the pickups and the people and myself in relation to everything else going on, take lots of subways, and play more sports on weekends, and spend time with friends. Oh, and fend off / appease the family. But I must say, my nephews and neice are definitely the sweetest, cutest babies ever. Albeit every baby is the sweetest and cutest. Well, every white baby. (!!) But really, the soft skin, the undifferentiated eyeball pigment, the wispy thin short hairs, the barely shaped nose, the limbs that flail arbitrarily and get more padded week by week from suckling just milk. It is all of those things but also, and most key-ly, the idea of a baby that is so powerful. The whole responsibility, extension of self, amalgamation of 2 people in love (sometimes), the we-made-this-life, or God-made-this-life-through-us thing... kind of makes someone with an ounce of sense just shut their mouths. Not me though. I can't shut my mine, apparently. It is time for me to do a cursory cleaning of the bathrooms here in the main Earthdance Farmhouse.
Needless to say, I am proud of myself.
Tuesday 23 June 2009
What I need to write
I need to not quash/squelch/quell the thoughts that are in my head. That I have. That I think. That I own. That exist, that creep. I am pretty sure they just do said things because my mind has a penchant for extremes and attempts at self-freaking out, but here it is. If Shalom Auslander can write in his world-renown published satirical orthodox yeshiva hating memoir about the initial thoughts of fear and terror for his unborn recently- concieved child, then I can write about thoughts along a similar (non heroin- infested, I might add uselessly) vein that I have tried not to entertain as of late.
When I held the babies, a thought came: I can poke out one of their tiny little, unfocused, of androgynous color, eyes. I can toss/drop/throw/huck them onto the floor. It's like when I drive over that curvy overpass on route 4: a slight turn of my wrists, or a negligence in turning at the right moment to remain on course, and drastic things with irreversible consequences, pregnant with grief, ensue. And it's all in my hands. Along with the great undifferentiated potential personalities, tribulations, and proud moments of these children lies the power in me to deter that, to fuck with it in a really really twisted and subtle way, or I could take the demonic route that would lead to as much havoc as me refusing to go to college and moving to a forest; and practice my javelin toss. Of course I need to write this in a veiled manner, even after setting off on a quest to be super lucid, because it's my fallback, and my default when I know that this is not FYEO. Sucks.
So the neuroses are there, ripe for the diagnosing. where are the willing, eager young world- changers?
When I held the babies, a thought came: I can poke out one of their tiny little, unfocused, of androgynous color, eyes. I can toss/drop/throw/huck them onto the floor. It's like when I drive over that curvy overpass on route 4: a slight turn of my wrists, or a negligence in turning at the right moment to remain on course, and drastic things with irreversible consequences, pregnant with grief, ensue. And it's all in my hands. Along with the great undifferentiated potential personalities, tribulations, and proud moments of these children lies the power in me to deter that, to fuck with it in a really really twisted and subtle way, or I could take the demonic route that would lead to as much havoc as me refusing to go to college and moving to a forest; and practice my javelin toss. Of course I need to write this in a veiled manner, even after setting off on a quest to be super lucid, because it's my fallback, and my default when I know that this is not FYEO. Sucks.
So the neuroses are there, ripe for the diagnosing. where are the willing, eager young world- changers?
Wednesday 17 June 2009
Funny you should ask.
So it's been a month since last blag. I guess that's indicative of summer. I am proud of my cooking that I just did, so I will note it here:
I made angel hair in a pot, alongside a pan in which I fried pieces of eggplant, broccoli, and string beans in butter, oil, and garlic. I added tomato sauce to the pot of veggies and then some pizza cheese, and mixed it with the angel hair. Now I'm eating it. It is such a pleasure to eat real food... It just makes so much more SENSE than what I did last night after a weary night of frisbee in astoria; stop at cvs and buy a pack of peanut butter cheese crackers and an instant teriyaki noodle bowl of soup to microwave with one of those tiny packets of "vegetables" which are really just thin flaky pieces of cardboard in orange and green and marroon. Next up will be eggplant parm; it just has to be. The strange thing is, it took me so many days/weeks to muster up the something to cook. It's like I feel it will be a big endeavor, whereas it's not more than 20 minutes, and now I'm set for food at least till tomorrow night. Is it gross to eat a pound of pasta and veggies in a day? I hope knotz. [chomp chomp]
Ok, I ate 2 bowlfuls and cleaned up. Good going E! I even wiped up the stovetop. The food is packed away in the fridge and the utensils and dishes are washed. And my shoulders hurt. And I will need to go to work in half an hour. On that front, here's what I've been up to these days:
Babysittin'
- lying around, trying to impart wisdom and common sense on a tot, perfecting my playground protocol/ettiquette skills in this damned city, cabbing myself and the little one EVERYWHERE, and generally getting looked at differently by everyone since I have a small clueless vulnerable child in tow. For example:
On the subway, first of all, the kid loves it. I'm not sure if it's because it is SO much bigger and greater than him, and he might feel about it the way I feel about the ocean. It continues regardless of him and all the other people present, but at the same time, all of those people make it what it is. I mean I look at his face, and it's that same enamored obsessed face when he sees an elevator, a shiny glinty "OPEN" sign, or whatever elsemight tickle the quirkish fancy.
Also, heh. I want to write about some stuff right now that I am so hesitant to divulge even here on the internets because I'd venture to say there is a 30% chance that somehow the people I will be emulsifying and blending with my words will stumble accross this very blag and then I'll have to dig myself out delicately from this self-imposed cheezit-crumbs barrell.
Ok, so 3 babiesfor the price of...well, 3. But for the timing of one gestation period! That's right, I am an aunt to triplets. I never thought I'd be typing that sporting this surreptitiously smug smirk but hey, that's the Truman life. They are somewhat real to me but will be even more real after this sunday night when I perform my first selfless and painstaking "night shift" of feeding, burping, daiper changing, cooing, wooing, pooing, and cashewing, and whatever else is involved with people who weigh 4.5 pounds each. It's all me. Well, it won't be. But I had a strange dream. And then it was July, July, July, and it seemed SO strange!
Get the ref? you should.
Iran: kind of exciting. I wish I was there. Or it was here. Token mention of sadness for the casualties and injuries, but my original hunch remains: I want in on the passion.
So what kind of sense am I trying to teach the little dude? First of all, I call him dude. Maybe a little bit too much. The entire thing is an exercise in my own patience, for sure. I need to tell him everything, and between 5 and 10 times before it gets done. And not just tellling, but prompting, physically and modelling. For everything. Like, "give me your foot" so I can put on your shoe. But hey, some people can't move their own feet, so this is a prodigious thing and should not be catted on.
Man, I need to wrap this up as I should put on presentable clothes and maybe brush my teeth? And then go be one of the other people here with a purpose. I can't wait for certain things. Such as hockey later. I don''t know, its been much too long since I've made it to a weekday scrimmage.
I made angel hair in a pot, alongside a pan in which I fried pieces of eggplant, broccoli, and string beans in butter, oil, and garlic. I added tomato sauce to the pot of veggies and then some pizza cheese, and mixed it with the angel hair. Now I'm eating it. It is such a pleasure to eat real food... It just makes so much more SENSE than what I did last night after a weary night of frisbee in astoria; stop at cvs and buy a pack of peanut butter cheese crackers and an instant teriyaki noodle bowl of soup to microwave with one of those tiny packets of "vegetables" which are really just thin flaky pieces of cardboard in orange and green and marroon. Next up will be eggplant parm; it just has to be. The strange thing is, it took me so many days/weeks to muster up the something to cook. It's like I feel it will be a big endeavor, whereas it's not more than 20 minutes, and now I'm set for food at least till tomorrow night. Is it gross to eat a pound of pasta and veggies in a day? I hope knotz. [chomp chomp]
Ok, I ate 2 bowlfuls and cleaned up. Good going E! I even wiped up the stovetop. The food is packed away in the fridge and the utensils and dishes are washed. And my shoulders hurt. And I will need to go to work in half an hour. On that front, here's what I've been up to these days:
Babysittin'
- lying around, trying to impart wisdom and common sense on a tot, perfecting my playground protocol/ettiquette skills in this damned city, cabbing myself and the little one EVERYWHERE, and generally getting looked at differently by everyone since I have a small clueless vulnerable child in tow. For example:
On the subway, first of all, the kid loves it. I'm not sure if it's because it is SO much bigger and greater than him, and he might feel about it the way I feel about the ocean. It continues regardless of him and all the other people present, but at the same time, all of those people make it what it is. I mean I look at his face, and it's that same enamored obsessed face when he sees an elevator, a shiny glinty "OPEN" sign, or whatever elsemight tickle the quirkish fancy.
Also, heh. I want to write about some stuff right now that I am so hesitant to divulge even here on the internets because I'd venture to say there is a 30% chance that somehow the people I will be emulsifying and blending with my words will stumble accross this very blag and then I'll have to dig myself out delicately from this self-imposed cheezit-crumbs barrell.
Ok, so 3 babiesfor the price of...well, 3. But for the timing of one gestation period! That's right, I am an aunt to triplets. I never thought I'd be typing that sporting this surreptitiously smug smirk but hey, that's the Truman life. They are somewhat real to me but will be even more real after this sunday night when I perform my first selfless and painstaking "night shift" of feeding, burping, daiper changing, cooing, wooing, pooing, and cashewing, and whatever else is involved with people who weigh 4.5 pounds each. It's all me. Well, it won't be. But I had a strange dream. And then it was July, July, July, and it seemed SO strange!
Get the ref? you should.
Iran: kind of exciting. I wish I was there. Or it was here. Token mention of sadness for the casualties and injuries, but my original hunch remains: I want in on the passion.
So what kind of sense am I trying to teach the little dude? First of all, I call him dude. Maybe a little bit too much. The entire thing is an exercise in my own patience, for sure. I need to tell him everything, and between 5 and 10 times before it gets done. And not just tellling, but prompting, physically and modelling. For everything. Like, "give me your foot" so I can put on your shoe. But hey, some people can't move their own feet, so this is a prodigious thing and should not be catted on.
Man, I need to wrap this up as I should put on presentable clothes and maybe brush my teeth? And then go be one of the other people here with a purpose. I can't wait for certain things. Such as hockey later. I don''t know, its been much too long since I've made it to a weekday scrimmage.
Sunday 17 May 2009
yep
The world is so weird. This is going to be pretty stream of concsiousness, as I am listening to ben folds and just feel this fancy dark chocolate melting rapidly in my mouth as i try to quickly spread the remaining bits over all surfaces of my mouth in a futile yet ever- valiant effort to enhance the sensory experience. I mean, double you tee eff? Im sitting on a comfy twin bed in stuytown with my partialy unpacked stuff surrounding me, including a down blanket i snatched from the carlyle pile of discarded dorm stuff. Im sitting here shirtless, probably with peanut butter on my chin and perhaps my nose. I had the strangest day. Actually, it was so UNstrange, I think that's what about it got to me. I couldn't deal with the normalcy of it, since I've worked my entire life (since I was 11 and became aware of myself) to create this alternative image of myself, and stray from normalcy that when I actually fight those natural E.-urges, stuff goes awry in my heart and my kidneys, and I end up... drinking? Nope, that didn't pan out. I feel really emotional right now, and I'm not sure why. I think it's because although I feel like my socializing today was totally ftw, (for the win) (i.e. good, way to be Elana, way to socialize with the real adults and still maintain your individuality) but I also know that none of it meant anything and that it never really does/ will.
Fact: Drunk people embody transience. No matter how turned on I might get hanging around the hockey guys, flirting aimlessly and shamelessly back and forth, forth and back, none of it means anything (when does flirting mean something? I should ask Duncan, who concentrated in Meaning. see last post. He owns my respect though.) I mean I'm all about fucking the notion of a boundary and doing whatever, but since I think too / so much about it, I inevitably and undeniably impose meaning and importance to all of the actions I do, and that are done to me. I can't just let something happen, in the split second before, during, and after every tiny decision I make, everywhere I look, everything I say, every facial expression I put out, I consider so mouch. I consider what other people would think: all of the people in my life that I have ever known, and all of the people I might know in the future, myself in different mindsets, etc. Should I/did I do this was it good or bad or stupid, I dont need to spell out the defining characteristics of hyper self-awareness here.
There was a mini mini scrimmage. With some people later on. It was really fun, it was what I needed. I tossed twice for short amounts of time in between the hockey and the socializing, and I needed those also. We lost our game, but that feels like ages ago. I can't do games, I choke, I choke up, and I flub, or I don't perform, and then I feel shitty about it. I get so hyped and worked up inside in my heart that when it's my turn to play I am jittery as a beanbag and can't do much. I was ok today, I blocked some shots with my stick and legs nicely, and held hark marks on D a bit. but none of that is enough. It means something to me in my head, but I need to finish I need to score and get on that paper. Thats why games suck...they promote said mindset and outlook.
What is my point? what am i getting at. maybe i feel successful that i socialized with adults. why dont i feel like an adult? why cant i just do what everyone else does and not freak out about it and overthink it so much? see llook now im not writing in caps this must be emotive. I am worthwhile and I know it, and I want so much to prove it to others, but in unconventional ways, and i think the truth is that most of the world doesnt give. Who has the time or energy or trust, especiallly trust and interest to be receptive to such a strange breed? Why can't I just dumb down and be like everyone else? I'm typing pretty fast here, this rocks. maybe i should get a job as a transcriber, or a transponster, like chandler bing. Phew. Sore shoulders, egging holders, and I have a boy after me. Not really. Now I can't even write about it. Sometimes a part of me just wants to focus all my efforts on facilitating compliments for myself so I can feel that tiny bit of "Yess!" ness when someone gives you a compliment before I start to deconstruct their motives and fabricated/ produce other reasons why they don't mean it, or why if they do mean it, I shouldn't take it with more than a grain of kosher salt.
oh eff em ell, oh woe is me, oh oh.
Fact: Drunk people embody transience. No matter how turned on I might get hanging around the hockey guys, flirting aimlessly and shamelessly back and forth, forth and back, none of it means anything (when does flirting mean something? I should ask Duncan, who concentrated in Meaning. see last post. He owns my respect though.) I mean I'm all about fucking the notion of a boundary and doing whatever, but since I think too / so much about it, I inevitably and undeniably impose meaning and importance to all of the actions I do, and that are done to me. I can't just let something happen, in the split second before, during, and after every tiny decision I make, everywhere I look, everything I say, every facial expression I put out, I consider so mouch. I consider what other people would think: all of the people in my life that I have ever known, and all of the people I might know in the future, myself in different mindsets, etc. Should I/did I do this was it good or bad or stupid, I dont need to spell out the defining characteristics of hyper self-awareness here.
There was a mini mini scrimmage. With some people later on. It was really fun, it was what I needed. I tossed twice for short amounts of time in between the hockey and the socializing, and I needed those also. We lost our game, but that feels like ages ago. I can't do games, I choke, I choke up, and I flub, or I don't perform, and then I feel shitty about it. I get so hyped and worked up inside in my heart that when it's my turn to play I am jittery as a beanbag and can't do much. I was ok today, I blocked some shots with my stick and legs nicely, and held hark marks on D a bit. but none of that is enough. It means something to me in my head, but I need to finish I need to score and get on that paper. Thats why games suck...they promote said mindset and outlook.
What is my point? what am i getting at. maybe i feel successful that i socialized with adults. why dont i feel like an adult? why cant i just do what everyone else does and not freak out about it and overthink it so much? see llook now im not writing in caps this must be emotive. I am worthwhile and I know it, and I want so much to prove it to others, but in unconventional ways, and i think the truth is that most of the world doesnt give. Who has the time or energy or trust, especiallly trust and interest to be receptive to such a strange breed? Why can't I just dumb down and be like everyone else? I'm typing pretty fast here, this rocks. maybe i should get a job as a transcriber, or a transponster, like chandler bing. Phew. Sore shoulders, egging holders, and I have a boy after me. Not really. Now I can't even write about it. Sometimes a part of me just wants to focus all my efforts on facilitating compliments for myself so I can feel that tiny bit of "Yess!" ness when someone gives you a compliment before I start to deconstruct their motives and fabricated/ produce other reasons why they don't mean it, or why if they do mean it, I shouldn't take it with more than a grain of kosher salt.
oh eff em ell, oh woe is me, oh oh.
Thursday 7 May 2009
birthday
So It will be my 21st birthday, and it's hard to know what, if anything, that means. I should ask my Gallatin pal who just finished his colloquium in "Meaning." Meanwhile, another Gallatin grad of this year is planning to go on a bike trip all around the usa with a friend for the summer... 3 months, bike trip. propane, couch surfing, camping, grime, etc. What's it mean? I should go spend some time in the jungle with the hulu tribe. Oh wait...
I'ts kinda weird to see the way physical maladies evolve. Like pimples. Just saying.
I'ts kinda weird to see the way physical maladies evolve. Like pimples. Just saying.
Thursday 30 April 2009
Mood Ingredients
I'm really not sure what's going on. But the little switch inside of me that is seldom approached seems to have the most frightening potential. I have a couple of these switches. There's the fear one, and then there's the hypochondriac one. That one does not need to roll in its grave of dormancy when I act the way I normally do; pshaw at any possible disease or injury. But every once in a while... Maybe it's because I read the internet and the modern day black plague has befallen us stinky new yorkers. Who knows. But I did ride two 5 express trains this evening crammed in so hard that both the subway pole AND my hockey stick were covered in eager, haphazardly placed hands, hands who belong to those dimwits rushing around during rush hour, clutching the phallus(took me 3 tries to spell that correctly) of mundanity.
Hockey scrimmage: why did I go? I shouldn't have. thought it would draw me out, but instead, I know too much. Last year it was an exciting free for all, I had no skill but my willingness to hustle, and it was me playing for myself, not know anybody else there, just being constantly humbled by their skills. Now it is different. Now I know who my competition is, who's mean and who's nice, who I can play hard on and who I best keep my distance from. Granted, all of the above are constructs I created over the past 10 months, but what isn't?
TBNYU/morals/ activism: I am a voyeur. I care about some stuff, but feel that brandishing your care for something in a public sphincter is nothing but cringe-worthy. Sorry, but it's in me.
I made a pretty bad decision last night. I really fucked up. Maybe it was what I needed though, to finally tip the scales. I'm afraid that it wasn't though, and will remain a bad decision made in vain.
Hockey scrimmage: why did I go? I shouldn't have. thought it would draw me out, but instead, I know too much. Last year it was an exciting free for all, I had no skill but my willingness to hustle, and it was me playing for myself, not know anybody else there, just being constantly humbled by their skills. Now it is different. Now I know who my competition is, who's mean and who's nice, who I can play hard on and who I best keep my distance from. Granted, all of the above are constructs I created over the past 10 months, but what isn't?
TBNYU/morals/ activism: I am a voyeur. I care about some stuff, but feel that brandishing your care for something in a public sphincter is nothing but cringe-worthy. Sorry, but it's in me.
I made a pretty bad decision last night. I really fucked up. Maybe it was what I needed though, to finally tip the scales. I'm afraid that it wasn't though, and will remain a bad decision made in vain.
The Urge To Blag
I've been getting it. Here's what I'm eating for breakfast: trader joes honey bunches of oats with milk, raisins, and peanuts. zesty. I might as well dwell in a house of peanut butter, it seems to line my every surface.
Stuff I care about:
sign language. It is mad rad. I like to fingerspell everything (circa "occupy everything")
bdsm blogs. heh.
conversing with someone via frisbee tossing: It is more intimate than most conversations. All we ever use are words, and I am realy trying to get myself to wholly believe that communication can happen as definitively through physical metaphors as it can through verbal exchange. We think if we see something, it must be there. But if we hear something, it could be a simulation, or far away, or misheard. So to, with frisbee. A story develops as we toss, the nuanced eye contact, the directness and speed of the throws, the playful nature, the candor of plastic exchange, the congratulatory measures coupled with the dutiful apologies for (if in nyc) hitting passersby in the head) and elsewhere-- a bad throw.
I played hockey last night in a small gym in washington heights. This one very nice guy who played disclosed to me and some of the other players that his mom died that morning (yesterday). I couldn't say anything, so I gave him lots of eye contact, and was frank. I have insights into death, although not of a parent, but a parent's parent. I asked him on the subway if he felt that he had sufficiently / appropriately individuated into his own person such that he does not feel like he lost his left side of the body when his mother passed. He said yes; it gave me hope that someday I will be as autonomous as all getout.
Stuff I care about:
sign language. It is mad rad. I like to fingerspell everything (circa "occupy everything")
bdsm blogs. heh.
conversing with someone via frisbee tossing: It is more intimate than most conversations. All we ever use are words, and I am realy trying to get myself to wholly believe that communication can happen as definitively through physical metaphors as it can through verbal exchange. We think if we see something, it must be there. But if we hear something, it could be a simulation, or far away, or misheard. So to, with frisbee. A story develops as we toss, the nuanced eye contact, the directness and speed of the throws, the playful nature, the candor of plastic exchange, the congratulatory measures coupled with the dutiful apologies for (if in nyc) hitting passersby in the head) and elsewhere-- a bad throw.
I played hockey last night in a small gym in washington heights. This one very nice guy who played disclosed to me and some of the other players that his mom died that morning (yesterday). I couldn't say anything, so I gave him lots of eye contact, and was frank. I have insights into death, although not of a parent, but a parent's parent. I asked him on the subway if he felt that he had sufficiently / appropriately individuated into his own person such that he does not feel like he lost his left side of the body when his mother passed. He said yes; it gave me hope that someday I will be as autonomous as all getout.
Monday 20 April 2009
Ode to the ovum
I raised up my arms atop my head to prepare to dive into a handstand against the inside of the front door. Upon throwing myself down and kicking off my right leg into the air, my foot crashed full speed against a stepstool thingy that has somehow found its way into my apt. I was taken aback, and my arms crumbled, leaving me in a heap on the dusty floor, my cheek against the chilly door. I viewed it immediately as the world closing in on me. I sat cross-legged for some time, head down towards my toes, unwittingly getting the most ghastly whiff of my day-old socks. I remained there, humbled, and then got up and did a proper handstand, taking supreme caution of how far my legs would extend. Woe unto those who cannot be upside down.
Friday 17 April 2009
peanut butter and chocolate
most inspiring food ever. hands down. unfortunately the pb i got in my haste to procure quality chametz last night from whole foods has a bit too much salt for my liking. Oh well, at least I'm melting on my tongue right now. I also got this bag (not box, bag.) of cereal that is cinnamon toast crunch...but natural. whole foods natural. organic, and advertises "no phony flavors!" It's mad good. It will be finished soon. This manic food consumption is offset (I hope) by my ass busting of sports playing by weekend. Otherwise, I am nothing. It's my common Jewish name with an Elana- shaped hole of empty space immediately preceeding and anteceding it.
So last night a coupla things happened. I rejoiced inwardly upon reaching thursday evening, which means no class for 4 days, and in those 4 days I can only predict what sort of blasphemy might go down. At least its routine, at least it's in the peanut butter zone. What else is there to dub?
Last night I played hockey. With some girls who really hustled. Especailly this one girl. she looked small, compact, and mousey, and I usually assume that I can take any girl, but this one put up a fight. I was humbled and proud of her. She really hustled and didn't miss many passes.
I practiced my boxout, and that term means basically any time I use my body as a strategic barrier. It's one of my few moves to call upon. Too bad it doesn't directly involve smooth tricky movement of the ball. Maybe I'll get there.
I play pretty physically with some people and I want to be sure they are ok with it. So I sometimes ask bluntly, awkwardly, just to be sure that my hump-like trap into the boards D isn't unwelcome.
last night was frisbee night too. i dont want to take for granted the comfort and contentment i feel playing with these kids. I recall freshman year feeling so out of place, illegit, and dweeby, and am so glad that I have found a niche, at least I percieve myself to have found one. I actually get it. It took me long enough, that's for sure. I made a good catch/bid/fall/lay on the concrete and got minimally hurt, and it was my body acting governed by "get disc" without thought about personal injury, or adding insult to. I want that to be the way I always play. *scrapes off dried blood from elbow.*
When boys cry. It's the best reminded of our humanity across the board and I want it to be more than okay.
So last night a coupla things happened. I rejoiced inwardly upon reaching thursday evening, which means no class for 4 days, and in those 4 days I can only predict what sort of blasphemy might go down. At least its routine, at least it's in the peanut butter zone. What else is there to dub?
Last night I played hockey. With some girls who really hustled. Especailly this one girl. she looked small, compact, and mousey, and I usually assume that I can take any girl, but this one put up a fight. I was humbled and proud of her. She really hustled and didn't miss many passes.
I practiced my boxout, and that term means basically any time I use my body as a strategic barrier. It's one of my few moves to call upon. Too bad it doesn't directly involve smooth tricky movement of the ball. Maybe I'll get there.
I play pretty physically with some people and I want to be sure they are ok with it. So I sometimes ask bluntly, awkwardly, just to be sure that my hump-like trap into the boards D isn't unwelcome.
last night was frisbee night too. i dont want to take for granted the comfort and contentment i feel playing with these kids. I recall freshman year feeling so out of place, illegit, and dweeby, and am so glad that I have found a niche, at least I percieve myself to have found one. I actually get it. It took me long enough, that's for sure. I made a good catch/bid/fall/lay on the concrete and got minimally hurt, and it was my body acting governed by "get disc" without thought about personal injury, or adding insult to. I want that to be the way I always play. *scrapes off dried blood from elbow.*
When boys cry. It's the best reminded of our humanity across the board and I want it to be more than okay.
Tuesday 7 April 2009
Hockey
I just got back from my last regular season hockey game in scrappier league. I am happy I played this season with this team because athough we lost every game, we improved and I got to be a part of timed, reffed games against good other teams and players. Granted, I get that in scrimmage and it is more fun, but still- hockey is hockey. My teammates are all super nice, and while our skill does not match that of the other teams like pete and kevin's teams, I still believe that we have good solid players. Solid, albeit scattered.
I think I might feel strongly about this game because it is the sole recreational activity that marks the end of the time I have here in the city before pesach, before i tread to yardley for another 5-dayer. I remember th 5 day yom tovs of yore, i remember them well. and honestly, i never thought i'd be a month shy of my 21st birthday, typing a blog naked in my dorm room, having broken free of the constraints set upon me by the world in which i was raised. I mean, (unsure as to who I am addressing, but yet) I dig Judaism. I teach the kiddies about it every sunday for the last 3 years. I tutor special needs kids for their bar mitzvahs. I do, and I do.
About hockey though, I feel like all these guys have my back. We may not be best of friends and all chum-chummy, but that might be because we live in different worlds, or are at different stages of life, or, and most likely, because I am a social dunce. Regardless, I do feel like they like me and respect me and my hockey playing, and always ask if I am ok if I fall down, which I like to have happen during these games so that the adrenaline rush keeps me from feeling any pain that may be there. (If pain is present, but not felt, is it still pain? Riddle me that.)
So they have my back, and they give me tips, but not in an overbearing condescending way, rather in a helpful useful way, because after all, my hockey knowledge can be measured by a geiger counter. And I don't feel [all that] stupid asking questions to the ones who know about hockey and play good. And they exist, and I am so unsure as to what our relationship is. Is there more camaraderie with the Jewish ones...because we're Jewish? Am I making that up? Am I creating crushes where there are none? Probably, that seems to be erupting in my head pretty often these days. It is hard to separate someone who is a pal and I look up to, especially in a sport, which I hold in such high regard, from being someone who I want to become closer with. I'm not even sure. I admire certain players and for that reason I want to fuck them. That's a joke.
I also want to go to a tournament. I consider myself to live by certain tenets with regards to hockey (and frisbee). Let's see if I can flesh em out academically:
1. If there is hockey to be played, I am there.
- no matter what time of day or night, if I am aware of a hockcey game/ scrimmage going on, I will get up and go there, and play, despite the other ersponsiblities or fatigues I may have.
2. Hmm. I don't know if there is a second one. They all kind of fall under the umbrella of the first. I mean I always need to tell myself to remember that even though I am tired, the greatest feeling ever that is pure purity and exhilaration comes from my sports, and as a human, this is what I am meant to be doing and it makes sense. It fits like a magnetic puzzle. Like a rubix pajamas.
3. Never show weakness. This one may not be so wise, but it has been how I've been playing. If I fall, don't exaggerate or complain, just get up and let the bruises/ blood speak for themselves. I'm not sure what I'm getting at here, but like, I'm ok, just way too complex for my own good.
eff that ess.
I think I might feel strongly about this game because it is the sole recreational activity that marks the end of the time I have here in the city before pesach, before i tread to yardley for another 5-dayer. I remember th 5 day yom tovs of yore, i remember them well. and honestly, i never thought i'd be a month shy of my 21st birthday, typing a blog naked in my dorm room, having broken free of the constraints set upon me by the world in which i was raised. I mean, (unsure as to who I am addressing, but yet) I dig Judaism. I teach the kiddies about it every sunday for the last 3 years. I tutor special needs kids for their bar mitzvahs. I do, and I do.
About hockey though, I feel like all these guys have my back. We may not be best of friends and all chum-chummy, but that might be because we live in different worlds, or are at different stages of life, or, and most likely, because I am a social dunce. Regardless, I do feel like they like me and respect me and my hockey playing, and always ask if I am ok if I fall down, which I like to have happen during these games so that the adrenaline rush keeps me from feeling any pain that may be there. (If pain is present, but not felt, is it still pain? Riddle me that.)
So they have my back, and they give me tips, but not in an overbearing condescending way, rather in a helpful useful way, because after all, my hockey knowledge can be measured by a geiger counter. And I don't feel [all that] stupid asking questions to the ones who know about hockey and play good. And they exist, and I am so unsure as to what our relationship is. Is there more camaraderie with the Jewish ones...because we're Jewish? Am I making that up? Am I creating crushes where there are none? Probably, that seems to be erupting in my head pretty often these days. It is hard to separate someone who is a pal and I look up to, especially in a sport, which I hold in such high regard, from being someone who I want to become closer with. I'm not even sure. I admire certain players and for that reason I want to fuck them. That's a joke.
I also want to go to a tournament. I consider myself to live by certain tenets with regards to hockey (and frisbee). Let's see if I can flesh em out academically:
1. If there is hockey to be played, I am there.
- no matter what time of day or night, if I am aware of a hockcey game/ scrimmage going on, I will get up and go there, and play, despite the other ersponsiblities or fatigues I may have.
2. Hmm. I don't know if there is a second one. They all kind of fall under the umbrella of the first. I mean I always need to tell myself to remember that even though I am tired, the greatest feeling ever that is pure purity and exhilaration comes from my sports, and as a human, this is what I am meant to be doing and it makes sense. It fits like a magnetic puzzle. Like a rubix pajamas.
3. Never show weakness. This one may not be so wise, but it has been how I've been playing. If I fall, don't exaggerate or complain, just get up and let the bruises/ blood speak for themselves. I'm not sure what I'm getting at here, but like, I'm ok, just way too complex for my own good.
eff that ess.
Yeah so blogging hasn't happened in a while. Seems as though more people I know in real life have been privy to my blog and that has been made clear to me, so I can write less and less under the guise on anonymity. I have been asked about somethings written here, and felt the need to defend, explain away, or edify them. I could always start a new totally anonymous blog, or just write in my infamous word document I have had for the past coupla years. Or, I could just think and not write, or type an email and them delete it. Hmm endless options. roll.eyes.
I feel a little deviant right now, I am typing this blog entry and there are people waiting in line to use a computer at the swanky new kimmel lab where i wrote my post several weeks ago in rage that Jsex wouldn't let me into his grad student town hall. Memories abound, and yet I remain the same. I should send some all-important emails, right now.
I haven't said anything here yet, but for those of you who crave my voice in writing and pursue regular updates, this should soften the blow of negligence.
I feel a little deviant right now, I am typing this blog entry and there are people waiting in line to use a computer at the swanky new kimmel lab where i wrote my post several weeks ago in rage that Jsex wouldn't let me into his grad student town hall. Memories abound, and yet I remain the same. I should send some all-important emails, right now.
I haven't said anything here yet, but for those of you who crave my voice in writing and pursue regular updates, this should soften the blow of negligence.
Yeah so blogging hasn't happened in a while. Seems as though more people I know in real life have been privy to my blog and that has been made clear to me, so I can write less and less under the guise on anonymity. I have been asked about somethings written here, and felt the need to defend, explain away, or edify them. I could always start a new totally anonymous blog, or just write in my infamous word document I have had for the past coupla years. Or, I could just think and not write, or type an email and them delete it. Hmm endless options. roll.eyes.
I feel a little deviant right now, I am typing this blog entry and there are people waiting in line to use a computer at the swanky new kimmel lab where i wrote my post several weeks ago in rage that Jsex wouldn't let me into his grad student town hall. Memories abound, and yet I remain the same. I should send some all-important emails, right now.
I haven't said anything here yet, but for those of you who crave my voice in writing and pursue regular updates, this should soften the blow of negligence.
I feel a little deviant right now, I am typing this blog entry and there are people waiting in line to use a computer at the swanky new kimmel lab where i wrote my post several weeks ago in rage that Jsex wouldn't let me into his grad student town hall. Memories abound, and yet I remain the same. I should send some all-important emails, right now.
I haven't said anything here yet, but for those of you who crave my voice in writing and pursue regular updates, this should soften the blow of negligence.
word
Yeah so blogging hasn't happened in a while. Seems as though more people I know in real life have been privy to my blog and that has been made clear to me, so I can write less and less under the guise on anonymity. I have been asked about somethings written here, and felt the need to defend, explain away, or edify them. I could always start a new totally anonymous blog, or just write in my infamous word document I have had for the past coupla years. Or, I could just think and not write, or type an email and them delete it. Hmm endless options. roll.eyes.
I feel a little deviant right now, I am typing this blog entry and there are people waiting in line to use a computer at the swanky new kimmel lab where i wrote my post several weeks ago in rage that Jsex wouldn't let me into his grad student town hall. Memories abound, and yet I remain the same. I should send some all-important emails, right now.
I haven't said anything here yet, but for those of you who crave my voice in writing and pursue regular updates, this should soften the blow of negligence.
I feel a little deviant right now, I am typing this blog entry and there are people waiting in line to use a computer at the swanky new kimmel lab where i wrote my post several weeks ago in rage that Jsex wouldn't let me into his grad student town hall. Memories abound, and yet I remain the same. I should send some all-important emails, right now.
I haven't said anything here yet, but for those of you who crave my voice in writing and pursue regular updates, this should soften the blow of negligence.
Tuesday 31 March 2009
chocolate
Yeah so yesterday I ate too much chocolate. Let's see.
Chocolate chip muffin from whole foods, hefty portion of dark chocolate bar, chocolate covered something-or-others, trader joes peanut butter cups, dark chocolate covered grahams from starbucks. Uber decadent, all of 'em, and made me bounce off the walls. I was wondering what it was that was making me tap and stomp and bang and dash and run and chatter. Too much immersion in autism? A definite possibility. But no, I'd rather blame it on the cacao intake.
My computer is being attacked. I can't say much more, because you, dear reader, might be the attacker, or get a hardon at the prospect of me asserting such a guile and wish to give it a whirl.
*Goes to the kitchen to get some more of that blasted chocolate bar*
meta: hey, is this me being a typical woman? In the year 2009? Not being able to stop eating chocolate, and then blogging about it?
No. I am blogging for other reasons:
1. Putting off writing papers
2. Putting off ASL HW
3. Inspired by a glorious blogpliment I recieved upon waking up this morning via email from a modern-day scholar in resident of christ.
About that, honesty is all I've got. That, and a host of other useful / useless things. But I have been trying to cut away at the crap, i.e. dearth of honesty and mollassessizing parts of my life and thought processes recently, becuase honesty is just better. Except for when I steal shit. ha
Chocolate chip muffin from whole foods, hefty portion of dark chocolate bar, chocolate covered something-or-others, trader joes peanut butter cups, dark chocolate covered grahams from starbucks. Uber decadent, all of 'em, and made me bounce off the walls. I was wondering what it was that was making me tap and stomp and bang and dash and run and chatter. Too much immersion in autism? A definite possibility. But no, I'd rather blame it on the cacao intake.
My computer is being attacked. I can't say much more, because you, dear reader, might be the attacker, or get a hardon at the prospect of me asserting such a guile and wish to give it a whirl.
*Goes to the kitchen to get some more of that blasted chocolate bar*
meta: hey, is this me being a typical woman? In the year 2009? Not being able to stop eating chocolate, and then blogging about it?
No. I am blogging for other reasons:
1. Putting off writing papers
2. Putting off ASL HW
3. Inspired by a glorious blogpliment I recieved upon waking up this morning via email from a modern-day scholar in resident of christ.
About that, honesty is all I've got. That, and a host of other useful / useless things. But I have been trying to cut away at the crap, i.e. dearth of honesty and mollassessizing parts of my life and thought processes recently, becuase honesty is just better. Except for when I steal shit. ha
Thursday 26 March 2009
expletive frustrated
Honestly, I don't get why people don't do what they say they will. It's simple. Don't be a flirt or a tease unless you're willing to go through with it. And I don't mean anything big, just some healthy snugglin. Geez Louise.
Tuesday 24 March 2009
Why am I in what I'm in
I realized this weekend that I am not only in ultimate frisbee for the dance, but hockey too. I played hockey all freakin weeken, and the part that sticks out most in my mind, aside from perhaps scoring on a subpar goalie, was this one fancy-footwork bit on sunday at the btsh scrimmage at tompkins park, which this one girl on my mofo team called "tomskin" which the goalie of said team joked that she said 'foreskin park'. anyhow, A tall, quick athletic guy had the ball on the side and i was marking him , he was going to hit it into play. he kept faking me right and left, and i did that thing where my entire being is immersed in the play and i am putting forth all my energies to reading where he is going with the ball, reacting to each movement, and thus my eyes were on his feet, stick, and the ball (i have tried to focus on his center of gravity/waist/hips, but that flubs me up because then i dont knwo where the ball is going. besides, its safer to play ball than man here.)
anyways, I was shuffling and stutter stepping and juking all over the place all the while keeping myself (body, stick, and aura) as big and menacingly imposing as possible. i didnt pick off the pass, but that didnt matter, because i believe i had him challenged and scampering for an open lane. if just felt so satisfyingly exhausting to really be playing hard D like that.
yes, i am aware of my jargon use and beaming with pride inside that i am able to. if only here. but no, i use it in practice too. and i must. because learning to say "do you want in" instead of "do you want to play with us?" was a huge step, just like the michigan trip, the dormage, and the parental prenatal laparnassah honesty.
thats the dance. and in ultimate, same deal while marking. keeping a hard mark and good cover is so important, and a large part of the game that goes unnoticed and is not given enough attention. its about scoring, but not all about scoring. its about intimidation. and i want to own it.
blam. how wrong is it to accept being hit on by a married man?
anyways, I was shuffling and stutter stepping and juking all over the place all the while keeping myself (body, stick, and aura) as big and menacingly imposing as possible. i didnt pick off the pass, but that didnt matter, because i believe i had him challenged and scampering for an open lane. if just felt so satisfyingly exhausting to really be playing hard D like that.
yes, i am aware of my jargon use and beaming with pride inside that i am able to. if only here. but no, i use it in practice too. and i must. because learning to say "do you want in" instead of "do you want to play with us?" was a huge step, just like the michigan trip, the dormage, and the parental prenatal laparnassah honesty.
thats the dance. and in ultimate, same deal while marking. keeping a hard mark and good cover is so important, and a large part of the game that goes unnoticed and is not given enough attention. its about scoring, but not all about scoring. its about intimidation. and i want to own it.
blam. how wrong is it to accept being hit on by a married man?
tomboy
I am one. I looked it up on urbandic and I fit the bills.
So the wedding last night was as it will be.
I greeted, was greeted, was kissed on the cheek, was asked how I was, to which I replied "good, how about you?" instead of the expected "baruch hashem and you?" but my intentional folly was overlooked all of the time.
Funny/Awful thing: About College.
They ask me- what am i doing in college? how much longer do i have? what will i end up with when i finish?
And then some ask "oh, so they let you out of college to come to the chasunah?! Very nice, ..."
"so what, is it like a sleepaway camp/school, and you live there?"
And someone asked me if I'd be coming to BP for the shabbos sheva brachos. I replied with a vague "perhaps." I was met with a curious look. "what does "perhaps" mean?"
nuff sed.
Yes, I am writing off an entire sect of people based on the ignorance of a select few.
enter enter, enter enter, i keep pressing.
So the wedding last night was as it will be.
I greeted, was greeted, was kissed on the cheek, was asked how I was, to which I replied "good, how about you?" instead of the expected "baruch hashem and you?" but my intentional folly was overlooked all of the time.
Funny/Awful thing: About College.
They ask me- what am i doing in college? how much longer do i have? what will i end up with when i finish?
And then some ask "oh, so they let you out of college to come to the chasunah?! Very nice, ..."
"so what, is it like a sleepaway camp/school, and you live there?"
And someone asked me if I'd be coming to BP for the shabbos sheva brachos. I replied with a vague "perhaps." I was met with a curious look. "what does "perhaps" mean?"
nuff sed.
Yes, I am writing off an entire sect of people based on the ignorance of a select few.
enter enter, enter enter, i keep pressing.
Monday 23 March 2009
a phew things
Weird and sticky social thing:
I stopped in a convenience store last night, really tired, just wanted a quick fix of sour cream and onion chips. I heard someone address me and greet me - it was this boy who grew up nearby me, one of the millions of Jewish metro-area boys that I am on a "hey whats up"/ smile basis with. We chitter chattered, and around the corner came the boy he was there with, a friend, in that crowd. This boy happens to be one of the half million that I have seen around since freshman year, but for whatever reason, we never interact or acknowledge each other. Yes, he is my age, a product of the same school system and community system that produced me, and yes we are both Jewish NYU students, but no we never, ever, make eye contact, and if we do, we do not smile or nod or anything. I tried to at the beginning, but I was met with deaf ears and blind eyes. It's ok, no skin off my back. But here we have a clash! I clearly was on a talking-basis with his friend, and we DO know who each other are, so we hastily nodded and smiled and said hey. Cool. Word. I'm still here and I'd vouch for the fact that so is he.
Ego Trip: Hockey. BTSH.
they all want me on their teams. granted, its crappy hockey and its bc im a girl and they dont have enough girls. but i could just be an ignored girl who sucks. instead, im a decent girl who they recruit. YESS!!!!
I signed. with Filthy Gorgeous. I have strange hangups about this whole thing. Who are these people, these expats of yore with rainbow sweatbands round their foreheads, the scrappy attitudes, the standoffish adoptive NY ambience threaded between the PBR's they brag of and tatted skinny-limbs that are somehow agile enough to pick off my every pass. more of this later.
PS any suggestions of consumable items that will give me a 2nd wind? I feel like I'm on my last legs right now and still must actively endure 2 classes and a family simcha. yea. chocolate?
no coffee please kthxbye.
I stopped in a convenience store last night, really tired, just wanted a quick fix of sour cream and onion chips. I heard someone address me and greet me - it was this boy who grew up nearby me, one of the millions of Jewish metro-area boys that I am on a "hey whats up"/ smile basis with. We chitter chattered, and around the corner came the boy he was there with, a friend, in that crowd. This boy happens to be one of the half million that I have seen around since freshman year, but for whatever reason, we never interact or acknowledge each other. Yes, he is my age, a product of the same school system and community system that produced me, and yes we are both Jewish NYU students, but no we never, ever, make eye contact, and if we do, we do not smile or nod or anything. I tried to at the beginning, but I was met with deaf ears and blind eyes. It's ok, no skin off my back. But here we have a clash! I clearly was on a talking-basis with his friend, and we DO know who each other are, so we hastily nodded and smiled and said hey. Cool. Word. I'm still here and I'd vouch for the fact that so is he.
Ego Trip: Hockey. BTSH.
they all want me on their teams. granted, its crappy hockey and its bc im a girl and they dont have enough girls. but i could just be an ignored girl who sucks. instead, im a decent girl who they recruit. YESS!!!!
I signed. with Filthy Gorgeous. I have strange hangups about this whole thing. Who are these people, these expats of yore with rainbow sweatbands round their foreheads, the scrappy attitudes, the standoffish adoptive NY ambience threaded between the PBR's they brag of and tatted skinny-limbs that are somehow agile enough to pick off my every pass. more of this later.
PS any suggestions of consumable items that will give me a 2nd wind? I feel like I'm on my last legs right now and still must actively endure 2 classes and a family simcha. yea. chocolate?
no coffee please kthxbye.
Wednesday 18 March 2009
Michigan
It's really good. That is the overwhelming truth. I had a bit of dabbling with my fraught emotions in, say, the first 24 hours of the trip but I think I'm settled now. Too bad I go back tomorrow. This is, as they say, a learning experience, I guess.
Things I've noticed:
There are lots of chocolate stores in this state. Stores that are fancy and sell chocolate in different varieties and wrapped in thick wax paper. And fudge.
Water slides: Driving in both the Detroit area and the Northern Mich area has allowed me to see many isolated water slides along the side of highways. You know, like tall, curly enclosed water slides that are in water parks...except these slides stand alone.
Flowers For algernon: remember that book? I do. I say that I have read it but really I have just read one emotional chapter from it, as in my 7th grade "Anthology" (textbook full of random bits of novels we had to read) there was one chapter assigned. It was a good book. Dont you think.
It is really different here. people smile at you, and me. they arent in such a rush, and they seem more genuine. they have each other's backs. The atmosphere is just overall more human/humane. You needn't be scared at every corner you turn. It's dark at night and light in the day. The nature is impeccable. It is just different. It's not a shithole.
It's ok to be a person here. Things remain still. There is open space.
i want to write at some point about the Lily, Rose, and Cinderblock joke, and how my first thoughts were about the positive functionalities of C-block as opposed to her obvious deficiencies.
more some other time. if you or i want.
Things I've noticed:
There are lots of chocolate stores in this state. Stores that are fancy and sell chocolate in different varieties and wrapped in thick wax paper. And fudge.
Water slides: Driving in both the Detroit area and the Northern Mich area has allowed me to see many isolated water slides along the side of highways. You know, like tall, curly enclosed water slides that are in water parks...except these slides stand alone.
Flowers For algernon: remember that book? I do. I say that I have read it but really I have just read one emotional chapter from it, as in my 7th grade "Anthology" (textbook full of random bits of novels we had to read) there was one chapter assigned. It was a good book. Dont you think.
It is really different here. people smile at you, and me. they arent in such a rush, and they seem more genuine. they have each other's backs. The atmosphere is just overall more human/humane. You needn't be scared at every corner you turn. It's dark at night and light in the day. The nature is impeccable. It is just different. It's not a shithole.
It's ok to be a person here. Things remain still. There is open space.
i want to write at some point about the Lily, Rose, and Cinderblock joke, and how my first thoughts were about the positive functionalities of C-block as opposed to her obvious deficiencies.
more some other time. if you or i want.
Tuesday 10 March 2009
What I'm doing
I'm pretty certain that I'm keeping debauchery to a minimum. Except for in a certain area that needs work, or does it, I am rather straitlaced. And not even on my own volition- it's like the universe/uterus has deemed my future choices and actions to all fall within a certain pendulum that swings barely higher than a tot.
I had a scary experience last week. I was outside with an autistic child I care for, let's call him Skyler. No, let's call him Jake. No, Alex. Alex is an enigma to us all. I know upwards of 2 handsful of people who care dearly about him, but none of us know just why he does what he does. And it drives us batty. He does not take interest in the things that most of us take interest in, and if he does, it is for an inimitable amount of time and for a reason so foreign to us. Can we even assert that he "likes" stuff? If he does something a lot, like tap long thin things/ random manipulatives on any surface he encounters, is that him doing something he likes, or is it him doing what he was predisposed to do, or cannot get out of the mind of the beast that causes him to do that so incessantly?
The scary thing that happened. I was out with him, and he got pissed. Or so I think. Maybe this is just his emotions running their course. Whatever it was, it was a bad meltdown. And As he grows and becomes bigger and stronger, it is harder for me to sedate him. Especially in public. I am learning to do what a colleague tells me to do in public "have no shame" and do with him what I need. I hate hate hate to lay a hand on him, but he often does stuff that is dangerous to himself or to others, and I need to stop that, and if verbally terminating the detrimental action does not work, I need to use my body. He darted towards the street. I grabbed him back and said to him sternly "you know you cannot run into the street" because he does know. Or at least, he usually knows. He began to jump around and flail his arms, trying to smack my chest and face, scratch my neck, and when I held his arms down by his sides, he tried to bite my arms, and succeeded a few times. I held him by his elbows and faced him forward and marched him down to 3rd ave, the goal now was to get him home where there were more readily available resources that have been proven to help him chill out, like ice, a bath, and peanut butter (a boy after my own heart.) And hopefully, his dad. No such luck, I found out. After he managed to break my hold of his elbows it began to get unclear for me. We essentially spent an unknown amount of time causing a huge scene on the street in front of a blockbuster and next to a fruit stand. He pulled my hair, bit me, hit me, and was clearly very mad. Certain passersby of course stopped to stare, tried to intervene, asked me what was happening, threatened to call the police, all the while I tried to explain to them "he's autistic, he doesn't act the way we would expect and he doesn't mean to be hurting me or understand what you are saying right now." (At least, that's what I think. Granted, I have no fuckin clue what it is all about, and that is the hardest part of this. The line of empathy that I would like to establish with Alex, as I do with any person I meet ever, can only grow so far until it is severed ruthlessly somewhere in the abyss that exists between my consciousness and Alex's. It is almost like I am trying to connect with someone who does not speak the same language as I do, but it runs deeper than that. Alex understands English full well, but he does not speak. He does, however, make lots of sounds. And as I spend more time with him, and by now, I understand much of those sounds. The nuances are there albeit subtle. It is the forehead position and the slight pout that accompany more whimpering and whining sounds that alert me that something is brewing just under Alex's super sensitive/ not sensitive enough thick/thin/? skin.
The terrible climax of this event for me was cerrainly after a passerby had taken my phone to call Alex's dad and recieved his answering machine, and as an elderly woman came up close, too close, she waggled her finger at Alex as she chastised him. I explained through my chapped lips, mussed hair, and welled up tears that she should continue on her way, and he is autistic and does not have control over what he is doing the way we think he should. She continued to scold him, and he turned his energies from me to her. So he managed to slap her tan old-lady coat a few times pretty hard before I grabbed his arms again. In response to getting slapped by Alex, she did the unthinkable: She hit him back. Not just a light tap, but a strong hit. And then again. And then she punched him. By this time I was crying hysterically, a crowd had formed, and I was in pain, scared, stressed, and felt responsible for stuff that was over my head. I have invested a lot in Alex, from when I met him 9 months ago at the 92nd st Y until now. I have had wonderful moments with him, frustrating moments, funny moments, and most poignant of all, humbling moments. Being caught in this scuffle was too much for my frail emotional fortitude, or lack thereof. I wailed "please stop!" to the old woman, and finally she headed off, muttering, as passersby called after him "you can't touch him- he's autistic!."
Next came a godsend. A black woman who was certainly over age 45 offered her help: she took Alex's right arm and I took his left. To my absolute surprise, Alex did not act too aggressive toward her, but rather he complied as she stroked his pasty hand and repeated in an overly-soothing tone "thank you so much little boy, for allowing me to hold your hand...and what a handsome young man you are!" (he totally is). As soon as we made it down the block we were back at his fancy UES high rise, where the security guards know him. They saw me in my state and him, still bouncing around with that spark of fire in his eyes, and were very helpful and calming. Alex bounded down a back hallway after some official looking men in suits holding clipboards, and I ran after him, sputtering and hardened, both on the outside and on the inside. I say the word "hardened" because that is how I felt inside my chest. In the face of adversity and stress such as a freaking out autistic child who I am responsible for who will not see me and realize that I am serious and somtimes just not listen and bo absolutely crazy, I freeze up inside. I harden. But my exterior knows it cannot shut down, so I continue to go through the motions, manually preparing my senses of pain for the impending hit they may have to take soon, and to face it with fierce objectivity and nonchalance.
Why did this bother me so much? Well, For one, it was the fact that we were in public and it's not that I care what strangers think of me per se (anyone who sees how I dress on a regular basis knows it's true) but I have not found that comfort zone in the world with being responsible for a child who is obviously very peculiar, and while he looks like a gorgeous young boy, is clearly a violent, bipolar, and well, disturbed child to some degree. In so many ways he is a loving normal boy who just wants to play and connect, but he is trapped in this enigmatic body/psyche of seeking and or needing these intense stimulatory sensations at specific times, in specific degrees, and to different parts of his being. And when these cannot be met, he cannot regulate himself and has trouble keeping control of his body. Or maybe it's not that there is a "him" and a "his body" - maybe he just IS his body and that is the problem.
Another reason it bothered me: I hate to see him upset, and hate even more that he cannot explain to me what is the matter and I cannot help him. It is ultimately a huge guessing game, and I feel so fucking feeble and low offering him peanut butter, olives, and koubideh to sedate him as he freaks, when obviously something greater is going on.
It hurts when he hits me. It really does. He slaps hard, and he bites hard. Not because he wants to hurt me, but because he wants so much to express something and does not possesss the means to express it in a way that will be cathartic and operative for him and will reach me and my understanding. At least, that's the going assumption.
In the end, I had to run down that hall after him even though the guard told me "don't worry" because nobody would, and what if he ended up somewhere he shouldn't be, or got caught somewhere with someone who tried to talk to him and eventually got him upset and frsutrated because they were not expecting this cute little boy to have such a profoundly different way of being?
As much as I want to be selfless, there is definitely some part of me that is hurt emotionally by this. It is basically what I fear most I am doing to my parents, or to someone above me who is caring for me, what I feel he is doing to me. Here I am trying to give him some time outside because he loves to be outside and on the swing, and he lashes out at me like this? I am not evil! Why does he do this to me? Right there, is the problem. He is not "doing this" and it is not "to/at me." I am there and I am his closest confidante for the time, and he is trying to communicate. Bottom line.
The teethmarks are faint on my arm, surrounded by darker bruises. I note them solemnly as I remember last Friday, and wonder what to do from here on in.
I had a scary experience last week. I was outside with an autistic child I care for, let's call him Skyler. No, let's call him Jake. No, Alex. Alex is an enigma to us all. I know upwards of 2 handsful of people who care dearly about him, but none of us know just why he does what he does. And it drives us batty. He does not take interest in the things that most of us take interest in, and if he does, it is for an inimitable amount of time and for a reason so foreign to us. Can we even assert that he "likes" stuff? If he does something a lot, like tap long thin things/ random manipulatives on any surface he encounters, is that him doing something he likes, or is it him doing what he was predisposed to do, or cannot get out of the mind of the beast that causes him to do that so incessantly?
The scary thing that happened. I was out with him, and he got pissed. Or so I think. Maybe this is just his emotions running their course. Whatever it was, it was a bad meltdown. And As he grows and becomes bigger and stronger, it is harder for me to sedate him. Especially in public. I am learning to do what a colleague tells me to do in public "have no shame" and do with him what I need. I hate hate hate to lay a hand on him, but he often does stuff that is dangerous to himself or to others, and I need to stop that, and if verbally terminating the detrimental action does not work, I need to use my body. He darted towards the street. I grabbed him back and said to him sternly "you know you cannot run into the street" because he does know. Or at least, he usually knows. He began to jump around and flail his arms, trying to smack my chest and face, scratch my neck, and when I held his arms down by his sides, he tried to bite my arms, and succeeded a few times. I held him by his elbows and faced him forward and marched him down to 3rd ave, the goal now was to get him home where there were more readily available resources that have been proven to help him chill out, like ice, a bath, and peanut butter (a boy after my own heart.) And hopefully, his dad. No such luck, I found out. After he managed to break my hold of his elbows it began to get unclear for me. We essentially spent an unknown amount of time causing a huge scene on the street in front of a blockbuster and next to a fruit stand. He pulled my hair, bit me, hit me, and was clearly very mad. Certain passersby of course stopped to stare, tried to intervene, asked me what was happening, threatened to call the police, all the while I tried to explain to them "he's autistic, he doesn't act the way we would expect and he doesn't mean to be hurting me or understand what you are saying right now." (At least, that's what I think. Granted, I have no fuckin clue what it is all about, and that is the hardest part of this. The line of empathy that I would like to establish with Alex, as I do with any person I meet ever, can only grow so far until it is severed ruthlessly somewhere in the abyss that exists between my consciousness and Alex's. It is almost like I am trying to connect with someone who does not speak the same language as I do, but it runs deeper than that. Alex understands English full well, but he does not speak. He does, however, make lots of sounds. And as I spend more time with him, and by now, I understand much of those sounds. The nuances are there albeit subtle. It is the forehead position and the slight pout that accompany more whimpering and whining sounds that alert me that something is brewing just under Alex's super sensitive/ not sensitive enough thick/thin/? skin.
The terrible climax of this event for me was cerrainly after a passerby had taken my phone to call Alex's dad and recieved his answering machine, and as an elderly woman came up close, too close, she waggled her finger at Alex as she chastised him. I explained through my chapped lips, mussed hair, and welled up tears that she should continue on her way, and he is autistic and does not have control over what he is doing the way we think he should. She continued to scold him, and he turned his energies from me to her. So he managed to slap her tan old-lady coat a few times pretty hard before I grabbed his arms again. In response to getting slapped by Alex, she did the unthinkable: She hit him back. Not just a light tap, but a strong hit. And then again. And then she punched him. By this time I was crying hysterically, a crowd had formed, and I was in pain, scared, stressed, and felt responsible for stuff that was over my head. I have invested a lot in Alex, from when I met him 9 months ago at the 92nd st Y until now. I have had wonderful moments with him, frustrating moments, funny moments, and most poignant of all, humbling moments. Being caught in this scuffle was too much for my frail emotional fortitude, or lack thereof. I wailed "please stop!" to the old woman, and finally she headed off, muttering, as passersby called after him "you can't touch him- he's autistic!."
Next came a godsend. A black woman who was certainly over age 45 offered her help: she took Alex's right arm and I took his left. To my absolute surprise, Alex did not act too aggressive toward her, but rather he complied as she stroked his pasty hand and repeated in an overly-soothing tone "thank you so much little boy, for allowing me to hold your hand...and what a handsome young man you are!" (he totally is). As soon as we made it down the block we were back at his fancy UES high rise, where the security guards know him. They saw me in my state and him, still bouncing around with that spark of fire in his eyes, and were very helpful and calming. Alex bounded down a back hallway after some official looking men in suits holding clipboards, and I ran after him, sputtering and hardened, both on the outside and on the inside. I say the word "hardened" because that is how I felt inside my chest. In the face of adversity and stress such as a freaking out autistic child who I am responsible for who will not see me and realize that I am serious and somtimes just not listen and bo absolutely crazy, I freeze up inside. I harden. But my exterior knows it cannot shut down, so I continue to go through the motions, manually preparing my senses of pain for the impending hit they may have to take soon, and to face it with fierce objectivity and nonchalance.
Why did this bother me so much? Well, For one, it was the fact that we were in public and it's not that I care what strangers think of me per se (anyone who sees how I dress on a regular basis knows it's true) but I have not found that comfort zone in the world with being responsible for a child who is obviously very peculiar, and while he looks like a gorgeous young boy, is clearly a violent, bipolar, and well, disturbed child to some degree. In so many ways he is a loving normal boy who just wants to play and connect, but he is trapped in this enigmatic body/psyche of seeking and or needing these intense stimulatory sensations at specific times, in specific degrees, and to different parts of his being. And when these cannot be met, he cannot regulate himself and has trouble keeping control of his body. Or maybe it's not that there is a "him" and a "his body" - maybe he just IS his body and that is the problem.
Another reason it bothered me: I hate to see him upset, and hate even more that he cannot explain to me what is the matter and I cannot help him. It is ultimately a huge guessing game, and I feel so fucking feeble and low offering him peanut butter, olives, and koubideh to sedate him as he freaks, when obviously something greater is going on.
It hurts when he hits me. It really does. He slaps hard, and he bites hard. Not because he wants to hurt me, but because he wants so much to express something and does not possesss the means to express it in a way that will be cathartic and operative for him and will reach me and my understanding. At least, that's the going assumption.
In the end, I had to run down that hall after him even though the guard told me "don't worry" because nobody would, and what if he ended up somewhere he shouldn't be, or got caught somewhere with someone who tried to talk to him and eventually got him upset and frsutrated because they were not expecting this cute little boy to have such a profoundly different way of being?
As much as I want to be selfless, there is definitely some part of me that is hurt emotionally by this. It is basically what I fear most I am doing to my parents, or to someone above me who is caring for me, what I feel he is doing to me. Here I am trying to give him some time outside because he loves to be outside and on the swing, and he lashes out at me like this? I am not evil! Why does he do this to me? Right there, is the problem. He is not "doing this" and it is not "to/at me." I am there and I am his closest confidante for the time, and he is trying to communicate. Bottom line.
The teethmarks are faint on my arm, surrounded by darker bruises. I note them solemnly as I remember last Friday, and wonder what to do from here on in.
Thursday 5 March 2009
Ovum
I should pay mind to my expectations and assumptions about the future, and not put all my eggs in the same basket.
I won't shave my legs
at least not yet. And now I don't even have this pressure hanging over me like an obese cloud named O. Beece McLeod dribbling into my aura-space.
In layman's terms, that means that I quit a certain sports team I am on with a bunch of pretty mainstream girls, and I now feel less pressure to shave my legs for when it's warmer outside or I wear shorts, an arbitrary grooming habit in which most mainstream girls partake.
Why don't I want to shave my legs? Everyone does it, for a girl to have black leg hair is unbecoming and unconventional in an unattractive way, and will probably lend itself to being the impetus of one or more of the following terms being purposefully conjured in ogler's heads: hippy, dirty, gross, boyish, unclean, animal, manly. I can't think of any more right now, but if you are reading this and have any primer words in your head that might describe my unshaven leggeth, do share.
This may all be a subsubconscious ploy for me to other myself from those who I wish to be a part of so dearly and desperately. But assuming it is not, I can commence with my tirade against girls who play sports who are not myself and few select others, and barrel ahead with brazen anonymity.
The above paragraph housed somewhat substantive points in my mind but now that I reread it it might as well say "Bullshit smothered in grandiloquence." So "sue" me.
In layman's terms, that means that I quit a certain sports team I am on with a bunch of pretty mainstream girls, and I now feel less pressure to shave my legs for when it's warmer outside or I wear shorts, an arbitrary grooming habit in which most mainstream girls partake.
Why don't I want to shave my legs? Everyone does it, for a girl to have black leg hair is unbecoming and unconventional in an unattractive way, and will probably lend itself to being the impetus of one or more of the following terms being purposefully conjured in ogler's heads: hippy, dirty, gross, boyish, unclean, animal, manly. I can't think of any more right now, but if you are reading this and have any primer words in your head that might describe my unshaven leggeth, do share.
This may all be a subsubconscious ploy for me to other myself from those who I wish to be a part of so dearly and desperately. But assuming it is not, I can commence with my tirade against girls who play sports who are not myself and few select others, and barrel ahead with brazen anonymity.
The above paragraph housed somewhat substantive points in my mind but now that I reread it it might as well say "Bullshit smothered in grandiloquence." So "sue" me.
Tuesday 3 March 2009
Start Wearing Purple
So I have had this Avril Lavigne song in my head for several hours now: the one that begins like this"
"Let's talk this over/ its not like we're dead, was it something I did/ was it something you said"
I don'tknow why, but i didnt like it. so In my limited mental arsenal, I ploughed hastily through the reachable songs while in my respite-shower (read: shower) and came up with a sorta viable replacement: Gogol Bordello's "Start Wearing purple." Fine. Onto the meaty stuff:
Here's what I want to touch on:
My Sister Reads My Blog!
yes, folks. she does. my one and only sibling who I have been trying to remain neutral and objective towards has been privy to certain vague references of secrets that only I and my heart know! But I must forge ahead, for it is a strong signal of goodness that no reprimands or patronizing comments have been put forth.
Showew blogging: I wish I had a waterproof computer. I would love to blog in the shower. Instead of try to givfe my own shoulders a subpar massage rubbing soap with "cleansing beads" down my trapezius.
Ramen noodle soup: for 59 cents I bought dinner. Those are the burbs, I spose. Fatigue is overtaking me as my scintillating wit takes a one-way trip down memory lane...
"Let's talk this over/ its not like we're dead, was it something I did/ was it something you said"
I don'tknow why, but i didnt like it. so In my limited mental arsenal, I ploughed hastily through the reachable songs while in my respite-shower (read: shower) and came up with a sorta viable replacement: Gogol Bordello's "Start Wearing purple." Fine. Onto the meaty stuff:
Here's what I want to touch on:
My Sister Reads My Blog!
yes, folks. she does. my one and only sibling who I have been trying to remain neutral and objective towards has been privy to certain vague references of secrets that only I and my heart know! But I must forge ahead, for it is a strong signal of goodness that no reprimands or patronizing comments have been put forth.
Showew blogging: I wish I had a waterproof computer. I would love to blog in the shower. Instead of try to givfe my own shoulders a subpar massage rubbing soap with "cleansing beads" down my trapezius.
Ramen noodle soup: for 59 cents I bought dinner. Those are the burbs, I spose. Fatigue is overtaking me as my scintillating wit takes a one-way trip down memory lane...
Monday 2 March 2009
An apple in the face of adversity
Everything went wrong yesterday. And here's a tip: when shit goes down, don't let your only food intake be ice cream, chips, chocolate, candy, and peanut butter. Even though they taste the best, they are the worst.
so everything sucks, right? and then i had to walk for 25 minutes this morning into the biting chilly wind and fat wet snnowflakes that i began to not be able to distinguish from my own tears.
Flubsequently, I am deciding to opt out of class this morning, at least my first one. I have three. I might plotz. I'm wholly unprepared and been having asthmatic trouble breathing for almost a day now.
So yesterday after everything went wrong at Bobst, I came home and planned to dip into my newly purchased crispy promising apple from Trader's joe. Of course it was not where I left it. My damn suitemates strike again. And when confronted, they deny, deny, deny. It occurs to me that I am going to far when I find myself scouring their respective trash cans for a recently deposited apple core.
NYU Frisbee practice:
clearly I am the worst on the team, I suck so hard, and I essentially ruin the flow of the stack, plays, cuts, and every other structurally sound piece of the system that they promote. What else can I say? I thought I was on my way to being in good shape. I thought I was in good shape. If I can pay 7 hours of hockey straight, I can't be that lackadaisical.
Now I'm jittery from proventil. fast heartbeat, whelmed ambiance.
so everything sucks, right? and then i had to walk for 25 minutes this morning into the biting chilly wind and fat wet snnowflakes that i began to not be able to distinguish from my own tears.
Flubsequently, I am deciding to opt out of class this morning, at least my first one. I have three. I might plotz. I'm wholly unprepared and been having asthmatic trouble breathing for almost a day now.
So yesterday after everything went wrong at Bobst, I came home and planned to dip into my newly purchased crispy promising apple from Trader's joe. Of course it was not where I left it. My damn suitemates strike again. And when confronted, they deny, deny, deny. It occurs to me that I am going to far when I find myself scouring their respective trash cans for a recently deposited apple core.
NYU Frisbee practice:
clearly I am the worst on the team, I suck so hard, and I essentially ruin the flow of the stack, plays, cuts, and every other structurally sound piece of the system that they promote. What else can I say? I thought I was on my way to being in good shape. I thought I was in good shape. If I can pay 7 hours of hockey straight, I can't be that lackadaisical.
Now I'm jittery from proventil. fast heartbeat, whelmed ambiance.
Wednesday 25 February 2009
Things that are Bullshit
Hi.
Too often I am faced with bullshit. Lets unpack the bullshit.
but first: an excerpt from an IM I sent someone tonight after finding my laundry soaking wet and full of lint after I paid quality campus cash for it to be dried in the dorm dryer.
i am so going to cut thru nyus beurocratic process tomororw morning and get that dollar back on my campus cash card, and get an apology from some ass kissing administrator.
they might think that nobody will pursue this because of the mere pence involved, but I surely will. It is the principle, and if nothing else, I am a woman of principle.
So I lug with me, day by day, an antiquated suitcase chock full 'o shit, of the bull flavor.
1. Peanut butter and co. They have peanut butter, but since it's dubbed "gourmet," it runs $6 a jar.
2. The entire NYU Health and Wellness Center. I will unpack this more juicily upon request. Lets just say that on average, I get shot down there by self- important pseudo- MD's about 75% of the time I go. Either that, or I'm told to give whatever the problem/ ailment "a few days," after which the treatment is "a few more days"
As for the Mental Health aspect, express distress and you'll be granted a scrawled perscription to one of about 12 SSRI's that they circulate around the NYU kids, respectively. It's a toss- up which one you'll get. Have been known to favor Cymbalta, Prozac, Paxil, and Anthrax.
As for the ten free therapist sessions, the best advice I got from mine freshman year was that when I was feeling down, anxious, or sad, I should try to "see a movie, read a book, work on a jigsaw puzzle, or go to a museum."
Where is the duncecap when you really need it?
3. Vanilla ice cream. Effin gross.
4. makeup.
5. Asian people wearing blue or green colored contacts.
Why? It would be like me, a white person, getting a lip replacement so I had lips characteristic of a black person, wearing a frizzy wig, and ditto with nose and above re lip. Why be something you're not? Just take a chill.
6. In a certain Gallatin 3- hour long class today a certain teacher- who- shall- not be named was absent, and left us with instructions to lead class ourselves, and what to do. There were 10 different instructions. The entire class showed up, and proceeded to follow all of her directions. What do we make of such a phenomenon? Do people actually care about something? Before they turn 45?
7. when teachers say "this idea that/of" and proceed to say a painfully obvious thing, like "self and other," or some other hackneyed axiom. Oh, I know. "it's cliche for a reason!"
8. Teachers that use words from our youngster parlance to curry favor with us.
9. Teachers who amplify and exaggerate minute technical difficulties in the classroom to get suck-up laughs from the class. We don't care that you forgot to plug in your computer, or the projecter is on the blink. Just do your thing, we'll do ours, and switch to Gallatin.
10. ASsignment pads. Use your hand, it will never get lost.
11. The last hour of latent-ness this poor post has endured due to my internet voyeurism with regards to the "Kimmel 17+1 unnamed gutsy student"
Too often I am faced with bullshit. Lets unpack the bullshit.
but first: an excerpt from an IM I sent someone tonight after finding my laundry soaking wet and full of lint after I paid quality campus cash for it to be dried in the dorm dryer.
i am so going to cut thru nyus beurocratic process tomororw morning and get that dollar back on my campus cash card, and get an apology from some ass kissing administrator.
they might think that nobody will pursue this because of the mere pence involved, but I surely will. It is the principle, and if nothing else, I am a woman of principle.
So I lug with me, day by day, an antiquated suitcase chock full 'o shit, of the bull flavor.
1. Peanut butter and co. They have peanut butter, but since it's dubbed "gourmet," it runs $6 a jar.
2. The entire NYU Health and Wellness Center. I will unpack this more juicily upon request. Lets just say that on average, I get shot down there by self- important pseudo- MD's about 75% of the time I go. Either that, or I'm told to give whatever the problem/ ailment "a few days," after which the treatment is "a few more days"
As for the Mental Health aspect, express distress and you'll be granted a scrawled perscription to one of about 12 SSRI's that they circulate around the NYU kids, respectively. It's a toss- up which one you'll get. Have been known to favor Cymbalta, Prozac, Paxil, and Anthrax.
As for the ten free therapist sessions, the best advice I got from mine freshman year was that when I was feeling down, anxious, or sad, I should try to "see a movie, read a book, work on a jigsaw puzzle, or go to a museum."
Where is the duncecap when you really need it?
3. Vanilla ice cream. Effin gross.
4. makeup.
5. Asian people wearing blue or green colored contacts.
Why? It would be like me, a white person, getting a lip replacement so I had lips characteristic of a black person, wearing a frizzy wig, and ditto with nose and above re lip. Why be something you're not? Just take a chill.
6. In a certain Gallatin 3- hour long class today a certain teacher- who- shall- not be named was absent, and left us with instructions to lead class ourselves, and what to do. There were 10 different instructions. The entire class showed up, and proceeded to follow all of her directions. What do we make of such a phenomenon? Do people actually care about something? Before they turn 45?
7. when teachers say "this idea that/of" and proceed to say a painfully obvious thing, like "self and other," or some other hackneyed axiom. Oh, I know. "it's cliche for a reason!"
8. Teachers that use words from our youngster parlance to curry favor with us.
9. Teachers who amplify and exaggerate minute technical difficulties in the classroom to get suck-up laughs from the class. We don't care that you forgot to plug in your computer, or the projecter is on the blink. Just do your thing, we'll do ours, and switch to Gallatin.
10. ASsignment pads. Use your hand, it will never get lost.
11. The last hour of latent-ness this poor post has endured due to my internet voyeurism with regards to the "Kimmel 17+1 unnamed gutsy student"
Tuesday 24 February 2009
middle of the night
so lately, been wond'rin, who will be there to take my place
when im gone
you'll need love
to light the shadows on your face
remember that song? I could google it and write down what it is, but i wont botha.
too bad this household is in shambles right now. more than it usually is, even. but usually i am cool with it. now, because there is 9 people dwelling here overnight instead of the usual 4, resources are scarce, and sleeping options are limited. A Mad search for a pillow that began at 5 am ends now, with this pillow *cocks head towards pillow.* But who can sleep now? And where to sleep? And how can I sleep in this chilly atmosphere of expats who save money by not using heat in the dead of winter?
What is an expat?
What will today bring. I have a couple of things lined up in my head for landmarks/benchmarks, as I try to do for every day in order to maintain my steadily dwindling grip on functional productivity and overall action with a forward trajectory. The things I have lined up are less than something that is not so mammoth<
BLOODY HELL< the punctuation and caps lock are all of the sudden majorly fucked up on this ole compaq number reminiscent of a simpler time with more crude tools< (comma) sheepskin wardrobes, (ITS BACK!) and the third thing that was a sign of the times that served as the heyday of this compaq[t] [not] compy need not be written here because the point has been rendered moot by the reappearance of the comma after the blessed word 'wardrobes.'
The daughters of the deceased woman and the brave harrowing souled grandpa are bustling about the kitchen, making coffee, doing the dishes, wiping up surfaces in preparation for "later" (what happens later? Will let all of you eager readers/ voyeurs into my daily life know.) These are the vision of strength for us all, having come from a modest American home, vaguely Jewish, vaguely patriotic, vaguely vagabonds in Northeast Philly. I expect them to break down, the 2 girls, today they play 2 roles hand in hand: daughters and mothers. Organizers of the proceedings, whatever they may be, and mourners of a woman who has been a rock for me for my first 20 years.
A rock? now I can't remember hardly anything. So much of my time spent with her, I feel like, was sort of me trying to appease my guilt for perhaps taking her for granted my whole life, for not milking her for all of the information, posterity, and lessons that I could have been. So I painted this happy- go- lucky picture of myself for her, a spunky girl with a fiery drive, specific interests, and significant talent in some areas of note, and some of disgrace.
I overhear these women debreifing in the kitchen. Debreifing? The emotions are thick like soup sans water. The perpetual humming of a modern household, be it the deceptive heating system, the cieling fan above me, or the pipes and washing machine below me (Yup! I'm perched atop a whirring washing machine! Kewl) Every vocalization is made with that underlying wimpering waver that might as well provide subtitles in 3 languages "I am about to cry, and doing my utmost to hold in my tears till a more socially acceptable time"
luckily for us all, that time is in T minus 2.5 hours. Or something.
My mother, desperate for an entity to blame, to place her grief upon regally, is suspicious of the nursing home. Did they give her dinner that last night? Did they forget about her, in her catatonic state in her hospital bed in room 429 (yes I made up the number, but that's what gives tear- jerking memoirs like this one their street cred) as she used a steadily diminishing capacity of her brain and her body shut off its systems that were not needed or even foremost, silently, without warning any of us explicitly of their plan to close up shop later that night? Did they not pause to thicken her apple juice enough so she would be able to swallow it without choking on the transient, gurgly liquid that would never be enough to coat her innards or contribute to the human body's 75% of water?
My dear aunt, my mother's sister just gave me a rundown of the proceedings. First funeral home, then quick car ride to gravesite. Solemn, respects, eulogies, local Chabad Rabbi as leader, as per the life change of my cousins family roughly a decade ago. All this interspersed with and accented by seemingly arbitrary Jewish customs of misogyny like the fact that despite our families lack of able- bodied males who will be present (my father will watch from an undisclosed panoptic location, the priestly gene pool coursing through his veins detectable only in the teltale surname grounds for a life on the outskirts of cemetaries, graveyards, funeral zones. Back to my run-on: we need 6 "pallbearers," they must be male. The 2 children and 4 of the 5 grandchildren are female. Out of the running. We women may very well sit idly by while my family and the Rabbi try their durndest to find some migrant workers, perhaps a deaf-mute dwarf, a gravedigger's Cretian apprentice, anyone with a penis 'n scrotum to help defy gravity as they steadily lift the wooden box which contains my grandma's body wrapped in a shroud. Her soft soft skin, once wrinkled by old age, she was past that point. Beyond the wrinkled skin stage is a sagging, windblown facade. Weathered and leathered were her arms and hands, they once witnessed the ivory keys of concert pianos up close and personal, pounding, tickling, and pressuring the polar colored yet integrated keys of the upstanding instrument slash furniture item. Her teeth: light green and brown, yellow and off- white, the subject of a minor tragedy she once told me about- "the dentist made a mistake" she said simply. I haven't seen her teeth as anything but puffy- cloud white since the day I learned my colors and was in her presence. Her body is one thing. But where is the rest? If there is some sort of communion with god in an afterlife, or limboland, does it feel to her like it has been forever, or for never, as time as we know it probably holds no meaning 'out there'? Does she even feel. I don't want to ask these questions because I formulate the questions within the limitations of our world of time, space, emotions, apologetics, rhetoric, and mixed metaphors, sour grapes, and paralysis, orgasm and overdose married in a union so precious that no proposition number 8 would consider approaching it with a 200- tefach pole. cubit pole.
All of a sudden religious practices are at the forefront. As if they were about to transmit all of the sacred truths that must be passed on to the newer generations, they flesh out the details of the Jewish mourning process. In the face of fear, loss, and as we are forced to make lingering eye contact with the morbidity of those who concieved us, vowed to never decieve us, which is what brings us here today, humbly before those who we live before, but blindly, naively, not until it's too late. In the face of the above, we cower and cling to ritual. I am sure someone like Rene Girard, Rene Descartes, Joyce Kilmer, or some other god forsaken famous stuffy man whose 'work' has been widespread for it's academic clout, no by coincidence sporting the blatant name of a female, has written on such human phenomena before. Fuck them. I see it right here, so they may have been born first, but I am me. Can anyone blame them? They consider the garments they wear, which should be torn first, the outer or inner shirt? Are these chairs too high off the ground for us to sit on for the next week, and how do we convince dad/grandpa that this is not an occasion that deems fasting an appropriate response?
This lurker of a thought wants to be typed up here: What if my grandpa can't take this unspeakable anguish and he submits to natural forces and causes, as a preemptive measure to avoid the upcoming weeks, months, maybe even years, that he will be forced to live in solitude while being surrounded by the other elderly who he is unable to shoot the shit with. He is just too wound up in his retired- aeronautical engineer world of reviewing the rules and regulations that allow the nursing home to run without a hitch: the way the residents choose their meals for the next day on small blue slips of paper. The morning, afternoon, and evening routine with medicine, hygiene, futile socialization attempts, and sleep patterns. The heating system, the new fangled technology of remote control television, a box that is both a clock and a player of the classical music compact discs my mother incessantly borrows from the library for him/them/just him now I guess...
So I guess I won't be getting to sleep before the funeral. I am kinda glad I wrote this though. Would be kinda sour if the compaquter croaks right now. We could stage a double funeral.
when im gone
you'll need love
to light the shadows on your face
remember that song? I could google it and write down what it is, but i wont botha.
too bad this household is in shambles right now. more than it usually is, even. but usually i am cool with it. now, because there is 9 people dwelling here overnight instead of the usual 4, resources are scarce, and sleeping options are limited. A Mad search for a pillow that began at 5 am ends now, with this pillow *cocks head towards pillow.* But who can sleep now? And where to sleep? And how can I sleep in this chilly atmosphere of expats who save money by not using heat in the dead of winter?
What is an expat?
What will today bring. I have a couple of things lined up in my head for landmarks/benchmarks, as I try to do for every day in order to maintain my steadily dwindling grip on functional productivity and overall action with a forward trajectory. The things I have lined up are less than something that is not so mammoth<
BLOODY HELL< the punctuation and caps lock are all of the sudden majorly fucked up on this ole compaq number reminiscent of a simpler time with more crude tools< (comma) sheepskin wardrobes, (ITS BACK!) and the third thing that was a sign of the times that served as the heyday of this compaq[t] [not] compy need not be written here because the point has been rendered moot by the reappearance of the comma after the blessed word 'wardrobes.'
The daughters of the deceased woman and the brave harrowing souled grandpa are bustling about the kitchen, making coffee, doing the dishes, wiping up surfaces in preparation for "later" (what happens later? Will let all of you eager readers/ voyeurs into my daily life know.) These are the vision of strength for us all, having come from a modest American home, vaguely Jewish, vaguely patriotic, vaguely vagabonds in Northeast Philly. I expect them to break down, the 2 girls, today they play 2 roles hand in hand: daughters and mothers. Organizers of the proceedings, whatever they may be, and mourners of a woman who has been a rock for me for my first 20 years.
A rock? now I can't remember hardly anything. So much of my time spent with her, I feel like, was sort of me trying to appease my guilt for perhaps taking her for granted my whole life, for not milking her for all of the information, posterity, and lessons that I could have been. So I painted this happy- go- lucky picture of myself for her, a spunky girl with a fiery drive, specific interests, and significant talent in some areas of note, and some of disgrace.
I overhear these women debreifing in the kitchen. Debreifing? The emotions are thick like soup sans water. The perpetual humming of a modern household, be it the deceptive heating system, the cieling fan above me, or the pipes and washing machine below me (Yup! I'm perched atop a whirring washing machine! Kewl) Every vocalization is made with that underlying wimpering waver that might as well provide subtitles in 3 languages "I am about to cry, and doing my utmost to hold in my tears till a more socially acceptable time"
luckily for us all, that time is in T minus 2.5 hours. Or something.
My mother, desperate for an entity to blame, to place her grief upon regally, is suspicious of the nursing home. Did they give her dinner that last night? Did they forget about her, in her catatonic state in her hospital bed in room 429 (yes I made up the number, but that's what gives tear- jerking memoirs like this one their street cred) as she used a steadily diminishing capacity of her brain and her body shut off its systems that were not needed or even foremost, silently, without warning any of us explicitly of their plan to close up shop later that night? Did they not pause to thicken her apple juice enough so she would be able to swallow it without choking on the transient, gurgly liquid that would never be enough to coat her innards or contribute to the human body's 75% of water?
My dear aunt, my mother's sister just gave me a rundown of the proceedings. First funeral home, then quick car ride to gravesite. Solemn, respects, eulogies, local Chabad Rabbi as leader, as per the life change of my cousins family roughly a decade ago. All this interspersed with and accented by seemingly arbitrary Jewish customs of misogyny like the fact that despite our families lack of able- bodied males who will be present (my father will watch from an undisclosed panoptic location, the priestly gene pool coursing through his veins detectable only in the teltale surname grounds for a life on the outskirts of cemetaries, graveyards, funeral zones. Back to my run-on: we need 6 "pallbearers," they must be male. The 2 children and 4 of the 5 grandchildren are female. Out of the running. We women may very well sit idly by while my family and the Rabbi try their durndest to find some migrant workers, perhaps a deaf-mute dwarf, a gravedigger's Cretian apprentice, anyone with a penis 'n scrotum to help defy gravity as they steadily lift the wooden box which contains my grandma's body wrapped in a shroud. Her soft soft skin, once wrinkled by old age, she was past that point. Beyond the wrinkled skin stage is a sagging, windblown facade. Weathered and leathered were her arms and hands, they once witnessed the ivory keys of concert pianos up close and personal, pounding, tickling, and pressuring the polar colored yet integrated keys of the upstanding instrument slash furniture item. Her teeth: light green and brown, yellow and off- white, the subject of a minor tragedy she once told me about- "the dentist made a mistake" she said simply. I haven't seen her teeth as anything but puffy- cloud white since the day I learned my colors and was in her presence. Her body is one thing. But where is the rest? If there is some sort of communion with god in an afterlife, or limboland, does it feel to her like it has been forever, or for never, as time as we know it probably holds no meaning 'out there'? Does she even feel. I don't want to ask these questions because I formulate the questions within the limitations of our world of time, space, emotions, apologetics, rhetoric, and mixed metaphors, sour grapes, and paralysis, orgasm and overdose married in a union so precious that no proposition number 8 would consider approaching it with a 200- tefach pole. cubit pole.
All of a sudden religious practices are at the forefront. As if they were about to transmit all of the sacred truths that must be passed on to the newer generations, they flesh out the details of the Jewish mourning process. In the face of fear, loss, and as we are forced to make lingering eye contact with the morbidity of those who concieved us, vowed to never decieve us, which is what brings us here today, humbly before those who we live before, but blindly, naively, not until it's too late. In the face of the above, we cower and cling to ritual. I am sure someone like Rene Girard, Rene Descartes, Joyce Kilmer, or some other god forsaken famous stuffy man whose 'work' has been widespread for it's academic clout, no by coincidence sporting the blatant name of a female, has written on such human phenomena before. Fuck them. I see it right here, so they may have been born first, but I am me. Can anyone blame them? They consider the garments they wear, which should be torn first, the outer or inner shirt? Are these chairs too high off the ground for us to sit on for the next week, and how do we convince dad/grandpa that this is not an occasion that deems fasting an appropriate response?
This lurker of a thought wants to be typed up here: What if my grandpa can't take this unspeakable anguish and he submits to natural forces and causes, as a preemptive measure to avoid the upcoming weeks, months, maybe even years, that he will be forced to live in solitude while being surrounded by the other elderly who he is unable to shoot the shit with. He is just too wound up in his retired- aeronautical engineer world of reviewing the rules and regulations that allow the nursing home to run without a hitch: the way the residents choose their meals for the next day on small blue slips of paper. The morning, afternoon, and evening routine with medicine, hygiene, futile socialization attempts, and sleep patterns. The heating system, the new fangled technology of remote control television, a box that is both a clock and a player of the classical music compact discs my mother incessantly borrows from the library for him/them/just him now I guess...
So I guess I won't be getting to sleep before the funeral. I am kinda glad I wrote this though. Would be kinda sour if the compaquter croaks right now. We could stage a double funeral.
Monday 23 February 2009
Dry foods are more than just that 3 letter word, dry. I mean be it saltines (eat 6 within one minute- you will not be able to!) or krumbly challah that will turn crunchy if left exposed to the open air for over 5 minutes, or uncooked pasta, the way that my mouth responds in the similar way that it does to the suction-y dentist tool that is meant to suck our all your saliva. No, even more than that. Because the small pieces that
You know what? How can I finish writing of the sensations felt in my mouth on my grated tongue when I bear direct witness to my uncle plotting different ways to enhance the mood of the shiva house through rude comical signs and items to serve as reminders of our own mortality. For example: My grandpa, being what i presume is completely normal for a later octogenarian, has a bit of trouble getting to the bathroom on time. So in preparation for whatever post- funeral festivities occur at this suburban Philly moderno- turned self- inflicted pigsty, (read: house) a sign was pasted on the powder room door, the only place on the ground level floor to let out urine in a socially respectable manner. The sign reads "Please use upstairs toilet if able- bodied enough to walk up the stairs."
This anarchist with side flavors of Breslov Hasidut, militant weapons, outright racism against all non- whites and non- Jews. My uncle, once a pot- smoking deadhead who embodied the unlikely blend of two stereotypes: the aforementioned, and the Arab and Muslim hating, gun and hunting loving militant with a severe case of both pre and post traumatic stress disorder constantly brewing under his taut skin stretched over decades of hard fat buildup.
A direct quote:"Oh here we go- for the treatment of chronic idiopathic constipation- Go Upstairs." He hastily flips the pages of JAMA magazines (Journal of American medical Assoc), and other such obscure pamphlets of medical literaure searching for relevant or not_ so relevant ads that might relate vaguely to my ailing grandpa. To accomplish what? Stir up an already simmering kettle of distraught, anxious women with rapidly graying hair, secretly angsty teens, and the absence of traditional familial stability?
You know what? How can I finish writing of the sensations felt in my mouth on my grated tongue when I bear direct witness to my uncle plotting different ways to enhance the mood of the shiva house through rude comical signs and items to serve as reminders of our own mortality. For example: My grandpa, being what i presume is completely normal for a later octogenarian, has a bit of trouble getting to the bathroom on time. So in preparation for whatever post- funeral festivities occur at this suburban Philly moderno- turned self- inflicted pigsty, (read: house) a sign was pasted on the powder room door, the only place on the ground level floor to let out urine in a socially respectable manner. The sign reads "Please use upstairs toilet if able- bodied enough to walk up the stairs."
This anarchist with side flavors of Breslov Hasidut, militant weapons, outright racism against all non- whites and non- Jews. My uncle, once a pot- smoking deadhead who embodied the unlikely blend of two stereotypes: the aforementioned, and the Arab and Muslim hating, gun and hunting loving militant with a severe case of both pre and post traumatic stress disorder constantly brewing under his taut skin stretched over decades of hard fat buildup.
A direct quote:"Oh here we go- for the treatment of chronic idiopathic constipation- Go Upstairs." He hastily flips the pages of JAMA magazines (Journal of American medical Assoc), and other such obscure pamphlets of medical literaure searching for relevant or not_ so relevant ads that might relate vaguely to my ailing grandpa. To accomplish what? Stir up an already simmering kettle of distraught, anxious women with rapidly graying hair, secretly angsty teens, and the absence of traditional familial stability?
Sunday 22 February 2009
2 songs: killer queen and bohemian rhapsody.Why is Queen so good? The contrast, the assured sound that persists through the songs despite the erratic words and genre, the crispness coupled with the childlike carefreeness. The asymmetry. These contribute to the goodness, but are really just words.
I am currently polishing off a zesty bag of sour cream and onion ruffled potato chips. I dislike sour cream and onions but together in the form of whiteish/greenish powder stuck to the fried ridges in a chip, well the only word I have is "mmm". Are there other words like that, 3 of the same letter? There is zzz, kkk (more acronynm). So the chips: I put one or a few into my mouth onto the front part of my tongue, let out some preliminary chews,let them soak for about 2 seconds, and then suck vigorously inward so that I extract a juice that is flavored and spicy oil. And that's all for the chips, folks, the inside of the bag has been licked, once shiny silver with oil, now slicked down silver with a thin coating of my laden saliva on it, especially in the bottom corners where the crumbs tend to frequent.
Is doing an extracurricular hobby type activity for ten hours in one weekend excessive? Is this blog excessive? I have gotten pretty positive feedback thus far, be it through comments here (although those are sparse) facebook, in person, or telepathically (the most and least at the same time) And I thank y'all for your continued concerted efforts to bolster my back.
Whistles away now, because I did not sleep for 2 nights now. Fading fast, bleary and dream.
I am currently polishing off a zesty bag of sour cream and onion ruffled potato chips. I dislike sour cream and onions but together in the form of whiteish/greenish powder stuck to the fried ridges in a chip, well the only word I have is "mmm". Are there other words like that, 3 of the same letter? There is zzz, kkk (more acronynm). So the chips: I put one or a few into my mouth onto the front part of my tongue, let out some preliminary chews,let them soak for about 2 seconds, and then suck vigorously inward so that I extract a juice that is flavored and spicy oil. And that's all for the chips, folks, the inside of the bag has been licked, once shiny silver with oil, now slicked down silver with a thin coating of my laden saliva on it, especially in the bottom corners where the crumbs tend to frequent.
Is doing an extracurricular hobby type activity for ten hours in one weekend excessive? Is this blog excessive? I have gotten pretty positive feedback thus far, be it through comments here (although those are sparse) facebook, in person, or telepathically (the most and least at the same time) And I thank y'all for your continued concerted efforts to bolster my back.
Whistles away now, because I did not sleep for 2 nights now. Fading fast, bleary and dream.
Saturday 21 February 2009
Crumbs + Satisfaction
crumbs are cool because they get into the nooky nitty gritty spots of my life. For starters, my keyboard. For middlers, the floor mixed with dust and wayward hair under my desk. For finishers, my goshdarn fingernails!
The statistician, er, satisfaction that I get from cleaning the crumbs out of my keyboard is severalfold.
Fold 1: The q-tip never fails to emerge from betwixt my keys with at least some discoloration, from either dust, food, or general grime! (who, bee tee dub, was the most inspiring war general in all of the 20th century.)
Fold 2: I get to blow a short hard burst of air every so often to disrupt the 9.8 m/s squared force that gravity is exerting on them
Fold 3: After I've done as much as I can i look on the screen and see that I have sufficiently fucked up my computer, sent several people spam- like IMs, and google searched lengthy combinations of numbers, letters, and punctuation marks, all inadvertently!
I thoroughly got distracted. I'm listening to some queen songs over and ovary.
It's kinda nice. My body is shot to heck, but I cannot stay in this cabin(et) until sleepytime. I shall try and find some ruckus to be a part of. Best case scenario- it will involve good pizza, garlic knots (ok maybe not both, that'd be hella indulgent, especially after playing hockey for a record 7 hours.) puns, words, body communication, laughter, and substance. Oh, and hopefully it won't include money, politics, buzzwords, exploitation, sexploitation, drudgery, small-talk, and fallacies.
That's a lot more negatives than positives right there. Hmm.
Over Under Through- anywhere a mouse can go is where you'll find me.
The statistician, er, satisfaction that I get from cleaning the crumbs out of my keyboard is severalfold.
Fold 1: The q-tip never fails to emerge from betwixt my keys with at least some discoloration, from either dust, food, or general grime! (who, bee tee dub, was the most inspiring war general in all of the 20th century.)
Fold 2: I get to blow a short hard burst of air every so often to disrupt the 9.8 m/s squared force that gravity is exerting on them
Fold 3: After I've done as much as I can i look on the screen and see that I have sufficiently fucked up my computer, sent several people spam- like IMs, and google searched lengthy combinations of numbers, letters, and punctuation marks, all inadvertently!
I thoroughly got distracted. I'm listening to some queen songs over and ovary.
It's kinda nice. My body is shot to heck, but I cannot stay in this cabin(et) until sleepytime. I shall try and find some ruckus to be a part of. Best case scenario- it will involve good pizza, garlic knots (ok maybe not both, that'd be hella indulgent, especially after playing hockey for a record 7 hours.) puns, words, body communication, laughter, and substance. Oh, and hopefully it won't include money, politics, buzzwords, exploitation, sexploitation, drudgery, small-talk, and fallacies.
That's a lot more negatives than positives right there. Hmm.
Over Under Through- anywhere a mouse can go is where you'll find me.
Friday 20 February 2009
Questions & Rhymes: updated after the JUMP
Questions
1. TBNYU reports that negotiations have begun. Who exactly is doing the negotiating, and when is it/has it been taking place?
-"we'll fund TWELVE Gaza kids NYU educations. k?"
-NO can do. It must be 13.
2. What is mace? What is tear gas? What is pepper spray?
-one or more of these was used tonight. I know this because at about 1:20 AM I a guy near me began pouring out the contents of his SmartWater bottle into the eyes on the man next to him, as this man pulled down his eyelids. I asked "why are you pouring water on his face?" -"He got maced." was the curt reply. Maced man was groaning a bit, or perhaps that was just my heart.
3. Is charlie (aka: hero of our time) missing class for this?
4. Why, oh why would any of these students be willing to be arrested and expelled? Arrested, fine. But expelled? That means even more wasted money that goes into Sexton's butt pocket.
5. Why doesn't the world remember that we are all people? We're all the same. They shouldn't try their gosh darndest to amplify alleged differences in the name of boredom, or more ironically, democracy.
6. Where is Jsex in all of this? I daresay he be renamed John "low-profiler" Sexton
Rhymez
democracy + hypocrisy
exposure + disclosure
B-A-N-A-N-A-S + T-U-I-T-I-O-N
school + school
streets + streets
something-eese + "fuck the police"
justified + occupied
impossible + possible
Wittyish Sign:
"Sex Fuckston"
bye.
1. TBNYU reports that negotiations have begun. Who exactly is doing the negotiating, and when is it/has it been taking place?
-"we'll fund TWELVE Gaza kids NYU educations. k?"
-NO can do. It must be 13.
2. What is mace? What is tear gas? What is pepper spray?
-one or more of these was used tonight. I know this because at about 1:20 AM I a guy near me began pouring out the contents of his SmartWater bottle into the eyes on the man next to him, as this man pulled down his eyelids. I asked "why are you pouring water on his face?" -"He got maced." was the curt reply. Maced man was groaning a bit, or perhaps that was just my heart.
3. Is charlie (aka: hero of our time) missing class for this?
4. Why, oh why would any of these students be willing to be arrested and expelled? Arrested, fine. But expelled? That means even more wasted money that goes into Sexton's butt pocket.
5. Why doesn't the world remember that we are all people? We're all the same. They shouldn't try their gosh darndest to amplify alleged differences in the name of boredom, or more ironically, democracy.
6. Where is Jsex in all of this? I daresay he be renamed John "low-profiler" Sexton
Rhymez
democracy + hypocrisy
exposure + disclosure
B-A-N-A-N-A-S + T-U-I-T-I-O-N
school + school
streets + streets
something-eese + "fuck the police"
justified + occupied
impossible + possible
Wittyish Sign:
"Sex Fuckston"
bye.
Thursday 19 February 2009
TBNYU Kimmel Occupation is a Cospiracy
Certain people need to be applauded, first off.
1. Charlie Eisenhood. He has a strange last name, he plays ultimate frisbee, and he is doing every NYU student a huge service. I was there last night with him for a little bit, and his staunch stoicism and serenity in a time of turmoil is admirable.
**Alert!** Apparently more kiddies got in the room and a guards arm was broken? That's what WSN and NYULocal say... that kinda sucks. No 2 ways about it. No broken bones. SWEEEET!
Still, I cannot contain myself- this is excitement I have not yet encountered! The rush of adrenaline with the threat of risk is something to write home about. Not literally, though, as my mother has already warned me fiercely to "stay away from those hoodlums" and that people who feel strongly about the middle east "have a tendency to turn violent very quickly." (No kidding- insert sardonic reference to my right- wing background here-)
OK, other commendations:
2.Ned Resnikoff. A friend linked me to his blog, in which he writes clearly and succinctly what so many have been saying on nyulocal's comments all day.
3. Whoever made the comment about the Gaza-themed party. I want those 13 lucky Gazan kids to be bombarded with vegan food, purple torches, and super-skinny topless girls with bubble-wrap-manila-folders as signs. We'll see how in line the interests are.
Conspiracy Theory:
this whole thing is a ploy. John Sexton paid off TBNYU! to stage this stint, in order that the University recieve mad press, and most importantly, for each and every one of us. Have you ever felt such a sense of urgency about your school? I certainly haven't. Not even when GSP was laughed at in the All- University games freshman year. Not even when John Beckman won the Nobel prize for being quoted uhaving using words sans a smithereen of substance day in day out in the WSN.
This is our time, guys. This is the community we have all been yearning for. Take a side, or don't. Laugh at the 'whackjobs' as one acquaintance dubbed them, or consider them martyrs. Either way, there will be snark, (ala Damon Beres, whom I do not know.) blogs, and students who agree with you, and are more than willing to flesh out these ideas over the suicide-proof facades of Bobst.
Essentially, this is the catalyst for the most meaningful, heated, and passionate conversation and dialogue that has occured at NYU for a long time. Kudos to us for caring about the Kimmel Marketplace!
As far as the food they got for free:
Total bullshit. I want free dinner, vegan or not. Owen Moore= ultimate big brother.
1. Charlie Eisenhood. He has a strange last name, he plays ultimate frisbee, and he is doing every NYU student a huge service. I was there last night with him for a little bit, and his staunch stoicism and serenity in a time of turmoil is admirable.
**Alert!** Apparently more kiddies got in the room and a guards arm was broken? That's what WSN and NYULocal say... that kinda sucks. No 2 ways about it. No broken bones. SWEEEET!
Still, I cannot contain myself- this is excitement I have not yet encountered! The rush of adrenaline with the threat of risk is something to write home about. Not literally, though, as my mother has already warned me fiercely to "stay away from those hoodlums" and that people who feel strongly about the middle east "have a tendency to turn violent very quickly." (No kidding- insert sardonic reference to my right- wing background here-)
OK, other commendations:
2.Ned Resnikoff. A friend linked me to his blog, in which he writes clearly and succinctly what so many have been saying on nyulocal's comments all day.
3. Whoever made the comment about the Gaza-themed party. I want those 13 lucky Gazan kids to be bombarded with vegan food, purple torches, and super-skinny topless girls with bubble-wrap-manila-folders as signs. We'll see how in line the interests are.
Conspiracy Theory:
this whole thing is a ploy. John Sexton paid off TBNYU! to stage this stint, in order that the University recieve mad press, and most importantly, for each and every one of us. Have you ever felt such a sense of urgency about your school? I certainly haven't. Not even when GSP was laughed at in the All- University games freshman year. Not even when John Beckman won the Nobel prize for being quoted uhaving using words sans a smithereen of substance day in day out in the WSN.
This is our time, guys. This is the community we have all been yearning for. Take a side, or don't. Laugh at the 'whackjobs' as one acquaintance dubbed them, or consider them martyrs. Either way, there will be snark, (ala Damon Beres, whom I do not know.) blogs, and students who agree with you, and are more than willing to flesh out these ideas over the suicide-proof facades of Bobst.
Essentially, this is the catalyst for the most meaningful, heated, and passionate conversation and dialogue that has occured at NYU for a long time. Kudos to us for caring about the Kimmel Marketplace!
As far as the food they got for free:
Total bullshit. I want free dinner, vegan or not. Owen Moore= ultimate big brother.
Budget Disclosure as Buzz Word
I am curious to see what will go down as the potential for altercation and friction between students of TBNYU! and the administration/(may spill over onto security guards) increases.
I do not with to disclose my identity here, although it is not too difficult to figure out, but let us see how the 'Kimmel Occupation' unfolds.
Something I've noticed: people inflate everything. And shamelessly, too. Like, say I am in WSP and someone begins to remove their clothes, and then someone else follows suit (hehe). I will mostly likely be audibly privy to a cell phone call from a passerby like myself to one of their friends/ confidantes, in which they will assert something along the lines of "everyone in the park is stripping!"
Inflation comes in different forms. Not everything is worth saying, and if something is worth saying, but nothing else, then perhaps it should'nt be.
I took a nap before. I sort of meant to, sort of didn't. That has been happening pretty much since I began college. The sleeping during the day thing. Am I just doing it for additional stimulation? That is my biggest fear and also my biggest comfort (that it is pinpointable). About anything. Ever. I woke up and was confused for a sec about what day and time it was, you know, the whole bit. But something that crossed my mind before I drifted into slumber was this blog.
I realize that earlier tonight I wrote about the escapade finding the crackers in the garbage outside of Gristede's, and I could have slapped my forehead repeatedly. I did not want this blog to be a mere journal, where I write stuff that happens to me and stuff I feel somewhat strongly about. I don't know what I want it to be, but I want to to shine like a super-superstar and be different from all the others. How do I get to that point? And how can I put my feelings into words without sounding like every other college student in the blogospheah?
I do not with to disclose my identity here, although it is not too difficult to figure out, but let us see how the 'Kimmel Occupation' unfolds.
Something I've noticed: people inflate everything. And shamelessly, too. Like, say I am in WSP and someone begins to remove their clothes, and then someone else follows suit (hehe). I will mostly likely be audibly privy to a cell phone call from a passerby like myself to one of their friends/ confidantes, in which they will assert something along the lines of "everyone in the park is stripping!"
Inflation comes in different forms. Not everything is worth saying, and if something is worth saying, but nothing else, then perhaps it should'nt be.
I took a nap before. I sort of meant to, sort of didn't. That has been happening pretty much since I began college. The sleeping during the day thing. Am I just doing it for additional stimulation? That is my biggest fear and also my biggest comfort (that it is pinpointable). About anything. Ever. I woke up and was confused for a sec about what day and time it was, you know, the whole bit. But something that crossed my mind before I drifted into slumber was this blog.
I realize that earlier tonight I wrote about the escapade finding the crackers in the garbage outside of Gristede's, and I could have slapped my forehead repeatedly. I did not want this blog to be a mere journal, where I write stuff that happens to me and stuff I feel somewhat strongly about. I don't know what I want it to be, but I want to to shine like a super-superstar and be different from all the others. How do I get to that point? And how can I put my feelings into words without sounding like every other college student in the blogospheah?
Wednesday 18 February 2009
Thank You... + Melba Toast
...Dearest NYULocal blog for heeding my tip and posting a bit of my humble words on your widely trafficed website. I assure you that you are the best.
Yesterday, on my way from somewhere to somewhere, I passed the Gristede's on University place and 8th st. Yes- the one that always puts up a welcome back NYU students sign in their door/window at the start of each new semester.
Anyhow, thanks to freegan.info, and certain Gallatin comrades who promulgate minor-league dumpster diving here in the village, I knew that the pile of transparent garbage bags outside this particular supermarket is often one filled with fanciful loot. And this time, on a dejected walk home from NOT the town hall meeting, (See post below), I took a look-see. Right there on top was a bag filled with (and only with) sealed, fresh, clean, boxes of assorted crackers. Tomato basil bagel chips, garlic and plain melba toast, and Kashi TLC Cheddar Cheese Crackers. [there was also a lone box of chocolate/marshmallow/raspberry pastries, but they looked horrid and torrid.] I considered grabbing a couple of boxes, but then I realized I should just take the whole bag. I lugged it over my shoulder, and not half a block later, came across a (presumably) homeless man holding out a mangled and gritty paper cup. I dropped the bag of crackers in front of him and said "have at it." I didn't really say "have at it," I merely offered him some boxes of crackers. He obliged, and I went on my way with a lighter load to lift. At Union Square south-west, I laid out about 8 boxes neatly along the perimeter of the rim of the fence around the Ghandi statue, hoping someone who needed would find them, and took the rest into my room.
Would anyone like Melba toast or Kashi Cheese crackers?
I don't know why they were tossed, but there are no expiration dates, and I assure you I am as sane as ever after having eaten some. Just read my blog.
Yesterday, on my way from somewhere to somewhere, I passed the Gristede's on University place and 8th st. Yes- the one that always puts up a welcome back NYU students sign in their door/window at the start of each new semester.
Anyhow, thanks to freegan.info, and certain Gallatin comrades who promulgate minor-league dumpster diving here in the village, I knew that the pile of transparent garbage bags outside this particular supermarket is often one filled with fanciful loot. And this time, on a dejected walk home from NOT the town hall meeting, (See post below), I took a look-see. Right there on top was a bag filled with (and only with) sealed, fresh, clean, boxes of assorted crackers. Tomato basil bagel chips, garlic and plain melba toast, and Kashi TLC Cheddar Cheese Crackers. [there was also a lone box of chocolate/marshmallow/raspberry pastries, but they looked horrid and torrid.] I considered grabbing a couple of boxes, but then I realized I should just take the whole bag. I lugged it over my shoulder, and not half a block later, came across a (presumably) homeless man holding out a mangled and gritty paper cup. I dropped the bag of crackers in front of him and said "have at it." I didn't really say "have at it," I merely offered him some boxes of crackers. He obliged, and I went on my way with a lighter load to lift. At Union Square south-west, I laid out about 8 boxes neatly along the perimeter of the rim of the fence around the Ghandi statue, hoping someone who needed would find them, and took the rest into my room.
Would anyone like Melba toast or Kashi Cheese crackers?
I don't know why they were tossed, but there are no expiration dates, and I assure you I am as sane as ever after having eaten some. Just read my blog.
Tuesday 17 February 2009
Screw NYU
They really do treat the students like shit. It's not a rumor, not a scandal that the over-privileged kids spread so they can whine about hierarchy. It's true. And here is how I know:
I was eating lunch in Kimmel today, innocently reading the WSN, when I came across an ad for one of President John Sexton's "Town Hall" Meetings tonight at 9 pm in Kimmel 904. "Sweet." I thought, I can finally make it to one of these and see what the hell the SCRC/TBNYU kids are all badgering about. I have never heard him (John) answer questions candidly, and for the amount of money he makes us all spend to go here (I know I know, we don't have to enroll.) and lack of budget transparency (Which means, for the layperson, that there is no official statement made as to where our tuition money goes, and where money that is given by filthy rich fundraisers, including alumni, goes. So NYU could be spending our tuition money on the "Stress vegetables" they give out from the health center, and the tacky "tear it up" T-shirts with the obscene claw-print on the back, and the pomp and riffraff of A baseless event such as "100 Nights Before Commencement" before prioritizing that our money go towards assuring good teachers, or purchasing textbooks for us, or what have you. )The important stuff, essentially.
Now, where was I. Oh right, why I wanted to go to the town hall. Basically, I as a full- time matriculated student at NYU want to avail myself of the opportunities that are presented to me that ensure the student body as a whole a somewhat democratic and fair footing to remain between administration and students. Y'all get that, right?
If it got boring, I'd peace.
Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to even enter the room of the meeting. I smelled trouble from the moment I stepped off the elevator on the 9th floor. 3 security guards greeted me with the seemingly irrelevant question "are you a graduate student?" I replied that I was not, to which they shook their heads and said "then you cannot go any further." I said "let me just try," and they did not object. So I walked to room 904, whereupon 2 more security guards greeted me outside the door. I recognized one of them; a burly middle aged white- haired man whose long waxen face could very well be a Modigliani. They, too, asked if I was a graduate student. I said no. They said "the town hall is only for graduate students."
"That's not what was written in the ad in the WSN today" I said
"Actually, you're wrong. It specified that it was only for grad students." He then darted inside the room, where I could see our beloved President donned a hoodless NYU sweatshirt, an amicable smile, and a trim white beard. I also noticed that there was approximately 5-10 people in attendance at this point (9:05 pm) and nearly 40 empty seats (I'm not the best estimator, I disclaim).
The security guard returned with the newspaper ad, which reads [and I quote] "President's Town Hall Meeting For Students of NYU Graduate Schools. All Graduate Students Welcome!"
OK, so it specifies graduate school, which I must have skipped over in my initial perusal at lunch today. But nowhere does it state that undergraduate students are unwelcome. So I replied to the security guard "Next time it should specify somewhere that undergraduates are not welcome."
"It's not about 'unwelcome' miss, it's just not for you."
"So I'm not allowed to sit in the back and listen?"
He turned to Mrs. Kimmel, a woman who frequents Kimmel, and thereby I deduce has some position of authority in this pasty yellow building. She said "we will be sure to alert you of the next town hall meeting for undergrads, but you have to leave now."
Defeated, I retreated to the handicap stall of the bathroom, and promptly cried. I write it plainly, because this is how it happened. I am still not sure why this encounter reduced me to tears. Or, shall I say, induced me to tears. I was frustrated, sure, but enough to cry? Methinks not. Maybe it was one of those 'right-beneath-the-surface emotions that was just waiting anxiously to hook onto a plausible catalyst for the camel's-back-breaking straw and open the floodgates. Either way, I had to walk back past these guards, into the elevator, and down to the 4th floor new shiny Kimmel laptop computer lab, open till 11 pm every week night.
As far as being treated like shit, this all came right after I passed a resident of my dorm walking away from an RA hovering above about 10 full pizza pies in the lobby of my dorm. I asked kindly and with a smile, "can I have a slice?" "Are you in the event?" He replied with biting sarcasm, cocking his head toward our 'lounge', which was full of students listening to a man with a combover talking about real estate.
Shot down, again.
The most difficult test attending NYU is how to reconcile myself with this newfound sense of brazen entitlement I feel surge inside of me with every 'free food', or even not-so-free- food, or anything else, encounter I come across. The real world isn't vying for my approval, I guess.
75 reasons not to talk to boys
I oddly enough, don't feel all that shitty. Maybe I'm distracted, or distracting. Or in denial. But I don't think I'm in denial. This in regards to the fact that I've been inevitable preparing myself for my grandmama's death for the past week. This preparation occured in my head, except for today, a culmination of sorts, I jetted down there for a 'final visit', and it was what it was.
I certainly have been walked in on in the bathroom a few too many times lately for it to be a mere coincidence. In public places, lets see. On the NJ Transit train, and in a diner, yea. Those both happened on consecutive days. A part of me doesn't care. The part that doesn't care is also the part that doesn't feel the need to eat with utensils, pee anywhere but nature, be too civil, and pay for stuff. That's right, folks. I lack a basic moral gene. In the presence of a huge corporation, when there is some smallish trinket to be swiped, or had, such as a granola bar, a fruit, or who knows what, I feel awash with a sense of bold entitlement. My mind zeroes in on the fact there there is a thing to be had. And how the place this thing came from has millions more of the same thing, and it means more to me than it ever will to the cardboard box from whence they came.
What's the deal with chest hair? Does it matter? I think that anything that amplifies / exemplifies / embodies the difference between genders is a turn on, simply put.
I certainly have been walked in on in the bathroom a few too many times lately for it to be a mere coincidence. In public places, lets see. On the NJ Transit train, and in a diner, yea. Those both happened on consecutive days. A part of me doesn't care. The part that doesn't care is also the part that doesn't feel the need to eat with utensils, pee anywhere but nature, be too civil, and pay for stuff. That's right, folks. I lack a basic moral gene. In the presence of a huge corporation, when there is some smallish trinket to be swiped, or had, such as a granola bar, a fruit, or who knows what, I feel awash with a sense of bold entitlement. My mind zeroes in on the fact there there is a thing to be had. And how the place this thing came from has millions more of the same thing, and it means more to me than it ever will to the cardboard box from whence they came.
What's the deal with chest hair? Does it matter? I think that anything that amplifies / exemplifies / embodies the difference between genders is a turn on, simply put.
Monday 16 February 2009
Well, I didn't mean to "publish" that last post already, but I cannot figure out how to edit / continue my draft. So I guess I'll run the risk of being a blogaholic, but there are worse fissures.
On the way back from frisbee I stopped in a deli. That means bad news. I eyed the oreos, the vegan packaged dinners, the parfaits, the Reeses, and finally settled for the ole Yukon Gold Onion 'n Garlic Terra chips. Of which, by the way, I have never successfully purchased a bag of without eating it all in one sitting. I told myself I'd do it this time, but now that I'm at the computer with it, I know there's no chance.
Some things never change.
The bag of chips cost $4.50. Cash only. I sighed heavily and did the quick Cohen- considerations in my head that I have done and am fated to always do until the end of my life:
"A bag of chips versus 2.5 subway rides..."
"Decent good quality zesty chips"
"Is this emotional eating?"
"Is there something wrong with buying a bag of chips?"
"Recession prices abound, inflated costs cannot be avoided.
etc.
What does it all mean?
*Update: I finished the chips, and am now eating cabbage. "Yes, cabbage."
Onto important things.
Maybe for the summer I should make a pros 'n cons list about staying in the city or going someplace else.
NYC:
Pros
-familiar
-easy access to family, new and old
-established hockey playing opportunities
-ditto for frisbee
(sheep meadow, mccarren, wsp, a club team!?)
Cons
-same.
-been here done it.
-how we gonna pay the rent
-dirty sticky smelly rude
Somewhere else:
good because its new and all that goes along with that,
bad because its new and all that goes along with that,
sports opportunities? cool people? worthwhile job?
yea.
bee T Dub.
I hate that everything is bullshit, and only once you get a tiny foot in the door of stuff in the real world do you realize that words so often have nothing behind them. Some highlights:
-teacher exaggerating exasperation over technical difficulties experience in the middle of a class with one or more of the following: projector, slide, computer, wire, youtube clip (you know, for the 'with it' teachers that try to cater to our generation x/y/z/couch potato penchants) basically anything with electricity. And then of course all the students respond in kind with the obligatory burst of laughter, without fail, each and every time teacher rolls eyes, sighs, or cusses relating to the technical difficulty.
geez, guys.
On the way back from frisbee I stopped in a deli. That means bad news. I eyed the oreos, the vegan packaged dinners, the parfaits, the Reeses, and finally settled for the ole Yukon Gold Onion 'n Garlic Terra chips. Of which, by the way, I have never successfully purchased a bag of without eating it all in one sitting. I told myself I'd do it this time, but now that I'm at the computer with it, I know there's no chance.
Some things never change.
The bag of chips cost $4.50. Cash only. I sighed heavily and did the quick Cohen- considerations in my head that I have done and am fated to always do until the end of my life:
"A bag of chips versus 2.5 subway rides..."
"Decent good quality zesty chips"
"Is this emotional eating?"
"Is there something wrong with buying a bag of chips?"
"Recession prices abound, inflated costs cannot be avoided.
etc.
What does it all mean?
*Update: I finished the chips, and am now eating cabbage. "Yes, cabbage."
Onto important things.
Maybe for the summer I should make a pros 'n cons list about staying in the city or going someplace else.
NYC:
Pros
-familiar
-easy access to family, new and old
-established hockey playing opportunities
-ditto for frisbee
(sheep meadow, mccarren, wsp, a club team!?)
Cons
-same.
-been here done it.
-how we gonna pay the rent
-dirty sticky smelly rude
Somewhere else:
good because its new and all that goes along with that,
bad because its new and all that goes along with that,
sports opportunities? cool people? worthwhile job?
yea.
bee T Dub.
I hate that everything is bullshit, and only once you get a tiny foot in the door of stuff in the real world do you realize that words so often have nothing behind them. Some highlights:
-teacher exaggerating exasperation over technical difficulties experience in the middle of a class with one or more of the following: projector, slide, computer, wire, youtube clip (you know, for the 'with it' teachers that try to cater to our generation x/y/z/couch potato penchants) basically anything with electricity. And then of course all the students respond in kind with the obligatory burst of laughter, without fail, each and every time teacher rolls eyes, sighs, or cusses relating to the technical difficulty.
geez, guys.
Sunday 15 February 2009
To keep Me Going
I think that is why I do stuff. And everyone. And I can make that assertion about the whole world too. But frisbee practice is soon. NYU women's ultimate frisbee. It's a phenomenon all its own. Maybe I should make a list of phenomena. Sometime I will. Or maybe I just dub something a phenomenon because it distances it and makes me feel that my feelings of apprehension and unsureness towards it are more valid. Some stuff, I feel like I have mastered/ conquered. Cooper Frisbee I have mastered. It was something that used to cause me thoughts like "who are these people, what right do i have to play with them, am i a part of this group, am i good enough, etc" but now I don't have those thoughts anymore, in fact, I often have opposing thoughts. But NYU frisbee, im still somewhere along the continuum. Probably that's just how it will always be. I need to remember to consciously weight the pros and cons before I invest in it, or anything, though. That seems like a sensical way to make decisions.
Some people can't spell! Even full grown college kids or adults, dub them as you wish, cannot spell. I don't understand this, yet another phenomenon, of a differing scale. I mean it's forgiveable if you cannot spell "comeuppance" but not something like "facetious" or "reminisce." You know who you are. Actually, you don't. And neither do I. But I know that you're out there.
Speaking of MLA, take note of my punctuation and capitalization. That is novel.
You may wonder: Why is this blog called "Crystal Caves?" (read: crystal caveth) (don't).
Some people can't spell! Even full grown college kids or adults, dub them as you wish, cannot spell. I don't understand this, yet another phenomenon, of a differing scale. I mean it's forgiveable if you cannot spell "comeuppance" but not something like "facetious" or "reminisce." You know who you are. Actually, you don't. And neither do I. But I know that you're out there.
Speaking of MLA, take note of my punctuation and capitalization. That is novel.
You may wonder: Why is this blog called "Crystal Caves?" (read: crystal caveth) (don't).
Saturday 14 February 2009
ok so essentially nobody is reading this but me. if i even count as a reader. Am I reading the words in my head before i think them/write/type them/ say them/ execute them? What does reading even mean?
I played hockies all day today. Now I'm eating Lay's "Baked!" potato chips, and they are horrendous. cooking something in an alternative way is fine and respectable, but nobody, nobody wants to munch of flat skin colored pieces of dried parchment that resound in their ears as they try and chew the flaky mess.
Well that did it, now I'm not finishing the bag.
"It's in the bag." = we will win. I like that phrase.
I wish it was tomorrow, and then the next day. I wish I was more sure of my feelings about Grandma dying. She is going to die very soon. They know it, she knows it, and I know it. I mean, I am trying to know it, but it's tough. And it's tough to know whether I know it or not.
Hockey here in the city is nice. It's got a rough and worn edge to it, and after about 8 months of playing with these crowds I feel somewhat comfortable. Well, sometimes more than somewhat. Can't believe it's been 8 months though. What a good prosperous activity for me to involve myself in, and minimally pricey. On the smother hand. There are some less stable and some more stable people. Is it a community? A hockey community? or are we just people. I'm leaning towards the people side.
I played hockies all day today. Now I'm eating Lay's "Baked!" potato chips, and they are horrendous. cooking something in an alternative way is fine and respectable, but nobody, nobody wants to munch of flat skin colored pieces of dried parchment that resound in their ears as they try and chew the flaky mess.
Well that did it, now I'm not finishing the bag.
"It's in the bag." = we will win. I like that phrase.
I wish it was tomorrow, and then the next day. I wish I was more sure of my feelings about Grandma dying. She is going to die very soon. They know it, she knows it, and I know it. I mean, I am trying to know it, but it's tough. And it's tough to know whether I know it or not.
Hockey here in the city is nice. It's got a rough and worn edge to it, and after about 8 months of playing with these crowds I feel somewhat comfortable. Well, sometimes more than somewhat. Can't believe it's been 8 months though. What a good prosperous activity for me to involve myself in, and minimally pricey. On the smother hand. There are some less stable and some more stable people. Is it a community? A hockey community? or are we just people. I'm leaning towards the people side.
Friday 13 February 2009
More
The travails of a sore and scratchy throat. written by Allen Ginsburg.
It's where I'm at, and I wouldn't scoff at the suggestion that it was partially self inflicted, to pull an intangible wool over my eyes about the truth of the situation in Central Jersey. Or maybe I wish that. Or maybe I don't even care. No, I care. A good way to know if something matters to me is to gauge how often it appears in my dreams, and to what degree. And is it a lucid dream or a passing frenata?
There will be more.
It's where I'm at, and I wouldn't scoff at the suggestion that it was partially self inflicted, to pull an intangible wool over my eyes about the truth of the situation in Central Jersey. Or maybe I wish that. Or maybe I don't even care. No, I care. A good way to know if something matters to me is to gauge how often it appears in my dreams, and to what degree. And is it a lucid dream or a passing frenata?
There will be more.
Thursday 12 February 2009
Dude, creating a blog...
...is so fucking tender. I am overcome by the immeasurable joy that accompanies my current consumption of oreos with peanut butter. At long last, my buds are at it again, and I can taste phewd!
And Boy, is it good.
So I daresay it's a fine line between doing something so others see it and react, or think things, and doing something because you want to do it. (I know, - maybe you only want to do it so that the others will do said things...) But I don't particularly feel the need to defend my decision to 'cave' and create this blog. Perhaps it will moph into a Vlog. Or better yet- a sloth.
Still not sure which of my facets to brandish here. I'll let my nonexistent readers 'n lurkers do the choosing. That means, newbies, that you should comment with whichever of the following choices tickles your fancy:
1. Alternative Sports girl. Rough and tumble, thick skinned, always on the lookout for a pickup game of volleyball, hockey, or ultimate frisbee. Few other things interest her, save a couple of hapless quirks that scream "I'm distinct!"
2. Sensitive Pariah. Not totally sure what 'pariah' means, but this girl is soft spoken, somewhat shy, stands up for what is right, and sits down for what is wrong. She spends her time hanging out with the disabled population of the world. Has a penchant for autistic behaviors in the young and old, but especially the young.
3. Jew Cynic. Expletive that cash- guzzling Yeshiva education right down there where it belongs. For this I am what? Awash with enough guilt to last 3 priests-turned- molesters their lifetimes, I cringe easily and avoid crowds in the metro-area sans telltale signs of a Jewish presence in order to save myself from perishing at the hands of my self- inflicted ennui that pervades me without religious Jews to mock.
4. Feisty Perv*. After the sun goes down, or in the presence of males who dote upon her, she flirts ever- so- subtly- as to not alarm the pigeons squawking nearby. I can't say any more. Oh yes: has linked you to one or more of the following: frumteens, calmkallahs, tefillindate, kinkyshiduchin, you get the idea. I guess in that vein, she is inextricably linked (those 2 words have to be said in a pair, ya know) to #3.
All right, that's going to be it for now. I suppose to separate what makes me into the amalgam of cells I am is to compartmentalize for the sake of a lower purpose. I'm not sure if I want to be dabbling in that just yet. Nor am I sure what it means, if it means anything.
My fear now is that this has all been too much in the language of my own head and will not be understood by anyone. I guess it can't matter.
*Pretty risky to publicize here, but I may just leave it in for the shock value. Not everyone is privy to this persona.
And Boy, is it good.
So I daresay it's a fine line between doing something so others see it and react, or think things, and doing something because you want to do it. (I know, - maybe you only want to do it so that the others will do said things...) But I don't particularly feel the need to defend my decision to 'cave' and create this blog. Perhaps it will moph into a Vlog. Or better yet- a sloth.
Still not sure which of my facets to brandish here. I'll let my nonexistent readers 'n lurkers do the choosing. That means, newbies, that you should comment with whichever of the following choices tickles your fancy:
1. Alternative Sports girl. Rough and tumble, thick skinned, always on the lookout for a pickup game of volleyball, hockey, or ultimate frisbee. Few other things interest her, save a couple of hapless quirks that scream "I'm distinct!"
2. Sensitive Pariah. Not totally sure what 'pariah' means, but this girl is soft spoken, somewhat shy, stands up for what is right, and sits down for what is wrong. She spends her time hanging out with the disabled population of the world. Has a penchant for autistic behaviors in the young and old, but especially the young.
3. Jew Cynic. Expletive that cash- guzzling Yeshiva education right down there where it belongs. For this I am what? Awash with enough guilt to last 3 priests-turned- molesters their lifetimes, I cringe easily and avoid crowds in the metro-area sans telltale signs of a Jewish presence in order to save myself from perishing at the hands of my self- inflicted ennui that pervades me without religious Jews to mock.
4. Feisty Perv*. After the sun goes down, or in the presence of males who dote upon her, she flirts ever- so- subtly- as to not alarm the pigeons squawking nearby. I can't say any more. Oh yes: has linked you to one or more of the following: frumteens, calmkallahs, tefillindate, kinkyshiduchin, you get the idea. I guess in that vein, she is inextricably linked (those 2 words have to be said in a pair, ya know) to #3.
All right, that's going to be it for now. I suppose to separate what makes me into the amalgam of cells I am is to compartmentalize for the sake of a lower purpose. I'm not sure if I want to be dabbling in that just yet. Nor am I sure what it means, if it means anything.
My fear now is that this has all been too much in the language of my own head and will not be understood by anyone. I guess it can't matter.
*Pretty risky to publicize here, but I may just leave it in for the shock value. Not everyone is privy to this persona.
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