your skin is something i stir into my tea

a moment of having it all

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:15:50 GMT

It's been almost two months since I wrote in here - two months! A crazy two months.

Yesterday was my last day of work. I had a party and cleaned out my desk. I am officially jobless now - not technically unemployed (which implies looking for work) but removed from the labor market. I can set my own schedule. Any money I spend comes from a finite pool of my savings. There will be no more. I keep thinking someone will jump out of the woodwork and say "just kidding!" and life will go back to normal, but as my boss pointed out yesterday, that person would have to be me.

In less than two weeks I am moving out of my apartment, that I love. I am giving up the non-working fireplace and the filtered red light from my curtain. I am not saying goodbye to San Francisco, yet - I freaked out and bought a plane ticket back for most of July - but when I come back I will be a guest, a floater, a visitor. I am giving up my residency. I am packing my books away and giving away or selling my furniture. If I come back - when I come back? - I will have to begin again. New bookcases. New dresser drawers. I hate transitions but I asked for this one. No one is forcing me to go but myself.

I am sitting in a tea shop now with my friend and roommate Melissa, drinking strong Russian tea and writing. It is beautiful outside, and somewhere in the city gay couples are getting married right now, after years of waiting. The city feels happy and bright and productive. I want to stay here and do this: sit and drink tea and write with a friend. But I will go broke if I try to do this for too long. We pay for the blue skies and the trees and the liberal love. I can have half of everything I want.

The Great Matzo Panic

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 17:36:20 GMT

On Monday, my roommate sent me an article about a matzo shortage in the Bay Area. Matzo is “unleavened bread” – basically a kosher cracker – that observant Jews are supposed to eat in place of bread for the week of Passover. Even unobservant Jews, like myself, eat it during the holiday, usually (in my case) during Seders, which are ritual dinners celebrating the holiday. Matzo is an integral part of the Seder: you eat it, you talk about it, you point to it, you hold it in the air, you hide a piece and make someone find it, and then you buy it back from that person.

We are giving a Seder tonnight, so the possibility that there might not be any Matzo sent me into a panic. To steal a phrase from “Little Women” (with slight alterations): a Seder isn’t a Seder without any matzo.

I called supermarkets: all out. I looked on craigslist: lots of requests for matzo, nobody selling it or giving it away.

I told my aunt and she offered to send me some from Seattle. This seemed slightly ridiculous, but also like a perfect solution: family coming together to save a thousand-year-old holiday ritual via FedEx. It’s like a commercial come to life.

Of course, it does raise some issues, starting with: is it really worth $30 to overnight matzo? If you get past the monetary cost (anything for family and tradition, right?) you are confronted with the less-obvious environmental costs: the gas expended on the airplane used to fly it down, the cardboard used to package it. It is definitely not eating locally. Did we really want our Seder to contribute to global warming? Not to mention the social implications of being able to ship boxes of matzo around when there is a worldwide wheat shortage and people are actually starving in developing countries.

Being terrible at making decisions, I passed this one off to my uncle, who went ahead and FedEx-ed the matzo. It arrived yesterday, to my office. The Seder was saved! Tradition trumped environmental and social guilt!

Of course, a half an hour after I received my FedEx tracking number by email, I got an instant message from my roommate saying that her grandmother (who lives in San Francisco) had gotten some matzo from a friend. This was followed twenty minutes later by another instant message from a friend who is coming to our Seder saying he has extra matzo he can bring. Then I went to my brother’s Seder, where they ended up with two leftover boxes of matzo, one of which I took home. Now, instead of no matzo, we will probably have too much.

To make the whole situation even more ironic, I was asked to drive to Sacramento yesterday for work, so I did not go in to my office. I asked my brother to pick up the FedEx-ed matzo, but he might not be coming to my Seder, and it is possible it will never arrive.

What is the lesson to take from all of this? I can think of a few possibilities.

One: Exhaust all local options before turning to outside help.

Two: Murphy’s Law holds – as soon as you don’t need something, it will appear in abundance. If Doug had never FedEx-ed the matzo, no one would have found any, and we would have been matzo-less. Since he spent the time and money, we ended up not needing it.

Three: Shop early for dinner parties, especially when they involve unusual foods.

Four: God will bring you matzo one way or another, even if you are not really an observant Jew.

this is what is means to be grown up (in two parts)

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 05:42:34 GMT

A strange shifting of worlds: last Sunday I woke up in my brother's apartment. One sister was sleeping beside me. The other was on the floor beside the bed, looking at a book (she had fallen asleep on the couch so we left her there, but waking in the middle of the night she had apparently decided she would rather sleep on the floor). I got up, made them breakfast, and took them to the Exploratorium.

Today (Sunday) I woke up in my own bed, squinting at the sunlight, in a house with cupcake-frosting-smeared floors and sixty fading gold balloons. We had a party last night, and I got around six hours of sleep. I shuffled into the kitchen, where my roommates and our out-of-town guests were eating leftover M&Ms from the party. We attempted the Sunday NY Times crossword, cleaned a little, read aloud funny snippets from blogs and from the paper, debriefed on the party and told each other about what had gone on in the rooms we had not been in, and later went out to brunch.

Conclusion: There are different kinds and levels of adulthood.

Second conclusion: I love my sisters, and I want to be a mother someday, but at the moment I am happy that I am 23, and that I stayed up until 3:30 am last night dancing in my kitchen with a bunch of unknown Germans.

The day after a party is always a letdown. I am groggy and out-of-sorts, even though I had a wonderful time. My apartment is now a perfect metaphor for my mood. I went to a movie by myself this afternoon, because I couldn't be bothered to call anyone and make plans, and when I came home, all the balloons had fallen down. (Backstory: we rented a helium tank yesterday and blew up 75 gold balloons and an assortment of balloons of other colors, some of which have been popped or sent home with party guests or punctured this morning in order to inhale the helium and talk in strange voices for 10-15 seconds a pop.) Once clustered in two rooms, the balloons have now made their way into every room in the apartment, where they float, discombobulated, between two inches and eight feet off the floor. As I sit in my bed writing this, a balloon hovers next to me, golden string making a circle on my sheets. If I touch it it rebounds, bouncing up before settling back just above the bed. It has a little life left in it, but not much.

Mom for the weekend

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 07:41:00 GMT

My sisters are here. They came in tonight, and it was such a flashback to the way things used to be, when people were there at the gate to meet you - but this time I was there, watching their faces as they saw me, watching them come running down the corridor (what do you call the thing that connects the plane to the terminal? I want to say gang plank, but I know that is not right).

Nick and I took them out to pizza, and Vivien said the greasy food made her mouth itch, but all she really needed was to be hugged and jollied out of her attempt to make herself upset. I said, "Does this ruin EVERYTHING?" and pulled her onto my lap, and she said "No!" and laughed, and we played with her hair and examined the results in the restaurant mirror.

She keeps saying, "I am SO EXCITED to be here!"

When I put them to bed I got in between them and we all snuggled and read a book. I'm glad they still like to be read to, even though they are both old enough to read chapter books now. I hope when we are all old they will still let me read to them.

After singing to them, I kissed Vivien goodnight and she said, "Goodnight Mom." Then she cracked an eye, half-asleep, and giggled, "I mean, Felicity."

The cat does not know what to make of the girls. He hovered around, anxiously, always just out of reach. Vivien really wants to make friends with him; Merlyn is a little more wary. Vivien keeps trying to approach him and play with him, and Merlyn keeps saying, "Leave him alone! That's not the way to handle it" in her best older sister-ish voice. Now he is sitting on the pull out sofa bed, having made himself a nest in the covers, looking weary and resigned to his fate, whatever that is. Poor Simon: so put upon.

what's the opposite of concise? rambling?

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 07:10:15 GMT

Just bought another year for this journal - guess that means I should write more.

I have become scarily addicted to political blogs. I hate them, and yet I love them. They all cover the exact same stories and issues. They refer to each other constantly. Basically their whole purpose for existing is to refer to each other. They repeat themselves. They blow everything out of proportion. They bicker like children. They are ruining American democracy, and maybe saving it too: at least they are talking about the issues, sometimes. Good or bad, I am addicted.

Another new addiction: the Sweeney Todd soundtrack. Can it really be healthy to spend an hour every day in my car singing about cannibalism?

I signed up to be an Obama precinct captain, as I may have mentioned, which means that I am responsible for contacting likely Democratic and independent voters in a couple-block radius to see who they are planning to vote for, and as election day nears, to get Obama supporters to the polls. Only my precinct is not actually near my house. Also, 80% of the people in it are over the age of 80 (there's an assisted living center smack dab in the middle). I

tried to make calls tonight after I got home and had dinner, but it was 8:30 so I didn't want to call any older people who might be asleep already. Calling only people under 65 meant I could call 1-3 people per page (18 to a page). I do not have a good work schedule for this. But I will try to devote myself to it this weekend.

One of the women I talked to said that she was undecided, even though she lived Obama better, because she did not want to get too attached to a candidate and be disappointed. I laughed, sadly, and said, "I'm bad at that." I really hope I am not disappointed this time. The Clinton machine is on the attack, and that scares me. Why does the lowest common denominator always win? (but it hasn't won yet - and I am going to tell myself, at least for the next 12 days, that it won't win this time)

Other than that, I am taking a newswriting class at City College of San Francisco, one night a week. The teacher has been in journalism and editing for over 20 years, and he has lots of good stories. His experience is both an asset and a drawback. He knows all of the reporters in SF, and at the San Francisco Chronicle - which is cool because he has the inside scoop, but unfortunate because he is unable to separate himself from them or be critical of their work. We were discussing an article in class yesterday, and he seemed to take criticism of it personally, and rather than admit it might not be perfect, he finally suggested that an editor might have changed it - as if we were criticizing the reporter and not the work. Institutional thinking - the press defends itself. I'm interested to see how he critiques our writing, as that is the real test. I hope he can teach me to be clear and concise. Obviously, my conciseness needs some work.

Doing my public service, and lots of thoughts on the primaries and gender

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 19:25:05 GMT

I have jury duty today. I approve of the concept, but it strikes me as odd how one line in our constitution - "a jury of his peers" - has led to this spectacle. The informational video says that they mail out 5,600 jury summons a week. Each summons has a bar code, which they scan when you present yourself at the jury office, after which they wave you into an enormous room where videos are playing explaining the duties of jurors. Justice will have been served (announced the video at the end). Really?! Wow! The man sitting next to me and I rolled our eyes in unison. I'm not against the concept of a jury - but I think justice is a much more difficult mistress. What happens in the courtroom is only a small piece of it - just as important is who gets to that courtroom and why, what they're charged with and why, where they grew up, what kind of schools they had, what kind of job opportunities they had, and what kinds of schools and job opportunities were had by the boxful of jurors... Justice is more elusive than 12 "peers" listening to the facts of the case and pronouncing judgment.

I know I've been absent from this blog for a while. I couldn't post in Dubai, as I said, and then things pile up and there's too much to say so I say nothing at all. I'm home. Life has recommenced. I am missing work right now, and anxious about that fact - the only reason I have my computer here is so that I can hopefully get some work done. It's nice to be home, even though vacation was wonderful and I again miss all those I briefly did not miss.

I've been pretty wrapped up in the election and election coverage, even though the media drives me crazy and probably the best thing to do would be to disengage. I'm going to become a precinct captain for Obama, since at this point it is clear that California will indeed matter, very much.

Two points on the election I want to discuss:

1. The media drives me crazy because they try to reinvent the wheel every day. Iowa was big and exciting, but declaring Obama the frontrunner and Clinton's campaign - which has been built up for months, for a whole year practically - dead in one night was ridiculous and obviously premature. Now anointing Clinton's victory in New Hampshire a "comeback" is just as silly. It was always a two-person race (at least). There are way too many media pundits desperate to have something to say, so they make up these stories that have very little, if anything, to do with reality.

2. I read Gloria Steinem’s editorial in the New York Times yesterday about how women have it harder than black men (in the race for public office anyway) and how the media has unfairly attacked Hilary. I think she has good points, namely that gender is an incredibly strong barrier, one that does not get enough attention (or the wrong kind of attention) and that the media has used a lot of misogynistic language in its portrayal of Hilary. I strongly disagree, however, with her conclusion – that the bias exhibited by some is a reason to vote for Hilary, and that by supporting Obama, I and other young women are betraying or taking for granted what second wave feminists did for all of us.

I consider myself a proud feminist. I am very sensitive to gender stereotypes and prejudices. But I am also a human being. I am a woman but this is not all I am. I think that is what second wave feminists were fighting for: the right to make decisions on an equal footing with men. The right not to be defined by my gender.

There are many reasons I am supporting Obama. I believe he is a compromiser in the best way, in that he does not compromise his core values, but he is willing to listen to people who disagree with him and learn from them. For illustration: at a rally yesterday in New Hampshire, there were anti-abortion protestors. The crowd started booing them down, and he quieted his own supporters, pointing out that this is exactly the problem: we don’t listen to each other. The protesters were escorted from the building (it wasn't the moment for a debate) but they weren't heckled along the way.

From what I’ve seen, Clinton is the other kind of compromiser (and I think Bill Clinton was too): the kind that compromises to get ahead.

I also think Obama has a much better chance of winning the general election, which, let’s face it, is important. In the last debate, Clinton tried to equate Obama with Bush, by saying he was doing well because he was “likable.” Not only do I think this is a ridiculous comparison (Bush is likable in that people felt they could sit down and have a beer with him, Obama is likable in that he is well-spoken and inspiring), but let us not forget that Bush won the last two elections against politicians with a great deal of experience who came across as awkward, stiff, and ultimately… unlikable. The Democrats have proven their ability to pick losing candidates using Hilary Clinton’s formula for success. Why not pick someone who appeals across party lines? Why not pick someone who excites people? Why not pick someone without the baggage of the Clinton years, who is respected and liked by a lot of Republicans and Independents, rather than hated and vilified? Why not pick someone who can win?

Mostly, I support Obama because I see how he inspires people, especially people of my generation - cynical youth, constantly berated by their elders for trying to work within the system instead of rebelling against it. This is the candidate we have been waiting for, this is the one we will take to the streets for - why should we now be berated for that too? Because our candidate is not the candidate our parents might choose? It's funny that people like Gloria Steinem, who set themselves up as anti-establishment, should so buy into the establishment, and tell young women they're blind if they don't follow.

I want to see a female president. The thing is - I believe it will happen in my lifetime. In fact, I believe it will happen in the not-too-distant future. Which is why I am making my choice based on all the things that make me an intelligent human being, and not panic that this might be my only chance to see a woman in the White House. That kind of attitude is selling women short.

Update: Dismissed from jury duty! Back to work.

And one more thing: I don't have cable, so my news coverage is the NYT and NPR - that's what I was citing when I said that the news coverage of Clinton that annoyed me. After reading this interesting article, I'm wondering whether I missed the stuff that would really have pissed me off (on the cable news channels). Anyway, I recommend and get behind this article (the same one - written by a young woman for Salon, talking about how she's not a Clinton supporter but still sees the misogyny in the news coverage).

traveling styles

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 17:11:13 GMT

My time in London is coming to a close. Already! The three days here have flown by. I can't believe that tomorrow morning I will be in Dubai, with Rawaan and Annie. It feels like a marvelous enormous present waiting to be opened, so marvelous and enormous you can't do anything but stare with wide eyes.

Lots of walking over the last two days: yesterday I went to the Tate Modern, walking there along the Embankment, and then wandering through looking for the Rothko Room. It was the last place I looked, of course, but that was okay because they cycle their permanent collection and there were lots of new things to see. Today we went to St. James' Park and up into Mayfair and down into Belgravia. I wanted to see the great old squares, to gather finishing details for my romance novel. Christian accompanied me (he had school and errands on Monday and Tuesday so I wandered alone) and it was a different experience. When I find a square I have been looking for, I meander all around it, and then sit usually, and stare at the houses, and take pictures, and scribble in my notebook about the air and the other people around. Christian is more goal-oriented. When we got to Grosvenor or Belgrave Square, he was immediately ready to turn around and find the next place, while I sort of sighed and followed more slowly after him, my head turned over my shoulder to see what shape the windows are, what color the facades. He did save me a lot of aimlessness though, and my feet thank him for all the buses he got us onto.

Apparently LiveJournal is blocked in Dubai, so I may not be able to post about the rest of my trip. Rawaan can access it from work, but I'm not sure if I will get around to stockpiling entries for her to put up. So if I don't post here for the next two weeks, don't worry: I have not been kidnapped by terrorists. I am just in a county where speech is not entirely free. I'm not sure about Flickr - I will try to update photos regularly.

Flaneuse-ing in London

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 00:45:56 GMT

A wonderful day that completely made up for the mattress debacle last night!

I wandered from Charing Cross Station through Trafalgar Square, Chinatown, Neal's Year, the British Museum, Russell Square, the British Library, and then back down through Bloomsbury, Charing Cross Road, Soho, and down Regent Street to Picadilly Circus. My feet hurt (now).

I've remembered the smell of London, and the way my heart beats faster here when I encounter something particularly wonderful. I am overcome with the fact of being here. How I love to simply sit in the middle of a small square, on a bench, watching the fallen leaves and the tiny red flowers blooming from beneath them, the statues, the sunlight coming in and out, the men in pink button down shirts eating lunch, the fountains, the skeletal trees, the old buildings with their faded brick and rows of white windows. Or in the cafe, where I had tea from white china, and you never have to ask for milk, it is just understood. Or in the British Library, where the beautiful old books live, where I heard Gertrude Stein reading a poem, and T.S. Eliot, and looked at manifestos from the 1910s, when everything seemed possible, when that century was as young as this century - only now we are postmodern, and believe in nothing, certainly not ourselves.

Pictures of the day here.

Off to bed.

sleep or bust

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 21:16:42 GMT

According to my computer it is 1 pm at home. That makes sense, since it is 9 pm here (in London). My body does not understand this distinction however; it doesn't understand much right now besides the desire for sleep. Unfortunately, my dear host bought an air mattress "with a built in inflation device" only the inflation device turns out to be a pump, which you have to pump by foot, or hand, in a really careful and specific way, for at least a half an hour. I have already been pumping, taking turns between various limbs, for about twenty minutes, and the mattress, while puffed up, feels like there is nothing inside if pressed on.

My host, Christian (a friend from San Francisco who is now attending the London School of Economics) went to a movie with his roommates, at my urging, because I thought it best to go to sleep early, and it would be quieter and easier to do so if he was out. He appeared to be under the impression that the mattress would inflate itself. I am approaching the end of some kind of very very short rope. It's my birthday, but feeling bad for all the trouble I am already putting Christian to, I found no easy way to slip this into the conversation, and so I didn't tell him. I will celebrate in Dubai with Rawaan and Annie, and have already celebrated in San Francisco with my friends there. Still, I am tired enough that this feels fairly disastrous at the moment: sitting alone in a strange house on my birthday with aching arms and legs and a half-inflated mattress between myself and sleep.

But. I am in London. My flight went well. I found Christian's house easily. We had a nice dinner at a Singaporean restaurant that happened to have replaced a restaurant Lily and I went to once (the old one had a better name, something about the people's revolution, but this one was still delicious). On the way home we walked across Westminster Bridge, which has the best view: Parliament and Big Ben lit up against one side of the sky, and St. Paul's against the other. Tomorrow, assuming I someday get to sleep, I will be rested and happy again, and I will spend all day wandering around the streets, thinking about Victorians and discovering Edward Monkton cards, and drinking tea.

Okay, enough of a break. Once more into the breach: I will inflate this mattress or fall asleep trying.

on the verge

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 06:59:15 GMT

My room is slowly disassembling. (Not really: being stripped of its frippery is a more accurate description.) In three days, I will get on an airplane and a stranger will start sleeping in my bed. Only briefly. One month, even less. I will only be out of the country for a little over two weeks, which is not so much time if you think about it. But I'm leaving work for a month. I'm putting all my odds and ends in boxes to shove into them into the utility closet. I am preparing to say goodbye to normal life for a little while.

I have been panicking, the last couple days, because I was on the verge of getting sick, sick in a really nasty way that would have made it almost impossible to get on a plane on Saturday. I didn't realize how much of myself I have hung on this trip until it became endangered: The pieces of me that have been living in London all this time. The pieces of me that feel right and well only when sitting with Rawaan and Annie, as we gaze at each other in mutual adoration. The pieces of me that hate going to work every day. The pieces of me that love watching movies on airplanes.

The danger seems to have passed. I am still on a knife's edge, though I think now everything is okay. And of course, it would be okay anyway. Even if I had to push my flight back, I would still go. Even if I didn't go, all of those pieces of me would survive. They've survived the last year and a half, or longer, and they will keep surviving, waiting for their turn. But I really do very much hope their turn comes on Saturday.

Work is ridiculous. I want to say, it will be over soon, I will be gone, but I have a terrible feeling that even though I'll be gone it won't be over, and it will haunt me all through the month of December. Maybe I am just overwhelmed right now though. They won't be able to get to me when I am half a world away, unless I let them.

Oh, I finished NaNoWriMo! Last Sunday. I reached 50,000 words (plus 90 or so) and have not touched it since. I have a lot of novel left to go, and I do want to write it, but I haven't had time. Maybe on the airplane. Maybe in Rawaan's garden, giggling and smoking shisha and scribbling away.

busy like a bee, bee-like

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 08:46:13 GMT

Normally when I write in here and say that life is busy, I mean that it is busy, but I still have time to read the New York Times online. I just prefer reading the Times to writing in here, most days; it's easier, and if I don't read the Times the day does not feel complete, but if I don't write in here I get by okay.

I mention this, because when I say that life is busy right now, I don't mean in that way. I mean in the have-not-read-the-Times-all-week way. In the behind-on-NaNo way. The will-have-to-work-this-weekend-because-8-to-9-hours-of-work-a-day-is-not-enough way. The having-a-party-tomorrow way. The going-home-for-Thanksgiving way. The leaving-the-country-in-two-weeks way.

(Two weeks! Hurrah!)

I literally have not had a moment to relax. Which is okay, overall, I am fine being busy. What's less okay is knowing I'm going to have to work this weekend (ugh) and going back and forth about how stressed I should be about NaNo. On the one hand, I have 37,700 words, which is pretty damn good - better than most people, I assume, since we're just over halfway through the month. On the other hand, I am insanely busy, and I am just going to get busier, and I REALLY want to get to 50,000 words before Thanksgiving so I can relax about it. Also, I said I would finish before Thanksgiving, and I am an insane, uptight person who hates missing deadlines, even self-imposed ones. I've decided that, to finish by Thanksgiving, I need to write between 7,500 and 10,000 words this weekend. While throwing a party. And writing a paper for work.

I mentioned that I'm crazy right? I'm crazy.

I love sunny weekends

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 06:42:05 GMT

I really love San Francisco. It was in the 70s both yesterday and today, with bright sunny skies. I wore skirts without leggings, short sleeves without jackets, and flip flops. Last night we had a drink at an outdoor bar well after sundown and it was that in-between temperature where I was okay with my coat on, and also okay without it. But it's not just the weather. Yesterday I got my hair cut. Last night I made a new potential friend and Mel and I stayed up too late talking, until my head was hard to hold up. Today I had breakfast with another new friend, and went to a cafe with old(er) friends to work and write a letter. We made dinner for ten, on a whim; the party kept growing and growing because there are so many people to see and feed. And between all these lovely things I've been writing.

I started NaNo at midnight on November 1, and so far I have kept ahead of my schedule, which has me finishing before Thanksgiving. My current wordcount is 10,698, which is one-fifth of the way there! I think the story I have planned out will take more than 50,000 words to tell, but I will be happy if I get to 50,000 before Thanksgiving, pause while I hang out with my family, get ready to leave the country, get ready to sublet my room, etc. and then start it up again in December or later. I think it's going well; the writing itself is, as predicted, pretty terrible. But I think the story is flowing, and the characters are starting to develop and push things in the plot around to suit themselves. That's always fun. The real challenge is coming up: a full work week (in which I have plans three of the five days). I'll see if I can keep the pace up.

In other exciting news, I finished the baby blanket for my new goddaughter. She's already a few weeks old, but I think she will still be able to use it, as it's not really a receiving blanket anyway. If I manage to re-charge my camera batteries (and after I weave in all the ends) I will take a picture, as it turned out very pretty.

I am exhausted: thank you, daylight savings. The one problem with this noveling business is that I have no time for the random things I usually catch up with on weekends: writing people emails, calling my mother (hi Mom!), cleaning up my room, etc. My room is a mess. Luckily, I think the rest of my life is holding up.

college essays, pumpkin carving, and reminding myself that I can't write a good novel in 21 days

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 05:41:45 GMT

On Saturday I helped high school seniors with their college admissions essays: a boy explaining how being in jail taught him that he wanted to go to college and be a children's attorney; a girl pondering whether there was a word in her native language for bisexual. I got home tired (I have a cold which has wiped me out all weekend) and starving, and missed "Thriller" while I was eating. I am a little, but not a lot, disappointed; I have no regrets about the matter.

I am hormonal and have a head cold, and wrote a very general and rather angry post on Friday. Like many general and angry posts, it contained some truths and a lot of over or under statements, so broad as to lose any real meaning. I blame the head cold, and too many editorials/articles/etc. which refer to my generation as one entity, as if everyone between the ages of 18 and 25 has the same worldview, the same motivation or lack thereof. I admit in responding, I was guilty of the same generational-ism. That cannot possibly be a real world.

In other news: I went to a pumpkin carving party today. I have a slight complex about pumpkin carving, due to the fact that my pumpkins usually come out with one enormous mouth (having screwed up the teeth or jagged edges or whatever was supposed to make the mouth interesting) and unevenly sized (and placed) oval eyes. In short, they continue to look like a five year old carved them. This despite the fact that my mother, the artist, is able to pick up a knife (a regular knife, not one of those special pumpkin-carving saws) and create lovely and creepy faces without template or forethought. Pumpkin carving is a yearly reminder that I am not artistically inclined. This year, I caved, and used a pattern. Now I feel inadequate in a whole new way!

(I'm kidding, mostly. I love carving pumpkins. Even though I suck at it.)

NaNoWriMo starts on Thursday. I am all geared up, though I keep making plans for social engagements after Thursday, without really meaning to. Still, I have confidence that I will keep pace: I have a 10 page scene-by-scene outline to keep me chugging along, and a goal of finishing before Thanksgiving which requires 2,500 words a day. Now I just have to hope the cold goes away, all of my friends cancel on me, and my characters and narrator cooperate once I actually start writing. This process is so different from how I normally go about writing I'm not quite sure what to do with myself, or how it will go once I get started. Usually I start with characters and get to know them very well, writing about them, trying out different narrative voices. I don't discover the plot until much, much later, and it grows out of the characters, and expands slowly, internally. In this case, I started with a plot and fit characters into it; granted I changed parts of the plot to fit the characters better, but the overall structure remained the same. I now have a description of every scene, but haven't written a word - I have no idea how the voice or characters will actually sound when I start writing.

Luckily, it doesn't matter much. This is not supposed to be good. I have to keep telling myself that, because I keep forgetting. I'm sure when I am actually producing 2,500 words a day, it will become much easier to remember.

the generation debate, or, what is it about "Thriller" that is so irresistible?

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 01:33:22 GMT

Tomorrow a thoroughly San Francisco juxtaposition of events will take place in Dolores Park.

First event: The culmination of an anti-war march. Marchers will have a “die-in” (I believe this involves lying on the ground in the park and pretending to be dead) to remind apathetic citizens of those who have died in Iraq. The protest is time to coincide with protests across the country (and perhaps the world?)

Second event: A re-enactment of the dance from “Thriller” (Michael’ Jackson’s epic zombie/werewolf/whatever battle), timed to coincide with “Thriller” re-enactments all over the planet (and thus break the World Record for most people re-enacting “Thriller” at one time).

On one side of the park: committed activists still willing to lie their bodies on the ground (granted, there will be no tanks) to protest an unjust and unnecessary war, even though they (and everyone else) knows they will probably not make any difference. On the other side: a bunch of hipsters who have watched the Thai prison re-enactment of the “Thriller” dance one too many times, most of whom cannot remember when Michael Jackson was not scary. In all: a lot of privileged white people with too much time on their hands?

I am feeling cynical, and a little guilty. I want to protest the war, and believe that it will make a difference; but the “die-in” feels like a stunt, the ridiculous name feels like mockery rather than reverence. I want to join in the “Thriller” dance because it is ridiculous, and funny, and why not spend a Saturday afternoon laughing in the park, coming together with hundreds of strangers to be publically weird; but juxtaposed against something serious the ridiculousness loses some of its appeal, I am reminded of why older people rant about my generation.

This could end up being a really long post.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this, given what feels like a constant bombardment of Baby Boomers declaring that the “problem with the ___ generation” (they all have different names, but they basically mean 18-29 year olds today) is that we aren’t angry enough, we aren’t out on the streets protesting, we are too quiet, we are too distracted, we are too cynical, we are too complicit with the system, we are too accepting of authority: we are too content. This argument makes me angry, because all the things that we are supposed to be angry about are things created by the Baby Boomers. They have the money and the numbers and the power; why don’t they stop the war? I also feel (as others have said before me) that it misses a fundamental point about the modern world, and political change: things are different now than they were in the ‘60s. What worked then won’t necessarily work now. We have to try things our own way.

So what’s our way? That’s where I get stuck railing against Baby Boomer commentators. Because I don’t have an answer. Protesting the war doesn’t help? Well should we all go dance “Thriller” instead? Hmm, maybe not. The old paradigm for youth movements feels broken and useless. So what’s the new one? The typical answer is the internet. But I have yet to see internet political organizing accomplish anything of significance. Mostly what I see online is a lot of in-fighting, a lot of obsession with scoring points off the other side, a lot of recrimination, and attention to things no one outside the Beltway could possibly care about.

Maybe the truth is that our generation is not politically mobilized. Maybe it’s because we have to fight so hard just to get by, to get a job, to get ahead, that we don’t have time. Maybe it’s because despite everything truly frightening happening in the world right now, none of it hits close to home for most young people; the Baby Boomers reacted to the imminent threat of being shipped off to Vietnam; to police beating black people in the streets; to women being raped and prosecuted for making decisions about their own bodies. Maybe our lives are actually too comfortable. What did the Baby Boomers really win? They ended the draft, so that the children of middle class white parents no longer get shipped overseas. They ended overt, brutal discrimination, so now minority groups have only the shadows of structures to swing at. In short, they made the problems invisible. And now they yell that we don’t see them.

This does not really serve as a valid excuse to dance to “Thriller” in the park tomorrow, because I do see the problems and I still don’t know what to do to fix them. Most likely, I’ll just lurk around the edges, take a few pictures to illustrate the weird wonderfulness of this city, feel guilty, laugh, and then go home.

ineffables

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 02:04:40 GMT

I think the reason that I don't post very much anymore is that it is hard to describe what is good about my life now.

I can write that we revived Sunday Night Trivia this week, and all of the teams were named after themes that teams might be named after (for instance "Numbers" "Smart Women" "Themes") (so meta!) except for one team, which was named something obscene, and we laughed a lot as we madly answering questions, but it doesn't quite convey the atmosphere of the evening.

I can describe the Lit Crawl on Saturday, which was San Francisco's answer to the pub crawl - themed readings all up and down Valencia St. in bars and bookstores. I could tell about the skeezy guy in a beret who read some "creative non-fiction" mocking a Vietnamese prostitute, or the enormous gay man who read about his attempt to become a porn star, while practically straddling the microphone stand. I might even be able to describe the atmosphere: the hipsters crammed in beside the aging lights of high San Francisco culture, the hushed poets and the tattooed middle-aged women who did way too many drugs in their youth, all cradling beers and spilling out onto the sidewalk.

I can't describe though, the rest of the night, wherein we spent literally hours laughing at and about the people unlucky enough to sit on a couch we dubbed "The Awkward Couch" because everyone who sat on it ended up staring awkwardly off into space, not talking to the people beside them, or talking to say, one of the people, while the third sat awkwardly on the other side. I realize that I just described the night I said I can't describe, but the point is, my descriptions don't do it justice. It sounds boring, and kind of mean, to sit and make fun of a couch (and it's inhabitants) all night. But somehow it was fun (and we did talk about other things as well).

Mostly, I can't describe a normal night at home, when Alex, Mel, and I sit around our kitchen table with mugs of tea and discuss the cat, San Francisco politics, our houseplants, our friends, our love lives or lack thereof, names of characters from romance novels, presidential politics, food, NPR, strange news stories, college, work, the death penalty, homelessness, law school applications, the cat some more, things that make us angry, and various and sundry other topics which may or may not actually interest us or anyone else. It sounds mundane, to sit around our kitchen table and talk, but I spend most of the time laughing. There are so many jokes I can't explain. So many conversations I can't even remember the details of. But all combined the experience is so good. I am so happy being there, being part of ridiculous conversations, drinking tea, laughing, or discussing soberly, or mocking ourselves. Most of my nights are like that now. So I don't write, because there's nothing to say exactly. I went to work, I came home; we had tea and talked about all the things we always talk about. I went to bed.

Maybe I'm floating, not moving anywhere, but times like these feel rarer than they should, feel precious. I want to savor it; soon enough it'll be gone and I'll be forced forward again.

the things we lost

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 08:30:14 GMT

I am a hoarder. I like to go back and look at all the fragments of my past - old stories I wrote, no matter how bad, journals both physical and online, favorite books. It may be years, but I will always return to my past, no matter how unimportant it may seem. Which is why it is strange, this business of losing things. When my hard drive crashed in January, I was able to recover the important stuff - my stories, my pictures, even my school work (I know you think, who would want to go back and look at all those terrible papers I cranked out, but my point is: I would, I do.) I lost profile stuff: my saved emails, for instance, my browser bookmarks. I also lost half (or perhaps more) of my "Other" file - my miscellaneous files that didn't fit anywhere else (I have the A-H files but nothing later). I hadn't thought much about it, because most of the things in that file were temporary, flitting ideas of the moment. But I went to look for something today, and noticed that my LJ back-up was gone, having been in the second two-thirds of the alphabet.

My LJ is obviously still online, so this isn't a disaster, but it is frustrating, since I had painstakingly formatted both this journal and my old journal for ease of reading in Word. It also foregrounds how easy it is to lose electronic words. In this case: memories. Livejournal won't last forever. Neither will hard drives. Or CDs. Or Word files. Neither, of course, will paper diaries. But they give a better illusion of solidity.

***

I have been absent from this blog, I know. I only posted once last month. I have been hiding, in a way. My roommates are applying to law school and I'm worried about my own lack of direction. At the same time: I am not worried. I am only 22. I don't need to know where I am going yet. Even if I thought I knew, I would probably end up changing direction later. I am OK drifting for a little while.

It rained today. It's hard to be cheerful when it is dark and sodden at 2 pm. I've been thinking about what it is, to write something purposefully bad, and how can something be bad and worth reading, and how can something be bad and good too?

A few days ago our (white) cat climbed up my (non-working, but still dirty) chimney. He is still covered with soot and angry because his mommy (my roommate) has been in and out of town for a week. He cuddles with her, then bites her fingers.

It's too late. I need to post but not in the middle of the night when I am incoherent.

wind me up and watch me go

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 18:25:13 GMT

A few days ago, one of my roommates sent me this link. It's a speech that a evolutionary psychologist gave recently entitled, "Is There Anything Good About Men?" (Short answer: yes.) To give it fair due, I agreed with a lot of things in the speech. For instance, that men and women (as a hugely generalized whole, and leaving aside the sticky questions of transgender, etc.) are different, but equal, and that many of these differences are attributable to genetic selection and the struggle to survive/reproduce over thousands of years. The problem with the speech is that it is written in a spirit of intense rancor, and is aimed at disproving the arguments of the "feminist establishment" that have taken over the whole Western world (that women are better, and men have been getting together in little groups to try and keep them down.) To me, this seems self-evidently ridiculous: no feminists that I know argue that patriarchy is a deliberate movement on the part of individual men, or that women are better. Moreover, the examples backing up his argument are at many points ridiculous. If I try to explain I will end up quoting them completely, so I won't try, but I will put a few behind the cut for anyone who is interested.

My two favorite examples, proving first how woman are not motivated to be creative, and second how men create culture than is better than anything women could create, as they are focused on interpersonal relationships:

"Creativity may be another example of gender difference in motivation rather than ability. ... I suppose the stock explanation for any such difference is that women were not encouraged, or were not appreciated, or were discouraged from being creative. But I don’t think this stock explanation fits the facts very well. In the 19^th century in America, middle-class girls and women played piano far more than men. Yet all that piano playing failed to result in any creative output. There were no great women composers, no new directions in style of music or how to play, or anything like that. All those female pianists entertained their families and their dinner guests but did not seem motivated to create anything new.

Meanwhile, at about the same time, black men in America created blues and then jazz, both of which changed the way the world experiences music. By any measure, those black men, mostly just emerging from slavery, were far more disadvantaged than the middle-class white women. Even getting their hands on a musical instrument must have been considerably harder."

"Giving birth is a revealing example. What could be more feminine than giving birth? Throughout most of history and prehistory, giving birth was at the center of the women’s sphere, and men were totally excluded. Men were rarely or never present at childbirth, nor was the knowledge about birthing even shared with them. But not very long ago, men were finally allowed to get involved, and the men were able to figure out ways to make childbirth safer for both mother and baby. Think of it: the most quintessentially female activity, and yet the men were able to improve on it in ways the women had not discovered for thousands and thousands of years."

That is not the point of this entry however. That is just the beginning to explain what is really bothering me. So my roommate sent me this link. I read it, trying to give it the benefit of a doubt, and quickly became appalled by the fact that this man was claiming scientific objectivity and that he wanted a fair, unbiased discussion of gender, when what he was really doing was attacking "feminists." His examples (under the cut) also made me incredulously annoyed. I emailed my roommate a few times with particularly choice quotes (and mentioned I wanted to punch the guy, though of course it was all in the spirit of rational criticism). That evening, my roommate and I discussed the article, and I became incensed, as I am wont to do, and ranted about how stupid and mean it was. My roommate laughed at my outrage, and egged me on, admitting that she sent me the link hoping that I would get angry and rant, because apparently I'm very amusing when I am outraged. Last night we were sitting around with friends and the article came up again. I began to explain how it was ridiculous, which quickly devolved into everyone teasing me about how worked up I got, and calling me "cute."

They were teasing, but it stung anyway, because it a recurring moment in my life. I can't count the number of times friends of mine have deliberately provoked me into a moral/political rant, and then sat around laughing at the strength of my reaction. It occurred to me this morning that it goes back even further than I thought, pre-political outrage, when my brother would say something to me that would make me incredibly angry or upset (I can't even remember the kinds of things he would say - but I think they were generally personal attacks on me) and I would scream and bang things, and hit him, and he would just laugh at me. Nothing I did ever touched him (or he never showed it if it did), but he could rile me with a sentence, anytime he wanted. I was a game, a doll; he would wind me up and watch me go. Now it's not personal, my friends don't attack me, but they say something or point me toward something I find really maddening or offensive, wind me up and watch me go. I hate this. Nothing I say in a moment like this matters, rational or irrational. No one is listening. The second I show a hint of emotion, I am just a little girl in over her head, boxing with shadows. The hurtfulness of having friends sit and laugh at me is not as bad as the feeling of helplessness.

Maybe I take things too personally. Maybe I am too sensitive. (Both at a political level - caring what someone said in a speech - and the personal level - taking it badly when people tease me.) But I also think I am justified at both levels. One of the worst offenders in terms of this riling-me-up-and-laughing phenomenon was a friend of mine freshman year of college. He would make misogynistic remarks and jokes to get a rise out of me. I wanted to be cool, and not to make waves, to be one of the boys (and not to be teased) so most of the time I would let it pass. I regret that now; he would push further and further looking for a reaction, until he got beyond the point of joking, and I would let him. I wish that I had told him it wasn't okay, and let him laugh. I wish that I had walked out. He has since grown up a lot, and we've had discussions about how much he regrets saying those things; maybe I could have helped him get there sooner if I hadn't kept my mouth shut. Even if he couldn't have heard it then, I would feel better. I don't know why I take gender issues so personally, but I do. Yes, I get upset. Maybe it's naive and idealistic. Maybe there is nothing that can be done, maybe the speeches people give, and what they show on TV doesn't matter, doesn't affect anyone's real life. But I don't believe that; I think it does affect people, women, men, in ways we might not see, and I believe shutting up about it just makes it worse.

On a personal level, I'm sure it goes back to my brother, and feelings of helplessness, and a friend I had in 9th grade who would make fun of me to my face and then tell me she was just teasing. It's insecurity, I get that. I know my friends like me, and don't mean any harm by it, probably don't see why it would hurt me, or that it does. I still think I'm justified feeling hurt though. The problem is, if I tell them to stop I am just perpetuating the image of myself as a little girl, who can't take a little ribbing, who has no self control. Maybe that's what I am. It's amazing how successive friends, who have never met one another, are able to find this same weak spot and return to it, again and again. Maybe I have a string coming out of my back, and a sign saying, "Pull me and see what I do!" and I just never noticed.

EDIT: To lessen all the bitching in here a little, I came home hungry and tired and ended up telling one of my roommates how upset I was, and she said (while still validating my feelings) from her perspective no one was laughing at me, I make entirely rational arguments and don't react in any crazy or over the top way, and in fact she (she said "they" but I don't want to push it) admires me for my political passion. So that was nice, and made me feel better about this particular incident, if still frustrated about the lifetime motif.

one year today

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 03:51:35 GMT

One year ago today I started my first real job. A year is so much and so little time; it is only a fraction of a lifetime, yet an eon compared to all previous jobs I have held. A year is a solid figure, not like three months or seven months. A year is a commitment. I am here now, I know my way around; I have no excuses.

This is not where I thought I would be a year ago. Or rather, I thought I would be on the cusp of something else, when in fact I am still right in the middle of what I was then beginning. I don't even remember my original timeline, but I think it had me departing sometime this fall. About a year of work seemed right. And now I have a happy life here, I went to Ikea this weekend (and triumphed! ha Ikea you tried to break us down but you FAILED!) with one of my roommates, and I love my roommates, and I love my apartment, and my job is okay, it is okay.

This weekend I went to a volunteer orientation for 826 Valencia, a program that offers creative writing classes and tutoring and other fun programs for disadvantaged kids. I applied to volunteer there when I first moved here, and had enormous stretches of empty time. I was hoping to make friends. They contacted me two months ago: are you still interested in volunteering? Now I have very little empty time, but I am still craving creativity, an interest in words that I have recently been filling with crossword puzzles and online Scrabble games (fun, but not quite the same because even when the words fit together they are separate and solitary. They share letters but not purposes.) So yes, of course I am still interested. I just have to find the time.

I applied to a writing internship, at a local weekly newspaper. I didn't hear back; since it starts in a week, I assume that means I didn't get it. I will persevere, try again. If I could trust my own motivation, I would just go to part time and spend one day a week writing. Maybe that is the experience I really need: to go to places in the city and sit and write, and listen to myself, and produce something I am willing to send into the world.

But one year. One year of sitting at a desk, staring at a computer screen. One year of tables and graphs and copy edits and meetings. One year of lunches. One year of driving home squinting into the sun.

A Library Visit, and, In defense of the young adult fantasy novel

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 20:03:02 GMT

I went to the library on Saturday afternoon, the Main Library in the Tenderloin (the bad part of town) (also the closest library to me). It's strange to me, a suburban girl, that the Main Library has a very small selection of fiction - most of the popular fiction is in branch libraries, scattered around the city. I was in the mood for young adult historical fiction (preferably set in the nineteenth century), involving magic of some kind. This may sound like a very specific sort of mood to be in, but it's actually surprisingly easy to find if you know where to look. More on this in a moment.

I was standing in the stacks with my arms full of books fitting this description (plus the Kite Runner, to give myself some respectability), when a young man approached me. He was thin, I thought probably younger than me, of indeterminate racial origin. He said softly, "Excuse me. I... I think you're cute, and I was wondering if I could talk to you."

I felt a surge of terror. Not because of him - it could have been anyone - but because I was at the library, with my arms full of young adult fantasy novels, and all I wanted was to be left alone to immerse myself in them. I couldn't imagine holding a conversation with a stranger at that moment. I tried, haltingly, to explain: "I'm sorry, it's just that I... when I come to the library, I like to be alone with my books..." He looked dejected (rejected); I felt bad. But I was in Solitary Library Mode, a state of being developed over many years, and I couldn't just snap out of it.

Back to the young adult fantasy novels. That evening I told my friend Brian, a quite erudite and well read fellow, what I had spent the afternoon doing (reading an entire one of those books). He seemed surprised, and I tried to explain the appeal:

First, there is familiarity (many of these books I have read before, or have read other books by the same authors/set in the same period etc.). Familiarity allows me to overlook certain things I could not overlook in an adult book; I read like I read as a child, without the criticality I now bring to everything (I cannot read most adult "escape" fiction - chick list, fantasy, mysteries, etc. - anymore, I get too annoyed with the writing, and the stereotyped characters, and the social and political implications).

Second, some (though admittedly not all) of these books (and in general, young adult and children's books) are well-written, entertaining, thoughtful, and contain a lot fewer stereotypes and negative social and political implications than adult books. Maybe they're, on the whole, not deep wells of philosophical thought (though certain books of the children's fantasy genre, like the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman, have much deeper moral and philosophical depth than the majority of adult books) but they often make an effort not to succumb to conventional gender roles or neat black/white world views - while retaining the romance and adventure that make a book easy to gobble up on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

For instance, the book I read Saturday was a re-telling of Snow White, called Fairest, except in this case the heroine was part gnome, and was generally considered to be hideous. It subverted the story in a lot of ways one could easily guess, stemming from Disney and other current updates of fairytales: the prince loved her better the way she was than when she briefly became beautiful, the evil queen was really just insecure, and in the end the heroine saved herself (though the prince did give her the Heimlich maneuver). But there were also lovely touches, like how the monarchy was one piece of a larger political puzzle, including an important council, and advisers that were not part of the nobility, and how that was really important to the health of the kingdom; and the fact that the queen didn't get killed at the end, she voluntarily went into exile, knowing that she wasn't a good queen; and the moment when the heroine realized that she was the one telling herself she was ugly - which is a moment the teenage girls reading this book probably need, whether they take conscious note of it or not.

I picked up Fairest because it was by the author of another young adult novel I love, Ella Enchanted (which was made into a horrible movie of the same name). The great thing about Ella Enchanted, besides the fact that it is quite fun to read, is that it's all about control. This young woman is under a spell so that she has to do what people tell her - a pretty good metaphor for life as a young girl seven hundred years ago. The climax of the book comes when the prince - who she loves, in a very sweet relationship of equals - asks her to marry him, and she has to refuse (which according to the spell she can't do) because if she marries him, she's afraid she will be made to hurt him. She breaks the spell, taking control of herself, and then asks him to marry her. It has all the sappy romantic fulfillment of any chick lit novel - it makes me all warm and fuzzy inside - but unlike most adult romances I've tried to read lately, it's clear that to be someone's life partner, you have to be in control of yourself. (And I don't mean this in an overcontrolled, Type A way, I mean in a very basic, 'I choose to be in this relationship because I want to, and not because I've been swept off my feet by some hunk who knows better than me how to make me happy' kind of way.)

There was an article in the SF Chronicle today about Avenue Q - which I really want to go see! - and why things like muppets and cartoons are being used by adults/in adult forms of entertainment. The author suggested that these childish mediums allow radical ideas much more freedom than mainstream forms of entertainment for adults. I would suggest that it goes beyond using these mediums to offer radical ideas to adults - authors (who can fly under the radar much more than Disney or Pixar) are also using children's books to create characters and stories they couldn't tell to adults. (I didn't give it much time here, but I'd say, again, the His Dark Materials books are the strongest example of this I've seen, but there are others.)

Wow, that was much longer than I meant it to be.

why don't you love me all the time?

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 05:29:13 GMT

I forgot July 25th this year. (The day my father died, 12 years ago.) I didn't even think about it; it was Rawaan's last day, and we spent it making truffles and running around preparing for guests, putting together packages. Life goes on, and on. I think Dad would have liked the truffles, the excess of chocolate involved.

It's been a strange couple of weeks. A strange couple of months. I am alone again, but I'm not lonely yet. Recently: My car window was smashed. I got a check in the mail from my insurance company, not because of the smashed window, apropos of nothing in fact. I went to Orange County, and Seattle, and spent two nights in different hotel rooms, my head on strange pillows, blinking at the television instead of sleeping. I went through old journal entries looking for writing to submit with an internship application, and thoughts of all the things I have not recorded recently, and how I wish I had. There is nothing quite like the moment. But then again, some moments it is better not to remember in great detail.

Our cat (my new cat, my roommate Alex's cat from before we moved in together) Simon only loves me when we're alone. If no one else is in the house he lets me pick him up and hold him. He doesn't squirm or protest. He pushes his face into my hand, and cuddles up. If, however, there is anyone else nearby, he runs when I approach. He will sniff my fingers, but if I move them closer he bolts. He's like that boy (or girl) who whispers sweet nothings when there is no one to see, but when his (or her) friends are around, makes fun of you. Though it's possible that person only exists in movies. And anyway, Simon doesn't have friends, just other people he dislikes as much as he dislikes me.

The Trap?

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 21:13:46 GMT

Just read this book review about why today's youth is not more politically involved. The answer: the increase in cost of living and increasing wage gap between corporate and public service jobs means that we literally can't survive on the kind of activist lifestyle our parents might have chosen - to be a teacher or a journalist now, or work at a non-profit, means scraping by if you happen to live in a big city where many of those jobs are located. If you want to have a house, and children, and be solidly middle class, you have to sell out to some extent or another. The book, "The Trap" by Daniel Brook, looks at a number of educated young people who tried to do something creative or activist for a few years, before deciding it was too difficult, or even impossible.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. My two roommates are Fellows with the State of California, which means they are severely underpaid, and are both working for the courts. Other good friends of mine work for government agencies and non-profits, or are entering Teach for America. No one, as far as I know, is starving, or even working a second job. Some of these people use free time to make music and art. Many don't.

On the other hand, I know a lot of people working at Google and other large tech companies in the area. I don't think they've sold out, because as far as I can tell, they really enjoy their jobs, but it's true that they are not saving the world.

And then there's me. Technically I work for a for-profit firm, though most of my actual work is done on the non-profit side. I'm in consulting, but instead of helping corporations make more money, we help government agencies work better (that's the idea anyway). I make a very comfortable wage, even in San Francisco - I have a car, I am saving up to travel - but I'm not going to run out and buy an iPhone. What I do could be counted as public service: we work to improve programs for children, the elderly, and people with developmental disabilities. I don't feel like I've sold out - but I also don't feel like I'm doing all I can for the world - or much of anything at all. I also have little time or energy to pursue writing. I think about submitting articles, trying to get freelance journalism work, but the effort feels great for very little return, given that I am already working a full time job. I sat down and worked on a story on Sunday, for the first time in a month. It felt great. But I don't have time to work on it the rest of this week.

I've looked into other jobs, only to turn away when I see that it would be a $15,000 pay cut from what I'm currently making. But that's pretty standard, for an entry-level non-profit job. Could I live on that much, here? I'm pretty sure I could. Could I maintain my current standard of living? (pretty nice apartment, dinners out a couple times a week, airplane tickets home to see my family every couple months, growing my savings account) No. So it comes down to what's most important to me. Having not felt like I had a very secure income for a while, I'm really enjoying not worrying. It's not the consumption; I could cut back on that. It's that I don't feel sick every time I look at my bank balance. I don't second guess every purchase I make. It's knowing that I have a cushion. That's important to me. And knowing that I have all that on my own; I've earned this security. It's not dependent on anyone else.

I think I've gotten off track. I suppose on balance I do agree with the main thrust of the argument - if it was a little less scary to take a pay cut and do something I believe in, I would do it. But I could also take that plunge, and survive, if I was willing to sacrifice a little peace of mind.

rootless and windswept

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 16:17:24 GMT

Last week I started to write an entry and wrote quite a bit - and then suddenly I hit the wrong key and it was gone. But just now when I came to update, it asked me if I wanted to restore my entry - and here it all is back again! So I am going to put that under a cut.

Last Sunday was the Pride Parade - I believe San Francisco's is officially the biggest. The whole week before was Pride actually, and there were rainbow flags everywhere, and crowds in the Castro (the "gay" neighborhood). Erica and I went to a movie at the GLBTQ film festival in the Castro on Friday, which turned out to be truly horrible, really, worst film I have seen in years... I won't say ever, because those types of absolutes are hard to justify, but it was really bad. Sad to say, movies do not have to be good, just because they are gay friendly and the theater is full of lesbians, predisposed to approve.

But the Parade itself was wonderful. I went with Erica, and we held hand and made out on an inordinate number of street corners, just because we could. We bought matching "I [rainbow] San Francisco" t-shirts. We were, in short, ridiculously cute and happy. The parade goes down Market street, the main street that cuts through town, and then the celebration goes for many blocks north. There were different stages for music, and lots of booths handing out information, and free stuff, and not-free stuff (mostly rainbow themed), and there were lots of pretty gay boys and lots of straight people and lots of everyone - the whole city comes out I think (no pun intended). It was sunny and bright and lovely everywhere you turned (except perhaps Leather Alley, which was interesting, but I wouldn't say lovely, necessarily).

We didn't see too much of the Parade - we got there after it started, and were standing pretty far back, so we could only see the people on floats, or the very tops of people's heads. People had complained that the parade has gotten very corporate, and while that is true, I also like Erica's take on it, which is that twenty years ago no corporation would be caught dead sponsoring a gay pride parade, so perhaps we should be happy and embrace the mainstream-ness of it all. And I have to admit, Google had the best float that I saw - George Takei (of Star Trek, and more recently, Heroes fame) sat in a raised chair by a fake console, and occasionally got up to join the Google employees doing some kind of dance involving hip rotation. Photos of various parade bits under the cut.

As to my reaction/how I fit into all of this... It is hard to pinpoint. I have always sort of wanted to be a gay boy, so embracing the pride parade, and rainbows, and gay culture isn't new or weird. I would have gone to the Parade even if I wasn't dating a girl. On the other hand, as we were walking through the crowds, a group of teenagers from the Gay-Straight Alliance Network stopped us and asked us if we wanted to get married - for $5 they loaned us a top hat, a veil (gender roles still full in force), plastic rings, fake flowers, and took a polaroid of us decked out. I probably would not have done that if I wasn't dating a girl.

I am torn, I think, between not wanting everything to be identity politics - I can be with who I want to be with, and it shouldn't define me, as a person, I am everything I have always been - and knowing that I live in a fragile bubble of acceptance and peace. If I lived somewhere walking down the street with Erica led to people yelling bad things at me, maybe I would identify more strongly, as a reaction.

[And this is where that discussion got cut off, and I do not have the energy to finish it now.]

Anyway, now a week later. I am moving tomorrow. I am meeting Erica's parents in an hour (they are in town on vacation). I am a little stressed, but in the way that I can step back and look at myself being stressed and laughed. Tomorrow night I will be living with two dear friends. I will go to sleep in a different room and wake up there, and eat breakfast at a table with chairs instead of sitting on a stool (there is no table for eating in my current apartment). In between I just have a 20 item To Do list, a brunch, and a lot of heavy lifting to get through. No problem.

Moving is always a little sad - the actual act of packing makes me sad, I think because I associate it with leaving. Enough now, when I am not leaving anyway, but rather becoming closer to people, I feel an unaccountable sadness creeping in. One minute I think I have too many things - so much junk - and the next I think how easy it is to pack up my whole life, and how I have no roots anywhere. (Maybe I am sad about other things though, and I am just projecting it onto moving.)

I should go, pack, etc. Also get dressed for brunch. Eek.

Prolix ravings about how I hate having a cold, especially right before a test

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 18:25:03 GMT

Sometimes I hate my body.

I am taking the GRE tomorrow. I have been studying for weeks. I have memorized math formulas. I have written practice essays. I made flash cards. But it may not matter now, because today I have a cold. A wet cough, blocked sinuses, runny eyed cold. I can barely concentrate on my work screen. I have to stop and blow my nose every five to ten minutes. If I don't drink water constantly, I start coughing. Not exactly ideal test taking form.

Maybe it will be fine. I am ready for this test, I think I can do well. I am just not sure I can do well with a head that feels like it's stuffed with cotton, and blurry vision from my leaking eye (for some reason, only the left one is watery.) It's too late to cancel or reschedule. My only option is to go and take it, and try to judge at the end of the four hour ordeal, if I did well or not. If I don't think I did well, I just cancel the scores, swallow the $150 fee and pay another $150 to take it in a few weeks, hoping that next time my body cooperates a little better. If I think I did okay, whatever the actual result, I accept the scores, and (if I am wrong) have to live with low scores which will be sent to all schools, along with whatever scores I get later, and which unfortunately can't be explained with a little asterisk and a footnote saying that I was coughing up phlegm at the time.

I know that this is not that big a deal. It will be fine. I will get into grad school, no matter what happens tomorrow. It is the lack of control that bothers me, I think. I am brought low by something so random, so stupid, something I would complain about a little but shrug off if it was any other week. This is the moment when I want to be a brain, floating in a jar, when I want to be free of fleshly encumbrance. (This is hyperbole - mostly.)

Good words I learned while studying for the GRE: meretricious (tawdry), prolixity (verbositing, wordiness), mulct (defraud someone), palimpsest (a parchment that was erased and used again).

In the my-life-is-actually-really-great category: we found a new apartment! On the very first try! It was so easy, and quick, and it is in a perfect location (just off Haight on Fillmore, within one block of three Thai restaurants, three Indian restaurants, three cool cafes, a Walgreens, a health food store, many bus lines, and in easy walking distance to a number of neighborhoods I love.) Plus, it has a big, sunny kitchen, and a deck! And a big living room! and it's cheap!

Also, tomorrow night after the test, I am going to see Meshell Ndegeocello, who (though I cannot pronounce her name) I have loved since high school.

And next weekend, Erica is throwing me a Talent Show. At a real coffee shop. With commemorative T-shirts. If you are going to be in SF, and have not yet gotten the memo, you are required to come (and ideally, perform.) It's a benefit for Action for Hunger, which helps people in Darfur. And there will be pie.

to say quickly, how I am

Tue, 29 May 2007 05:49:08 GMT

I am tired, and happy. Work is busy busy. I am taking the GREs in less than two weeks. I am moving on July 1, into a new apartment, as yet hypothetical, with my friends Mel and Alex. This as-yet-to-be-discovered apartment will be full of people, and food, and NPR, and giggling fits. So many good things. I have no idea what I am doing, about work, or how long I am going to stay, or any of that, but I am telling myself it will work out. I want to be here, I want to live with my friends, and maybe when things calm down I can devote myself to a job search. Or maybe I will just hold out where I am a couple extra months, and leave a little later to travel.

My mom thinks I should take up Rawaan's offer and move to Dubai, and get a job in journalism, where I can gather experience, and become a Middle East correspondent, and then spend the rest of my life traveling and writing. Which sounds pretty good to me. (Though she also wants me to move to Portland, so there's some kind of internal dissonance...or just what she wants for me, and what she wants for herself, which is understandable - and of course I want both too, to be here and gone.)

My weekends are full from now until late July. With wonderful things, so wonderful (besides the GRE). Concerts. Dinners. The Talent Show (oh oh oh baby). Travel. Rawaan. Many other visitors. Camping. Moving. This summer is going to go so quickly. It feels almost over already. If I take a deep breath, it will be September.

disappointments, linguistic and otherwise

Fri, 18 May 2007 23:06:48 GMT

I looked up reification today, because it is one of those words that I ought to know what it means, and generally pretend to know what it means, and nod when it is used in a sentence, but could not actually define. It turns out reification is a type of fallacy, as when you treat an abstraction like a reality - such as discussing the government as if it was a person who could want things, or hate you.

This makes me sort of sad, because if I had to guess what reification was, outside of any context, I would have guessed that it had something to do with ruler-worship, or lifting something up - to reify in my mind evokes the image of a throne. (Obviously, somewhere in the back of my brain I equated reify with deify, except I substituted a king for a god.) To find out that reification is actually a bad thing is rather disappointing. (I am ignoring the fact that my false version of reification would probably also be a bad thing, implying the creation of hierarchy, etc.)

I applied for a job, a really exciting job that paid well and would have been doing exactly what I wanted to be doing, in the field I wanted to be doing it in. Today I got an email saying I did not get it. I didn't even get an interview. I actually felt qualified for this job, unlike the vast majority of jobs I look at. If I can't even get an interview for this one, why even bother applying to any others? Which leaves me with the question: stay at my current job, so that I can stay in San Francisco, apply to (and presumably be rejected from at least a large percentage of) many other jobs, so that I can stay in San Francisco, or run away and be fancy free and lonely for a while?

I woke up today with a sore neck, for no reason I can figure out. Not just a little sore, really sore. So sore that I can only move it gingerly, if at all. So sore that I have been fantasizing about Vicodin all day, and wincing and making faces and grabbing at it whenever I turn my head, or tilt my neck forward or back. I have the 22 year old body of an old woman, new aches and pains every day.

This is entirely too morose an entry. Last night I had dinner at Elizabeth and Priya's, with Erica and Mel and Alex and Priya and other wonderful people. After dinner we sat around and the musicians among us passed around guitars and sang along, in harmony, their own songs, old songs everyone knows. Erica sang a song she wrote (not about me) called Straight Girl, and lots of assumptions were made around the room, and I had to hide behind my scarf. I sat there (over the course of the night, not at that particular moment) and thought, I am so lucky, to be here with good food and friends making music.