Ride the River

There are so many, many things to do.

Il y a si beaucoup de choses de faire!

Bahuut chizen karne hain!



I have been puzzled the last few days, trying to figure out a few things.

One: I am feeling quite good about many things, like my friends here and the way that my social life has become, once again, a force to be reckoned with. I find myself talking to people and enjoying it thoroughly, once again wondering: what on earth are they doing here talking to me? Only, I realize now, they're enjoying it a lot too.

TWO: Am I a horrible academic/scholar/writer? I keep meeting with this one person who tells me over and over again that I need to focus, but he finally helped me understand what he meant. I am not unfocused; I just tend to cut out step 2 of 3 and then my thoughts get confused. It's not that I need to use theory to lobotomize my ideas, but that I need to make my own voice stronger. The only way I can do that is to explain everything clearly and to recognize people don't think about stuff as much as I do (least not the same stuff).

THREE: Why am I on edge lately? With multiple fronts actually coming together (cool research, cool friends, cool students to teach), what is up with me? And then I remember that there is a whole big world out there. WHile some people can just block it out, it's always in the back of my mind, just moving along, a river of thoughts and important things. My dad does not have another set of tumors (yet); he is not unemployed but not gainfully employed either; my mom is doing okay, at least she says she is (but that's no way of knowing); sisters and brother are all going through rough spots.
And then, here I am, having a good time and enjoying my work. Feeling inspired and thinking I could actually get through this PhD with my soul in tact, that I could go to INdia and write something awesome, get published, give papers, get a job.

FOUR: If things were different, I would run off to Seattle or Portland with my friend S and spend some time just living, doing a crap job and eating vegan, seeing the world and traveling maybe (cheaply). Walking in shoes and sleeping in beds that don't quite fit but that always remind me just how good I have had it. Just how wonderful the world can be. If things were different.


A river of thoughts and things to do. A river to ride out to the source.
Or until the world falls out from under us (and we learn it was a disk all along).

Higher Learning

Learning can be awesome. It can be fun.
It can also be unnervingly painful.

I took a particularly intense language class this year to try to liven up my schedule and also because I love language. Unlike most normal, sane human beings, I enjoy conjugating verbs and memorizing different words for things. I like knowing the little exceptions and strange intricacies of other peoples' grammar. It feels like I'm going through someone else's belongings, like when I was a kid and I would go through my mom's purse, my sister's shoeboxes of random writings and knicknacks, or my brother's 'secret' drawer (which was the top drawer and which often didn't even have a front to it--thus not so secret).

But I do not love this.
I keep trying to make it fun and there have been changes that have helped (like story-reading and a few film clips and a skit or two for activities), but I keep getting stuck. First, it's unclear what the homework is or what we're supposed to know for tests, which wouldn't be so bad except there's no book anymore and we just get barraged with vocab all the time. Plus, the vocab from last year that we were told was unimportant is something we are supposed to know now, though no one but native speakers do. Second, I do not get along well with the leader of our learning---I get wicked mixed signals. So, I'll be told I'm motivated and then that I should come to the board if I think I know everything (which, by the by, I was writing notes on the grammar points when told that I think I know everything [!]). Last, but not least, whenever I ask a question about anything, though mostly grammar cuz that's what I love, I get a response that has nothing to do with what I asked. I've tried explaining what I mean, only to have the exact same response repeated several times until maybe, just maybe, I get my original meaning across.
But usually, I just say sure and nod my head and wait for the spotlights to clear. Then, I stick my head in my book (which apparently distracts from my learning from sporadic and disorganized explanations) and try to wait out the day, the semester, and the year.
So, I have decided that language is for the summertime---cuz at least then I only have one crazy person to deal with, as opposed to many.

Basically, learning gets less and less fun the higher up in ed I go---though it doesn't have to. I have one class right now where I was told: here's a list of books, read the ones you dig or can find cheap, and then call me when you've read the first group you come up with-later! Which is cool, and apparently very European.

So there's that.

And here's this:

Exhale...

So my dad does not have to face another bout of chemo---what we were worried might be tumors in his sinuses (gross!) was in fact a clog formed by nasal fungus that took advantage of his weakened immune system (GROOOOOSSSSSSSS!!!), and was easily cured.

You may ask, why share that?
I would answer, because it's gross and ridiculous...and just a bit funny.

Breathe in the Evening

Today, I managed to work the inauguration speech into my teaching---which was, frankly, awesome. For me. And for a few students. Mostly, I just was happy I got to watch some of it, since I teach in the morning this year.

Then, after walking home in a bit of a haze and meeting up with one of my favorite people in Bton, I stumbled into my house and fell down on my bed. I looked out the window and just was. Not critically thinking or avoiding myself through fiction or feeling bad about not doing enough work.
I had a headache. My feet were cold. The light was the kind of pale light in winter that lets you know 'this is evening now; this is what counts for the time before darkness'. No one walked by and the wind blew. I lay on the bed and imagined something, and that something led down a path that led to sleep.

There is something so invigorating about just being a biological, physical being. Not thinking about the whys and wherefores, but just feeling the senses. Knowing the pain of my sinusitis, curling my feet under corduroy, tensing at the cold inside the house.

Feeling and knowing what it means.





This is not the house where you sleep.