I cannot get over feeling like a total jerk. Nothing but complaining that I have too much buttery cake all on my own. So if you are reading this at all, and might have been concerned with my last post that I am really overdoing it with the egotistical self-absorption, I just wanted to say that I am trying to get my act together. Which means: a) I started really looking into the possibility of volunteering at a rape crisis center or something of the sort. But (how convenient!) they ask volunteers to commit to a full year, and I'm not sure I can do that. Not to mention I was scared shitless to actually do it, and thought maybe now was not totally the greatest time for me to be in a position where people that have been through something so awful and destructing actually NEED ME.
b) I looked into getting professional help, i.e. student counseling. This might seem totally contrary to a), just me being self-absorbed again. However, I really think I have some pretty good excuses for my need to TALK TO SOMEONE who is not an immediate relative. And who might help me clear up my thoughts and emotional tangles and maybe get my act together so I can finally DO whatever it is that I feel like I'm capable of doing for others. Last week I was so stressed for inviting a darling friend over for 5 o'clock tea and cake (someone to talk to and to consume my baked goods all in one!), and then crying during half the time she was here, for fear she will never want to come eat the basket-case-baker's cakes again, let alone be my friend anymore.
In any case, I found out the slightly long and winding way (i.e., after going through a preliminary intake session) that, alas, student counseling is available to spouses only if they have bought the whole health insurance plan offered by the University (which I did not). Or if they come to couple therapy with the actual student. If only my grief would have made our married life a totally dysfunctional hell, then I (i.e., we) could have qualified for student counseling! Unfortunately, that is not the case.
c) Right after writing the former post, I searched online for soup kitchens in the neighborhood. I think I can bring myself to pick up the phone and volunteer at one of those. I think. But what if the food is gross and the smell of beef makes me nauseous and the whole experience is condescending and estranged?
You might notice c) is a strange mixture of trying to get my act together and being neurotically self-absorbed. Not to mention slightly racist, I'm afraid.
What I would really like is to wake up in the morning, bake a quiche and a cake, and bring them over to people in need. I have a hunch soup kitchens don't work that way, but by god, I will check.
All right, somebody tell me I'm OK now. And then slowly, without making any sudden movements, move me away. from. the. internet. THIS IS NOT HELPING.
Apr 30, 2010
Leftovers.
Things I'm procrastinating at the moment: reading five new scripts delivered to my inbox this morning. Reading Virgil's Eclogues. Reading Plato's Phaedo. Things I'm incidentally not procrastinating right at this particular moment: Writing my Blog. But this is just a coincidence. I was spending the morning browsing the foodblogosphere, waiting for it to be a morally appropriate time to have lunch already. And I had some future post or two or three running around in my head, and I thought, woe is meeee, when will I be able to actually write this post, why must I produce abnormally long posts that give only the absolute big, whole and detailed picture, and why oh why did I get myself into blog-debt in which I owe an explanation for why I did not post, so much so that now I procrastinate writing about why I was procrastinating….? Woe, Dear Readers. Woe are you too. How do you put up with me.
Anyway, I'm what you might called bored. Which is understandable seeing that I have no life, in the usual, casually-unaware-to-the-nearness-of-death kind of way the term is usually used. That is, I have no job and I am currently not really a student. I have no real academic commitment except the general wish to advance my skills in the scholarship of Greek and Roman antiquity before grad school hits. hard. And I have been reading some Plato and some Virgil, which is generally not utterly unenjoyable, and I am even taking vocabulary notes (gasp!). Yet, there are a random two to three days a week where I can just wake up in the morning and start reading some ancient text for my own "good", still less days in which I can bring myself to drag my ass to the library, where there is a slight chance of being more productive. Especially if I do not bring the Evil Machine That Miraculously Conjures Images of Facebook and Cooking Blogs with me (which I don't. Why go to the library if I'm not going to work? I would rather stay at home where the bathroom is certainly cleaner and the fridge is closer, and tea doesn't come in a paper cup or a burn-your-lips metal tumbler. Jeezuz). The rest of the week, days in which my ass is not dragged to any such place, is more hazardous. Now, as you may guess from the aforementioned bathroom comment, I'm a I'd-rather-stay-at-home (and neurotic! We must never forget NEUROTIC.) kind of girl. But still, there is nothing more depressing than having no reason to get out of the house. ALL DAY. Not to mention speak to a human soul other than DH, dear as he most certainly is. That's right, I don't really have that much friends either. Which is understandable seeing that etc.
And in my woes, I bake (sometimes, occasionally, I cook too. Must give myself a pat on the back for the exceptionally successful last few dinners: Chicken drumsticks baked in Roasted Red Pepper sauce, Turkey-Cilantro meatballs, and Swordfish coconut milk Curry. I am getting GOOD at this, people. DH is not even complaining).
Sorry, I'll get back to my usual grumpy and dissatisfied self now. Nothing like the subject of BAKED GOODS to make me not give myself any slack. First Reason: Butter (if you've been reading this blog for a while you have probably gathered already that Butter is used metonymically for ANYTHING CHOLESTEROLICALLY VEIN-CLOGGING). I bake, and then I feel guilty about eating what I baked. Now DH is not much of a consolation here, seeing as a) he spends less time at home and in the proximity of baked goods than I. b) he does not have much of a sweet tooth. Nothing comparable to me, that is. I eat meals for the sake of dessert. I crave a sweet bite the minute I finish eating whatever it is that I'm eating. Every single meal. Even if it's a random 3 pm snack. I could grab a pretzel, then feel like some cake to finish it off (then another pretzel, of course, to take out the sweetness). Now you must understand. I would be characterized as anything but thin by no-one. DH is even naturally thinner than I am (the man has no fat on his body). And yet when I get all neurotic about not consuming so much, DH plays along - I think he thinks he's offering me moral support here, like, if he reminds me that I don't feel great about eating so much CAKE, I'll appreciate it and feel better about myself. Or, if he agrees that we should lay off the butter a bit it would make it easier for me. First of all, nothing will make it easier for me. I AM INSANE and life is shit. Second, really, man, just ignore me. I'm psycho. No need to take this rationally. Third: I know you say you'll love me even more when I'm fat, wrinkled, and with gray hair (check on all three, darling. Future husbands out there: Don't marry a girl with freckles. You might find it cute now but it's the same kind of skin that goes wrinkly before she's 30.) SO NOW PROVE IT: just let me INDULGE and get fat. I know, I know, none of this is making sense (Accept your body. You're beautiful from the inside. And the outside. No More Tyranny of the Size-0 Beauty Industry! Feel good about yourself, don't seek confirmation from significant or non-significant others! I KNOW ALL THAT).
But seriously, there is currently in the fridge a bit of leftover more-than-a-week-old Orange Coffee Cake that I shall slowly but surely finish up myself (still delicious), a 5-day-old bowl of something like maple creme brulee (leftover from this pie), 3/4 of a still fresh buttery-lemon toffee-like tart (just 1.5 days old!), and the only reason there is no more Tarte Tatin in there (for heaven's sake. I made this for his birthday and after polishing off almost half on the first night with the aid of our favorite Venezuelan friend, we both got cold feet because of all the butter in it and ate it sparingly, even though heating it up in the oven brought it back to near-perfection), is because I scraped off the buttery apples with a spoon one day and threw out the crust remainder - it was not so tempting after more than two weeks in the fridge. PEOPLE, a home baked Tarte Tatin lasted two weeks in our household. THAT IS JUST WRONG, no matter how conscious one is to economic inequality.
The Second Reason has to do with the fact that I hardly have friends to invite over for cake. Or an office to bring cake to.
Combined with Reason #1, this means I am doomed to eat cake by myself most of the time, and obsess about it. Yup, that pretty much sums up the raison d'etre of this blog.
(I shall stop here. Mid-thought! If you count as thought "every baking related association I have had in the last two weeks which leads to the conclusion that being lonely AND experiencing baking fiascoes is worse than just one or the other, so that's why I was not blogging for a while there, and now I owe you, like, at least, 5 posts of a semi-friendly length!" In that case, YEAH.)
Anyway, I'm what you might called bored. Which is understandable seeing that I have no life, in the usual, casually-unaware-to-the-nearness-of-death kind of way the term is usually used. That is, I have no job and I am currently not really a student. I have no real academic commitment except the general wish to advance my skills in the scholarship of Greek and Roman antiquity before grad school hits. hard. And I have been reading some Plato and some Virgil, which is generally not utterly unenjoyable, and I am even taking vocabulary notes (gasp!). Yet, there are a random two to three days a week where I can just wake up in the morning and start reading some ancient text for my own "good", still less days in which I can bring myself to drag my ass to the library, where there is a slight chance of being more productive. Especially if I do not bring the Evil Machine That Miraculously Conjures Images of Facebook and Cooking Blogs with me (which I don't. Why go to the library if I'm not going to work? I would rather stay at home where the bathroom is certainly cleaner and the fridge is closer, and tea doesn't come in a paper cup or a burn-your-lips metal tumbler. Jeezuz). The rest of the week, days in which my ass is not dragged to any such place, is more hazardous. Now, as you may guess from the aforementioned bathroom comment, I'm a I'd-rather-stay-at-home (and neurotic! We must never forget NEUROTIC.) kind of girl. But still, there is nothing more depressing than having no reason to get out of the house. ALL DAY. Not to mention speak to a human soul other than DH, dear as he most certainly is. That's right, I don't really have that much friends either. Which is understandable seeing that etc.
And in my woes, I bake (sometimes, occasionally, I cook too. Must give myself a pat on the back for the exceptionally successful last few dinners: Chicken drumsticks baked in Roasted Red Pepper sauce, Turkey-Cilantro meatballs, and Swordfish coconut milk Curry. I am getting GOOD at this, people. DH is not even complaining).
Sorry, I'll get back to my usual grumpy and dissatisfied self now. Nothing like the subject of BAKED GOODS to make me not give myself any slack. First Reason: Butter (if you've been reading this blog for a while you have probably gathered already that Butter is used metonymically for ANYTHING CHOLESTEROLICALLY VEIN-CLOGGING). I bake, and then I feel guilty about eating what I baked. Now DH is not much of a consolation here, seeing as a) he spends less time at home and in the proximity of baked goods than I. b) he does not have much of a sweet tooth. Nothing comparable to me, that is. I eat meals for the sake of dessert. I crave a sweet bite the minute I finish eating whatever it is that I'm eating. Every single meal. Even if it's a random 3 pm snack. I could grab a pretzel, then feel like some cake to finish it off (then another pretzel, of course, to take out the sweetness). Now you must understand. I would be characterized as anything but thin by no-one. DH is even naturally thinner than I am (the man has no fat on his body). And yet when I get all neurotic about not consuming so much, DH plays along - I think he thinks he's offering me moral support here, like, if he reminds me that I don't feel great about eating so much CAKE, I'll appreciate it and feel better about myself. Or, if he agrees that we should lay off the butter a bit it would make it easier for me. First of all, nothing will make it easier for me. I AM INSANE and life is shit. Second, really, man, just ignore me. I'm psycho. No need to take this rationally. Third: I know you say you'll love me even more when I'm fat, wrinkled, and with gray hair (check on all three, darling. Future husbands out there: Don't marry a girl with freckles. You might find it cute now but it's the same kind of skin that goes wrinkly before she's 30.) SO NOW PROVE IT: just let me INDULGE and get fat. I know, I know, none of this is making sense (Accept your body. You're beautiful from the inside. And the outside. No More Tyranny of the Size-0 Beauty Industry! Feel good about yourself, don't seek confirmation from significant or non-significant others! I KNOW ALL THAT).
But seriously, there is currently in the fridge a bit of leftover more-than-a-week-old Orange Coffee Cake that I shall slowly but surely finish up myself (still delicious), a 5-day-old bowl of something like maple creme brulee (leftover from this pie), 3/4 of a still fresh buttery-lemon toffee-like tart (just 1.5 days old!), and the only reason there is no more Tarte Tatin in there (for heaven's sake. I made this for his birthday and after polishing off almost half on the first night with the aid of our favorite Venezuelan friend, we both got cold feet because of all the butter in it and ate it sparingly, even though heating it up in the oven brought it back to near-perfection), is because I scraped off the buttery apples with a spoon one day and threw out the crust remainder - it was not so tempting after more than two weeks in the fridge. PEOPLE, a home baked Tarte Tatin lasted two weeks in our household. THAT IS JUST WRONG, no matter how conscious one is to economic inequality.
The Second Reason has to do with the fact that I hardly have friends to invite over for cake. Or an office to bring cake to.
Combined with Reason #1, this means I am doomed to eat cake by myself most of the time, and obsess about it. Yup, that pretty much sums up the raison d'etre of this blog.
(I shall stop here. Mid-thought! If you count as thought "every baking related association I have had in the last two weeks which leads to the conclusion that being lonely AND experiencing baking fiascoes is worse than just one or the other, so that's why I was not blogging for a while there, and now I owe you, like, at least, 5 posts of a semi-friendly length!" In that case, YEAH.)
Apr 26, 2010
At last. Something to write home about.
Hi. It's me again. And not with one of the two posts I just promised you earlier today.
Oh, no! I've got much more exciting news!
I have recently applied, and just a few hours ago was informed that I was accepted, to the Internship at the DirectorsLabChicago! Yeyyyyyyy!!!
It's a week-long, intensive, workshop-like, well, LAB. For theatre directors. Which I am not, but - despite that last thingy I was applying to, what was that again, grad school? huh? PhD program? - I do actually aspire to be one day. So here's my chance to slave for others (remember, I'm just an interrrrn), while getting to know some theatre-people and opening a few doors, with the vague prospect of them all shutting back, if not with a slam, then with a steady screech ending with a thud. I envision said screech will start grating on my ears somewhere around September 2010, when I shall enclose myself in the so called Classics Reading Room, aka Where Classics Grad Students Come to Bury Themselves in Yellowing Pages of DICTIONARY. I? applied for grad school? When did that happen? Was I there?
So yeah. This internship application was actually quite demanding. So much so that DH was sure I was applying to participate as a director. Cute, isn't he? Especially since I have never directed anything in my life.
This was my favorite question:
Stepping Away from the Stage is a unique series in which professionals from outside the world of theatre are invited to speak about their craft in relation to the chosen theme. Examples of themes and speakers from past Labs include: myth and ritual/wedding planner, the kinetics of directing/traffic research safety scientist, re-imagining the classics/plastic surgeon.
With this in mind, please suggest two Stepping Away speakers related to this year's theme, 'In Rehearsal.'
I picked a Doula and a Haute Cuisine Chef. I won't expound on why exactly I thought these were a brilliant choice (isn't it brilliant?!), but in my defense, in defense of this whole copy-paste bonanza, I promised on my application that I would promote the Lab on my blog (they specifically asked in what technocratic ways I will be able to spread the word. So hear I am, telling you all about it. Ha! Little do they know that hardly anybody in Chicago reads this).
Actually, the aforementioned business of getting informed of my acceptance was a tad embarrassing. You see, they explicitly said applicants will be informed by today. So when today arrived, I was checking my email constantly - I want to say more frequently than usual, but that would be a lie. There is No More Frequently. - and when 7 PM arrived, the following email exchange ensued (this is for real, people. The Names Have Been Changed, though). (More Copy-Paste Bonanza. BONANZA! Fun word.)
6:54 PM
Dear Person In Charge of Interns,
I would just like to make sure that if I have not heard back from you by now, it means that my internship application was not successful.
thank you.
Lou
7:28 PM
Lou,
I was just sitting down to write to you that in fact we would love to invite you to be part of the DirectorsLabChicago this year. We loved your application. My apologies on the delay, I was not at my computer earlier today.
See the following email for details.
Thank you.
PICoI
[DOH!!!!!]
7:43 PM
Thanks PICoI!
This is so exciting!
I'm sorry I was so impatient [translation: obsessive-compulsive] about it (there are some summer-flight schedules I need to settle) [not a lie. but still, kind of a stretch], and assumed you would see my email only tomorrow morning... [i.e., after the day you said you would contact us. I mean really. It's Chicago here, not NYC. People leave work and go home to their kids at 5 PM]
Thanks again. I'm really looking forward to being part of the Lab! [I hope you're not regretting the fact that you accepted me, now that my true neurotic self has been so distastefully revealed....]
[I remain humbly yours,]
Lou.
Oh, no! I've got much more exciting news!
I have recently applied, and just a few hours ago was informed that I was accepted, to the Internship at the DirectorsLabChicago! Yeyyyyyyy!!!
It's a week-long, intensive, workshop-like, well, LAB. For theatre directors. Which I am not, but - despite that last thingy I was applying to, what was that again, grad school? huh? PhD program? - I do actually aspire to be one day. So here's my chance to slave for others (remember, I'm just an interrrrn), while getting to know some theatre-people and opening a few doors, with the vague prospect of them all shutting back, if not with a slam, then with a steady screech ending with a thud. I envision said screech will start grating on my ears somewhere around September 2010, when I shall enclose myself in the so called Classics Reading Room, aka Where Classics Grad Students Come to Bury Themselves in Yellowing Pages of DICTIONARY. I? applied for grad school? When did that happen? Was I there?
So yeah. This internship application was actually quite demanding. So much so that DH was sure I was applying to participate as a director. Cute, isn't he? Especially since I have never directed anything in my life.
This was my favorite question:
Stepping Away from the Stage is a unique series in which professionals from outside the world of theatre are invited to speak about their craft in relation to the chosen theme. Examples of themes and speakers from past Labs include: myth and ritual/wedding planner, the kinetics of directing/traffic research safety scientist, re-imagining the classics/plastic surgeon.
With this in mind, please suggest two Stepping Away speakers related to this year's theme, 'In Rehearsal.'
I picked a Doula and a Haute Cuisine Chef. I won't expound on why exactly I thought these were a brilliant choice (isn't it brilliant?!), but in my defense, in defense of this whole copy-paste bonanza, I promised on my application that I would promote the Lab on my blog (they specifically asked in what technocratic ways I will be able to spread the word. So hear I am, telling you all about it. Ha! Little do they know that hardly anybody in Chicago reads this).
Actually, the aforementioned business of getting informed of my acceptance was a tad embarrassing. You see, they explicitly said applicants will be informed by today. So when today arrived, I was checking my email constantly - I want to say more frequently than usual, but that would be a lie. There is No More Frequently. - and when 7 PM arrived, the following email exchange ensued (this is for real, people. The Names Have Been Changed, though). (More Copy-Paste Bonanza. BONANZA! Fun word.)
6:54 PM
Dear Person In Charge of Interns,
I would just like to make sure that if I have not heard back from you by now, it means that my internship application was not successful.
thank you.
Lou
7:28 PM
Lou,
I was just sitting down to write to you that in fact we would love to invite you to be part of the DirectorsLabChicago this year. We loved your application. My apologies on the delay, I was not at my computer earlier today.
See the following email for details.
Thank you.
PICoI
[DOH!!!!!]
7:43 PM
Thanks PICoI!
This is so exciting!
I'm sorry I was so impatient [translation: obsessive-compulsive] about it (there are some summer-flight schedules I need to settle) [not a lie. but still, kind of a stretch], and assumed you would see my email only tomorrow morning... [i.e., after the day you said you would contact us. I mean really. It's Chicago here, not NYC. People leave work and go home to their kids at 5 PM]
Thanks again. I'm really looking forward to being part of the Lab! [I hope you're not regretting the fact that you accepted me, now that my true neurotic self has been so distastefully revealed....]
[I remain humbly yours,]
Lou.
Vignettes
So. It's been more than two weeks since I last posted, despite a flood of bakeriesque attempts, some of which very successful (notably the much anticipated Tarte Tatin and this charmingly bright and heart-warming Very Orange coffee-cake.)
I apologize for this prolonged silence and promise to expound about how I was feeling too shitty to blog - despite said attempts and because of the not-so-successful ones among them - soon. But so as to not welcome you back to my virtual life with a full fledged Elegy of Shitty Life, aka the Life is So Shitty when Your Sister Dies Dirge, with guest performance of Reading Cicero Won't Make you Feel Better When You're Blue, Baby - yes, dear readers, I promise to leave all that to an upcoming super-duper extra-chipper post! - but in the meantime, here's some little things to make you…
go AWWWWHHH…..
Last Saturday morning, DH and myself were having a little self-indulgent, uncharacteristically guilt-free sleeping-in time. We were both already awake, and somehow had the exact same thought even before we started talking about it. I'm pretty sure it's DH that brought it up, the idea of a little child squiggling into our bed. Technically, he might have been reminiscing of when he was a child crawling into his parents' bed, but there was a non-explicit agreement that such a squiggling presence of a young humanoid could work just fine for us at the moment.
My cynical self, however, made it explicitly clear that "the moment", if such toddlery cold-footed presence were to join us, would likely be 5 am, and not the comfortable 9 am we were now luxuriating in.
- shake your head at me.
But you promised not to talk about your sister! you say. Well, fine, but I just wanted to share this uplifting song with you. Somehow, in the mess that is my itunes folders, the only songs or artists I can easily find and readily play are those that N introduced me to, among them the lovely Feist. Yes, there are objective technophobic reasons to this - Computers have Ruined My Life! Somebody Give me Back my ACTUAL CDs so I can find my MUSIC! - but, eh well, still, what a coincidence. I guess this is my way of missing and mourning you, dear N. Sing along, everybody. Or at least hum. It's catchy.
- nod knowingly.
While we are on the subject of my life in vignettes - and add to that a completely arbitrary sonic association to Anna Karenina, which I have resumed reading yesterday, truly a sign of mental stability - I am mildly obsessed with the breathtaking Anna Karina, particularly after watching Godard's Vivre Sa Vie. Don't take it from me, though: Susan Sontag described it as "a perfect film" and "one of the most extraordinary, beautiful, and original works of art that I know of." Just go watch it already.
*Incidentally, I was very pleased with myself for recognizing the young Antonin Artaud, who plays in the silent film our heroine watches. It seems I am evolving out of my cinematic boorishness, and quite enjoying it! Much to DH's relief, it is probable I shall some day grow out of my habit of proclaiming things like "I don't really like Fellini", nor, for that matter, "Argghh! I hate Socrates!". But really, Socrates deserves more than a *. So that's another post I owe you.
I apologize for this prolonged silence and promise to expound about how I was feeling too shitty to blog - despite said attempts and because of the not-so-successful ones among them - soon. But so as to not welcome you back to my virtual life with a full fledged Elegy of Shitty Life, aka the Life is So Shitty when Your Sister Dies Dirge, with guest performance of Reading Cicero Won't Make you Feel Better When You're Blue, Baby - yes, dear readers, I promise to leave all that to an upcoming super-duper extra-chipper post! - but in the meantime, here's some little things to make you…
go AWWWWHHH…..
Last Saturday morning, DH and myself were having a little self-indulgent, uncharacteristically guilt-free sleeping-in time. We were both already awake, and somehow had the exact same thought even before we started talking about it. I'm pretty sure it's DH that brought it up, the idea of a little child squiggling into our bed. Technically, he might have been reminiscing of when he was a child crawling into his parents' bed, but there was a non-explicit agreement that such a squiggling presence of a young humanoid could work just fine for us at the moment.
My cynical self, however, made it explicitly clear that "the moment", if such toddlery cold-footed presence were to join us, would likely be 5 am, and not the comfortable 9 am we were now luxuriating in.
- shake your head at me.
But you promised not to talk about your sister! you say. Well, fine, but I just wanted to share this uplifting song with you. Somehow, in the mess that is my itunes folders, the only songs or artists I can easily find and readily play are those that N introduced me to, among them the lovely Feist. Yes, there are objective technophobic reasons to this - Computers have Ruined My Life! Somebody Give me Back my ACTUAL CDs so I can find my MUSIC! - but, eh well, still, what a coincidence. I guess this is my way of missing and mourning you, dear N. Sing along, everybody. Or at least hum. It's catchy.
- nod knowingly.
While we are on the subject of my life in vignettes - and add to that a completely arbitrary sonic association to Anna Karenina, which I have resumed reading yesterday, truly a sign of mental stability - I am mildly obsessed with the breathtaking Anna Karina, particularly after watching Godard's Vivre Sa Vie. Don't take it from me, though: Susan Sontag described it as "a perfect film" and "one of the most extraordinary, beautiful, and original works of art that I know of." Just go watch it already.
*Incidentally, I was very pleased with myself for recognizing the young Antonin Artaud, who plays in the silent film our heroine watches. It seems I am evolving out of my cinematic boorishness, and quite enjoying it! Much to DH's relief, it is probable I shall some day grow out of my habit of proclaiming things like "I don't really like Fellini", nor, for that matter, "Argghh! I hate Socrates!". But really, Socrates deserves more than a *. So that's another post I owe you.
Apr 8, 2010
Post-colonialist Angst
Rant rant rant rant ranttttttt.
Here goes.
Well first of all, the internet has ruined my life. I mean, really, take zappos. I can spend hours on that site, perusing every goddamn sandal until I think I found the perfect one that will bring bliss to my problematic, picky, post-injury left foot. Or all these fashion blogs which, as a dear friend has put it, are a time-pump (and by the way, I apologize for introducing you to these time consuming monstrosities!). How self absorbed can I be? Even if they are occasionally about empowering women and positive body image blah blah blah, one of them is even a sort of fundraiser, still I can't sleep at night because I run over in my head how exactly to put in words on my BLOG, my own fucking blog, that the other self absorbed bloggers have made me a mouse potato, or whatever you call someone who just sits in front of the computer all evening long and will never finish reading Anna Karenina.
Also, lately I keep saying to myself stuff like: think of the hungry children in Africa. I mean, it's not something I would ever say to a child who doesn't feel like eating the last bite of peas off their plate, because there are few things crueler than forcing food down a child's throat. But these days, I'm having bouts of something like post-colonialist capitalist remorse, thinking more and more of how I consume much more than I need - I've already told you of my love of fatty spreadable food - eating more than will keep me full, because I have a sweet tooth and I'm just used to it that way, or convincing myself I absolutely need another pair of jeans (because in the "world" I "live" in, where different clothes are appropriate for different occasions, I actually do). So DH says, pick a fundraiser, give them 10 dollars a month, and some kids IN AFRICA will have more to eat. No, I say, that doesn't work, it doesn't change anything about the system, that's just a fig leaf for Republicans! (I was pretty pleased with myself with that one…) And he answers: well, it's better than standing in your kitchen with a bowl of rice krispies, talking about it and doing nothing. And that's what I do, of course: NOTHING. Except now I've published it in my blog, and I'm wondering if the fact that I have this place to channel my thoughts into just makes me mull them over even more instead of just going to sleep, it's gonna be 2 am by the time I finish this ghastly post [2:20 and I would love a peanut butter sandwich right now. going to bed...]. Speaking of nothing, I'm very sure that I will bring no change whatsoever to this world, that I will produce nothing of significance to humanity. I have a no less firmer conviction that the world is going to be a shittier place in the future, and if my grandchildren don't actually fight their neighbors for some resource like, oh let's say, WATER, it's because white people will leave it to the grandchildren in Africa to kill each other.
(Girly girl talk coming up. Seriously guys, if you don't feel like reading about menstrual pads and hand laundry, just skip to the next paragraph). I've recently started using non-disposable menstrual pads. In short, they're great. But I guess ideally I should have spent even more money to buy enough of them to last my whole period without having to do the laundry every other day for a week. So I end up hand washing with Tide - which is probably manufactured by one of the most animal-testing, toxic-waste-dumping, baby-killing conglomerates in the world - those cool eco-friendly save the planet and embrace your femininity pads. Point: made myself feel totally lame again. I mean, I can technically sew some more of these pads myself, they even encourage you to. (Girl talk is over...)
However, a) I don't have a sewing machine, and what is more important b) I can do nothing with my bare hands besides bake, and for that to turn out nice I need assistance from some butter (back to the original problem: SATURATED FATS!), and occasionally write unimportant papers on antiquity. Perhaps if I were an artist. dot dot dot.
Now, I kinda owe you an explanation of what it is I want to be when I grow up, which is not necessarily a Classics professor, but a theater director, and how I am trying to move in theatrical circles, but that will have to wait. What I do want to say is that I recently saw a dance piece by Andrea Miller, well what do you know, just go ahead and click on that link and you will see she defines it as a "duet for two men about loss and the vain attempt to save someone who is dying" (the Internet, I tell you. You learn something every day). Chapeau, Ms. Miller, because even without knowing what it's "about", it totally made me cry, and I mean choke down sobs into a kleenex, and I was willing to at least partly attribute that to the music by Arvo Part (which, I found out at the end of the show, is a piece called Fratres, which means Brothers in Latin). But mostly, well, I see a piece like this, something so strong and crystal-clear and WITHOUT WORDS, and I know that if I really could, it is not theatre I would strive to do, but dance.
But I can't. The easy excuse would be to refer you back to my left-foot injury.
Some concluding thoughts: 1. Thanks, mom, for taking us out to shows like this, and mending my clothes and knitting us cool stuff. You are a woman who does things with her hands, including deliciously amazing food, and I admire you.
2. If there is a volunteering path I might actually take, it is to help women who have been sexually attacked. Now, my ex-therapist would probably advise me not to do it, and I seriously do not know if my stomach and heart can take the devastation of these situations, but if ever there was a cause I believed in, an aspect of this shitty world I would want to actively contribute to changing.
3. This might be one of my passing nihilistic fits, though they seem to be recurring more frequently lately. When DH looses faith in his intellectual vocation - which he recently described as a sublimation of the artistic occupation that he can't pursue anymore because of his own physical injury - or in his capacity to make a difference, I say to him: we will bring children to the world and raise them to be good people. That's all very well (minus the anxiety of my children being molested, chronically ill, socially inapt, or just unhappy) but let's just stick to the Art and Vocation parts. So really, even if I were an artist, I'd probably be presenting to a bunch of left-wing white intellectuals and I'm back to square one: I am not going to have any impact on anything. NOTHING is going to change. All this talk about NOTHING, could it be somehow related to the fact that - with the original intent solely to hear DH presenting in class, my very own DH who is, in a way, returning to his intellectual "home" - I spent the day reading Heidegger's What is Metaphysics, and then sitting in a class on the NothingNESS that is revealed to us in ANXIETY?
Hmmmm. Probably not.
Here goes.
Well first of all, the internet has ruined my life. I mean, really, take zappos. I can spend hours on that site, perusing every goddamn sandal until I think I found the perfect one that will bring bliss to my problematic, picky, post-injury left foot. Or all these fashion blogs which, as a dear friend has put it, are a time-pump (and by the way, I apologize for introducing you to these time consuming monstrosities!). How self absorbed can I be? Even if they are occasionally about empowering women and positive body image blah blah blah, one of them is even a sort of fundraiser, still I can't sleep at night because I run over in my head how exactly to put in words on my BLOG, my own fucking blog, that the other self absorbed bloggers have made me a mouse potato, or whatever you call someone who just sits in front of the computer all evening long and will never finish reading Anna Karenina.
Also, lately I keep saying to myself stuff like: think of the hungry children in Africa. I mean, it's not something I would ever say to a child who doesn't feel like eating the last bite of peas off their plate, because there are few things crueler than forcing food down a child's throat. But these days, I'm having bouts of something like post-colonialist capitalist remorse, thinking more and more of how I consume much more than I need - I've already told you of my love of fatty spreadable food - eating more than will keep me full, because I have a sweet tooth and I'm just used to it that way, or convincing myself I absolutely need another pair of jeans (because in the "world" I "live" in, where different clothes are appropriate for different occasions, I actually do). So DH says, pick a fundraiser, give them 10 dollars a month, and some kids IN AFRICA will have more to eat. No, I say, that doesn't work, it doesn't change anything about the system, that's just a fig leaf for Republicans! (I was pretty pleased with myself with that one…) And he answers: well, it's better than standing in your kitchen with a bowl of rice krispies, talking about it and doing nothing. And that's what I do, of course: NOTHING. Except now I've published it in my blog, and I'm wondering if the fact that I have this place to channel my thoughts into just makes me mull them over even more instead of just going to sleep, it's gonna be 2 am by the time I finish this ghastly post [2:20 and I would love a peanut butter sandwich right now. going to bed...]. Speaking of nothing, I'm very sure that I will bring no change whatsoever to this world, that I will produce nothing of significance to humanity. I have a no less firmer conviction that the world is going to be a shittier place in the future, and if my grandchildren don't actually fight their neighbors for some resource like, oh let's say, WATER, it's because white people will leave it to the grandchildren in Africa to kill each other.
(Girly girl talk coming up. Seriously guys, if you don't feel like reading about menstrual pads and hand laundry, just skip to the next paragraph). I've recently started using non-disposable menstrual pads. In short, they're great. But I guess ideally I should have spent even more money to buy enough of them to last my whole period without having to do the laundry every other day for a week. So I end up hand washing with Tide - which is probably manufactured by one of the most animal-testing, toxic-waste-dumping, baby-killing conglomerates in the world - those cool eco-friendly save the planet and embrace your femininity pads. Point: made myself feel totally lame again. I mean, I can technically sew some more of these pads myself, they even encourage you to. (Girl talk is over...)
However, a) I don't have a sewing machine, and what is more important b) I can do nothing with my bare hands besides bake, and for that to turn out nice I need assistance from some butter (back to the original problem: SATURATED FATS!), and occasionally write unimportant papers on antiquity. Perhaps if I were an artist. dot dot dot.
Now, I kinda owe you an explanation of what it is I want to be when I grow up, which is not necessarily a Classics professor, but a theater director, and how I am trying to move in theatrical circles, but that will have to wait. What I do want to say is that I recently saw a dance piece by Andrea Miller, well what do you know, just go ahead and click on that link and you will see she defines it as a "duet for two men about loss and the vain attempt to save someone who is dying" (the Internet, I tell you. You learn something every day). Chapeau, Ms. Miller, because even without knowing what it's "about", it totally made me cry, and I mean choke down sobs into a kleenex, and I was willing to at least partly attribute that to the music by Arvo Part (which, I found out at the end of the show, is a piece called Fratres, which means Brothers in Latin). But mostly, well, I see a piece like this, something so strong and crystal-clear and WITHOUT WORDS, and I know that if I really could, it is not theatre I would strive to do, but dance.
But I can't. The easy excuse would be to refer you back to my left-foot injury.
Some concluding thoughts: 1. Thanks, mom, for taking us out to shows like this, and mending my clothes and knitting us cool stuff. You are a woman who does things with her hands, including deliciously amazing food, and I admire you.
2. If there is a volunteering path I might actually take, it is to help women who have been sexually attacked. Now, my ex-therapist would probably advise me not to do it, and I seriously do not know if my stomach and heart can take the devastation of these situations, but if ever there was a cause I believed in, an aspect of this shitty world I would want to actively contribute to changing.
3. This might be one of my passing nihilistic fits, though they seem to be recurring more frequently lately. When DH looses faith in his intellectual vocation - which he recently described as a sublimation of the artistic occupation that he can't pursue anymore because of his own physical injury - or in his capacity to make a difference, I say to him: we will bring children to the world and raise them to be good people. That's all very well (minus the anxiety of my children being molested, chronically ill, socially inapt, or just unhappy) but let's just stick to the Art and Vocation parts. So really, even if I were an artist, I'd probably be presenting to a bunch of left-wing white intellectuals and I'm back to square one: I am not going to have any impact on anything. NOTHING is going to change. All this talk about NOTHING, could it be somehow related to the fact that - with the original intent solely to hear DH presenting in class, my very own DH who is, in a way, returning to his intellectual "home" - I spent the day reading Heidegger's What is Metaphysics, and then sitting in a class on the NothingNESS that is revealed to us in ANXIETY?
Hmmmm. Probably not.
Apr 2, 2010
Sister Week
(TESNOBEN Alert! Not for the faint of heart)
Some of you may have noticed my Facebook status of late:
IT'S SISTER WEEK!!!!! If you have any SISTER who makes your life interesting and fun, is a blessing in your life and generally makes life worth living by being around, copy and paste this to your status.
Probably not a status statement that anyone would really be accused of needing an excuse for - especially considering the quite legitimate, all-embracing interpretation of sister (i.e., "sista"), that would include any significant female in my life (except maybe my mother?) - not to mention my sister-in-law, who is AWESOME and deserves a blogo-tribute of her own (despite her refusal, or at least reluctance, to read the way-too-long English entries of this blog). And yet, I do not tend to participate in anything reminiscent of chain letters, and was just about to share with the Facebook world how some nasty neighbor is using (i.e., stealing) our laundry detergent, the huge bottle of which we conveniently left in a box in the basement so as not to haul it up and down the stairs in addition to the triple load we (i.e., I) customarily struggle with. But then I saw this status and knew I had to copy-paste it (though I probably should have laid off on those excessive exclamation marks. That's what I call Chain-Letter Reminiscence).
Now even without the aforementioned interpretative permissiveness, it's not stretching the truth too far to say that I have a sister, and that she is around. Yes, N left me a lot of her nice clothes (she insisted I choose whatever I want while she was still alive, so we could all feel like she's giving them to me), which I do wear - because what's the point not to. And whenever I see something N would find interesting or funny or inspiring, I have to swallow to keep breathing at the same pace. This what-I-wore-blog - one of my favorites, perhaps because I think N would love the outfits here - I found this blog in the middle of the night when N was already in a coma, about 30 hours before she past away, and my first thought was "I have to show this to N!" And now, my mother is spending the week here with me, and every once in a while tears well in her eyes when she thinks how my sister is irrevocably gone. Interestingly, this recently happened in another clothing-related occasion, when we were both perusing the hangers at a huge and thoroughly-cool thrift shop.
I'm not sure having N constantly around with us - because hey mom, she is constantly with us and we are not in danger of forgetting her any time soon - makes life worth living. And I'm not trying to say that life is worth living because there's blogging and shopping and nice outfits to wear. NOPE. But it definitely tells us that there is no choice but to live. And this is probably what my mother feels heart-broken about, what actually makes life so hard. Here's how this onerous life-task translates in my head, sometimes all options simultaneously: a) But I DON'T WANNA go on living!!! Tough luck, sista. YOU HAVE TO. b) I've got a husband and grad school and things to do and to wear and to bake and that's pretty not-to-bad. OH NO I might be ok though TESNOBEN. Holy CRAP. c) (which is the worst) N was always pretty hard on me, and besides we haven't been living in the same country for the last 10 years, and never really were the let's-go-thrift-shopping-together-sista! kind of sisters, but I won't ever forget her because my parents will never get over this anyway HOLY CRAP I HAVE NO HEART.
I tend to prefer b) and aim to spend most of my emotionally-distraught time around that option because as an existentialist conclusion HOLY CRAP or a variation on that theme (say, SHIT HAPPENS) pretty much suits life as I see it, and without a doubt corresponds to how N lived her whole life and especially her last year: not afraid to die, spending her time exactly the way she wanted to, and imploring us to wear nice clothes and be merry. AMEN.
Some of you may have noticed my Facebook status of late:
IT'S SISTER WEEK!!!!! If you have any SISTER who makes your life interesting and fun, is a blessing in your life and generally makes life worth living by being around, copy and paste this to your status.
Probably not a status statement that anyone would really be accused of needing an excuse for - especially considering the quite legitimate, all-embracing interpretation of sister (i.e., "sista"), that would include any significant female in my life (except maybe my mother?) - not to mention my sister-in-law, who is AWESOME and deserves a blogo-tribute of her own (despite her refusal, or at least reluctance, to read the way-too-long English entries of this blog). And yet, I do not tend to participate in anything reminiscent of chain letters, and was just about to share with the Facebook world how some nasty neighbor is using (i.e., stealing) our laundry detergent, the huge bottle of which we conveniently left in a box in the basement so as not to haul it up and down the stairs in addition to the triple load we (i.e., I) customarily struggle with. But then I saw this status and knew I had to copy-paste it (though I probably should have laid off on those excessive exclamation marks. That's what I call Chain-Letter Reminiscence).
Now even without the aforementioned interpretative permissiveness, it's not stretching the truth too far to say that I have a sister, and that she is around. Yes, N left me a lot of her nice clothes (she insisted I choose whatever I want while she was still alive, so we could all feel like she's giving them to me), which I do wear - because what's the point not to. And whenever I see something N would find interesting or funny or inspiring, I have to swallow to keep breathing at the same pace. This what-I-wore-blog - one of my favorites, perhaps because I think N would love the outfits here - I found this blog in the middle of the night when N was already in a coma, about 30 hours before she past away, and my first thought was "I have to show this to N!" And now, my mother is spending the week here with me, and every once in a while tears well in her eyes when she thinks how my sister is irrevocably gone. Interestingly, this recently happened in another clothing-related occasion, when we were both perusing the hangers at a huge and thoroughly-cool thrift shop.
I'm not sure having N constantly around with us - because hey mom, she is constantly with us and we are not in danger of forgetting her any time soon - makes life worth living. And I'm not trying to say that life is worth living because there's blogging and shopping and nice outfits to wear. NOPE. But it definitely tells us that there is no choice but to live. And this is probably what my mother feels heart-broken about, what actually makes life so hard. Here's how this onerous life-task translates in my head, sometimes all options simultaneously: a) But I DON'T WANNA go on living!!! Tough luck, sista. YOU HAVE TO. b) I've got a husband and grad school and things to do and to wear and to bake and that's pretty not-to-bad. OH NO I might be ok though TESNOBEN. Holy CRAP. c) (which is the worst) N was always pretty hard on me, and besides we haven't been living in the same country for the last 10 years, and never really were the let's-go-thrift-shopping-together-sista! kind of sisters, but I won't ever forget her because my parents will never get over this anyway HOLY CRAP I HAVE NO HEART.
I tend to prefer b) and aim to spend most of my emotionally-distraught time around that option because as an existentialist conclusion HOLY CRAP or a variation on that theme (say, SHIT HAPPENS) pretty much suits life as I see it, and without a doubt corresponds to how N lived her whole life and especially her last year: not afraid to die, spending her time exactly the way she wanted to, and imploring us to wear nice clothes and be merry. AMEN.
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