Flushed.

Tomorrow, after an extended bout with poverty, I will have money in my bank account again. To celebrate this fact, I spent 10 of my last 15 dollars on thai curry and rice for dinner, and then looked at some shirts online until the fact that all the models wearing said shirts were only visible from the bridge of their nose downward started to freak me out. Why aren't the models allowed to show their eyes?
I also have noted that the "new" "style" for "skirts" is that they be short and pulled up to right under the boob area. So, you know, I'm looking forward to having my eyes raped repeatedly from whenever the weather starts to stay above 70 degrees until oh, late November or so. Meanwhile, I will continue my plans to create a hybrid nun's habit/mechanic's jumpsuit so that I can see myself into the post-swine flu zombie apocalypse in comfort and style, while revealing as little of my flesh as possible so as to not unduly tempt the undead. Plus, wimples!

But hey, I didn't intend to write about clothes or anything even vaguely related to that tonight. I have actually been carrying around an inner blogging narrative all day today, which is quite sad, especially since I've been awake since 5:30am. Teaching at 8am requires me to get up earlier and earlier, in order to do whatever grading or lesson planning is left over from the night before, or just to stare uncomprehendingly at my alarm clock until I can make myself get out of bed. I hate it vehemently until about the time when I get coffee in my hand and then leave the apartment, and then I always feel won over by the surprise thrill of being awake early in the morning. There's something about being proudly stoic that gives me a little rush, as I walk down the street fully dressed and cognizant at 7am, before all save one shop (a restaurant/cafe place) in my neighborhood have opened. The morning is usually cloudy, and never warm, deliveries are made and the sidewalks are hosed off, and it suits me well.

I don't feel well-suited to my element, or my environment, all that often, and so those moments are particularly sweet. These early mornings, or when I sit in my advisor's office, or when I've written something or said something at school that hits the mark -- then I have that realization, "ohhh, so I am alive after all, aren't I?". Like the first time you breathe in winter air in the morning, and the cold goes up in your nose and then down to your lungs, your eyes open wider or maybe you close them tight, and just...ahhhhhh. Everything around you exists acutely, the edges could slip and cut you in half like a paper doll.

This reminds me of an image I once came up with for an imaginary movie I wanted to make while I lived in Japan. A woman would sit in a folding chair, with bay windows behind her covered in gauzey white drapes. She'd wear a black dress with a high neck and a wide skirt that reached the floor, and she'd sit in a wide stance with her knees far apart. And draped across her would be the body of a boy, alive but perhaps unconscious or somehow asleep, heavy like the body of Jesus in the Pieta. Then she'd draw a bow across his body like a cello.
I thought of this scene for no reason, and then I wanted to make a film that would have this image in it, so that it could exist somewhere outside of my mind. The concept for it went on and on, but I never wrote any of it down, because it was so far out of my element and something in me feels ridiculous for pretending I have more artistic capability or integrity than a goat. Yet I don't quite want to relinquish the ideas either.


In completely unrelated news, the "lingerie" on the urban outfitters website is so goofy and trashy it makes me want to go find someone to dress up for. Mesh, lace, and ribbons? Well, why the hell not!

The Women.

Banal observation time. Today, the weather is perhaps too beautiful. Crisp enough to make walking outside feel exciting, but the sun is still shining, compounding my regret that I am currently in a basement office writing a paper, and that I won't be finished with class for another four and a half hours. I can't wait until my schedule isn't so campus-oriented; today would be perfect for drinking coffee and reading on the balcony.
This reminds me that, as soon as I get paid, I can perhaps finally attempt to grow a few delicious things out on that little space. Tomatoes and basil seem easy enough, as long as I can convince the roommate to stop feeding squirrels until the weather gets cold again. I don't find those little fuckers nearly as cute as she does; definitely not cute enough to forfeit the possibility of delicious fresh tomatoes.
I would like some chemist to find a way to reproduce the scent a tomato stem has right after you've pulled the fruit off of the vine...it could be my "signature scent". Right now, I smell like skin, and maybe a little tinge of soap.

Non-banal observations next. I've been thinking and talking a good bit the last few days about women and being "emotional", or as our society has deemed it, "being a crazy bitch". In general, I think we've come about three or four feet forward since the days of being diagnosed with hysteria, although the language of the discussion has changed. Women, during relationships with men (especially while beginning them), are all I think afraid of coming off as "crazy"; ie, too attached, too interested, too irrational, too emotional. Controlling these emotions becomes an obsession, and while the object of our affection might be spared from experiencing how we "really" feel, the internalized debate over what can and can't be said/done/etc is definitely something of a hazard to the woman herself -- not to mention all her friends who have to hear about it endlessly. All the non-crushing have to step in as a sort of judicial panel: "Yes, it's okay to call him now." "No, I don't think that's a weird reaction to have." "No, don't text him once until he texts you twice." And so on, so on, so on...

But to what end? Looking back, I don't think I've ever regretted not "controlling" myself more. In general, exercising restraint has resulted in a sort of prolonging of an inevitable rupture; for instance, getting upset about not hearing from someone often results in trying to "keep cool", suppressing the feelings, and waiting it out. But that has never worked out in my favor. Sure, other girls will say that I did the right thing, but in the end, all it means is waiting an extra week or so before figuring out that Boy X is acting like a dickhead, that nothing I can do is going to fix said dickheadedness, and that I stressed myself out needlessly for said week instead of getting started on moving on.

And the few times I've just done crazy shit (punching that guy), I've never felt a moment's regret about it (except wishing that I could punch better). Why hold back the tears and the yelling and whatever else? Those are your emotions, man, get them out. Repressing them will just end up either a) putting you in therapy, or b) making you into an emotionally fucked-up asshole. Who I will then date? Yeah, probably that's the next step in that progression.

I'd go on, but someone gave me a liter of free diet coke, and I now have to pee out all that fucking aspartame...

The internet is a surveillance state.

One thing I feel goony about is all the times when I get into a jag of listening to one song over and over. Before the internet(!), I could escape from sharing the fact that I'd listened to one song ten times in a row because that was my own private life, goddamnit, and no one was looking over my shoulder as I set up my discman to repeat one song over and over again. But now, since I have the last.fm music logger thing (which I have actually had for four years now, dear god), I feel sort of extra nerdy about my occasional song obsessions, as well as any time I listen to something particularly cheesy. No one needs to know about that week in 2007 when I thought "Last Dance With Mary Jane" was a really good song. And yet!

And yet, I would feel pretty upset if one day the last.fm website were to disappear, and those years of my internet listening habits were no longer recorded. Especially as now it can even process the stuff I listen to on my beat-up ol' iPod, which I think is still a new-ish development. There I am in all that strange data, revealing to the world that the last 6 years or so of searching for music off the beaten track has done nothing to sever my dependence on listening to the Beatles.

It also makes me feel strange, and not so great in the end, that most everything I listen to exists only in the computerized world. Of course, if I had to rely on only being able to listen to music I had bought in a physical store, I would be royally fucked, since my dumb overeducated white poor person lifestyle doesn't leave a lot of extra monies for media purchases. Last weekend I bought a used novel for $5, and as of current writing I have $40 in my bank account for the rest of the month, so I feel pretty stupid about spending that $5 on words instead of food. Of course, the less money I have, the more I am drifting towards the truly idealized life of the scholar, which generally seems to require that one own clothes with holes in them (done) and be somewhat skeletal. Mind over body, and so forth!

In related news: I am pretty hungry. Luckily I have a lot of unliked clothing to try to sell to Buffalo Exchange, and I also can make an okay meal out of a can of beans and a can of tomatoes?

I have also noticed lately that when I run into a particularly pretty, well-dressed female acquaintance of mine on campus (I teach in the building her department is housed in, so I run into her about once a week or so), I find myself getting really cranky about the fact that she somehow manages to finance an ever-changing wardrobe on a TA's salary. And, you know, is all pretty and shit. This crankiness makes me feel bad of course, because what did she ever do besides suck less at life than I do?, but there it remains! Go away, overwhelming consumerist impulses, get the fuck outta here.

Every time I log into facebook, it is an affirmation of the fact that by and large, the people I have known are idiots. There's just no getting around it.

Psychedelicatessen.

Samson is sending up a gigantic new shoot, in that weird too-bright color of baby plants, and the leaves are even starting to unravel off the stalk. Which is comforting, as before it looked like aggressive flora genitalia sticking up out of the moss. I am proud of the plant's progress, although it's not like I contributed anything to it besides semi-regular watering.

...And although I started writing this with the best of intentions, suddenly I am too sleepy to really want to continue. Things happened today, too -- I saw Slavoj Zizek wear yet another dirty t-shirt and talk about the future of capitalism, I heard Louis-Georges Tin talk about the construction of "heterosexuality", I ate more than one meal consisting of beans and tortillas. I rode a slow bus home, and passed some kind of crime scene, while an acquaintance sitting behind me said something about seeing a dead girl's body. I saw a picture of a misguided and angry middle-aged woman wearing a sunhat with teabags hanging off the brim.

All these things and more, and more. I'd like now to sleep, but then the dishes won't get done, or the laundry. Or the reading of various important things, the waking up by 6am, the going to teach something or other again, and so it goes. The week is over in two more days, and christ, how much haven't I done yet. I want to make a coccoon out of pillows and blankets and things that make me feel warm, and sleepy, and softly removed from time.

As a postscript, here's a goal I can get behind:

I am halfway through this and I like it.

Suburban monastery death poem: http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/dalevy/levy-l1.htm

(Finished it now, and it is indeed all good to me...better than my history seminar reading, although relevant to it, since it's a class on the '60s. d.a. levy can be my new dead imaginary friend. and he says:

note:

peace & awareness are
like two small birds
trying to leave the planet
because they are tired of dying

im not advocating anything

......which I can agree with as well).

Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow.

About a month ago, herr doktor put me on a higher dosage of my main anti-depressant med and started phasing me off of the other one. Turns out, after about a year and a half on those medicinals, I was still experiencing the symptoms of major depression. Which I guess I would have figured out on my own, if I hadn't been feeling so depressed?

To be more serious, I just sort of chalked a big mess of things up to being exhausted by school and in need of a break. And, you know, laziness. I have always been pretty sure that I am just an inherently lazy person.

Except! Things are getting a little different in Amy-town these last few days. Although I can't say my mood has changed (indeed, I have felt pretty sub-human the last week/weekend), suddenly I'm doing things. I have exercised in a substantial manner for the last three days -- something that almost never happens. I've been all throwing dumbbells up and dancing around and sweating til my hair starts to stick together and my chest has turned pink. And, you know, I kind of like it.

And then yesterday, while sitting at the bus stop, I wrote three short (unfinished) poems -- something I haven't done in probably two years, if not longer. The last one was excrement, but the first two weren't so terrible. The first one I'll stick here I guess (Lilly, you still read my blog, don't you?)

Walking home in pairs

the comedian said
"'Every living thing dies alone' --
Well, it isn't true,
Sometimes a relative stays
in the room
after they pull the plug."

I might be wrong about everything, and so I

And so I'd better have a baby
as soon as I turn thirty --
one with all the right
chromosomes,
one that will grow up
healthy,
one that can learn how to
feel guilt.


So, there's that nonsense. The other two were about sex and about getting stared at while waiting for the bus, respectively. Not like I know anything about those topics, of course...

Yesterday, I sat with a friend and ate a calzone and talked about a topic I've thought often about. This ties in a bit with the weird fact of my exercising -- anyway, being a person who lives in america, I feel pretty weird about my body a lot of the time. There's all the intimacy stuff of course (curse the day I found out that men have opinions on whether or not you have an ugly vagina...), but in a more day to day way I also often feel just rather oversized and unnecessary. At no time did I feel this more acutely than when I lived in Japan. And I'm sure it's because I'm already really fucking sensitive (in the bad way), but while I was there I felt from time to time as if I'd ceased to be a woman completely. I was taller than the men, I weighed as much as nearly two women, my hair was about three inches long and I didn't really do a great job of things like wearing makeup. I don't much wear skirts either, or like wearing dresses, or (this is sad, but true) always feel comfortable having my shoulders exposed in public. Not exactly feminine, although in the US I feel like I get by all right.
Not in Japan, though. This was sort of compounded by the fact that I couldn't buy clothes that were made for most Japanese women anyway. I bought men's jeans at Uniqlo and spent long, long periods of time hoping to find a place where I could buy shoes. Shirts I did okay with, but I could never get into the weird tunic-over-turtleneck thing that was going on while I lived there, so I certainly didn't appear "stylish". I coped a little by ceasing to get my hair cut, and by the time the year ended I could put it up in a standard ponytail. And I started buying earrings almost obsessively. But I still felt, at best, asexual, foreign, out of place.
And I feel like if that feeling had gone on, I could have easily "given in" and just embraced my weird almost-masculinity. Start wearing 60s throwback mod boots and army jackets, give myself spiky hair, I could've done that. And when I think about going back for a long period of time, I get a little scared -- how will I deal with it the next time? Grow my hair out long in defense, drop 30 lbs, what? It's painful to imagine.
The biggest element of diffence is, in a nutshell, that in America men will hit on me and in Japan they do not. It just isn't the way it works. And so much of my gendered sense of self, clearly, comes from this idea of reinforcement. I'm a lady because I look like these other ladies, because men see me as a lady, and so on. It is extremely weird to think of how easily all that can become loosened, and makes me wonder what "gendered" idea of myself I would hold onto in a vacuum.

This sort of ties into my thing about exercising in that I question whether I do it because I want strength or because I want to lose weight. To be honest, I want them both, because right now I feel like I look like shit and I know I couldn't lift something heavy or run a mile to save my life. But what of that will actually keep me moving?

This thought leads me on to talking about reinforcement again (ie, I rarely feel bad about my body when I have someone that desires me, but when I'm alone with just my head to judge it I feel like I'm a pile of shit shoved into a human-shaped bag), but surely I must quit writing. I have a doctor's visit to keep.

Postscript: The reason, of course, that I wanted to write all these rather mundane observations down was that I had believed in the past, at least, that I was tough enough to basically feel the same about myself in any context. Especially since I've been such a good hermit for most of my life. The Buddhists would tell me that my self does not exist anyway, so why bother, but of course I am concerned with this whole idea anyway.

Contradictions, contradictions.

Today has spanned perhaps too wide a spectrum of emotions for me. Let me tell you all about it!

Before writing my previous entry (emotion: terrible embarrassment), I overslept and missed attending the lecture I am currently TAing for (emotion: guilt). Lately I find myself sleeping like the most unpleasant parts of my subconscious have me in a headlock; the dreams are terrible and I'm too exhausted to wake up from them. Last night/this morning, I dreamt I was being hunted down by various hitmen, who'd get a million dollars if they managed to kill me. For some reason, I was also some kind of hitman, or at least really familiar with firearms, because whenever one found me I managed to avoid being killed and take them out instead. I even remembered to switch the safety off.
The panic of all this "action" lingered on after I woke up.

While I was being shot at/hiding from being shot at, my mother threatened to commit suicide (emotion: anger). I also had to take several buses/trains for no apparent reason (more panic), and rescue one of my sister's childhood friends from a large cult religion (which my mother had also joined) based on the idea that the world was about to experience a second biblical flood. Emotion here, of course, more anger. God, do I ever hate anything involving cults, or my mother.

Upon waking at long last (the dream went on from here, by the way, but I know how impossible it is to make a dream ever, ever sound interesting), I took a shower, which was at least rather pleasant. The morning coffee was also good, until I discovered captain moustachio douchebag's photo on the internets. And then, bus ride (frustration), class (moments of feeling smart again), and finally, the contradiction that made me feel like writing something today.

I volunteered last week to meet with a prospective student for our department, and after class I and a colleague met up with her. I've done this once before, and today I was surprised again to see myself becoming effusive about my advisor, classes, fellow students and all the rest of it. After all, as anyone who has read this blog or ever spoken to me knows, my experiences in grad school have been pretty tumultuous. I'm always broke, I have trouble with my workload, I don't always like teaching very much, LA frustrates me, and on it goes. And yet I still felt like it was my job to personally convince this girl to come study here anyway. I imagine patriotism feels something like this.

I even stuck around after our assigned meeting time to make sure the girl managed to get on her shuttle back to the airport, all the while talking about how our dissertation program is better than the ones they have at other schools, and on and on. Why do this? I have no idea if this school is the right fit for other people, since I've never done graduate work anywhere else. It feels, now that I'm home, as if I was being disingenious. At the same time, I was doing a great job of convincing myself that I was happy to be where I am.

Then, I got on the bus to go home, as I do every day. From somewhere behind me, I heard a girl say a terrible thing; worse, a terrible thing I would never have to hear if I did not live in LA. She said, "There's an Ed Hardy store at the Beverly Center. We can go there and buy whatever you want". That one really made me feel sad, there's just no way around it.

And now I'm home on Friday night, and I must say I feel at the end very melancholy. My roommate invited me out to karaoke, but I only like to sing around people I know well. But of course, I also hate sitting alone on weekend nights, feeling like a loser who should have made plans or have more friends.
Hopefully, the cure for this is listening to Al Green's "Tired of Being Alone" ten times in a row. You and me both, Reverend.

Fucking hell.

It only took a few months of the site's existence, and someone I dated is now up on"I bang the worst dudes" ( sorry-mom.com ). At least I did not, in fact, bang him...