I'm going to be leaving LJ soon... BUT I'd like to highlight a new site I've started, and encourage you to read, to submit your questions, to sample recipes, etc.

You can find the launch invite here.

s.

I did this last year, and think it is a silly (but nevertheless gonna happen) way to catalogue my year. So here's to 2008, when most of my stated goals went unmet but I had many, many unforgettable (even if they've faded a bit now) experiences, some amazing, some terrible in the short run but great in the long, some of the simple good varierty that makes me happy to be alive. It was a good year, not a great one, but I'm happy with the way things went, and hopeful for the way they'll go.

Books read: 77
Articles/excerpts read: 51
Total pages: 16,324
Books started but as-yet unfinished: 12

Movies (total): 87
In the theater: 21
Favorites of the year (first watched, not necessarily from 2008): There Will Be Blood, Persepolis, Teeth, Eraserhead

Pages written: 105 + an odd website project's worth of stuff
Total word count: 34,715

As for goals, I'm not going to record them here. I know what they are, and I take them more seriously (& yet playfully... I must remember this) than I ever have, but I want to leave some room for them to change over the course of the year. (One of them is, however, to be writing more often, some of which might make it here, so K* can stop complaining [sweetly] about me never updating.)

The week that my body's been under siege by tiny awful things has been nearly totally unproductive, save today - I have read lots, written some, neatened a bit, etc - and it's still not even close to time for me to head to bed.  That week was terrible, but save the breathing issues, I now feel decent enough to throw myself back into most stuff.  It was a bad week to be sick (the 2nd of the semester) but I suppose that's better than later in the year.  It gave me lots of time to 1) watch crappy (and some not-so) movies 2) write out a master goal list 3) collect lots of new music.  I'm looking forward to behaving like a normal person and less like a shut-in... 

What better way to start the semester... than on no sleep and semi-delirious?

Composition class intro down - they're adorable, and I haven't had to read their writing yet so I still like them unconditionally.  Now waiting for hours and hours for a class I might be taking, but am going to pass the time with (hopefully) tasty healthy food and watching a movie with Courtney.  I might read the stuff I need to for tomorrow's class, too, but then again...

But what the fuck is language poetry?  I feel like I need a primer just to talk to some of my friends here.  I make a bad conversationalist when I just nod and sort of grimace.

Glasses, oh glasses, where are you?

I am deeply unthrilling at the moment.  Been remaking the kitchen so I can imagine cooking in it - a little actually does go a long way.  But now feeling ill-ish and tired but unable to sleep... School must be soon, right?  That's perhaps where my interest in all these homey machinations comes from, putting off less pleasant things like finishing a rogue paper, establishing web contact with my newbie students, psyching myself out of the terror of teaching that I have somehow developed in the past week (nice-ish comments from my students notwithstanding). 

I was looking through cookbooks today and spurred by an entry, had the odd experience of remembering my first taste of jicama.  I can't recall too many of these new gustatory conquests but this one is salient (perhaps because of the fact, or stranger still even, that I have rarely had this vegetable since).  But I was in Denver, visiting my mother, which means I must have been ten.  I had this very bright pair of blue-green pants that I loved to wear with a white satin shirt (what was *actually* a nightshirt but I fancied that it was fancy), and my mother and I were in some sort of nice-ish buffet restaurant.  I was a vegetarian at the time, so picked liberally off of the sizeable vegetable bar, and one of the items, a slender little crisp white stalk, was jicama.  The flavor was practically nothing, slightly sweet and watery, but I remember the crunch.  And the strange pride at trying something so unusual-to-me.  I don't remember much from that particular time-period, but this, utterly clearly.

In a fit of possible silliness that I really do aim to turn into usefulness and pride, I bought a gym membership today.  More, a 24 month gym membership.  Several locations, one close to school, another to home, classes galore, a swimming pool at one facility, etc, etc.  I know I need to be moving more, but I'll be damned if I actually use the "complimentary" four visits with a personal trainer. Nah.  But looking forward to non-educational experiences and changes and goals.

This is me trying the whole "write 30 minutes a day" thing, only out loud, so to speak.  So far, I find it distasteful, but I know that, once I'm reading more or engaging with ideas on a more regular basis (ie the semester), it will come more easily.  Or I will find more excuses.

Have been reading Crash by JG Ballard these past couple of days; if the weird sleep habits I've been cultivating and for the past couple of days, prisoner to, holds out, I will likely finish it tonight.  Prompted to read it by the Cronenberg paper from last semester - and C's a fucking genius, what he took from the book were amazing little nuggets while managing to leave behind most of the banal car instrument worship.  But I also think that Cronenberg's got a different concept of sex than Ballard - by focusing on instruments and steering wheels and these huge machines cum organic material, Ballard suggests that sex is just as ridiculous and commercial and trite.  Which maybe it is, can be.  Cronenberg sees a different sort of set of possibilities, though, and it's an excellent example of transformation of a text.  I dunno.  I feel like that paper was such a waste for what it could have been, for the little kernels of ideas floating around in my head.  This is where feedback from the professor might be nice - even a "hey, this is awful" would be better than my worries that it is and hopes that something transcended the clutter of my brain and came out ok.

So here we go, resolutions galore.

* Stop smoking. Haven't had one today, don't need them tomorrow.  It's time for this to finally happen.
* Write for 30 minutes every day, regardless of the topic.  This doesn't have to be publishable, doesn't have to be for a paper, but must happen in some form (even list-making, crappy blog-posting, whatever).
* Learn to meditate, and do it, everyday.
* Yoga, all day, even if it is a pose at a time in between reading and writing.
* Cut out dairy, cut out sugar, cut out prepared foods, cut out all meat but fish.
* Write cards to my grandmother and Aunt Mary, at least one a month. Extending from this, make the thoughtful ideas that I have realities - the thought really doesn't count, but my actions do.

And goals:
* By the end of 2008, have no debt (beyond student loans, of course).
* Start a savings account, a 401K, etc. Really start managing money.
* Get to desired weight.  More important, stop fucking worrying about this altogether (I think I know what this will take...)

Today itself is seeming pretty un-shiny, but I am sure that I will get excited about the prospect of the New soon.  Regardless, it seems appropriate to look a bit at the year that has passed, and being that I have a tendency towards compiling data, I have been keeping tabs...  So, a year (mostly) in numbers.

Distance moved: 1,243 miles
Approximate cost of move: $4,500 (to be honest, I did have this calculated at one point, but the number was so distressing that I got rid of the evidence)
Days spent in hotel/motel/not-home during move: approximately 22

Books read: 56
Articles/excerpt read: 43
Total pages: 15,361
Books started by as-yet unfinished: 7

Movies (total): 72
In the theater: 25
Favorites of the year (first watched, not necessarily from 2007): Cache, Eastern Promises, Juno, Lust/Caution, Me and You and Everyone We Know

Pages written: 101.5 (this is just for this Fall semester, didn't count Bschool stuff)
Total word count: 31,683

Different colors of hair: 7

I am excited for this new year, the new semester, all of it.  I know that I have resolutions as well (however silly the process may be) but I think those will come in a different post.  The problem with numbers is that at the end of it, it seems too stark.  In the moments of this year, I felt as though I was becoming more accomplished or something silly like that, but the cold facts of it look paltry in comparison to the work my head felt that it was performing. 

Tired. Cranky (a bit). Already had a long day. And now... 23 papers to grade.  Ah, but weekend, weekend, filled with Lukacs and Deleuze and hopefully some Ballard, Kafka & Saunders too... This is not much of an update, but it does comprise exactly what I'm occupied with.  More later.

I just finished watching "Me and You and Everyone We Know", which I should have seen ages ago. What I want to get down now doesn't regard my reflections on the movie as a whole (though I adored it), but rather Christine (Miranda July)'s awkwardness - she's so unselfconsciously strange. I always feel awkward, but I am constantly self-conscious about it, and often try not to be so (which is hilarious and provides consistently poor results)... so I end up evaluating and assessing and obsessing over the smallest details of my interactions, without fully giving in to them, to any single one moment. I think I would feel histrionic or ridiculous or tedious. But I found Christine's character a little unfathomable at times, but delightful. I want to embrace this in me, too.

Otherwise... things are still up in the air. This whole moving experience has been just shy of miserable, but I think I will be in my home soon, and... well, I'm looking forward to pouring my life into books. And awkwardness.

Moving stinks.

But my new old car doesn't. Well, much. Smells a lil like old leather, but that's acceptable. Once I get moved to NY and 'round to it, I'm totally going to be a dork and post pictures of Eska, the German wunderwagon.

My living room is slowly filling with boxes. Dust is accumulating in the air, and consequently, my lungs. It is 100 degrees outside. The van arrives tomorrow. The house still hasn't been finalized.

I am trying to avoid being nervous, which makes me want to hibernate. So apparently I play on here instead.

Were I to suddenly come into a substantial (but it needn't even be ridiculous) amount of money, I think I would become a foster parent. The job is ridiculously hard and few people do it well, but I think that I could maybe be an exception. There have been two, perhaps three kids, this summer in horrible situations but who are nevertheless so promising, so interesting (and often aggravating at times too), and who largely need the right situation to come along - they are particularly heartbreaking, since I'm too well-versed in the odds... I believe I am aware of just how hard it would be, but I wish I were in the position to do this - but I do indeed think that enough money to make full-time work unnecessary is incredibly important here, to have the time and energy to consistently provide what these kids would need.

I don't know that I'll ever want to be a parent of my own genetic spawn, but either this or starting some kind of new system for kids such as these... well, I'm adding that to my list.

One of these aforementioned children, a girl Sa- was moved to 29W today, our sister unit intended for the same-aged but more problematic children than those that 49S (my unit) houses. She is impulsive and hyperactive, attention-seeking, well-trained in certain forms of manipulation, and she's also bright, funny and sweet. This is not true of all my kids. She is one who the system seems to particularly fail and instead of being rehabilitated so she can be raised, she's being farmed out, likely to be crushed by the labels she'll encounter; that process is already in its nascence for her, but she's young and even in the month that I've had her, I swear I'm not crazy, I've seen changes. Maybe this is merely erroneous and symptomatic of why I would likely not be good at this job long-term, perhaps I'm just sad because I've seen two of my favorites leave this week (Sa- and St-, a boy who is difficult and enjoyable for entirely different reasons), and too, I have a deep-rooted, philosophically-bound objection to systems in general (especially those of the health and psychiatric variety), but... But...

I have this job. It's a horrible, exciting, daunting, terrifying, near-thankless, anxious-making, bewildering, lovely job. Every day, I come home and I want to write about it - it is only a summer job, and I know that there are precious few days left that I will have left to digest it the way it's only possible when one is experiencing a headfuck. But every day, I am tired, that achy-boned, numb-headed, wordless kind of exhausted that makes the prospect of writing seem ridiculously weighty. At the moment I am ill, which helps contribute, and my time is always divided, too - which is not a bad thing and actually provides a lot of time to vent verbally but I'm left with little energy to do so in a more structured, permanent way.

These are excuses, of course. At some point, I will try to get down all my thoughts and troubles about this whole system, maybe here but probably not. Tomorrow, one of my favorites - which of course I have, in a ward full of crazy children some of them will still charm, even though this one in particular seems to have no idea that he's done so - leaves. This is a good thing, yes? But it makes me, both selfishly and not, sad - for this poor eight-year old, diagnosed as psychotic and on medication that he credits with "killing" his imaginary friend (a boy who lived in the attic and told him good things about himself), a boy who shows so much pride in doing multiplication exercises that most kids would hate but can barely find the words when asked about his day, is going home to a family that barely talks and has three other children, one of whom is a newborn girl. This boy is... well see, here the words go, flying out of my head and failing me again.

Anyhow. Three more weeks of this job. It is wonderful. It is awful.

This world is tenuous, always crumbling, falling apart with little renewal, few opportunities for improvement or change...

I think I'm nearly always aware of this, but it's generally due to reflections on the macro scale, watching our government fumble and dissemble its way through its abysmal 300-someodd weeks while refusing to address the truly audacious human rights violations & injustices that continue to go on... this is old news to me, and in my most labile moods, I find myself alternately desirous of comitting myself wholeheartedly to my studies (largely in an effort to be "useful" even though I know it really isn't) and to thinking the whole thing is pointless regardless, that none of us will be here long enough for it to matter what I choose to do with my time & energy. That is to say, I'm a bit of a catastrophizer in my worst moments.

But this week, and for the next few, I have the privilege, responsibility and sometimes bewilderment of being charged with dealing intimately with microcosms of this chaos, fifteen tiny individuals, 6 to 12 year old samples of entropy.

And I can't be a catastrophizer for them, even though they, more than most of us, have less to look forward to, are less likely to extricate themselves from the system (or set of systems, it all depends on your sociopolical philosophies, but whatever, for now), have that proverbial deck and so much more stacked against them.

All that was a long way to say... I've largely been spending my time trying to lesson plan, trying to find interesting music and stories and assignments, and then spending every 8 to 11 am doing a truly poor job of synthesizing all of this. But the kids are, despite everything they're told that they are, even given their sometimes-horrifying histories, wonderful - occasionally infuriating, short attention-spanned, drugged, moody but regardless, wonderful, and it makes me sad that I'm one of the few people who seems to be able to see this, much less try to show it.

This is the short version. More to come (I hope).

Pictures, replete with pseudo-amusing captions.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007
- Plane ride to Denver, then SF. Somewhere along the way, my fear of flying evaporated.
- BART to Powell Street station
- Checked into Villa Florence
- Late dinner at Foley's Irish Pub (across from the hotel), with excellent food

Thursday, May 17, 2007
- Burrito in the Mission
- City Art, 826 Valencia, & the weird dead animal shop.
- Zuni Cafe
* Famous older gentleman, identity TBD
* Raging Stallion Man of the Year, Jake Deckard (identity determined by a DVD cover in the Castro)
- Blue Bottle coffee
- Bench-sitting at the park with the makeshift putt-putt course, geodesic jungle gym and cute puppies
* Potentially-crazy burrito woman
- Caffe Trieste
- Felice Newman
* Oakland is actually pretty (in places)
- Bad Thai but a tranny waitress
- The Lexington...
- Cabbies in SF are quite erudite (discussion of economics ensued)
- Drinks @ The Cafe on Castro/Market
* Drunken blond man and his unfinished lesson about "yum-yums"
- Mecca at closing
- Crazy female cab driver at 2 am
* "The tyranny of beauty is not gonna get me!"

Friday, May 18, 2007
- Coffee and pastry from downstairs
- Shopping on Powell, BART to Embarcadero
- Recchiuti!
- F Train to the Wharf
- Walking up Columbus
* Kristin has an excellent eye for exquisite chocolate, and the charming Frenchman was more than happy to indulge two "chocoholics".
- City Lights bookstore
* Good conversation with the odd visual arts man
- Lusty Lady, my first peep-show experience
* A used booth, too small with sticky floors (and window)
- Wrong bus on Sutter
- The best sushi in San Francisco
- Waiting for the show @ Starbucks on Fillmore
- Fillmore show
* "This is my love poem to California. It's called "We're all stuck out in the desert and we're gonna die."
* Ben Gibbard and nearly every song I would've liked to hear.
- $45 cab ride to Berkeley/Albany with quite possibly one of the scariest-but-still-charming cab drivers I've ever encountered

Saturday, May 19, 2007
- Conversation with couchsurfer-host Jessica & her friend Hannah after waking up late
- Headed into El Cerrito subway
- Coffee & sandwich at Tully's
- Walk up (North) Shattuck
- Shoe shopping
- Smoking outside the (sadly, closed for the day) letterpress shop
- Black Oak bookstore
- Reading our new purchases in the median on Shattuck
- The best food in the world @ Chez Panisse
- Watched "The Lives of Others" at an older theater, somewhere on Shattuck towards the university
- Coffee at Downtown with Jessica & her family
- Car ride back to couchsurfing spot, convinced to embark on an unplanned roadtrip

Sunday, May 20, 2007
- Ridiculously long trip to the rental car station
- Drive to the Ferry Building
* Lunch @ Lulu Petite
* Bought Recchiuti out of Fleur De Sel caramels (literally) to the chagrin of the next woman in line, who'd also made an especial trip to the shop for the very same confections
- Drive to Haight to get music for the drive
* "I'm so pissed off at her. Why does she think she's so fucking cool? I am so much cooler than she is! I'm going to fucking grad school!"
* The best orange juice ever
- Drive down Highway One, ostensibly to see Big Sur
* Listening to the Decemberists, Tori Amos, Bjork & Arcade Fire
* Too late to actually see Big Sur, but certainly got to experience the terrifying twists & turns
* Creepy lighthouse
- Ate at Nepenthe, which luckily wasn't make-believe and had excellent food (and stayed open for us)
- Drive back late, ended up at the Vintage Court Hotel with time for a couple of hours of sleep

Monday, May 21, 2007
- Check out, drive around in circles trying to get back to the hotel (one-ways and scary hills)
- Drive to North Beach
* City Lights to obtain canvas bags for the plane (to manage overflow from our purchases)
* Back to XOX for more truffles, but this time with a cranky Frenchman
* Lunch @ InNOut Burger
- Drive to the airport

I don't think it's really legit to call myself that, but I'm done done done (almost officially - my final grade report came in today, convocation is, however, on the 12th) with my MBA and... wish I were more excited. I dunno. It's a good thing, at the very least. I still don't know what I will be doing with myself this summer, other than lots of prep reading and worrying about moving... working on a book review of one of the excellent tomes that I've recently finished, want to be writing about a couple of the movies that I've seen recently, etc... all in good time? I'm going to hope so.

Right now, today, I've spent too much time knitting (for the payoff, anyhow) and too much of it with a headache that made my head foggy - but enjoyed perhaps the tastiest nachos I've ever had, courtesy of Iron Star; it's sort of sad that this was one of the highlights of my day. Tomorrow will be yoga, knitting and hanging out with Kristin. The rest of the week shall be spent similary, except for Friday (proctoring an exam) and hopefully sometime will provide a particularly-desired job interview. Next week Wednesday, heading to SF/Berkeley for a few days - Chez Panisse, Rechiutti, Zuni Cafe, copper-pot-man truffles, maybe a Michelle Tea talk, 826 Valencia, exquisite hot chocolate and excellent used bookstores will all be enjoyed; and perhaps this time I'll even take pictures.

I was waiting to write on here til I had something, you know, great to say. That hasn't happened, of course, but it's nice to write nevertheless.

I just completed my last (hopefully) group project/presentation ever - at the very least, it's the last for this degree. One test next week, a bit of GA work, and I'm... done. And I don't know what I'll be doing with myself for the summer, though some sort of employment would be nice. The JSOP job that I wanted wasn't offered to me, but the woman who I interviewed with said she liked me and that I should call her if I want something else on the unit. Which I would, but it's just an odd response; regardless, I will call her tomorrow and see what she really means. A summer full of reading doesn't sound bad, certainly, but the money I wouldn't be saving is a bit of a problem.

Regardless, I'm going to try to enjoy the end of this program before I get bogged down in another one...

I recently finished reading The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq, at the suggestion of a new possible-friend, and that coupled with a draining-but-potentially-positive relationship discussion and a rudimentary knowledge of chemistry have had me thinking... it could be the rain, too, static in my head, whatever.

Anyhow... The two main characters in Houellebecq's book are half-brothers who, despite a last-ditch shot at what might be happiness, are entrenched in their paths and, even though they both seem to realize these opportunties, fail to rise to their respective occasions. The book provides a sort of memoriam to humanity, whose demise is due exactly to what it describes as the constituting attributes of human nature - obsession, pattern, fallability, violence.

Yesterday saw an excruciating example of all of these, and every other day there are smaller but not lesser examples of this that don't make the news. I don't think that the future will hold a brighter humanity; I do think we do an excellent job of ruining this planet, disrespecting each other, embracing ignorance and devaluing the few exquisite moments we are haphazardly graced with. I think this is true on both global and on very local, personal levels.

I don't really know that I believe in change...

- but -

I do believe in possibility. I notice patterns, perhaps am even sometimes pathologically focused on looking for signs, signals, points of reference, without being particularly ritualistic. I am given to sporadic fits of profound nostalgia - in other words, I have my own orbits. The addition of energy (say, a new person who feels sympatico, or exposure to a thrilling idea or image, or a random moment on a drizzling day), mindfulness, even hope, can sometimes function to change those patterns and probibilities, to add other potential actions and reactions and even future paths, but that's unstable and the slightest rocking can knock me back down into a lower level, less possibility, more predictable but also more limited. I want the higher orbit, I do, but I also know how much of my own energy reserves it takes, how hard it is. I don't really think this has any particular bearing on the rest of the world; I think maybe Houellebecq's thesis isn't far off, that even the most brilliant among us will sacrifice themselves, that any sort of actual human possibility will result in our annihilation... but I am incapable, at the same time, of giving this up: personally, in my own small little sphere, I have hope.

* Yet more genderfuck legal issues. I think it's amusing that the only thing truly shocking (to me) about this article is what the transman changed his name to. But it's an interesting case to me - the precedent that is allowing this man to keep the alimony granted to him while he was still a woman and hence a more easily defined (ex)wife is precisely one of the potential problems for transgendered individuals, namely that the state of Florida (and most states besides) refuses to recognize the transitioned individual by their chosen and not "born" gender. I know that this is one of those situations where I'm rather in the minority and yet I just can't wrap my head around the objections of the majority.

* I decided that, instead of writing actual blogs about my "life" I'd take a cue from Yann Martel and provide only some apt news tidbit of the day rather than my actual autobiographical content. This takes more work than you might imagine. So, instead, bullet points (for now; perhaps I just need to renew my subscriptions to decent periodicals and then I could at least have news of the week).

* Buffalo, here I come. Though a brief visit to Philadelphia has been repeatedly offered (even in the face of me saying that I'd already accepted at UB) and might be worth undertaking, but I'm feeling a remarkable compulsion to spend the time that would be required to travel and socialize and whatnot... reading. Because I have a seriously intimidating and exhilarating book collection here in OKC alone, and I can't imagine how I'm going to feel once all the books are happily reunited in my place as yet to be found in NY.
-- Trip to Buffalo felt very long and alternatively very short. Pretty much like every other situation similar I've been in. I'm curious as to how my perceptions of people and the place will change once I'm permanently there. It'd be lovely to be able to distill my thoughts and keep them separate. Regardless, I met some individuals who will, I think, be excellent compatriots.
-- I am at the point of going to come. (And variations aplenty). My puerile sense of humor was, luckily, confirmed along with that of several other prospectives.
-- I am hoping to not become an apologist for the weather. I want to revel in the sleet, the grey, the very real possibility that I'll be snowed in (literally) at least once. This is, perhaps, a necessary attitude for the next five years. (The ten year old me, who wrote ridiculous stories along these lines, would definitely be pleased, though.)
-- Apparently the PA/NY border area does not appreciate my driving.

* Been listening to my neglected CDs today, in an effort to cull the collection. What I got was a little beauty that I bought ages ago and apparently never listened to, and a good dose of nostalgia. First is this, Nolita by Keren Ann, which I vaguely recall excitedly purchasing and then, apparently, letting it collect dust. I adore this album, though it certainly makes me wish my French were more up to snuff. The title track in particular. I wish I were able to write about music. Whatever. And the second album of interest today was To Bring You My Love by PJ Harvey, which I bought as a highschool sophomore at Russell's suggestion. I think it sort of scandalized me then (which was good): I wasn't really used to a woman using her voice that way or singing of such "dark" subjects. Laughable now (though I still like the album) - I wonder when that happened, that relinquishing of shock. I can think of several specific instances of this phenomenon. I've been reading quite a bit lately that I know was, and still would be to many people, disturbing or vile, and I just don't have that reaction. Which is to say, I think I'm looking around a bit to be shocked, I would like a window on that experience again. A couple of suggestions from last week might be of service for this goal - I'll respond here if it's the case.