being sarah marie
They love to plant...
Pull, then Push
Savage Minds
The Trick is to...
For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, Nathan Englander
Bad Dirt, Annie Proulx
Brown, Richard Rodriguez
Namesake
Rewind to the present
Two long but fascinating articles about China and ...
I wish I knew where to start or how to begin. Ther...
I guess it's time to start coming out of hiberatio...
Privacy and the Net
Blogging and Free Speech
Month of Discontent
Sister Issues/My Hunger Strike
March 31, 2006
No Thanks
Once I dreamt of being an astrophysicist. I romanticized the thought of having a job that regularly involved spending quiet nights gazing at the stars, moons, and planets from the high deserts or quiet mountaintops flanked with telescope arrays. So in high school, when I was still young, ideaslistic, motivated, and fortunate enough to be taking college classes paid by the state I decided to take the first steps.
After two semesters of honors physics in high school (which on our block schedule translated into two years worth), I had my eyes set on scarier sounding physics classes. Since I was only a lowly high school student, though, I needed explicit approval from a university physics professor who had taught a course like introduction to quantum physics.
Imagine this: I went the extra light year and researched the physics professors at the university, checking for the professors who had taught the class in the last few semesters. I e-mailed them, and even set up appointments to visit their office and get approval from the few who replied.
My first meeting was a miss. The professor eye-balled me really funny at the mention that I was a high school student. "Did you take the one year physics intro sequence course here?" He wanted to know.
"No," was the answer. "But I took Honors Physics 1 and 2 in my high school."
He frowned at me, and insisted that wasn't enough. I had to fight to keep that silly, friendly smile on my face. "But it's the same material," I gently suggested.
"But you don't want holes in your knowledge," he retorted.
That was the first shooting star to my astrophysical aspirations. After a few more meaningless exchanges I grabbed my bag, thanked him hollowly, and left. So much for the approval, so much for a mentor, so much for a professional taking any interest or being even remotely moved upon meeting a young student whose hopes and dreams, to which he held a key, were strong enough to accelerate him past the inertial laziness that holds back most other teens from pursuing anything other than sex and listening to cheap music with boring lyrics.
Funny how fate makes fools of us all. Four years later my parents dragged me to a pot-luck style Thanksgiving that was hosted by some friends of theirs. Reluctant to crawl out of my home cucoon on my short college break, I went. When we got there and I spotted that same professor in the house. I froze, then shook it off, pinched my mom and vehemently whispered into her ear why we must leave now.
Of course that didn't happen, so I spent the rest of the night awkwardly trying to avoid him. Gravitating towards the crowded corners or people-less places, I never made eye contact with him, only spitefully glancing his way on rare occassions.
But OF COURSE, of all the dozens of people pot-lucking, both of my parents had to strike up a conversation with him. And of course they had to tell him where I go to school and how I minored in astronomy. And of course I was sitting on the floor with my back towards them working up a nervous sweat while planting my face in my plate full of stuffing trying desperately to work some Harry Potter magic that would make me go poof.
But of course, upon hearing that I go to a school with one of the best astronomy programs in the damn country he had to loudly rehearse my name aloud a few times, and I had to pretend I didn't hear anything. And then of course he walked right up to me, repeating my name several times, and when I didn't turn around he touched my shoulder, and I jumped in a nervous twitch, and faked a smile, and wanted to sink down to the earth's mantle where I would dissolve under all the heat and pressure down there.
The rest is typical. He held out his arm, which I reluctantly shaked, and he gripped my hand hard and tight like some cocky businessman. "Nice to meet you," he said warmly and emphatically looking me in the eyes. I looked him right into the eyes for a snap second (I couldn't bear any longer), and wondered if those eyes registered absolutely no recollection of my face.
"My name is professor so and so, and I hear you're studying astronomy."
"Yes, among other things."
"You know that's exactly my field. I have a lab here and I do research. You know if you're ever interested you should come by, maybe you could work with me next year on your time off."
My heart sunk down to my ass. This was like torture to hear. If only he would have said that four years earlier he would have made one boy's dream come true; come true completely. I would have said yes and been the happiest soul in the solar system.
But I begrudge too much, and too strongly. I held back a shurg and tried to fake a smile, "Oh, oh. Nice to meet you. Thank you."
March 30, 2006
Getting Serious
With a little over a month left to whip up my final project I've forced myself to get serious. I've rearranged my work schedule so that now I can devote every Tuesday to working on my thesis/project/whateveryouwanttocallit. This has necessitated some painful sacrifices: I had to swap my Tuesday schedule with Friday--my only free day of the week. So instead of being easy and bookish on Fridays for the next month and a half I will be working till past 4pm on Fridays. Ack.
Nevertheless, being unusually productive this past Tuesday for my first thesis jam has rekindled in me an old feeling I thought I may never experience again. I'm very fortunate to be in my current program of study which let me craft whatever curriculum and project I wanted out of my college education over the last few years. As my final project I'm going through my archives from here and More to Life and turning many of these sometimes-scribbly, sometimes-ranty entries into substantial, reflective pieces. Some of these pieces are deeply emotional, some deeply personal, but all are deeply meaningful to me. This makes me so grateful right now that I'm not toiling over some obscure, dry, academic senior thesis right now.
This past Tuesday, I forced myself out of bed around noon, had a leisurely brunch, and then marched up the hill for my first and only class of the day. After 50 minutes of a rather routine boredom I paced over to the library and situated myself at an open desk beside the big windows overlooking the Arts Quad. By 2:30 p.m. was reading through my drafts and starting to scribble down some notes. A bit later, I yanked out my computer and started to transform the pieces.
The two pieces I worked on this Tuesday were Lux et What?! and Cycle of Friendship. I managed to add a nice amount of detail to L&W?!, though I still feel it's kind of cutesy in cliche, tongue-n-cheek kind of way. CoF was what I really sank my keyboard into though. Wow. Having lived over a year past that first encouter, my experience has shown me that a nice simple resolution as the one I first suggested is just way too simplistic. In reality, "cycle of violence" in the Middle East hasn't ended and she didn't stop wearing that necklace...
Suddenly I started to go real deep with that piece. The essay carried me back to the days I lived in Israel. They made me relive Yitzhak Rabin's murder, and consider on a deeper level what sacrifices we make amongst ourselves for peace, and what raising a generation to seek peace means. The story then fastfowarded me back to the present and forced me to choke up how living all too comfortably, far away from the warzones, has changed 0r obscured my attitudes and values regardless of whether I wanted them to change or not.
Eventually at 7:00 p.m. I gave up. The writing got too personal, too real, and too emotional to continue. It got to the point where I felt like every push on the keyboard tugged at my heartstrings and it was too much to bear in the library and after years of growing numbness and apathy. At the same time it was a good feeling. Magic happen upon discovering such an intense connection to the writing. I just hope I can bear repeating this over the next month. Who knows where this might go...
March 26, 2006
Listening
Well, I'm back at school. Excuse me as I unpack and stress about upcoming deadlines. Although my life feels dull the music hasn't stopped playing. If I'm short on words these days, take a bored moment to amuse yourself with some lists.
My recently listened tracks:
My most-listened tracks of the week:
Blink.
Well, much to my own dismay, I have been completely unable to bring myself to write. Life has been terribly mediocre and mundane, yet I really can't complain. That being said, I haven't been living for much of anything these days--just waiting for enough ticks of the clock till I graduate and somehow expecting that all the work I need to do between now and then will get done.
Flying back to college this morning for the last time. Next time I fly will be on a one-way ticket home.
March 09, 2006
Flock West
I went to the Commencement Office today ready to put up a fight. An e-mail and a phone call hadn't been enough to get them to send me the graduation materials that I rightly deserved and the that the other seniors had already received a week and a half ago. Instead, yesterday I received a mass e-mail from the Commencement Office in which they declared that all the packets had been sent out a while ago and that basically they took care of everything and if we didn't receive the packets the problem must be that our address was listed incorrectly or something else.
I walked into the Office today after a long day in class and at work. The lady at the desk greeted me with a sneer as I said hi. "What's your name," she demanded.
I told her, and began to spell out my last name but as I was doing so she cut me off, excited. "Oh, I know you!" She almost shouted, flapping her arms in the air. "I know you!"
I had never seen her before.
Surprised, and unsure how to take her reaction, I nervously joked, "Yeah I'm the one who called and e-mailed, maybe you..?"
"Yes, yes. I sent you--you left your address on the phone, right?"
Yes, exactly. She sent me off with the contention that my graduation materials should be in my mailbox when I get home today. Holding my breath, and somewhat relieved, I bid her goodbye.
I did receive my graduation packet in the mail today, and with that I'm leaving in the dust another block between and my emancipation.
Walking down the huge hill back to my dorm at the end of the day I fixed my eyes on the thick, gray March sky instead of heeding the hunky, privileged boys and the pretty-pretty, rich girls passing me by. As my eyes wandered from the tip of the old clocktower that scrapes the sky to the vast clouds, I noticed a huge flock of birds. They flew in several massive V-arrangements directly west over the hills on the opposite side of the narrow, long finger lake.
If I had wings I would have lifted myself right off this steep hill and headed west with them, too. That is, after all, where I'm from and where I want to go--back to the great northern plains, or the vast stretches of Wyoming and Montana, or the mountainous desert, or maybe even sunny, warm Hawaii. Though I'm originally from an ocean and a sea further east from this East Coast, I suppose if I fly west long enough I'd eventually get there, too. Nevertheless, I fear that might be a long journey and a long time away. But flocking west with those free birds is a good first step.
March 06, 2006
Blocks
Not that I'm much of a writer these days, but I've been experiencing writer's block lately and running into other sorts of annoying, but not too significant, blocks.
I'm getting four credits this semester to write my thesis/senior project/whateveryouwanttocallit/whatIneedtofinishtograduate. Hm. It's mostly four credits of unsupervised work, which is rather heavenly. I secretly promised myself that I'd take the first few weeks of the semester off before I actually start writing. I believe that I owed myself an easy time, some unwinding when I could afford it.
Now it's March though, and the project needs to be completely done within two months. That's not too bad, but if I keep putting this off any longer I'll really start digging myself into a bad hole. I've just been sitting on that thought for the past week, and it hasn't done me any good. Here's to hoping that the words start flowing soon. I have a check-up meeting with my advisor next week to talk to him about what I've done so far... uhm. Aside from the dilemma of what to tell him, let's hope this gives me the kick start I need.
In completely unsurprising news, the University has managed to screw me over one more time. I knew they would throw me a good one at least once again before I graduated. All the graduating seniors received nice packets in the mail with all the graduation information they needed including two very important tickets for guests to attend the graduation ceremony! Of course, of course, of course they omitted me from the mailing.
I e-mailed, and having waited a week with no response and nothing in the mail, my blood was boiling a little bit on my way home from work today at the thought of what hell I need to give them. I called today, but apparently it was too late. Left a message, doubt that'll do much good. *Shrug*
Another block not helping my whole situation is that I've picked up some extra hours at work. Somehow I've deluded myself into thinking that I need to make a significant amount of money while I still have jobs because who knows what might happen during my year off. How goofy to bust my ass over a couple dozen hundreds of dollars when I'll have to start paying off tens of thousands of dollars in student loans.
So that's the situation. Still working too much, still not sleeping enough, still finding reasons to get pissed off at "The University" (whoever is the real source of my troubles, I'd really like to know)... Wishing I could write more, and if not for any other thing than to just post here more often.
March 01, 2006
February 2006
When I'm wrapped up in whatever it may be, I sometimes catch myself scribbling down the date on the top-right side of my day's worth of class notes, or I'll notice it on TV or the bottom-right hand corner of my computer monitor. Today I noticed Feb. 28, 2006 and the thoughts came rushing into my head.
Yesterday evening I found myself stretched out on my bed attempting to do government readings. A blink of an eye later it was Feb. 28th, 2006. It was around 11:45 am and I was catching a quick brunch in the dining hall. Suddenly it was 3:00 pm and I was sitting at work in the physics department folding letters for a mass mailing, listening to music, thinking that in half an hour I'll start putting on stamps.
On Feb. 28th, 2006 I'm reminded of these moments, the way my life sometimes seems episodic, like a series of flashbacks. Each episode begins and ends and then with a blink I'm suddenly transported to another moment in time. I find myself trapped in the present only to be whisked away to another present time before I can savor the fleeting moment.
And on Feb. 28th, 2006 I'm reminded of the finality of it all. This is time, as we defined it, this is life, this is history, and this is how it so cunningly escapes us, never to return again. Feb. 28th, 2006: the end of a month in history, the end of a period that we've just lived and will never return. Never ever again. We mourn the loss of relatives, friends, sometimes pets and sometimes random things, and yet they leave us in just the same way as days and months do.
And with every day we bury, so do we relinquish someone we were. I might not ever be the same person as I was in the month of February, 2006. Did that part of me die? And how do we recover and remember who we were in those days that have passed away? Those days, now only memories, resting like shriveled decaying leaves in our minds.
Over the weekend I ran into a friend who met me freshman year in a writing seminar, those days when I was full of vitality and vigor. Those days when my blood would boil in anger and I would let it be known. I was determined to bring down the awful bureaucracies that reduced people to checkboxes and numbers. I handed in papers in which I insisted on spelling it "bureaucrazy." Fearless.
In that year I went to see my professor of Sociology 101 during her office hours not because I had a question about the homework, or wanted a regrade on my test. I sat in the chair across from her desk. She smiled. I told her I had been doing the readings, and they infuriated me. She listened, quiet, cautious. I recalled the reading about sexism in the military, the way women were treated, and the one in which white suburban students snubbed the poor at their schools, "they just don't work hard enough."
My voice almost cracked. "You see," I told the Professor almost shivering, "I guess I'm still one of those people who wants to change the world."
She blinked.
"That's," she paused, resigned. "That's great!" She managed almost superficially, perhaps just cynical, or realistic, hardened by the years. "We need people like you. Don't give up."
Then there's February, 2006. During the last weekend of the month never to return I bump into my friend from freshman year in the library. After the formalities and my (what seems to be habitual these days) proclamation of how tired and restless I am my friend says something. "You used to be so passionate," her eyes widen and a few specs of spit land somewhere on my cheek. I smile. "You would get so angry and you'd fight to change things. You wouldn't settle."
I sigh. Yes, I know exactly what she is going to say.
"But you know, you've changed so much. You're not like that anymore. You're just tired and ready to leave, depressed, just want to do enough to get by. That's how we all are, but you just used to be so passionate."
And February 2006 comes to an end. Time goes by and doesn't let us go back. Oh, how things change. But can we recover? Can we ever recover, or will our hopes and memories, the ambitions and ideals of the past, just get murky, decompose, and fade with the passage of time?
