so i just spent the last few hours out with some friends, or possible friends
this girl i know from work invited me to her birthday celebration involving seeing kiss kiss bang bang, and i of course said i was interested, and then went today...
and it was fine
when i talked to her, i felt like i made sense, and i had fun
but i just can't seem to shut my mouth
like i was talking to the other guys there and i just couldn't say what a guy is sposed to say...i kept talking about my problems with my department, in that other students are too tightly wound (tho i phrased it more awkwardly)
and i kept coming back to feeling like saying 'i'm sorry, i'm awkward' but i know that's no excuse, and i dont' need an excuse
mostly i just wish everyone hadn't coupled before i meet them, and that if i do meet them uncoupled, they don't assume i want them
honestly, the more grad students i meet, the more i think the kind of woman i would like to meet wouldn't go to grad school, would be far too irritated by its constraints
and so too i'm more and more confused as to what is right, what i ought to do
i keep being pressed into choices, into actions that i would not take normally...i have to define myself as being committed to one discipline, as a good student, as a normal person, as someone worth employging, as a published scholar with innovative ideas
but i don't care about any of that, i'm realizing...i just want to make a difference, i want to change the world, i want to change peoples' lives for the betterment of the world
and yet i'm pushed into being one tiny grad student insecure of his place in the world, missing his parents, longing for his friends, and dreaming that even the people he loves get lost in the tornado that has become his life
one tiny mook in a fancy wine/cheese place having a stranger spot him the cash for food and drink, a stranger who could very well be his cool friend...but i'm so lost, so ... floating that i can't even commit myself to a conversation
because i'm constantly anticipating what others willt hink and do, and yet i'm haunted by my sister's words from a few summers ago when we fought over why we'd been fighting for the last 2 years..."you're anticipating, you're holding your cards up against your chest and not letting anyone else see, you're too busy trying to stay one step ahead of people to give a fuck about them"
and maybe i am, maybe my way of being scared is trying to manipulate others, but at the same time, i find myself in social situations with my mouth running off in the other direction, vomiting my emotions, my self onto the table in awkward lights and situations so that others can see, so maybe someone will point at it and say
"that's beautiful"
Bienvenue
The moon shines down upon an open field, while you walk on the bare, crumbling cement of the path. The trees are welcoming but dark, and the night feels no place to wander.
About Me
- Jaro
- My name is Jeremy, and I create, research, and teach comics and graphic narratives (and their overlap with anthropology, ethnography, media, communication, etc.). I am also a textile artists, and I am often up for doing work freelance/by commission -- ask me and see. And now, a poem: watching stars collide, i breathe a sigh of wonder; life so short, yet so long
1 comment:
Just letting you know I still read this -- and that I can relate to your problems, as they have something of the universal about them, blah blah blah...
Part of why you fight with your sister IS because she's a total flake -- hope you realize that. Though she has a point: you want to change the world, which to you requires changing people, which means people must be wrong. But you can't really change people without changing yourself (why it's so hard), though of course you CAN get people to do what you want, i.e. by manipulating them. Jerk.
I've been thinking about this some too -- the change in self that is required in order to genuinely change another person needs to be equal to the change you expect in the other person. If you want to change some fundamental belief, your fundamental beliefs have to change -- which doesn't seem to make much sense, but I think it's true. There isn't a single belief you have that isn't totally worthless and false from some perspective (and anyway, how do you feel anything but the most contemptuous sort of compassion for a bunch of people who you think are blithering idiots?)
And yet you can't just give in ("it's hopeless, waaaaaah" or "I acknowledge your right to make that point that I am secretly contemptuous of you for making") -- that's false too, a cop-out. This is why arguments rarely convince anyone of anything (only reaffirm already existing beliefs) unless there is already an agreement on some crucial level -- 'common ground.'
What I'm probably trying to say is just that you have no chance at all at changing the world unless you give up your (completely foolish) conviction that the world needs changing. In other words, lighten up already (said in the most infuriatingly smug voice possible). Life will only work out better if you do.
And keep in mind how easy this all is for me to say when I'm addressing your convictions and not mine :0)
(ha! you HATE those!)
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