It's already October? How did the summer get away from us and fall rush in so quickly?
My Lyon application is due a week from yesterday -- how terrifying and fascinating all at once. I've been truly reticient to discuss this, mostly because I am terrified that if one person manages to talk me out of it, I won't ever be brave enough to go.
At the same time, I can't help but see the lure of stepping out of this life and these life-things and doing something radically different.
For now, I am skimping on my DMP reading and looking forward very much to this afternoon, when I will not have to worry about classes until Tuesday. Yay, fall reading days! Unfortunately, I really will be reading for most of them, since the Late Victorian Fiction midterm is the Wednesday we get back.
I am so glad I took that class. It might be my favorite this semester.
For now, I am a little bit thinking of how to begin to pursue something that I've wanted to speak out on for a long time -- the distressingly negative and repressive attitudes of our culture toward menstruation. This discussion of course brings in issues about parenting, female puberty, sexuality and sexual development, birth control, fertility, pregnancy & childbirth, and menopause, to name a few. All of these are important parts of feminist discourse, but I want to focus on the straightforward physical phenomenon of monthly bleeding and the range of attitudes surrounding it.
Here are the things I want to change: shame, secrecy, and negativity about menstruation. Unfounded fears and stereotypes about menstruating women (including the infamous diagnosis of PMS). The disdain many (most?) women feel about their cycles, and the corresponding lack of interest in alternative menstruation options.
And most importantly, I want to see a radical shift in the way that we teach our daughters (the inheritors of third wave feminism and the succeeding generation to ourselves) about the incredibly creative power of their bodies.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
pour tous les matins du monde, il n'y a qu'une aube.
To do this one, I won't lie, I pulled the posts I had written for my nineteenth birthday, and my eighteenth, and my seventeenth. They're sort of an odd mix.
As far as I'm concerned, the past year has been one of the richest and the best -- spending the fall chiefly concerned with my horse, declaring two degrees, spending the winter holidays with the family and Em in a (more or less) laid-back manner.
Spring, vacations, the slow-burning fuse on a best friendship that completely blindsided me. Summer, hot days, smothering nights, a surprising affinity for work. And now we're back to the balancing point of fall, looking into evenings with the Decadent Reader and weekend journeys across the state.
Since my tour-de-force brown belt test has already given me everything I could want, I look forward to a tolerable day and perhaps some joint birthday kata this evening (among other things).
And who wouldn't want to take on this song?
[[there are things that drift away
like our endless numbered days
autumn blew the quilt right off
the perfect bed she made]]
It's my birthday.
As far as I'm concerned, the past year has been one of the richest and the best -- spending the fall chiefly concerned with my horse, declaring two degrees, spending the winter holidays with the family and Em in a (more or less) laid-back manner.
Spring, vacations, the slow-burning fuse on a best friendship that completely blindsided me. Summer, hot days, smothering nights, a surprising affinity for work. And now we're back to the balancing point of fall, looking into evenings with the Decadent Reader and weekend journeys across the state.
Since my tour-de-force brown belt test has already given me everything I could want, I look forward to a tolerable day and perhaps some joint birthday kata this evening (among other things).
And who wouldn't want to take on this song?
[[there are things that drift away
like our endless numbered days
autumn blew the quilt right off
the perfect bed she made]]
It's my birthday.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
got your earrings in my pocket till i see you again
I am finally settling into the give and take of things here, and am realizing that I turn twenty in eight days. How strange a thought is that?
What else is there to say, except that I miss the relative comforts and companionship of the summertime? I've made a promise, foolishly and selfishly, that the weather will break by my birthday and be incredibly, breathtakingly, a Blue Ridge fall day. Perhaps that's more hope than anything.
Things I have gleaned from my classes so far include:
-hope and doubt are two sides of the same peculairly human state
-I am violently appalled and sickened by the not-so-ancient (though more and more discredited) notion that history is a a grand, divinely ordained, *progress* toward liberty, perfection, and telos -- that there is an END to this thing that we are tearing apart.
I need to see my fellow DMP students step away from the blindness of faith, that the world is some non-accidental creation, that the "great men" of history were somehow preordained and "chosen" to grasp the reins of historical change. I am prepared to slap everyone in the face with Britain's crippled postwar economy, the unmitigated disaster of Vietnam, the Armenian genocide, the formation of terror cells in countries whose leaders do not care about the welfare of their citizens.
I just can't reconcile myself with the unbelievably arrogant idea that we are progressing -- socially, morally, economically, politically, and religiously, toward a predetermined telos. I will not be cheated out of the intense intellectual pleasures of ripping down old theories, sustained research, a true quest for understanding, an admission of the senselessness and vastness of the past. By default, I have an incredibly dim view of the future, of the times that we can't think about and the incredible disparities that we face every day.
No one's fought me on it yet. I have to admit that I have more respect and perhaps even affection for my fellow DMP'ers than of any other class thus far. The redheaded boy with the impatient quotations who will challenge me on Voltaire, the gorgeous Russian girl who speaks with conviction, the girl from Georgia whose apologetic drawl does nothing to soften the barbs of her criticism, and all the manifold others.
Oh, and art history can be boring and fascinating by turns.
Sprained ankle - healing well. Skinned knee - healing slightly less well. Test in six days, oh panic.
What else is there to say, except that I miss the relative comforts and companionship of the summertime? I've made a promise, foolishly and selfishly, that the weather will break by my birthday and be incredibly, breathtakingly, a Blue Ridge fall day. Perhaps that's more hope than anything.
Things I have gleaned from my classes so far include:
-hope and doubt are two sides of the same peculairly human state
-I am violently appalled and sickened by the not-so-ancient (though more and more discredited) notion that history is a a grand, divinely ordained, *progress* toward liberty, perfection, and telos -- that there is an END to this thing that we are tearing apart.
I need to see my fellow DMP students step away from the blindness of faith, that the world is some non-accidental creation, that the "great men" of history were somehow preordained and "chosen" to grasp the reins of historical change. I am prepared to slap everyone in the face with Britain's crippled postwar economy, the unmitigated disaster of Vietnam, the Armenian genocide, the formation of terror cells in countries whose leaders do not care about the welfare of their citizens.
I just can't reconcile myself with the unbelievably arrogant idea that we are progressing -- socially, morally, economically, politically, and religiously, toward a predetermined telos. I will not be cheated out of the intense intellectual pleasures of ripping down old theories, sustained research, a true quest for understanding, an admission of the senselessness and vastness of the past. By default, I have an incredibly dim view of the future, of the times that we can't think about and the incredible disparities that we face every day.
No one's fought me on it yet. I have to admit that I have more respect and perhaps even affection for my fellow DMP'ers than of any other class thus far. The redheaded boy with the impatient quotations who will challenge me on Voltaire, the gorgeous Russian girl who speaks with conviction, the girl from Georgia whose apologetic drawl does nothing to soften the barbs of her criticism, and all the manifold others.
Oh, and art history can be boring and fascinating by turns.
Sprained ankle - healing well. Skinned knee - healing slightly less well. Test in six days, oh panic.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
you should come back home, back on your own now
It's quiet, here, quieter even than it was last year, I think. This new room is finally a little bit starting to feel like a home-place, coupled with a better layout and a nice roommate on the other side of the wall.
I am here, anyway, saying what I should have said last week -- that I miss little Andi, and maybe I didn't realize how much I would miss having her around at the barn until she left to go to school four hours from here. There are not a lot of opportunites to meet someone for the second time, to get another chance at a first impression and a friendship, but I am eternally glad that I had that with her these past two years. I have never had the pleasure of knowing someone so open wide, so free, so small but full of fire. This girl taught me how to make things happen, how to race horses and ride the fine line between suspended galloping and flying out of the saddle, watched me take my first bareback steps and jump my first jumps. The constant oversharer and the only other irreverant liberal, the only other teenage girl, at the barn, she showed up on cold mornings with killer hangovers and never once complained.
Above and beyond all of that, she is a superb horsewoman with a patient voice, a settling touch, and an indomitable determination. She will make a wonderful vet if that's what she goes forward with, and I can't wait for Thanksgiving break when we can reunite, sitting on the porch to clean tack or make horseshoe dreamcatchers and talk about the fall.
This was supposed to be more detached, better formed and quieter, less elaborated upon.
School is going as well as can be expected. I am mildly fond of each of my classes in a different way. In each there is someone fascinating to compell my attention (a stunning French girl, a cheerful boy with red hair, a professor who seems much too young, a girl who keeps reappearing in my courses), so that is something good.
Tomorrow I am spending most of my day at the barn, purely to avoid the overzealousness of football fans and such.
There are so many decisions I am avoiding, it should be criminal.
I am here, anyway, saying what I should have said last week -- that I miss little Andi, and maybe I didn't realize how much I would miss having her around at the barn until she left to go to school four hours from here. There are not a lot of opportunites to meet someone for the second time, to get another chance at a first impression and a friendship, but I am eternally glad that I had that with her these past two years. I have never had the pleasure of knowing someone so open wide, so free, so small but full of fire. This girl taught me how to make things happen, how to race horses and ride the fine line between suspended galloping and flying out of the saddle, watched me take my first bareback steps and jump my first jumps. The constant oversharer and the only other irreverant liberal, the only other teenage girl, at the barn, she showed up on cold mornings with killer hangovers and never once complained.
Above and beyond all of that, she is a superb horsewoman with a patient voice, a settling touch, and an indomitable determination. She will make a wonderful vet if that's what she goes forward with, and I can't wait for Thanksgiving break when we can reunite, sitting on the porch to clean tack or make horseshoe dreamcatchers and talk about the fall.
This was supposed to be more detached, better formed and quieter, less elaborated upon.
School is going as well as can be expected. I am mildly fond of each of my classes in a different way. In each there is someone fascinating to compell my attention (a stunning French girl, a cheerful boy with red hair, a professor who seems much too young, a girl who keeps reappearing in my courses), so that is something good.
Tomorrow I am spending most of my day at the barn, purely to avoid the overzealousness of football fans and such.
There are so many decisions I am avoiding, it should be criminal.
Friday, August 22, 2008
tried and true, faded, in the twilight
I've come back home once more, and all of a sudden it's August. It's not just August, it's late August, the end of midsummer falling hard with a huge orange moon in the sky every night.
School starts in four days (five, for me, the one who perpetually has Tuesdays off). I am once again migratory, getting ready to reset my flawless internal global positioning system to Brown, resizing all my distances, resetting every frame.
More specifically, I am enjoying the perfection of this weather, so delicately balanced that the slightest breeze would make me shiver or the lightest touch would be too warm. It's absolutely gorgeous as summer turns into fall. Fall!
I don't really know how to write full paragraphs any more; everything is too exciting and yet I also have to go fill in metadata fields.
Oh, and I got invited to test.
[but I was a young James Dean, with a way with the ladies...]
School starts in four days (five, for me, the one who perpetually has Tuesdays off). I am once again migratory, getting ready to reset my flawless internal global positioning system to Brown, resizing all my distances, resetting every frame.
More specifically, I am enjoying the perfection of this weather, so delicately balanced that the slightest breeze would make me shiver or the lightest touch would be too warm. It's absolutely gorgeous as summer turns into fall. Fall!
I don't really know how to write full paragraphs any more; everything is too exciting and yet I also have to go fill in metadata fields.
Oh, and I got invited to test.
[but I was a young James Dean, with a way with the ladies...]
Thursday, July 17, 2008
all your waves and all your thunder got me a haze running for cover
Things are disjointed. I'm moving in a forward direction down the winding path to a Myo Sim Karate first dan black belt, which is terrifying and exciting at the same time. More about that as the new semester approaches and this year's test (finally) takes place.
I wrote a very short poem about the glorious full moon tonight, getting down and dirty with pen and paper for the first time in way too long. I have been on the cusp of bringing up something large, looming, soft and silent, something I foolishly assumed had gone to ground inside of me.
On the same subject, I consciously lied to you by omission for the first time last weekend, and it's been weighing low and heavy on me for the past few days. I told you the story about home, about my transience and the wrapped black milk carton that travels, cradled in my protective arms as I tack back and forth across this sprawling town, never getting unpacked, smelling like nag champa and oak. I told you each of these things in turn, using the low tones of my voice and the sprawl of my arms to emphasize their importance, but crucially, consciously and painfully, I neglected to explain what it is and why.
Needless cruelty, shortshifting covered over by a mysterious smile and a distracting punching combination.
On another note, apparently I invite pounding because I have "a good frame for it." Shockingly, probably for the first time I *reacted* to an instructor reinforcing this statement (effectively, playfully punching me in the sternum) by pulling both fists back and into a short range double solar plexus punch. It is the unfairly agressive behavior I generally only unleash on B., and I swear you could have knocked the aforementioned instructor over with a feather.
But not in a bad way.
reading: Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot (and other observations) // Al Franken
listening to: Sweet Mistakes // Ellis Paul
I wrote a very short poem about the glorious full moon tonight, getting down and dirty with pen and paper for the first time in way too long. I have been on the cusp of bringing up something large, looming, soft and silent, something I foolishly assumed had gone to ground inside of me.
On the same subject, I consciously lied to you by omission for the first time last weekend, and it's been weighing low and heavy on me for the past few days. I told you the story about home, about my transience and the wrapped black milk carton that travels, cradled in my protective arms as I tack back and forth across this sprawling town, never getting unpacked, smelling like nag champa and oak. I told you each of these things in turn, using the low tones of my voice and the sprawl of my arms to emphasize their importance, but crucially, consciously and painfully, I neglected to explain what it is and why.
Needless cruelty, shortshifting covered over by a mysterious smile and a distracting punching combination.
On another note, apparently I invite pounding because I have "a good frame for it." Shockingly, probably for the first time I *reacted* to an instructor reinforcing this statement (effectively, playfully punching me in the sternum) by pulling both fists back and into a short range double solar plexus punch. It is the unfairly agressive behavior I generally only unleash on B., and I swear you could have knocked the aforementioned instructor over with a feather.
But not in a bad way.
reading: Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot (and other observations) // Al Franken
listening to: Sweet Mistakes // Ellis Paul
Thursday, July 3, 2008
you've got a lot to learn about possibilities
Running through the gamut of bookmarked blogs on my browser last night, I suddenly realized that Blogger had logged me out since I hadn't updated in at least a month. After a ten-minute struggle to remember my password, I return to Lesbia today in an effort to send some kind of update about how things are right now.
In the boring specificity of the day to day, I'm at work right now, constantly starting and stopping the medium-sized flat item scanner, running off hundreds of pages of rather boring 19th century sheet music. My iPod sits beside the monitor with a couple of hairties wrapped around it -- extras, since the one holding my long hair back is on its last threads. I'm avoiding the solitary world of playlists because I want to keep having intermittent conversations with the girl at the other Digibook. She is very polite and has a nice laugh.
I am well-worked and tired, my body slightly stressed after hours of hiking yesterday, but not sore like a difficult class or a long run might have left me. The tension in my neck is left over from Tuesday night falls, a little bit of whiplash that I still can't prevent. My right palm is scraped a bit and my fingers are cracking, and I desperately need a haircut that I can't afford.
Having tomorrow off for the holiday is a nice break from my usual Friday routine. I pretty much don't know what to do with myself without workout, but E. and I will be at my parents' house for dinner in the evening, which I expect will be nice. By "nice" I mean "bearable due to the presence of free food and drinky drink."
Hiking yesterday was gorgeous and relaxing and just generally wonderful, by the by. I stood too long on the edge of Blue Hole, watching B. splash around in the freezing water, but eventually I got over myself and jumped. It was every bit as cold as I had imagined, a cold that ended with both of us screaming and flailing for awhile, but eventually going numb and climbing out to bemoan our usual state of unpreparedness. Towels will be involved in similar adventures in the future.
Plans are being formulated for the annual Rhode Island trip (or exodus, as it were). I am extremely glad that E. has consented to come with for the second year in a row -- if the first year with my strange extended family didn't scare her off, then pretty much nothing could. It should be a pretty good time, at least. Two cushy weeks of bayside living isn't really a struggle.
In much more general terms, I'm looking forward to the fall semester already, though I'd like to find a class to replace my filler of "Late Victorian Fiction." Doesn't exactly sound riveting. I'm not nervous about third year -- I'm quite content to have a major and a plan, even if it's only for the next two years and doesn't mean much outside the department. I'm excited to have more days per week to ride, since I think I'm on the verge of starting to do a little bit of showing just for fun, but I'm also apprehensive because little Andi wants me to take over for her as a lesson instructor. I'm not sure I have the patience, the time, or the skill -- but I could sure use the extra cash. Big Andi seems to be in favor of this (but who really knows what she thinks? I can never tell). Sometimes I think she forgets how little time I've really been riding.
As for Myo Sim, what will be will be, and I'm not going to fight it. B. and I talk a lot about training, about what will happen to the school in the future, and about how things were (or in my case, how I've heard they were) way back in the earlier days of the school. I try not to think too much or too far ahead in classes, just practicing, just doing whatever it is that I'm supposed to be doing and thoroughly enjoying it. I am worried about possibly leaving in the spring and being declared unready to test next summer/fall, but really, my own readiness is something that has to come on its own. I want to feel it, and know that it's there, before I have to show it to the world (our small, insular, meaningful microcosm of a world, that is).
That was entirely too many words for not saying much at all, but since conversation is generally lacking and reflection even more so, there you have it.
My hand hurts.
In the boring specificity of the day to day, I'm at work right now, constantly starting and stopping the medium-sized flat item scanner, running off hundreds of pages of rather boring 19th century sheet music. My iPod sits beside the monitor with a couple of hairties wrapped around it -- extras, since the one holding my long hair back is on its last threads. I'm avoiding the solitary world of playlists because I want to keep having intermittent conversations with the girl at the other Digibook. She is very polite and has a nice laugh.
I am well-worked and tired, my body slightly stressed after hours of hiking yesterday, but not sore like a difficult class or a long run might have left me. The tension in my neck is left over from Tuesday night falls, a little bit of whiplash that I still can't prevent. My right palm is scraped a bit and my fingers are cracking, and I desperately need a haircut that I can't afford.
Having tomorrow off for the holiday is a nice break from my usual Friday routine. I pretty much don't know what to do with myself without workout, but E. and I will be at my parents' house for dinner in the evening, which I expect will be nice. By "nice" I mean "bearable due to the presence of free food and drinky drink."
Hiking yesterday was gorgeous and relaxing and just generally wonderful, by the by. I stood too long on the edge of Blue Hole, watching B. splash around in the freezing water, but eventually I got over myself and jumped. It was every bit as cold as I had imagined, a cold that ended with both of us screaming and flailing for awhile, but eventually going numb and climbing out to bemoan our usual state of unpreparedness. Towels will be involved in similar adventures in the future.
Plans are being formulated for the annual Rhode Island trip (or exodus, as it were). I am extremely glad that E. has consented to come with for the second year in a row -- if the first year with my strange extended family didn't scare her off, then pretty much nothing could. It should be a pretty good time, at least. Two cushy weeks of bayside living isn't really a struggle.
In much more general terms, I'm looking forward to the fall semester already, though I'd like to find a class to replace my filler of "Late Victorian Fiction." Doesn't exactly sound riveting. I'm not nervous about third year -- I'm quite content to have a major and a plan, even if it's only for the next two years and doesn't mean much outside the department. I'm excited to have more days per week to ride, since I think I'm on the verge of starting to do a little bit of showing just for fun, but I'm also apprehensive because little Andi wants me to take over for her as a lesson instructor. I'm not sure I have the patience, the time, or the skill -- but I could sure use the extra cash. Big Andi seems to be in favor of this (but who really knows what she thinks? I can never tell). Sometimes I think she forgets how little time I've really been riding.
As for Myo Sim, what will be will be, and I'm not going to fight it. B. and I talk a lot about training, about what will happen to the school in the future, and about how things were (or in my case, how I've heard they were) way back in the earlier days of the school. I try not to think too much or too far ahead in classes, just practicing, just doing whatever it is that I'm supposed to be doing and thoroughly enjoying it. I am worried about possibly leaving in the spring and being declared unready to test next summer/fall, but really, my own readiness is something that has to come on its own. I want to feel it, and know that it's there, before I have to show it to the world (our small, insular, meaningful microcosm of a world, that is).
That was entirely too many words for not saying much at all, but since conversation is generally lacking and reflection even more so, there you have it.
My hand hurts.
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