Phaedrus and other fictions at 30,000 ft

I'm on a plane right now, an unlikely place to write this blog. But since I'm attempting to produce a sort of 2011 wrap up, maybe it's not the unlikeliest of places. After all, I have made four transatlantic trips during the past year. Since I'm not doing business on both sides, or either one, of the atlantic, that's quite a lot of back and forth. This is not the blog post I had intended, had started writing in my head for months, gathering up mental "notes-to-self" of the monumental and the anecdotal which is worthy to be included in my 2011 greatest hits. But then, that things don't turn up as planned (and as noted-to-self before falling asleep) really shouldn't surprise us anymore, should it?

I am on my way to Israel for the fourth time this year, and I am going sheerly from Sehnsucht to my family (there is no English noun that agrees with the notion of "I miss you", other than "longing" maybe but that is way too melancholic. This linguistic misfortune, which has not changed since the last time I lamented it, MUST be rectified. (Okay, fine, I apparently did not actually compose that lament anywhere outside my head. Hence lack of link to former blog post.)). That, and also because DH is on a road-trip with our (his? ours.) best friend, driving through the official South, and it made no sense for me to stay home alone in Chicago, right? I didn't join the road-trip for a number of reasons which made sense at the time, including "8 hours in the car a day? I don't think so" and also I was not in the best of health, and got anxious thinking about being so far out of my comfort zone, especially in a part of the country where grilled red meat (which I don't and can't eat) is an essential part of the diet. So, you see, I would have been a bore and a pest and generally would have had fun an insufficient percentage of the time and spent the rest worrying and whining. Don't ever take me on a road-trip, by the way. 

And it makes sense, just the two of them bonding and doing guys-stuff like grilling red meat and drinking whiskey and bourbon and smoking and going to the best restaurant in America outside of NYC and checking into a fancy hotel for the occasion and, wait a minute. 

... But! I am TOTALLY cool with that. Yes. And also, totally jealous (in all senses of the word).

ANYWAY. 

I am on the plane, and trying to read Geraldine Brooks' MARCH, but reading in a long overnight flight is arguably harder than reading on the subway. Invariably, there is a crappy movie screened (that is, on those old boeings that don't have individual screens. I didn't know these boeings still existed, either). Invariably, seeing it mute with the Hebrew titles just makes it lamer. Invariably, it is really really crappy, in the most banal of Hollywoodesque-misogynistic ways possible. Seriously, Ryan Gosling is, half the time, parading his mostly naked self (ok fine, I can LIVE with that), the other half, getting girls to sleep with him by using truly unsophisticated punchlines. Then he finds his soulmate (barf). It also stars Julianne Moore, and that fact just makes me sad. So, whenever something distracts me from my book, most often some pathetically uttered announcement about duty free items for sale on board! Ladiesangentlmmnnn!, I involuntarily raise my eyes from the page and get sucked into those platitudes. And nothing could be more different than what I'm reading, a "prequel" to Little Women that tells the life of their absent father Mr. March, away in the South during the civil war. Right now, he is describing in hindsight the time when he had just met his future wife. "How one longs, when in love, for a glimpse of the beloved". I mean, come on, that could have been a line out of the Phaedrus, right? 

And I'm thinking, I don't even find Ryan Gosling particularly attractive. Indeed, he is, empirically, not-my-type (way too, well, big), and DH, empirically (more in terms of crushes than actual ex-boyfriends, though) is. But I don't have a type anymore, I think to myself, because I suddenly feel myself ten years from now loving my then 45-year-old husband. Excuse my sappiness. Really I have gone too far. But I'm sitting here in the sky, sleep deprived, having mulled over the PHAEDRUS for heavenssake for the last week, half worrying my husband is acting out a very rated R fantasy in Charleston, SC, and I have this Recognition. The familiarity, the comfort, of his body even while I know it's going to change. The thought now of ever falling out of love with him overcomes me in its inconceivability. 

We've been together for seven years. I get new gray hairs and he seems to be pleased with the fact (sappy, barf, cut it out). I've been feeling older, feeling old – and writing about it here – for a while now, and it has to do with N's death and that I'm rapidly approaching not only my thirties but her-age-when-she-died. But lately I've been thinking more in terms of growing-old-with: I've spent my twenties with DH. And they are very nearly spent. 

Our first year together was a year of Sehnsucht and long distance phone calls.

A night or two ago, with DH in the mountains of NC and I at home in the last throes of avoiding-my-Phaedrus-paper-deadline, we spoke on the phone. I suddenly had a violent moment of recognition: I heard in his voice his-seven-years-ago-voice. And it wasn't like seeing a younger face through the wrinkles and added freckles and gray hair and under-eye sagging. It was the same voice. His voice has not changed. (Has mine?)
I realized, there truly is something about the voice that is the core of our being. 

Momentous moment of 2011, no. 1.

For the Stephanie-ness

Two "unexpected" things happened over Thanksgiving weekend. First, the weather was too grey to accommodate a decently-lit daylight time video of the rest of the living room. Obviously, with my minimal-to-non-existent technical skills, in the first video you can't even really appreciate how nice-looking the one lamp we do have in the living room is. Second, I procrastinated. I saw it coming, having spent two Thanksgiving weekends here before (you got to hand it to the American people, though, working out their national holidays to make for spectacularly long weekends, and don't you let no lunar calendar mess with you!), and also, having lived with myself for almost three decades. I saw it coming, and tried to brace myself against it, but procrastinated I did nonetheless. I am also guilt-tripping myself (how unexpected of me!) about posting a video instead of a normal post, like I'm selling out on my responsibilities to the faithful audience of my written word. See, beyond my routine assignments (Demosthenes, please get out of my life, you remind me of the most fascists of Israeli demagogues. (That obviously says something perverted about me and my status as a graduate student in a Classics department…)), this long weekend was also supposed to be devoted to reading the Phaedrus and figuring out how I'm going to make a seminar paper out of it. In a way, it is seriously disturbing that out of all the texts in this Ancient Aesthetics course, I've chosen the Phaedrus as my topic though I have read it zero times before this seminar and did not even make it halfway through the dialogue on the week we were discussing it (it's a long m.f.ing dialogue). Which totals zero times I have read the whole dialogue, the dialogue on which I should promptly produce a seminar paper. How did I get thus far in my classical career without reading the Phaedrus? Well. You really must be bored with my self-deprecation by now, so I won't get into the details (which would have, for a change, been tinged with frustration over the establishment of higher education I formerly frequented). Let's just say that until very recently I mostly thought Socrates is infuriatingly arrogant and not really interested in teaching anybody anything, hence reading Plato is a pain in the ass. Also, let's just say that on my thirtieth year on this earth, I have started reading Plato (and some great articles on him. Indulge me in my starry-eyed-yet-disillusioned not-quite-an-undergrad-anymore (was I ever? Like, was I ever a young 19 year-old? But I digress.) enthusiasm). So, the video experiment was supposed to be a short-cut in procrastination (if ever there was a more ridiculous oxymoron), fulfilling my blogging urge-and-commitment and yet leaving me more time to be super productive on this long weekend (on the side of productivity, mind you, I also ultimately count cleaning the bathroom. I consider it no small feat that we manage to consistently not live in a pigsty).

HOWEVER. The two above-mentioned surprising consequences of late November in Chicago transpired. Also, I felt that in order to absolve for the abysmally-lit panegyric of my couch, I need to supply my blog with some actually written content in addition to just another video (though I am sure you are all holding your breath to see the rest of the room, not to mention to hear my Hebrew voice-over narrations once more! Let me tempt you some more: the next recording I make I will reveal my Hebrew neologism translating procrastination. One simply CANNOT MISS OUT on THAT!). So, this was a here goes.

***

When this blog becomes what it is supposed to be, a little less apologies a little more random thoughts – even if they don't fit into a coherent narrative, which they won't have to do because I'll be updating more than thrice a year –– Ah, when will I heed the Nietzschean appeal to become what I am…! Opportunity to teach Nietzschean texts, the best thing for me that came out of the establishment of higher education I formerly frequented (how could I have been so bold as to do that without Plato?!? Too much of my Plato-bias obviously comes from Nietzsche. What presumptuousness. Sigh. Self-deprecation. Sigh) –– when this blog becomes what it is, I will also just randomly add something that happened to me the other day. I was walking home from campus and passed the park. There were two American-Asian sisters, ages 8 and 12, something like that, nearby. The younger one was on a bike. She kept saying: "Let's make up names!". They were watching me as I walked by. I looked back at them. I kept walking, and when I was with my back to them, I heard the younger one: "Stephanie?…." and the older one confidently: "Nooo." I couldn't help but look back at them and smile. Both were old enough to look a bit embarrassed.

Growing up (or, spending two years of quintessential childhood) in the States, I could relate to them, kids with perfect American accents, whose imaginaire is inhabited by Stepanies and Amys and Emilys, some straight out of a Judy Blume novel, and who make up stories in their heads and out loud.But being cast as a Stephanie myself, that was kind of incredible.Breaks my heart a bit to realize how much of a "grownup" I am for these kids, with their games out-loud. Also, obviously, sisters. Break my heart, I mean.

Where I'm blogging from

A new and exciting feature on your favorite, least-oft-updated, blog!

I have been promising myself and others to post pictures of our newly furnished living room, and instead, I had the brilliant idea to create a video showcasing our stuff!... In some nook of my fancy-ridden capacity for reasoned judgements, I figured this would be less time-consuming than producing a written post.

Let's just say, yeah right.

My first mistake was, of course, not to give it a tiny short first shot, but to use my iphone-camera (for the very first time) to survey the whole living room, creating a monstrous 6:38 mins, 500 MB video. Which couldn't even be imported from iphone to computer, for some mysterious reason. In this first video I also kept flipping the camera around... Which led to take #2, shorter but still pretty long (and showing technical ineptitude of various sorts as well, which you will have the honor of surveying) – too long to fit the upload-limit here (or on flickr).

Hence, youtube.

Bear in mind that I have written all this (and it takes me longer than you think), and still only 37% of the video has uploaded on youtube. You'd think it's a groysse metzieh.

Anyway, I am determined to save time here! Procrastination begone! so I have to conclude this post – which is now, obviously, only one out of several of the remaining living-room video installments, to be shot at some future point, a magical point where procrastination will no longer be an issue – before youtube finishes uploading. So, there you have it. Where our lives take place. I'm excited about the shape it's taking, though I rarely leave my much less nicely decorated room (read: desk) and just spend time in our truly lovely living room.

One last comment: I've decided to voice-over in Hebrew, partly as a test, to see if anyone of my endangered-species non-Israeli readers would rise up and rebuke me (i.e. a test to see if this species is not in fact extinct).

And so, a new and exciting feature on your low-techiest blog! Comments, as they say, welcome.

arrrgggg. youtube can only tell me that there is a video-audio sync problem after taking 45 mins or so to upload the whole damn thing?!?! I need, apparently, to change some settings, and then re-upload. This will take longer than I thought. In the meantime, I bring you homemade pizza baked on a newly gifted pizza-stone. I would say, definitely more exciting than my narrating a corner of the living room.

UPDATED! Excited update: youtube was just screwing with me! everything's fine with the sync. Voila!

Birthday Blues

About 15 or 16 years ago, at this time of the year – around Rosh HaShana – we went on a family trip to France. We spent a few days in some pastoral setting near Lac d'Annecy, and then probably a week in Paris, I'm not sure about the details. I do remember sending a postcard home to my middle school best friend, amazed at how, though it was still scorchingly summery back in Israel, there was already (still? always? it is in the Alps after all) snow on the tip on the nearest mountain. Well, two nights ago, mid-September, I broke out my heavy blanket, for it is cold in our new apartment. Cold, and it still smells of paint, so I try to keep the windows open as much as possible, allowing the cold to come in. Yes, we moved. We actually bought this place. And renovated about a third of it. That happened. And we spent sleepless nights googling about oil- vs water-based wooden floor coating, and dining table designs, and sconces (we learned the word sconces. THAT happened) – yet we are still mostly in the dark after the sun sets because we haven't yet got enough lamps and light fixtures to accommodate these ceiling-outlet-bereft rooms – and hand-held shower heads, and toilet heights (indeed!), and what to do if your freshly-coated walls are alligatoring (we learned the word etc.) and your painting company is a bunch of incompetent liars. And we chose a granite top for the bathroom sink (possibly the sole and single contribution to the state of affairs of our new home that is truly my very own and did not involve DH web-researching for hours, you see, most of the obsessive googling and the subsequent loss of sanity as well as negotiating with the contractors, was DH's part) – luckily, I made a good, raspberry-colored bespeckled, choice). And spent hours upon hours upon hours with AT&T internet customer service – I shit you not, one morning I was on the phone with them (on the phone meaning mostly on hold) for close to three hours - and since the particular details of my plight with the unfortunate incompetents taking calls is not that interesting, really, I advise you to read a fellow Israeli's amusing account (go to USA2). And before all that, while vacationing in Greece (oh yes, THAT, too, HAPPENED), we were on the constant search for a wifi spot, in order to make sure we are getting our windows installed to the appropriate satisfaction of the condominium board – and yes, that was as vacation-appropriate as you imagine. On one of these internet escapades, we were informed by DH's sister that she is getting married, and right away, six weeks after we leave back to Chicago from Israel, a visit which we planned to directly follow the Greek adventure, obviously. And a few days ago, we were back from another, 3.5-day long, trip to Israel, a fun and exciting visit which I'm glad we never even considered not taking because I truly love my sister in law and it was so great being with her and her awesome husband on this special family-occasion.

This event marked the official end of summer: now we are back to our cold, new, where-did-I-put-that-thingamajig-I'm-sure-I-packed-it, apartment. Despite the feeling that everything is still out of place – including, and especially, all our 100% wool sweaters, which are lining chairs and shelves and window sills, most importantly not piled in dark closets ever since I found moth-bites in four of them, and the damn moths have good taste, nibbling only on my Club Monaco pieces!, BUT! after repeatedly deciding to buy moth repellents and then being disgusted by the instructions on the box, I discovered the joy of being a home-owner, where the monthly assessments cover exterminator services, yes please, let someone else take care of this for me! – despite that, we are getting used to the kitchen, undoubtedly the room where we have spent most of our time (and the best lit room as well). So, the other night we produced the ultimate comfort food, to make us feel at home, and carry us through this chilly fall with extra portions of chicken stock stacked neatly in the freezer.

Obviously, it is the season to be thinking, How is it possible that summer is over? and, What the hell have I been up to? and also, the inevitable No! This is not possible, I have hardly done even a quarter of the research I intended and now school will start and crush me under the workload!!! In other words, season of obsessively guilty reconsideration. Come to think of it, that's pretty much my existential default, and the main content of this here blog. Whenever I come back from a visit in Israel, I feel like I need to spend even more time communicating with the friends I just saw (if I was lucky), partly apologizing for not having spent as much time as I wanted with them, partly trying in vain to pick up the inevitably incomplete conversation where it was left off, partly scurrying to greet them a happy new year...

I always return from Israel with an unmistakeable frustration, with a particular heartache over all the relationships that are meaningful to me, taken up and cut short again. And because that scurried communication with recently-bid-farewell loved ones almost always fails to materialize, updating this blog becomes a commitment, an assignment looming for weeks on end on my mental to-do list.

* * *

15 or 16 years ago today, September 18th, we all woke up in a charming wooden cabin in the French Alps, and it was N's birthday. For her breakfast, I picked bits of dried strawberry out from the granola and used them to trace a heart shape on the white mound of yogurt. I have a vague recollection that those fuchsia-colored treats were in fact the slightly higher-in-calories component that she was trying to avoid eating.

It was always so hard to please you, N.

To be honest, your birthday has been for me the most definitive "deadline" for writing something here. I don't try to deny it anymore, not to myself, and not to whoever is still reading this: this blog is about my living with the grief of your death.

All this quasi-meaningful sequence of quasi-sentences that I've been piling up here up to now, all this verbal content blog-filling, which is a way of adding some kind of quasi-creative or at least almost-productive content to my life, even if it consists mostly of a nihilistic bemoaning of the nothingness that life, and mine in particular, is (*) – I just had to get all that out of the way, so I could deal with one of the few things that makes sense to me in this life through its utter senselessness.

(*) Including that day when I felt so shitty I wrote a self-deprecatory apology to a friend, wherein I explained that I have "abysmal self-esteem". It had to do with how I can not make any decisions anymore without DH (except, perhaps, choose granite counter tops), and how we have become pathologically dependent on each other, to the point of second guessing everything the other does and ourselves (especially myself) as well. Also on the plate was what my first grade teacher told me at some point: "You have ten questions for the day – use them properly!", a saying which I remember less per se than for how it was reiterated like a piece of folkloric wisdom by my mother, when what she essentially meant was, Little girl, you are getting on my nerves. Anyway, I can guarantee that no matter how bad you are feeling, describe yourself using the word abysmal and you will feel worse. Upon meeting recipient of said apology, a conversation ensued about whether I suffer from a bad case of low self-esteem or just an abysmal case of severe self-consciousness (and are they not, to some extent at least, coincidental). You are welcome to weigh in on this debate. (*)

A couple of months ago, shortly after we returned to Chicago for the first time this summer, I dreamt of N. In most dreams of N up till that one, N and I are fighting horribly, basically just screaming indecipherable things at each other. In this dream, though, I am almost completely aware of the fact that I'm dreaming (something that to my recollection has never happened to me before, and it still seems doubtful to me that it is possible). N knocks on my door, I open, and when I see her I literally jump for joy, smiling as wide as is physically possible, hugging her and crying out: I'm so HAPPY you came to visit me! And the dreaming-awareness part is, that that is what I truly mean: I'm so glad and grateful that you came to pay me a visit. It will be sweet and brief and I will miss you horribly when it's over and see you next time you appear in my dream.

I woke up feeling sad but not devastated, serene even, believing that I've reached some kind of new phase in life, at least in life with(out) N. This belief has slightly faded since, and there have been more "bad days" than good. Probably, I think, because I've bought a house, and not only will N never see it, it is also such a huge "adult" step that she will never take.

I wear your silver-flower ring on my right fourth finger. On good days, I consider myself healthy enough to realize that I can know you're there with me all the time and feel comfort in it.

I recently started watching with DH all the episodes of Mad Men. We're almost through the third season, which I'm pretty sure you never reached. I mentioned this to my mother, and I hear the silence on the other end of the line, thinking, does she know this is also my way of being close to you? Does she think I'm "over" you, that I am able to watch Mad Men without being crushed by the memory of you? Is it possible both things are true at once?

N, you should have been 34 years old today. I think of you every day. I tell you about things that no one else could understand. I miss you.

The FUB

The time-lapses between posts here are just getting longer and longer (which is not to say that in my head I haven't written, or at least started to write, dozens of posts in the last few months). OK, now that we've got the sorry-for-being-lame part out of the way, I can get on with it. And to my current obsession: sourdough starter. My short little span of attention is suffering from yet another source of distraction – will my little baby sourdough starter make it to maturity? Will I not kill it? Will it not kill me?!? As is my wont, I started out without exact instructions – I had an envelope of store-bought sourdough starter culture sitting in the cupboard for many months, which did or did not mean it was expired, and had apparently lost the instructions that came with it, but then I sort of improvised according to starting-from-scratch recipes nonetheless, in a vain attempt to tone down my obsessive tendencies, believing it will all work out – but now of course I am obsessively reading about it, in fact, mostly re-reading my three main sources of information and trying my best to do exactly as they suggest – after all it is a microorganism! that has to be fed regularly! at the same time of day because it acquires a memory! PLEASE, let not my sourdough starter develop separation anxiety at this tender age!! – measuring and feeding, discarding and measuring, feeding and worrying. I believe we have endured the phase where the reigning bacteria is not yeast but some kind of vomit-smell producing nastiness (this is real, apparently. Cf. above "it might kill me" link). But I'm not sure that nasty part is all over and hope I won't have to throw it all out soon. As is also my wont, I am mostly worried about what will be in the farther future, as if I haven't enough unknown to deal with as it is, wondering what exactly is the right schedule for preparing the starter when I will actually want to bake something (bread, perhaps?) while still maintaining the rest in shape. One blogger-authority feeds his starter at night, while the other feeds hers in the morning. CONUNDRUM. Wish me luck in getting to that next level of anxiety, dear readers.

What finally pushed me to start the sourdough project I've been putting off for months was the sad realization that most of my jar of active dry yeast has died on me. A moment, if you will.
One cake ended up in the trash, and another final attempt at cinnamon rolls, while it was not wholly unsuccessful – as far as yummy delicious rugelach-like cinnamon cookie-treats go, they were actually great – did seem to prove that the yeast is not doing all that it should.
All this has been taking place at our household during the week of The Festival of the Unleavened Bread (most hilarious translated religious terminology, possibly ever. Probably anything that starts with THE FESTIVAL OF will win that title, though).

UPDATE: I have indeed thrown out almost all of the starter I was trying to maintain (two batches in two different containers! just to be on the safe side!!), and what is left is acting out on me, probably because I've switched from night- to morning-feedings. To alleviate my frustration and craving for homemade bread, I made some Challah, thus proving that the yeast I have is in fact pretty much alive. It's not just me, ALL the living organisms in this house are thoroughly neurotic. And yes, it is still Passover, aka the FUB, over here. You're not offended, I hope, or at least not remotely surprised over my yeast-nourishing conduct precisely at this time of year.

To add to the festivities I made some matzo-ball soup and had one batch of balls upped with (too) much chopped parsley, arugula and dill. My mother would be proud at the depart from customary eastern-European cuisine but I think I like the original version better. We were not invited to any Seder and that was totally fine by me, but I did get a little sad over how dismissive I am about such traditions. In recent years, my side of the family has developed a slightly perverted disdain for Jewish holidays, with their concomitant family-gatherings and very specific not-always-so-inspiring foods. I'm talking gefilte fish here, people. My mother has already threatened once that she will replace the gefilte with homemade sushi rolls (a threat I'm still waiting to cash in on, by the way). But it has gotten to the point where an event like Seder is anticipated with horrified disgust. Such moments fit too well with my memory of N and her, shall we say, food-aversion. Too well, because I don't want to remember her only as a disliker, of tastes that I, despite it all, still feel nostalgic for. And I envy DH for still considering family gatherings a treat, still relishing the dishes his mother makes, like when he was a child. I think I've developed a defense mechanism, where I would rather just spurn Family with a capital F than realize how hard it would be for mine to keep up the capital F quality… than feel the pain that we've somehow lost that quality even before N died (not to mention the guilt over my contribution to the situation by leaving Home) but that in times like these her absence makes me think of how much she disliked what I would consider comfort-food.
So comfort ends up kicking itself in the face. This is also how I feel about the one-year memorial we recently attended. A pat on the bandaged heart. A distraction from the burning nothingness which is all that is left. It was the definition of a COMFORTing ceremony and this is perhaps as it should be. And as years go by maybe the distraction from the pain and the being in the pain will come together for me somehow. A friend who lost his father a few years ago says the yearly ceremonies are, for him, just that – no matter what content his family struggles to grant to the event – a crushing day that overburdens you with the unfathomability of it still.
And so, surprising myself once more with a sense of tradition, in these days I long for some kind of rootedness, and I find I want to just be near the grave. To stay there for hours.

I end up writing here about N's death almost on every post. Even the ones where I start out thinking I won't. I guess when I finally bring myself to write this is what comes out. I guess that

"I'm not DRUNK. I'm just... really wobbly right now"

Yes indeed. While the original bearer of this proclamation was undoubtedly drunk (a. We can hear you from our apartment. And yet, you are OUTSIDE... You are obviously drunk. b. You just said that. You are obviously drunk.) I have fallen in love with the drunkenness-wobbliness metaphor. The lines we strain to draw between one state and the other.

I have recently been wobbled by the amazing Trisha Brown Dance Company. THIS is the kind of dance I would have loved to do. (An even better example here. A snippet of the version with the original cast, including TB herself, may be found on the TBDC website, but the video quality is much poorer. I think the beautiful Hungarian youngsters are doing a fine job, except for smiling too much here and there).

Here's to DH and I keeping at least half our New Year's Resolutions – to go out to a theater/concert/cultural event/show at least twice a month. The other half was: every other week – the week where we're not being highbrow culture consumerists – go out to a MOVIE! An unintellectual form of entertainment! We even shook hands on this. Alas, we have not been to the cinema even once since, proving our handshake quite worthless. We have been to more concerts of different sorts (the most intellectual and demanding of all, if you ask me – JAZZ concerts) and this does mark an increase in joie de vivre around here, at least around my Roman-Historians-laden desk. In an effort to feel less brain-dead, and more importantly, less bored, when spending the time in which I'm not preparing for the LATIN.QUALIFYING.EXAM.FROM.HELL. I have also decided to cut down on some of the blogs I check out, realizing that most of them are not only self-absorbed, but uninteresting (like, ahem, well, mine?). So apart from the food-blogs, I'm trying to narrow the daily blogroll to those that are at least somewhat brain-stimulating: Brie, Academichic, and the infallible Mimi Smartypants. I mean, she has meta-linguistic comments on Saxon words, that turn into suggestions for the aspiring rockstar (go to #8) – that's my kind of blogger.
Finally, I have finally, FINALLY taken up what I have decided long ago should be my extra-curricular after-school fun activity that will bring music (literally) and meaning (possibly?) to my life: I have been to my first (ever) VOICE LESSON. Conclusions thus far: "You can hum high really well". Updates to come.

The consolation: There is Music Time to exist in.

I'm late. I was all geared up to finally, FI-NA-LLLLLY, let out a sigh of relief and give a warm, if very late, welcome to 2011. Something along the lines of: "Hey two thousand and eleven! I'm ready for you now". This was supposed to happen after I finished my seminar paper and felt fit as fiddle.
But then. Things just did not work out.
The short version is, I had two independent medical situations unfortunately superimposed… well, they were dependent in that one is a long-term chronic maintenance issue – my admittedly gender-neutral but still somewhat hysterical Crohn's inflicted Colon – which can not be treated before I take care of a totally uncalled for gynecological situation, which in turn is just going on and on, as these situations are wont to do. AND THEN, just when things seemed to be getting back on track (it was of course a gynecological illusion at that point) I got sick with a flu-like cold (I got the flu vaccine for HEAVEN'S SAKE. Much good that did me) and was totally out, out of school and business and life for a WHOLE week. If I may be so daring as to quote (but humbly!) from my facebook status:
"Double-you.Tee.Eff. I have a fever. What am I, 8?!? I have a life to attend to, I can't be sick all the time!"
(Whence the inevitable email from my father, asking what Double-you.Tee.Eff means. Here's a hint, dad: WT stands for What the.)
To which one of my grad student friends replied "I was sick all the time when I was in coursework. Literally out for at least a week every quarter… It comes with the territory!" A professor also concurred today that winter term is the bottomless pit of the wretched quarter system.
In any case, the problem now is that I'm almost OK, and should be back to work full blast but am just not sure exactly where to start with the catching up, and the caring about it enough to fight the urge to crawl back into bed and sleep a good ten hours per night like I forgot I could but heartily recommend to all my loved-ones!

The long version is: a mess.
Slightly long version is that winter break sucked tremendously and winter term is refusing to take off in any remotely non-depressing way. There was a time, however, when a new year seemed to be near, hence a bout of severely gloomy resolutions I wrote in that dreaded twilight zone between winter break, which had already proved kinda mostly awful, and winter term. I feel somewhat removed from it now, but it is still a sort of lump in my throat. So here goes:

New Year's Resolutions.
No. 1: Not feel like I SUCK SO BAD. AT EVERYTHING. Including life.
No. 2: FLY LESS.
Since neither of these are going to happen in the near future or at least the coming year, here is a tentative no. 3: maybe I could at least, please, suck less at flying, and the inevitable outcome of flying - not being at home, in my daily routine, a situation that at times coincides with what other people would deem VACATION. (Other times it is better known as VISIT BACK HOME. I do not think I will get remarkably good at that activity for as long as I live.)
I would explain, but I feel so damn pathetic and whining. Which is kind of a No. 4: GET OVER IT. But since lately, at least this last year, IT inescapably feels like the death of my big sister, a thing which is just in general NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN, maybe not until you're 78, I find it kinda hard to shake IT off.
And I was never very good at taking things, or um, life, easy. Nope. I pretty much had a slight nervous breakdown when I was 14 years old and it seemed just too much to keep practicing piano and going to the toughest, most professional ballet school in Israel every day after school as well as being a straight A student (a feat which, guess who, c'mon guess, guess who could do it all? Ding-Ding-Ding-Ding!!!! THAT's RIGHT!!!!!!!! my sister). I had already left the serious classical piano teacher and started seeing a young, cool tutor, who was supposed to teach me how to read chords – somehow I didn't manage even to get that far, though I do clearly remember doing pretty hard hearing exercises of the kind that were basic first-year music academy training, that's what my tutor said, and I remember crying at her place, being very upset about stuff, something to the effect of, oh I don't know, LIFE SUCKS or I SUCK AT LIFE, I was lonely and miserable and I was 14 and I did not wear a bra yet!!! COULD LIFE BE WORSE I ASK YOU. NO. NOOOOO. and I'm pretty sure she was kind of astonished at how bad I was taking it but she tried to give me perspective which I doubt you can do when speaking to a young teenager, but well. And I also remember my mother, right around that time, saying I quit piano because I didn't feel like practicing, and that When Something is HARD, I DO NOT DO IT, as in, a general rule on how I live, and hey Mom, sorry to be so blunt, I know you are among the only 4.5 people who read this but, really? Is that what you really thought? Do you still think it? Because I think choosing to stay at ballet was a much tougher thing to do, and it was H.A.R.D for me to be there not only because I had (have, have, of course I still have) Crohn's and everything body-related was a problem and a struggle, but because I seriously. SERIOUSLY. sucked at it. Maybe that is the only thing I was ever really, emphatically, NOT GOOD AT, but that is the truth. I could not dance. At least not in the standards expected and required at THAT PLACE, aka BALLET SCHOOL (complete with anorexia and terrorizing tight lipped madams). Not compared to all the other young aspiring ballerinas. No, I was one of the very few ugly ducklings around, the unfortunate not blessed with TURN OUT, you can press on that link but I assure you that it pretty much means that you will never ever be graceful and look anything but miserable and pathetic when you are trying to bourree en pointe. (Bourree is what she's doing with her feet. Her arms and hands are also a phenomenal ballet exemplar, the quintessential swanlike figure.)

(Rest assured, I did not fare much better in other genres of modern or contemporary dance. There is a myriad of things wrong with my body, but in a nutshell it is weak and un-flexible and that pretty much puts a lid on any dance aspirations one may have.)
THIS IS THE TRUTH, I am not exaggerating, yes, I may have occasionally wrote things on this blog that may have seemed slightly overstated, but may I be knocked down by thunderbolts if I did not simply, objectively, suck at ballet, and so I'm now positive that I picked the surest way to feel constantly disappointed about my body, and so, arguably, staying at THAT horrible PLACE was, perhaps, not the EASY thing to do.

Remember the getting over it part? So yeah, I'm not quite there yet.

And about the Vacationing resolution. Wait.
This post is completely disheveled. Apologies. (We are still before the period of the beginning of the post wherein I realize I'm not only late on the new year's resolutions, but my calendar-alarm to send a check to my proprietor is going off, it is that late in January. DTE! (Which stands for Double-you.Tee.Eff. OBVIOUSLY). Just for your general orientation.) I wrote the above after coming back from a short visit to NYC over Winter Break, which not exactly a break etc etc due to those medical situations which my later me has already divulged above. Frankly, most of the last month has been spent in nauseous anxiety but it seems like the bad part is over now.
So I have not been able to get as much work done over the "Break" as I planned, because I was anxiously, nauseoustically, preoccupied. So, the other night, I was basically doing nothing, and the nothing I was doing was looking over old photographs of, mostly, DH and myself. We've been together for almost, wait, what, seven years?!? no, I think it's actually six but it's fair to say that at this point I have lost track. So, I was flicking through, basically, snippets from my soon to be gone twenties. And you know the really strange thing? I felt like I had no memories of those days that are documented in the photos. It's not as if I don't remember where the picture was taken or what we were doing there, it's just that, I felt this weird estranged feeling, like I could not tell you anything about myself at that time, what my life was, who I was. I'm not sure where that feeling came from or what it means.
But since that happened a week or so after I wrote that totally not-over-it drowning-in-teenage-complexes bit, it got me feeling that I'm stuck somewhere. A time-place pre-sister-death, but not a good place. A time-place where the ambitious race of miserableness was still on between us. And then….. and then, much shit hits the fan… and then basically, SHE DIES. And now, a conundrum: is my life easier or harder than hers now?
Get OVER it. GET OVER IT. Stop competing with your sister. She has already won, and lost, forever. YOU LIVE. GAME OVER.


So. Finally. About that trip to NY. I'm no good at being out of my natural habitat, especially in said preoccupied condition. But sometimes a revelation ensues.
Let's just say that I love dearly the friends that were housing us (don't leave NY! We will miss you sooooo!!!!). But my immune system promptly has a mental breakdown when I see my host change his daughter's admittedly non-poopy diaper and then proceed directly to slice pickles for our lunch without an intervening hand-washing session. Minor incident and an occasion for me to demonstrate restraint of my obsessive-compulsive tendencies. And yet an exhausting feat nonetheless. See, that's why vacations are hard. Being in a place where I'm not the sole carrier- and cleaner-of germs is just too strenuous a task to be holiday-fit.
However, and this will soon make sense, on the days immediately after coming back from NYC, I had that children-song "The itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the water spout…" ringing in my head. And it continues: "DOWN! came the rain DOWN! came the rain and washed the spi-DOWN! came the ra-DOWN!"
WHAT? Yeah. I'll explain: said father-host is also a composer. Which is to say that, among other things, he's very talented music-wise and has a very good ear. And when he sings to his daughter it apparently sometimes goes like this: she, like a 18-month-old genius, is interested in the UP-DOWN part of the song. And so she wants to get to the DOWN! part already, over and over again. And when she sing-shouts Down!, her father responds with the rest of the line. Whenever she sings it, no matter where in the line he is. And the even more mind-blowing thing about it is how this amazing dad modulates his own singing voice to the precise note her Down! hits.
A refracted key-transposed children rhyme. Response-repetition.
This magical musical-interpersonal phenomenon defies description and so I'm not sure if my lame attempt to reproduce it here makes sense. But.
I feel so grateful for having witnessed that intimate moment between father and daughter, a moment of total immersion in being-for-another, parent for child. Which was playful and immediate and songful and not wordy at all like this damn blog. Thank you. You are a family.

Against all odds, I'm still alive!

Hey Lou,
How've you been? I haven't seen you around lately. Oh yeah, you're right. It's me that hasn't been returning your calls. Well, you know how life is. Please don't be offended – I've been meaning to write for ages… and it's not just you. I have hardly spoken to anyone other than DH in the past ten weeks. Good thing he's around. Without him, I don't know how I would a) be nourished properly, b) survive this crazy little thing called "we'll give you a scholarship, you just be brilliant and work your ass off in an essentially mental-masturbation environment where your ass-working-off labor has slim chances of eventually getting you a grownup job, much less make any difference in the world. And if you didn't question yourself every step of the way, we'd actually think you're not entirely normal. We're open-minded that way. Run along now, be brilliant!"
So Lou, forgive me if I forgo a comprehensive update of what's been up with me since the end of the summer. I had several such plans at various points in the last two or three months, for example where I realized Septembers are going to SUCK from now on till further announcement – lethal combination of end-of-summer weather, Hebrew holiday season, and my birthday, which is a mere 8 days after my sister's and we always celebrated ours together. So this fall the buildup towards our mostly stressful and sad visit in Israel was sprinkled with probably-anxiety-related middle-of-the-night nausea attacks that nonetheless got my doctor to suggest I should get an MRI. Well (though nauseous panic attacks have almost disappeared), this finally happened today under orders of my new American gastro-doc.
I was not aware of how unpleasant a procedure an MRI is. You are straddled to a narrow hospital bed for an HOUR (that feels like forEVER) and tunneled into the radioactive machine which produces alternate deafening noises of a fire drill, morse code, an old ink printer, and hardcore 80's techno "music" without the "melodic" component. Add to that my life-threatening pseudo-heroic conduct: once released from the contraption I took off out of there in less than two minutes only to nearly faint, stand in line for a cup of tea for which I paid and then pale-facedly left to wander out to the ice-cold air for fear of vomiting at the hospital lobby. The guy came out after me to hand me my tea, actually. If fall term should start and finish in nausea, however, I pick the sub-freezing degrees version.

There were other moments: like when I made a perfect poached egg for my aforementioned not-so-perfect birthday, took pictures of it but never posted them, though I promised my mother-in-law (who is awesome. she calls me on my birthday!) to send her evidence of my egg-technique progress. Then I did not speak to her throughout the ten weeks of term until a few days ago. SERIOUSLY, I was not joking, Lou. DH obviously had some phone calls with her, and I spoke to my mother no less than usual, so I guess in some moral world I'm still ok? In every world containing in-laws, though, I am surely condemned to eternal torment.
Then, after a first week of term, in which I literally wanted to DIE, coursework was making me that miserable, and images of my ambitious, intellectual, working on her death-bed sister met me wherever I turned, I was thrilled at the prospect of writing how I still kinda want to live, um not entirely sure academia is my thing, but yeah, living is still an option, and managed to fit a baked-good or two into my schedule. But then, I didn't write. And then, I had had enough but term wasn't over yet.
AND NOW.
Except for one seminar paper that needs to be produced from scratch (i.e. I still know nothing about my supposed topic "Prostitution in Ancient Athens". eye-roll….) I have lived to see the other side of my first ten-week term of GRAD SCHOOL (crazy little thing et cetera). Conclusions thus far:
1. I am not being "hard on myself" like people tend to think I am (and though it is probably at least somewhat true) when I say that judging by the courses I just finished, I was underqualified for grad work in Latin – though I did not miserably fail so maybe that counts for something. I have probably read more Latin this term than ever in my life before, and I have surely learned a lot (vocab! please stick to my brain this time!) but I feel mentally overwhelmed, like after a language summer course where you could hardly keep up through it and just wait for when it's over so maybe something might sink in and it will eventually seem like you made some progress and are not simply exhausted.
2. Who knew the English language would be such a hurdle? Expressing myself comprehensibly in front of other people among whom a faculty member (let's be honest, we just want all of them to say "No, I don't think you're stupid at all. Actually I think you're quite brilliant, that's why I keep being so thrilled that you're my student. Absolutely THRILLED!". Yes, ideally every single academic-superior that you come across should simply let you know that. But you grad students, you each have at least one prof in particular whose affirmation you pine for, am I right?), so producing coherent sentences in front of a class cum prof - and my writing is constant testimony of my incapability to keep a train of thought, let alone a sentence that has a beginning, some kind of predicate, and end (HA, see what I did here, I'm so self-reflexive… eye-roll. Challenging my reader! eye-roll...) – has proven a task I am not naturally talented for. I was never that good at it in Hebrew, and though my colloquial English is usually absolutely fine, bring up the formality a notch and I am stammering. Give me a sentence in Latin to translate out loud that contains a metaphor, two participles and some nautical technical terms for good measure, and I'm done for.
3. Life is wavering.
This is nothing new. I was never entirely convinced that a life of intellectual curiosity and painstaking writing of something that pretends to contain an actual argument was necessarily the type I would find worth living for, and I'm still not sure about that (HA! now there's at least one qualification I actually have to be a graduate student!!! SELF-DOUBT. Why didn't they tell me it's such an asset? I've got STORES of that and would have smeared it all over my application instead of trying to construct a coherent narrative of my academic career leading to this! particular! amazing! department! Instead, I would have just written: I don't know what I want to do with my life but I've successfully fooled some people into thinking I'm intelligent and perceptive. Now give me a stipend!) But ever since N died, moments of doubt are all encompassing, as in, why live at all? And that too is not new to you if you've been following my bloggingly neurotic accounts of not-so-late. But bottom line is, being a graduate student with health insurance and a scholarship, while living in the same house, city, country as the man I love, is a privilege.
Try to remember that, Lou. And not feel so goddamned guilty for all the people in the world who have no health insurance, income, or a loved-one to make soup for them when they have a very first-world ten-day-long cold. As DH, himself a man that at one point in life seriously contemplated the option of abandoning civilization in favor of chilling out and going native in Northern India, says: you can't give your place up and change it with a third-world woman. You will either die of an exotic disease, or be flown over to the West to get treatment for it. Either way, you lose.