Saw off John and Maura yesterday. One went back to Pittsburgh, one to Shaker Heights, Ohio. One will return to the DC/Baltimore area within weeks. One will take a detour through Cameroon and France for a couple of months before doing the same. Sterling and Diamond are still around.
Nonetheless, this is still undeniably the end of an era, arguably more so than the past two summers have been. It's the end of the Marylander penthouse. End of being amused by how trashed John's place is, listening to endless music on his computer, movies and dance parties in the living room, beers on the roof. I ran into Anna C. yesterday while walking to give John back his Radiohead book and Battles CD; we went to the Marylander together, where most of John's stuff was already moved out or in bags. After I gave him the book and the CD I went out to the roof for the last time. It was blue skied and clear, and I could see right over the buildings of the west city. I thought about how Chunwoo had showed up at that party back before the fall semester started and repeatedly pretended to jump off the edge of the roof, to the horror of the gathered throng. (Then he took home and hooked up with a GWU freshman girl who was buying drugs from him, but that's another story.) I thought of the time John kicked all those Kappa girls out. I thought of just last week, when it was kegs and hookahs and Christmas lights on the roof and I met this kid whom I'd sat next to in ProbStats for an entire semester, but only met that night.
Ever since sophomore year of high school it seems I get wrapped up in these weird gatherings: that year was Eric's 314 in Hamill, of course, junior year was nothing, senior year was Zach and Adam's entourage, freshman year of college I hung with "artsy" kids whom I now no longer speak to, sophomore year of college was the long-defunct Symposium House (310 E. University), summer after that was the Woodcliffe movement, and junior year of college (last year) revolved around John's Marylander penthouse. I've seen all these microcosms come and go, their endings usually nothing resembling their initial intentions. Ironically, Eric's 314 survived its tenure more intact than the rest, I think, in the sense that it didn't seem like truly ending until Ben suddenly got kicked out the beginning of my junior year in high school. Maybe that's because it was held together not by supposed ideological convictions, but simple hedonism.
The night before John left I found myself helping him pick up leftover Sonar flyers in his room. Maura was hanging out with us too, but she left early after raiding John's mp3 collection. The place was still full of junk as of midnight on Monday; it was hard for me to believe a place that heavy with baggage would be empty in hours. I stuck around as long as I could because, having packed up places and moved out for good many times myself, I didn't think it was something people should have to do by themselves. John talked to me about how he regretted being a douchebag to Steph for a long time. I told him that I'd been cruel as well--to whom, I don't think I need to say--and that we all hope we are kind all the time, but that's impossible, so then we hope all our mistakes are either remedied or forgiven, but that's also impossible, so maybe, at the end of the day, it's best to just hope that we don't get more retribution than we deserve.
We talked about his split personality again, and how the side of him who meets everyone he can an flirts with every girl he meets and the side of him who actually gets attached to, and hurt by, these people are constantly undermining each other. As far as I could see, I told him, maybe he should just start forcing one of his aspects to shut the fuck up once in a while, and I didn't think I needed to tell him which one I was talking about. "The problem," John said, "is that that side is the DJ." Fundamental conflict of interest here, then: the side of him that embodies and manages all the shit he likes to do offends his essential human tendencies. Lucky that I am a guitarist, and don't need an excuse to act more like J Mascis or Kevin Shields than Keith Richards or Jimi Hendrix. I've always contended that nothing--not science, and not music--is more important than basic human tendencies, but it's sort of hard to convince someone else of that, and I'm not sure I'm right about it anyway. Still, though, I hope John can one day figure out how to take his craft less personally, especially since his craft as a DJ and promoter is so intricately dependent upon how people react to him, and therefore a lot less under his control than whatever I spend my time on is under mine.
First results. A couple of Saturdays ago was Annie's 21st birthday. We'd planned to celebrate at Fletcher's where Trafalgar was scheduled to open at Mouth Curved Moonlike's record release show--obviously, that had become a non-option. She and her friends decided to go bar-hopping, and invited me, though I'd decided I probably wouldn't go, because I'm still a couple months short of 21. The evening came around and no word from Annie on where they were going. So I headed out with John, Sterling, Diamond, and Maura, as usual, for cheap beers and cheaper liquors and John's hijacking of the speakers with his iPod to make it all go down a little easier. I returned home later that night, slightly tired, somewhat grumpy, somewhat drunk, to the message: "i'm sorrrry." I replied, possibly too curtly, "what the fuck ever" and went to sleep. The next morning Annie messaged me apologizing for forgetting to let me know where they were going, and telling me I'd hurt her feelings.
At this point, I somewhat lost it. Though that's not really the right expression. Been waiting for a time to say very definite things, I suppose, and jumped at the opportunity. I pointed out to her that I've had to talk her through a crisis at least every other week this semester. I pointed out that despite this, we've only hung out two or three times, and each time I've had to call her. I pointed out that she'd forgotten to bring me along to the party with her (though I probably would've had to turn her down), even though she'd invited me in the first place. I concluded that if at the end of all this I had hurt her feelings, then things seemed a little unfair from my perspective.
I don't do this very often. Mostly, if people need to vent, I listen, though I don't often open up (emotionally at least) to people, so it's unlikely I'll balance the equation at a later point. But there's only so much of that I can tolerate. Anyway, she said I was right and she was sorry, and I said sorry wasn't the point, the point was friends listen to each other and support each other, but it has to go both ways, and either she needs to decide to be actual friends with me and not only when she's depressed, or she's not allowed to vent at me like she does. Though I suspect that, due to the respective natures of our personalities, it's possible that our interactions will always inevitably be one-way.
Incidentally, we haven't talked as frequently since then as we usually do. Maybe that's the best outcome. I've gotten frustrated with her before, having spent hours trying to cheer her up and then knowing she'll go back to the same old way of living and come back with the same issues a few days later. Watching her come so close to agreeing with me on aspects of life and then diverging at the last junction before I would believe she truly could relate, repeatedly. It's been draining. And I realized a couple of years ago that I am very much finite.
Though I've finally been able to find some people with whom communication flows in the other direction from time to time: John, Lindsay, Maura, and to some extent Janani, though the extent of her disagreements with me (my quasi-socialist egalitarian views and her quasi-fascist meritocratic views conflict from time to time, to say the least) is enough to make me want to keep my distance. John and Lindsay, in particular, I believe are the two people who had the greatest impact on my life this past year. I've talked about John at length--the whole thing about eccentric personal codes, demons on sleeves and such. Parallel personalities, if not overlapping.
Lindsay though. Got to give credit to Lindsay. It's mostly one-sided with her, too, but in the other direction--I was surprised when I realized I did more talking than listening with her. I've tried to balance my end--calling to comfort her when I heard she broke up with her boyfriend (for a day, it turned out), for example--but she's pretty much the listener in our steady dynamic, making plans to meet up, etc. That's another thing: she acts like she actually wants to spend time with me, which I don't get a lot. I've gotten most of the way back to functional this past semester and Lindsay gets a lot of the credit for that. If it weren't for her, I might've backslid into sophomore-year conditions after the winter.
She's leaving at the end of the week though. Virgil duty (tunnel guide) for her, Vi, and Sterling before that. But at some point I'm going to be on my own. Try to sail after having lost sight of land. Got to carry the direction on my own. Try not to let down those who've kept me going.
You just have to join in on this song.
(On a side note, Greg from MCM sent a message to the Trafalgar Myspace after their show dissing us for first bailing on the pay-to-play and then not even showing up to see them; since I was no longer in the band, and he hadn't messaged me at either of my personal Myspace accounts--I knew because Miguel emailed Steffi and I the message--I'm took the liberty of pretending it's not my problem, even though Steffi, for some reason, wanted to compose a "joint response" with Miguel and I. Honestly.)
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Monday, May 14, 2007
This Love
When I was around 13 or so, my uncle left a New Age compilation CD at my house when he was visiting from Utah. It was called Inspirational Moments II. Improbably, it started a year-plus-long obsession with New Age music for a very angsty and confused 7th-grade boy in Taipei, Taiwan. (As a side note, this also coincided with the start of my one- or two-year long Magic: The Gathering tenure.) I didn't listen to any rock then, because I thought rock was either pop, or dirty, or both, and that electric guitars weren't "natural," and I played that New Age comp until it skipped (possibly paving the way for my appreciation for glitch music six years later, but unlikely). A few months later I went out and bought some Enigma albums. I'm not afraid to admit it. I won't tell anyone about the Yanni album, though.
Oh, wait, I just did. Shit.
Anyway, on the compilation was a song, "This Love" by Craig Thompson. It's a glacial, stark, tremolo-piano and trip-hop beats piece, with a female vocal that was beautiful in a way my 13-year-old mind couldn't yet comprehend.
Today, purely by chance, I found out that the vocals for that song were performed by Elizabeth Fraser. That's right, the one from the Cocteau Twins. Whose Heaven and Las Vegas, and especially "Cherry-Coloured Funk," I became absolutely enamoured with sometime last year. That's a five- to six-year gap between the first time I heard Fraser's voice, and the first time I realized how wonderful it was. I've listened to a couple of other Cocteau Twins albums since then, but nothing tops the little major-to-minor chord transition in the middle of the verse of "Cherry-Coloured Funk," for some reason.
Anyway...what of "This Love"? It's a good song after all, as can be seen by the fact I just listened to it 10 times in a row, though perhaps less suited to 13-year-old Evangelion-worshipping wishy-washy daydreaming than the songs it came with. There's only one (albeit heavily processed) vocal track for the most part on this song, as opposed to two or three on most Cocteaus songs. I didn't understand these textured, digitized beats when I was 14, but now that I've journeyed through the DJ Shadow and Portishead discographies, they make a lot more sense to me. I've a lot more taste for the bass drum that hits on the second and fourth "ands" of "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and." And maybe the dissonant, though subdued, string section shriek-up before the bridge was prepping me for Penderecki and Schoenberg six years down the line.
And maybe Robert Miles' "Children" was a latent gateway to IDM and DnB. Sort of like how Tubular Bells was a warm-up for Lift Your Skinny Fists...
Yeah, maybe. If listening to "With or Without You" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" every summer on the radio when I was 8 meant I would buy All That You Can't Leave Behind without having any clue who U2 were when I was 14 and finally be convinced that rock music was good to listen to and play, then anything can happen, right?
Oh, wait, I just did. Shit.
Anyway, on the compilation was a song, "This Love" by Craig Thompson. It's a glacial, stark, tremolo-piano and trip-hop beats piece, with a female vocal that was beautiful in a way my 13-year-old mind couldn't yet comprehend.
Today, purely by chance, I found out that the vocals for that song were performed by Elizabeth Fraser. That's right, the one from the Cocteau Twins. Whose Heaven and Las Vegas, and especially "Cherry-Coloured Funk," I became absolutely enamoured with sometime last year. That's a five- to six-year gap between the first time I heard Fraser's voice, and the first time I realized how wonderful it was. I've listened to a couple of other Cocteau Twins albums since then, but nothing tops the little major-to-minor chord transition in the middle of the verse of "Cherry-Coloured Funk," for some reason.
Anyway...what of "This Love"? It's a good song after all, as can be seen by the fact I just listened to it 10 times in a row, though perhaps less suited to 13-year-old Evangelion-worshipping wishy-washy daydreaming than the songs it came with. There's only one (albeit heavily processed) vocal track for the most part on this song, as opposed to two or three on most Cocteaus songs. I didn't understand these textured, digitized beats when I was 14, but now that I've journeyed through the DJ Shadow and Portishead discographies, they make a lot more sense to me. I've a lot more taste for the bass drum that hits on the second and fourth "ands" of "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and." And maybe the dissonant, though subdued, string section shriek-up before the bridge was prepping me for Penderecki and Schoenberg six years down the line.
And maybe Robert Miles' "Children" was a latent gateway to IDM and DnB. Sort of like how Tubular Bells was a warm-up for Lift Your Skinny Fists...
Yeah, maybe. If listening to "With or Without You" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" every summer on the radio when I was 8 meant I would buy All That You Can't Leave Behind without having any clue who U2 were when I was 14 and finally be convinced that rock music was good to listen to and play, then anything can happen, right?
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Is It Up to Me?
I've lived in Baltimore for three years now, but I just got my first (professional, Julia notwithstanding) Baltimore haircut this week. It wasn't so much a statement of finality as a simple result of my anticipation that the weather around here will be getting very hot very soon. (And I was right, see; I'm always right.) I was going to do my research, find out who gives good haircuts around here--but then I stopped myself, decided it was against my principles to spend any effort on the issue, walked into Tenpachi and said, "just, um, make it shorter." And so it was. As far as I can tell, it looks alright, if boyish, but then again I'm boyish (at least to people who don't know me very well); besides, it'll look like the same old when it grows back out, anyway.
Finished with exams this week; got my grades back. They are:
Biological Physics 2: A
Advanced Biophysics Seminar: A+
Advanced Poetry: A
ProbStats: A
average 4.0
And there you have it: the first straight-A, four-point-oh average semester of my entire life. My overall GPA just went up by 0.13. It's not like I worship GPA scores, but I do feel somewhat accomplished, especially since I've been feeling more paranoid about studying this semester than during past semesters.
Met up with Valerie one last time on Wednesday afternoon. Sat outside Carma's with Sno-Joes for hours. Talked about how she injured her ankle while bouldering. At some point a really tall dude and a really short girl walked by, and Valerie said hi to the guy. His name was Chris, but I didn't really pay attention, since I didn't know the guy. But after he'd passed she said, "what a jerk," and I realized there was some history going on. So Valerie ended up talking to me about how this guy Chris had given her all these overt signals while they were hanging out, but then decided to not talk to her, and why was he with that short blonde girl when Valerie was a "good catch," (her words) and I had to talk through all this while thinking the irony was so goddamn thick I could roll it up into a ball and chuck it across the table. I think that I'd have the decency to not talk to someone about relationship problems just a few weeks after having to pre-empt them.
"You're a good listener," she said after I admitted that most people tend to tell me about their problems. So fucking what, I wondered. Later I helped her move boxes out of her dorm room. Sometimes I wonder why I bother.
After considering the cases of my uncle, my father, my brother, and myself, I've come to notice a pattern: my family makes loners. Since I got kicked out of Trafalgar, every group effort I've started since freshman year has officially failed. With all my talk about ineffable forces driving people's lives, I can't help but think that there may be some kind of force compelling me to be alone, making doing the same things by my self so much easier than doing them with others that I have no choice but to do things by myself.
I wonder what I am to the people around me, anyway. Being a good listener just means I feel the pain of everyone, and then I feel nothing. When all my friends are finally happy and don't need me anymore, what will become of me? Will I just disintegrate and fade away, having served my purpose? This year I had to talk Anne out of hating herself and her life once every week, and she didn't really bother to bring me barhopping for her birthday (though it's doubtful I could've gone, being 2 months away from my own 21st birthday), so where will I be when people don't need that from me anymore?
Probably just deluding myself anyway. Probably people would get along fine without the things I do. Probably I just balk at the proposition, since those things are the only connections I have with some people I know, and I'm scared of being disconnected completely.
I need to start drawing lines, establishing terms. I should stop being so damn kind. Can I stop? Should I stop? Maybe it's not just a vacation from this city that I need, but from the very people I surround myself with, the people who never seem to make time for me, but whom I can't seem to make myself stop caring about.
"So...what about you?" Valerie asked me near the end of our conversation that day. I didn't know what to say to her. How was I supposed to sanely communicate that the problem I had wasn't so much with any one person, not her, not anybody, snubbing me, but with a state of loneliness that's as perpetual and natural as thirst or hunger, except when I'm thirsty I can drink a glass of water, and when I'm hungry I can make myself a sandwich, but solitude is pretty much a chronic condition without a reliable, permanent cure? And were I to say that, how was I ever supposed to communicate that it was something personal, visceral, and relevant, and I wasn't just speaking on an abstract, philosophical, and disinterested plane, like I do too much of the time, even in this here very goddamn blog?
Finished with exams this week; got my grades back. They are:
Biological Physics 2: A
Advanced Biophysics Seminar: A+
Advanced Poetry: A
ProbStats: A
average 4.0
And there you have it: the first straight-A, four-point-oh average semester of my entire life. My overall GPA just went up by 0.13. It's not like I worship GPA scores, but I do feel somewhat accomplished, especially since I've been feeling more paranoid about studying this semester than during past semesters.
Met up with Valerie one last time on Wednesday afternoon. Sat outside Carma's with Sno-Joes for hours. Talked about how she injured her ankle while bouldering. At some point a really tall dude and a really short girl walked by, and Valerie said hi to the guy. His name was Chris, but I didn't really pay attention, since I didn't know the guy. But after he'd passed she said, "what a jerk," and I realized there was some history going on. So Valerie ended up talking to me about how this guy Chris had given her all these overt signals while they were hanging out, but then decided to not talk to her, and why was he with that short blonde girl when Valerie was a "good catch," (her words) and I had to talk through all this while thinking the irony was so goddamn thick I could roll it up into a ball and chuck it across the table. I think that I'd have the decency to not talk to someone about relationship problems just a few weeks after having to pre-empt them.
"You're a good listener," she said after I admitted that most people tend to tell me about their problems. So fucking what, I wondered. Later I helped her move boxes out of her dorm room. Sometimes I wonder why I bother.
After considering the cases of my uncle, my father, my brother, and myself, I've come to notice a pattern: my family makes loners. Since I got kicked out of Trafalgar, every group effort I've started since freshman year has officially failed. With all my talk about ineffable forces driving people's lives, I can't help but think that there may be some kind of force compelling me to be alone, making doing the same things by my self so much easier than doing them with others that I have no choice but to do things by myself.
I wonder what I am to the people around me, anyway. Being a good listener just means I feel the pain of everyone, and then I feel nothing. When all my friends are finally happy and don't need me anymore, what will become of me? Will I just disintegrate and fade away, having served my purpose? This year I had to talk Anne out of hating herself and her life once every week, and she didn't really bother to bring me barhopping for her birthday (though it's doubtful I could've gone, being 2 months away from my own 21st birthday), so where will I be when people don't need that from me anymore?
Probably just deluding myself anyway. Probably people would get along fine without the things I do. Probably I just balk at the proposition, since those things are the only connections I have with some people I know, and I'm scared of being disconnected completely.
I need to start drawing lines, establishing terms. I should stop being so damn kind. Can I stop? Should I stop? Maybe it's not just a vacation from this city that I need, but from the very people I surround myself with, the people who never seem to make time for me, but whom I can't seem to make myself stop caring about.
"So...what about you?" Valerie asked me near the end of our conversation that day. I didn't know what to say to her. How was I supposed to sanely communicate that the problem I had wasn't so much with any one person, not her, not anybody, snubbing me, but with a state of loneliness that's as perpetual and natural as thirst or hunger, except when I'm thirsty I can drink a glass of water, and when I'm hungry I can make myself a sandwich, but solitude is pretty much a chronic condition without a reliable, permanent cure? And were I to say that, how was I ever supposed to communicate that it was something personal, visceral, and relevant, and I wasn't just speaking on an abstract, philosophical, and disinterested plane, like I do too much of the time, even in this here very goddamn blog?
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Where You'll Find Me Now
Periodically...
Your Existing Situation
Persistent. Demands what he feels to be his due and endeavors to maintain his position intact.
Your Stress Sources
Delights in the tasteful, the gracious, and the sensitive, but maintains his attitude of critical appraisal and refuses to be swept off his feet unless genuineness and integrity can be absolutely vouched for. Therefore keeps a strict and watchful control on his emotional relationships as he must know exactly where he stands. Demands complete sincerity as a protection against his own tendency to be too trusting.
Your Restrained Characteristics
Willing to participate and to allow himself to become involved, but tries to fend off conflict and disturbance in order to reduce tension.
Clings to his belief that his hopes and ideas are realistic, but needs encouragement and reassurance. Applies very exacting standards to his choice of a partner and wants guarantees against loss or disappointment.
Circumstances force him to compromise and to forgo some pleasures for the time being. Capable of achieving physical satisfaction through sexual activity.
Your Desired Objective
Seeks affectionate, satisfying and harmonious relationships. Desires an intimate union, in which there is a love, self-sacrifice and mutual trust.
Your Actual Problem
Needs to protect himself against his tendency to be too trusting, as he finds it is liable to be misunderstood or exploited by others. Is therefore seeking a relationship providing peaceful and understanding intimacy, and in which each knows exactly where the other stands.
Your Existing Situation
Persistent. Demands what he feels to be his due and endeavors to maintain his position intact.
Your Stress Sources
Delights in the tasteful, the gracious, and the sensitive, but maintains his attitude of critical appraisal and refuses to be swept off his feet unless genuineness and integrity can be absolutely vouched for. Therefore keeps a strict and watchful control on his emotional relationships as he must know exactly where he stands. Demands complete sincerity as a protection against his own tendency to be too trusting.
Your Restrained Characteristics
Willing to participate and to allow himself to become involved, but tries to fend off conflict and disturbance in order to reduce tension.
Clings to his belief that his hopes and ideas are realistic, but needs encouragement and reassurance. Applies very exacting standards to his choice of a partner and wants guarantees against loss or disappointment.
Circumstances force him to compromise and to forgo some pleasures for the time being. Capable of achieving physical satisfaction through sexual activity.
Your Desired Objective
Seeks affectionate, satisfying and harmonious relationships. Desires an intimate union, in which there is a love, self-sacrifice and mutual trust.
Your Actual Problem
Needs to protect himself against his tendency to be too trusting, as he finds it is liable to be misunderstood or exploited by others. Is therefore seeking a relationship providing peaceful and understanding intimacy, and in which each knows exactly where the other stands.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
When's a Day?
Earlier this semester I mentioned my very attractive Biological Physics TA, Corinne. Today I went to pick up my last two graded homework assignments. I happened to be wearing my Dinosaur Jr 2005 t-shirt:
Corinne: "Hey, do you like Dinosaur Jr? Their new album came out yesterday, you know."
Me: "(Are you fucking kidding me?)"
Corinne: "Aren't you a little young to be liking Dinosaur Jr? [If you only knew...] I'm too young to be liking Dinosaur Jr...I'm 27."
Me: "...um. They were still putting out records when you were a teenager, right?"
Corinne: "Yeah, but they were...eh..."
Me: "Without Lou?"
Corinne: "Yeah."
Once again, music and science conspire to taunt me for not being born ca. 1979, give or take a year. Goddamnit. Why can't I ever meet a girl who's into science and Dinosaur Jr and is not seven years older than me?
Today I was sitting outside Carma's with Sid, downing caffeine and talking as one does, when Peter happened to walk by. I don't see him very often, and talk even less, even though he was one of the regulars at Eric Han's "speakeasy" back in Hamill. As I talked to him--how's things, how's the band, I got kicked out, are you leaving town (yes he is--I envy people who aren't depressed by the prospect of going home for extended periods of time)--it struck me that I was going to see him graduate again, after sending him and the rest of Lawrenceville Class of 2003 off four years ago. Maybe things do go in cycles...still, it was a really weird feeling, not quite deja vu, not quite nostalgia, not quite wincing in empathy with injuries past, but something akin to all of these.
Last Writing Sems undergrad reading of the year was last night. Senior guys', it was. Blaha, Chunwoo, Max S., James Z., Josh C., and Fox, in that order. Most of them far better writers than I'll ever be (I can't match Blaha's skill, but his aesthetic disagrees with me 80% of the time), and most everything that was read was great, if not new to me (I had classes this semester with Blaha, Max, and Fox). The high point to me, though, was when James read a story ("Napalm") wherein he and the other senior guys (names cleverly disguised, but not quite) became boy scouts lost and famished in the woods, and the others (poets) were just about to kill and eat him (for writing fiction) when the senior girls (Brooke and Kat, abandoning all pretense of fictional characters) showed up, declared that they "suck" and "will never read at tonight's reading!" before jetpacking into the night sky and calling in perennial not-Writing Sems-guy Vijay in a helicopter to firebomb the helpless senior guys, concluding with Fox's and James' fictional manifestations bemoaning, "Do you realize how much talent dies here tonight?" and "What a waste! What a waste!" as they and their colleagues succumbed to a glowing, napalmy fate.
(For whatever reason, I liked the other, more "serious" story James read as well, in a strangely empathetic way, even though it was way too much Hemingway fucking meets New York City, or something of that sort.)
"Why me?" Vijay would later ask me. "Because you're just a tool in...never mind," I replied, cutting my jab short before it crumbled into innuendo. I'm hyper-sensitive to these things.
It sort of reminded me of that poem I wrote four years ago caricaturing the then-editors of The Lit, except that wasn't as well executed, and was done more out of malice than sentimentality. All the same, though, I hope someone does something similar for the Writing Sems kids in my year a year from now. I hope Jessica does it. Or Stephanie. I hope both of them team up to do it, actually. It would be hilarious. I wonder how the Writers next year are going to turn out. Patrice and Tom are running things, but I wonder if they'll be able to pull in the east Charles Village hipsters (I hope they don't, regardless). I wonder if I'll hang with them at all. I'm sure I'll go to the readings and such, and maybe even read something once in a while, but I don't know if I'll be around on a regular basis, or if I'll keep drifting in and out of orbit, like I've been doing so far. I think I'd enjoy being the non-humanities interloper; or me and Garrett, perhaps. We could split the job.
One wonders what my present status is (isn't that always the question?). Case one: last week, I was walking back to my place from One World when a dude I'd never met stopped me. "Are you going to be there next Tuesday?" he asked. I was confused until I realized he was referring to the aforementioned senior guys' reading. I told him no. He introduced himself as Mac; he wasn't a student, but his dad taught here.
"Didn't you read at one of those things?" A few weeks ago, yeah, I said. "I really liked what you read. I asked Fox, 'Does this happen a lot?' and he was like, 'About once a semester.'"
Wait, what? Did Fox mean "awesome, Will read one of his rarely-revealed gems" or "that stupid science kid fucked with our shit again, and he's even wearing a goddamn JHU Biophysics t-shirt"? Poetry writers can be so inscrutable. I see the Writing Seminars people as being somewhat exclusive; John does not share this opinion. I don't know if I'll run guns with them, anyway; I like a few of them, but a few others I am not such a huge fan of.
Wandered up north in Tevas (!) Monday afternoon to find the fabled tulip garden, which everyone talked about (especially the Writing kids) but which I had never seen in my three years' residence. I walked under an unhesitant sun, under low-hanging jasmine branches, around sprinklers, maybe picked and scattered a dandelion clock, can't remember. It was some sort of spectacle, all right; beds of tulips in every imaginable color scattered across a patch of greenery the size of a small park or a very big yard. Many people were there, and I had to get ready for DC anyway, so I only walked through and around once before heading home. It wasn't until I found myself across the street from the ghost house that I realized I was in familiar territory, after all; I had been there before, once, with Patrice, two years ago, but it was raining and out of season (must've been before), so I didn't realize it was the tulip garden. I remembered sitting on one of the stone benches...and the ghost house, the one with the two massive cauldrons on tripods in front of it, was familiar too, and of course I thought about that night standing under an umbrella for an hour, before finally ringing the doorbell and slipping in the mud as I ran away. Memories...I've idealized them, no doubt, to the point where I don't so much remember things anymore as recall vague, abstracted, symbolic images detached from times and places that actually were.
After the '90s party (at which I spilled candlewax on my left Doc, and was persuaded to be, and then utterly dissed out as, an iTunes jockey within the span of minutes) I sat on the porch with Lindsay, and somehow the subject of conversation turned to people of my not-so-distant past...wasn't even close to drunk, but when asked, I tend to tell, to the best of my recollection. "But it must've been so good..." It's always nice to have Lindsay put things in perspective for me, if only because I don't feel so bad about taking things so seriously if other people tell me things are serious, that goddamn loneliness and security are issues for me because of history and not some sort of neurotic obsession on my part. (But then again, if you believe Freud, those two things are translatable.)
I must admit that it's been rather difficult, this past school year, to run into her wherever I go when we don't even talk anymore. Can't seem to have a conversation without feeling like the words are coming from and going into a void, can't seem to make inquiries and responses connect in a meaningful way, blah blah blah blah blah, so on and on. We don't seem to talk unless we disagree, or I wrote something I maybe shouldn't've somewhere I maybe shouldn't've written it (why I removed almost every single reference to this blog from profiles etc.). Que sera not necessarily sera, but qu'a été most certainly a été--or something like that, I don't even know if I used the right form of "to be," though I'm sure Jessica will tell me. All the same, there haven't been too many instances in my life where I've lost my grip on something I held onto tightly...I suppose I just haven't gotten used to it. Will I ever? Can I? Do I want to?
I can't even remember if I've been over this before. I've been doing some digging in some forgotten corners. "The inevitable things are the good things"...I said that. I said that. Not the same person, I am.
Cut it, cut it. I didn't mean for this to turn into such a rumination. Too good at making closing comments. Too good at fashioning dramatic exits. Shitty at everything preceding.
Monday night John and I went to DC for Fujiya & Miyagi + Peter Bjorn & John. (Au Revoir Simone were there too, but I don't know anything about them.) We missed the train and didn't get to the 930 until while Fujiya were playing their last song (I could hear "Collarbone" coming from inside as I stood helplessly in line at the door). Despite being at the very rear of the club at the beginning of Peter Bjorn & John's set, I managed to weasel my way towards the front; bastard I know, but I had a mission. Peter Bjorn & John's set was superb; lots of guitar heroics, to my surprise. Peter reminded me somewhat of a bespectacled, Swedish, and more awkward Ira Kaplan. "Chills" became an extended, tense, Krautrock jam. They were good with the stage banter, although John's accent was very heavy, and I couldn't understand most of what he said. They brought on one of the girls from Au Revoir Simone for "Young Folks." Peter threw his Telecaster on the ground after clanging his way through "Up Against the Wall" and bludgeoned it with a shaker before picking it up again and playing on.
When Peter walked back onstage, alone, for the first song of the encore--"Poor Cow"--I'd gotten to within two or three rows of the front of the crowd, and finally did what I came all the way from Baltimore to do: I pulled a CD-R of my own "Chills" remix and waved it at him, shouting, "here's a present for you!" "How kind," Peter said as he took the disc. Here's just hoping they don't throw it away, don't hate it, and don't nail me with a cease & desist order.
John and I crashed at Deal's house that night. Or, to be more accurate, I did; John wandered out in the middle of the night to CC's dorm down the street and stayed there. I slept in Deal's roommate, Jenn's bed, which I noticed had been stripped of its sheets. In the morning I learned Jenn had gone home for the semester. I wonder what one can possibly do for someone when the only thing that person wants to do for herself is die, but I know that I want to punch a wall and yell, goddamn, someone should be doing something.
Deal's always good company, though, even if she was writing a paper on Aztec poetry and didn't really have time to talk...I felt bad for being out of it in the morning (unshowered + unfamiliar bed), and therefore being more reticent than usual (having forgotten my allergy medicine didn't help). She's a wholesome human being the likes of whom I know too few in college.
Later, when John and I were sitting outside Thurston, CC's dorm, waiting for her to come downstairs and go to lunch with us, a toothbrush came flying out of the sky, foaming toothpaste and all, and landed splat on my backpack, which was sitting in my lap.
Still later, as the three of us sat around a table with CC's roommate Dasha at the vegetarian restaurant where CC worked, John and I listened to CC and Dasha tell stories which made us wonder how the fuck we ever ended up at the same table as these people.
Chalk one up for absurdity, I suppose. Or two.
I just remembered I still have Zach's roommate's Jacob's Ladder DVD, which I borrowed over a year ago. Goddamnit.
Finally, for no reason other than Jessica did it:
Corinne: "Hey, do you like Dinosaur Jr? Their new album came out yesterday, you know."
Me: "(Are you fucking kidding me?)"
Corinne: "Aren't you a little young to be liking Dinosaur Jr? [If you only knew...] I'm too young to be liking Dinosaur Jr...I'm 27."
Me: "...um. They were still putting out records when you were a teenager, right?"
Corinne: "Yeah, but they were...eh..."
Me: "Without Lou?"
Corinne: "Yeah."
Once again, music and science conspire to taunt me for not being born ca. 1979, give or take a year. Goddamnit. Why can't I ever meet a girl who's into science and Dinosaur Jr and is not seven years older than me?
Today I was sitting outside Carma's with Sid, downing caffeine and talking as one does, when Peter happened to walk by. I don't see him very often, and talk even less, even though he was one of the regulars at Eric Han's "speakeasy" back in Hamill. As I talked to him--how's things, how's the band, I got kicked out, are you leaving town (yes he is--I envy people who aren't depressed by the prospect of going home for extended periods of time)--it struck me that I was going to see him graduate again, after sending him and the rest of Lawrenceville Class of 2003 off four years ago. Maybe things do go in cycles...still, it was a really weird feeling, not quite deja vu, not quite nostalgia, not quite wincing in empathy with injuries past, but something akin to all of these.
Last Writing Sems undergrad reading of the year was last night. Senior guys', it was. Blaha, Chunwoo, Max S., James Z., Josh C., and Fox, in that order. Most of them far better writers than I'll ever be (I can't match Blaha's skill, but his aesthetic disagrees with me 80% of the time), and most everything that was read was great, if not new to me (I had classes this semester with Blaha, Max, and Fox). The high point to me, though, was when James read a story ("Napalm") wherein he and the other senior guys (names cleverly disguised, but not quite) became boy scouts lost and famished in the woods, and the others (poets) were just about to kill and eat him (for writing fiction) when the senior girls (Brooke and Kat, abandoning all pretense of fictional characters) showed up, declared that they "suck" and "will never read at tonight's reading!" before jetpacking into the night sky and calling in perennial not-Writing Sems-guy Vijay in a helicopter to firebomb the helpless senior guys, concluding with Fox's and James' fictional manifestations bemoaning, "Do you realize how much talent dies here tonight?" and "What a waste! What a waste!" as they and their colleagues succumbed to a glowing, napalmy fate.
(For whatever reason, I liked the other, more "serious" story James read as well, in a strangely empathetic way, even though it was way too much Hemingway fucking meets New York City, or something of that sort.)
"Why me?" Vijay would later ask me. "Because you're just a tool in...never mind," I replied, cutting my jab short before it crumbled into innuendo. I'm hyper-sensitive to these things.
It sort of reminded me of that poem I wrote four years ago caricaturing the then-editors of The Lit, except that wasn't as well executed, and was done more out of malice than sentimentality. All the same, though, I hope someone does something similar for the Writing Sems kids in my year a year from now. I hope Jessica does it. Or Stephanie. I hope both of them team up to do it, actually. It would be hilarious. I wonder how the Writers next year are going to turn out. Patrice and Tom are running things, but I wonder if they'll be able to pull in the east Charles Village hipsters (I hope they don't, regardless). I wonder if I'll hang with them at all. I'm sure I'll go to the readings and such, and maybe even read something once in a while, but I don't know if I'll be around on a regular basis, or if I'll keep drifting in and out of orbit, like I've been doing so far. I think I'd enjoy being the non-humanities interloper; or me and Garrett, perhaps. We could split the job.
One wonders what my present status is (isn't that always the question?). Case one: last week, I was walking back to my place from One World when a dude I'd never met stopped me. "Are you going to be there next Tuesday?" he asked. I was confused until I realized he was referring to the aforementioned senior guys' reading. I told him no. He introduced himself as Mac; he wasn't a student, but his dad taught here.
"Didn't you read at one of those things?" A few weeks ago, yeah, I said. "I really liked what you read. I asked Fox, 'Does this happen a lot?' and he was like, 'About once a semester.'"
Wait, what? Did Fox mean "awesome, Will read one of his rarely-revealed gems" or "that stupid science kid fucked with our shit again, and he's even wearing a goddamn JHU Biophysics t-shirt"? Poetry writers can be so inscrutable. I see the Writing Seminars people as being somewhat exclusive; John does not share this opinion. I don't know if I'll run guns with them, anyway; I like a few of them, but a few others I am not such a huge fan of.
Wandered up north in Tevas (!) Monday afternoon to find the fabled tulip garden, which everyone talked about (especially the Writing kids) but which I had never seen in my three years' residence. I walked under an unhesitant sun, under low-hanging jasmine branches, around sprinklers, maybe picked and scattered a dandelion clock, can't remember. It was some sort of spectacle, all right; beds of tulips in every imaginable color scattered across a patch of greenery the size of a small park or a very big yard. Many people were there, and I had to get ready for DC anyway, so I only walked through and around once before heading home. It wasn't until I found myself across the street from the ghost house that I realized I was in familiar territory, after all; I had been there before, once, with Patrice, two years ago, but it was raining and out of season (must've been before), so I didn't realize it was the tulip garden. I remembered sitting on one of the stone benches...and the ghost house, the one with the two massive cauldrons on tripods in front of it, was familiar too, and of course I thought about that night standing under an umbrella for an hour, before finally ringing the doorbell and slipping in the mud as I ran away. Memories...I've idealized them, no doubt, to the point where I don't so much remember things anymore as recall vague, abstracted, symbolic images detached from times and places that actually were.
After the '90s party (at which I spilled candlewax on my left Doc, and was persuaded to be, and then utterly dissed out as, an iTunes jockey within the span of minutes) I sat on the porch with Lindsay, and somehow the subject of conversation turned to people of my not-so-distant past...wasn't even close to drunk, but when asked, I tend to tell, to the best of my recollection. "But it must've been so good..." It's always nice to have Lindsay put things in perspective for me, if only because I don't feel so bad about taking things so seriously if other people tell me things are serious, that goddamn loneliness and security are issues for me because of history and not some sort of neurotic obsession on my part. (But then again, if you believe Freud, those two things are translatable.)
I must admit that it's been rather difficult, this past school year, to run into her wherever I go when we don't even talk anymore. Can't seem to have a conversation without feeling like the words are coming from and going into a void, can't seem to make inquiries and responses connect in a meaningful way, blah blah blah blah blah, so on and on. We don't seem to talk unless we disagree, or I wrote something I maybe shouldn't've somewhere I maybe shouldn't've written it (why I removed almost every single reference to this blog from profiles etc.). Que sera not necessarily sera, but qu'a été most certainly a été--or something like that, I don't even know if I used the right form of "to be," though I'm sure Jessica will tell me. All the same, there haven't been too many instances in my life where I've lost my grip on something I held onto tightly...I suppose I just haven't gotten used to it. Will I ever? Can I? Do I want to?
I can't even remember if I've been over this before. I've been doing some digging in some forgotten corners. "The inevitable things are the good things"...I said that. I said that. Not the same person, I am.
Cut it, cut it. I didn't mean for this to turn into such a rumination. Too good at making closing comments. Too good at fashioning dramatic exits. Shitty at everything preceding.
Monday night John and I went to DC for Fujiya & Miyagi + Peter Bjorn & John. (Au Revoir Simone were there too, but I don't know anything about them.) We missed the train and didn't get to the 930 until while Fujiya were playing their last song (I could hear "Collarbone" coming from inside as I stood helplessly in line at the door). Despite being at the very rear of the club at the beginning of Peter Bjorn & John's set, I managed to weasel my way towards the front; bastard I know, but I had a mission. Peter Bjorn & John's set was superb; lots of guitar heroics, to my surprise. Peter reminded me somewhat of a bespectacled, Swedish, and more awkward Ira Kaplan. "Chills" became an extended, tense, Krautrock jam. They were good with the stage banter, although John's accent was very heavy, and I couldn't understand most of what he said. They brought on one of the girls from Au Revoir Simone for "Young Folks." Peter threw his Telecaster on the ground after clanging his way through "Up Against the Wall" and bludgeoned it with a shaker before picking it up again and playing on.
When Peter walked back onstage, alone, for the first song of the encore--"Poor Cow"--I'd gotten to within two or three rows of the front of the crowd, and finally did what I came all the way from Baltimore to do: I pulled a CD-R of my own "Chills" remix and waved it at him, shouting, "here's a present for you!" "How kind," Peter said as he took the disc. Here's just hoping they don't throw it away, don't hate it, and don't nail me with a cease & desist order.
John and I crashed at Deal's house that night. Or, to be more accurate, I did; John wandered out in the middle of the night to CC's dorm down the street and stayed there. I slept in Deal's roommate, Jenn's bed, which I noticed had been stripped of its sheets. In the morning I learned Jenn had gone home for the semester. I wonder what one can possibly do for someone when the only thing that person wants to do for herself is die, but I know that I want to punch a wall and yell, goddamn, someone should be doing something.
Deal's always good company, though, even if she was writing a paper on Aztec poetry and didn't really have time to talk...I felt bad for being out of it in the morning (unshowered + unfamiliar bed), and therefore being more reticent than usual (having forgotten my allergy medicine didn't help). She's a wholesome human being the likes of whom I know too few in college.
Later, when John and I were sitting outside Thurston, CC's dorm, waiting for her to come downstairs and go to lunch with us, a toothbrush came flying out of the sky, foaming toothpaste and all, and landed splat on my backpack, which was sitting in my lap.
Still later, as the three of us sat around a table with CC's roommate Dasha at the vegetarian restaurant where CC worked, John and I listened to CC and Dasha tell stories which made us wonder how the fuck we ever ended up at the same table as these people.
Chalk one up for absurdity, I suppose. Or two.
I just remembered I still have Zach's roommate's Jacob's Ladder DVD, which I borrowed over a year ago. Goddamnit.
Finally, for no reason other than Jessica did it:
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