Epic Year-End Post

"Christmas came and went, all your money spent, on whiskey for the coming cold, you feel it in your bones, you're growing old..."

That's from a song off a CD I got back in high school from the Princeton Record Exchange on recommendation from a friend. I was into precious guitar-based indie rock in those days. I somewhat still am, so I guess little has changed in that respect, but as for other things...M. and I ended up in NJ last week wandering through the frozen and mostly deserted Lawrenceville campus, and as I showed her the quasi-frat houses where I lived; the library where I got my informal music education; the back cornfield and woods where I spent meditative winter afternoons; the bird-watching platform by the creek where I gouged my name with a rock--couldn't find the marking because it was covered by a hard sheet of ice; the basements where I had sloppy band practices with the amp turned way too high in a cinderblock room and helped edit literary magazines with other similarly heart-on-sleeve high school lustmakers and mythmakers; as we passed through these places, I thought of how I turned everything into a symbol or an allegory or a metaphor back in those days, just because I had nothing better to do, and wondered how shocked the people who knew me would be to see me now, how amazed they would be to know I somehow ended up competent and capable of maintaining a functional relationship and sane, at least for the time being.

There are times I feel I haven't truly earned all of this, that the greatest test is still to come. When I finished graduate applications round 2 I had another brief neurotic spasm about how New York City (or wherever) Will Eat Me etc. I can already see that first bad day in the lab (they happen), coming home late in the evening on the public transport, hungry and drained and staring at the ground, unable to meet anyone's eyes or speak to them because everything had crashed and burned so badly, really needing to be comforted and M. being far away...I don't do prayers, but Lord, give me strength. It seems I will need it.

But then again, it's not like I haven't dealt with off days in the past three years. Just out of practice for now. I'm willing to hope that things will be fine.

Anyway, I spent Christmas with M. and the Quakers. Went to the carol sing (alas, no carousing) with her and her family, and met a few really old people from rural eastern PA who have known M. for over a decade. Quakers do not really flip out over Christmas. Quakers do not really flip out over anything, which is why I like them, that is, when I'm not making statements such as, "I don't think people should have the right to be douchebags!" I get so perpetually sleepy when I stay at M.'s house all I can do is sit on the floor and play with her dog Knut all day and watch It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia with M. That and get my ass kicked at various board games (except Clue). I was raised too uncompetitively; maybe I could win if there was a staring-at-the-wall competition.

I brought M. to the departmental holiday party a week before Christmas. She met some of my favorite biophysicists, including ex-TA Z., ex-crush Sarah, and ex-crush Sarah's new boyfriend. Speaking of assemblies of attractive biophysicists. (Wait, we weren't speaking of assemblies of attractive biophysicists?) Talked to Sarah a bit about where she was looking to postdoc after she gets her PhD in May. She wants to move into mathematical network modeling, which coincidentally is what I'm trying to go to grad school for, putting us both in the category of frustrated molecular biophysicists turned "systems biologists," whatever that ends up meaning. Maybe this means we'll be meeting again in academia years from now. If we are both at some kind of bioscience convention in the distant future, all "Dr. K-----"- and "Dr. C----"-ing each other, where then will be the girl with the Sonic Youth knit hat and the constant flu, and the foolish undergrad with the misguided infatuations always trying to act older than he was? Where then will be those two skinny, awkward geeks and the overwhelming gravity of their passage?

I am always trying to stay on top of the constantly-accumulating mountains of things I will keep. That is why this blog exists. That is why I do things like this:

1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before?
So much, and I don't think I could tell you about all of it.

2. Did you keep your New Years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I forgot to make New Year's resolutions (almost typed "revolutions") this year. For next year: keep up the keeping up? (It's harder than it sounds.)

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Monica is due. Tomorrow! (Edit: she is born!)

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.

5. What countries did you visit?
None.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
Various music-making things. An acceptance letter to a grad program I like. And a little more self-assurance.

7. What date from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
May 22. That is the day I graduated from college.
September 29. That is the day M. and I started dating.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Bachelor's degree; first author publication...

9. What was your biggest failure?
Didn't get into grad school. But in the end I was luckier for it.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Had a couple of bad colds, one while I was traveling in February. Also repeatedly fell off my bike.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
MacBook Pro + Ableton Live Suite 7.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
M.'s (I suppose this is kind of obligatory)

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Graduate school admissions committees and USCIS.

14. Where did most of your money go?
See 11.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
US presidential election! and My Bloody Valentine reunion show!

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?
Beach House - "Gila"
British Sea Power - "No Lucifer"
Dinosaur Jr - "Start Choppin"
Ellen Allien & Apparat - "Leave Me Alone"
The Folk Implosion - "One Part Lullaby"
Guided by Voices - "Fair Touching"
The Hold Steady - "Constructive Summer"
M83 - "Kim & Jessie"
Thurston Moore - "Frozen Gtr"
The Mountain Goats - "Sax Rohmer #1" and any number of others
My Bloody Valentine - "You Made Me Realise" (live version)
The Notwist - "Gravity"
Portishead - "The Rip"
School of Seven Bells - "Half Asleep"
The Smiths - "Reel Around the Fountain" + anything from Strangeways

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder?
Happier by far.

ii. thinner or fatter?
Consistently 110lbs +/- 5.

iii. richer or poorer?
Richer. I have an income!

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Making music, writing poetry...

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Lying alone in bed during the day.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
With the Quakers!

22. Did you fall in love in 2008?
Yes.

23. How many one-night stands?
0.

24. What was your favorite TV program?
No TV for me.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Girl Talk aka Gregg Gillis. Just kidding. But you should still read this.

26. What was the best book you read?
Miranda July - No One Belongs Here More Than You

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Colleen
Ellen Allien
Gas
Medicine
The Mountain Goats
New Order
Oval
Pluramon
Rachel's
Sian Alice Group
earlier Smiths

28. What did you want and get?
A new computer, a bike, a BA, a house, and a girlfriend. What else can a boy ask for?

29. What did you want and not get?
Into grad school. That's pretty much it.

30. What was your favorite film of this year?
Me and You and Everyone We Know. I'm bad at going to the movie theater.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Went to Brewer's Art with Sarah T. et al, and then to the Hexagon where I was surprised with cake! I am now 22.

32.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
I don't have that much imagination. Car perhaps, but then I would be even broker, and possibly injured.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
Warm: t-shirt + shorts/jeans + sneakers. Baltimore summers don't leave much room for creativity.
Cold: v-neck or cardigan sweater w/ or w/o collared shirt underneath, jeans (often patched), sneakers or hiking boots, black peacoat, scarf, black wool cap

34. What kept you sane?
Ambient music and M.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Miranda July and Cate Blanchett.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
See 15. Also the Mumbai massacre and the failure of western civilization as we know it.

37. Who did you miss?
Jess, Thom, Maura, and Diamond for the second half of the year.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
M. (again, pretty much obligatory.) Honorable mention: Chetstar

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008:
Live carefully.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
First half: "Why live for a future that never arrives on time?" -The Folk Implosion, "One Part Lullaby"
Second half: "Currently fabulous, and perhaps at last the song you sing will have meaning." -Guided by Voices, "Fair Touching"
All: "Is that what the future holds?" -British Sea Power, "No Lucifer"