Resolute

For whatever reason, I'm hung up on Christmas this year in a way I've never been before.  The fact that Spanish Christmas traditions include lottery tickets, these odd witchy-looking hats decorated like Christmas trees, and a lot of funny translations of American carols, definitely helps, but I think it's mostly because of how much I love giving gifts.  If you think about it, a gift is an inherently elegant thing: it's a simple object that, as a result of its context, somehow takes on further meaning.  A really perfect gift can be like poetry  in its concision and poignancy, and even a lame gift gets better with age, as you come to recognize it as a physical index of your relationship at a specific moment, a piece of personal history.

Or maybe it's all about money and stuff in the end. Whatever the reason, anyway, gifts are so common among lovers; and I suspect that's why I'm more drawn to the idea this year than before.  Being farther from the people I love most, and having more time to reflect on how they've changed me, has left me feeling that I have a lot to say to them -- things I wish I'd said or realized earlier, or still can't put into words, but which seem more important now than ever.  Simple gratitude and complex admiration.

Anyway, in my pre-Christmas fervor, I guess I forgot that New Year's is also coming up, because at a dinner party last night, for the first time in my life, I found myself completely blindsighted by the question, "So, do you have any New Years' resolutions?"

"Not — well, normally I do," I stammered, "I mean, I'm the kind of person who resolves to change my life a lot — a few times a day, I'd say — and I love listing things — but, um, since I got to Spain, I'm not really sure what the direction I'd go in would be, even if I were to start all over — I mean, I guess I am starting all over — but when I go back — I mean... vale, let me think about it and, um, get back to you."  (This spectacular failure was, by the way, compounded by the fact that I'm still far from adept at expressing myself in Spanish; as a result it took several painful minutes.)

Realizing how insane I sounded, and that my host was momentarily at a loss for how to respond, I tried to save myself by laughing lightly, but it sounded unnatural even to me, so I stopped.  Sara (thats the hostess' name; she's this lovely, very gracious 24-year old Canarian) gave me an earnest but confused kind of half-smile.  Then there was a short pause, during which I think both of our faces were frozen.  And then — thank God — someone further down the table raised the subject of movie-musicals.  I turned and responded, a bit too eagerly.  When I glanced back at Sara I could see the lingering shadow of relief still traced on her face.  She touched my shoulder (people touch a lot here) and I knew that was her way of telling me she understood, proposing a pact to put the moment behind us.

The rest of the night passed in a casual and comfortable manner, and I think — or hope — that I spared myself further embarrassment; but the unanticipated question stayed with me in spite of myself.  I realized that the truth is that I've been giving myself a "break" from thinking about what I want my life to look like since I've been here.  I moved to Spain somewhat impulsively (I boarded a one-way flight two weeks after getting the job offer) and spent the first two months trying to manage my culture shock, learn to communicate, and find people I could relate to.  I've only just now started to feel "myself" enough to be able to think about the future with any kind of clarity.  So it's a shorter list than usual.

Still, something's better than nothing, right?  So here goes:

In 2012 I resolve:

 - Not to wear or buy fake leather, ever, it's just not worth it;

 - Ditto for shoes that aren't comfortable enough to walk in, and acrylic knits;

 - To sleep as much as possible, and drink a cup of coffee as early as possible each day;

 - To attempt to write something — anything — before getting on the internet after work each day;

 - To attempt to read books, watch movies, and hold conversations only in Spanish as much as possible while I'm here (even with my mother);

 - To reread all the Platonic dialogues by the end of the year;

 - To trust my instincts about people more often;
 - To check periodically that I'm not doubting myself or feeling daunted by others in ways that I wouldn't if I were a man;

 - To be less dismissive -- to attempt to understand people a bit more and to seek out what's interesting about them instead of writing them off (I realize that this makes me sound like a complete snob — or "pijo," an very useful word that means, roughly, overprivileged asshole — but it had to be said; my inability to feign or sustain interest in others is one of my worst qualities);

 - To seek a confidence in my opinions and my interests which will, I hope, release me somewhat from the anxieties about success and failure;

 - To learn to be comfortable enough with myself to make others comfortable, instead of placing the burden on them to put me at ease;

 - Not to allow myself to be daunted or disheartened by changing the states of journalism, publishing, or the American academic institution;

 - To make an effort to spend less time being "distracted" — and to surmount my fear of boredom, which I've noticed has hit a new high this year;
 - To keep in mind that money can, to some extent, buy you freedom, and to save accordingly;

 - To fucking ace the GREs;

 - To research and apply to grad schools as well as possible, but also to be mentally prepared to be rejected and to keep trying even if I am;

 - To be my smartest and my wisest and think as hard as I can about what I believe, not only for my sake, but for the sake of the people and things I love, which deserve my best efforts;

 - To start the "musical self-education" I put off throughout college;

 - To learn enough about European history to no longer feel embarrassed when the subject comes up;

 - To make a conscious effort not to acquire a Spanish accent in Spanish;
 - To take more pictures.

in a rut

I've only been in Spain for 3 weeks and change and I'm already stuck in a vicious cycle that involves chocolate-dipped churros / discount ice cream, old X-Files episodes (I just hit season four, I'm ashamed to admit), and going out at night with my roommate's friends only to get overwhelmed by the club or bar and leave early in a cab.  Oh, and feeling broke all the time.

Tonight I skyped with my sister and talked about it and thought about it and was getting more and more rut-y when my godsent always-upbeat roommate Angad came back from the gym, all excited to cook and still high from the exercise.  He'd been planning this dinner for a few days now and I followed him around the house as he got the ingredients together in a premeditated kind of fervor.

I was just musing sadly that I'd probably never achieve his pleasant disposition when he shouted from the kitchen, "V, would you do me a favor?"
He was clearly oblivious to my state of premenstrual existential despair.  "Sure," I said, a bit too brightly.
"Could you grab, like, three yoghurts from Don Fruta while I heat up the sauce?  It's for the second course.  Whenever, it doesn't have to be right away.  Just, you know, plain — not azucarado."
"Of course," I said.  I'll do anything for someone who knows how to cook.  I grabbed my coat and keys and slipped into some heels, socks still on, and walked two flights down and out into the street.

It was the kind of night when the lights seem sharper and brighter than usual, as though it had been raining, and the streets were full of the gentle sound of people talking from the bars, whose doors were all open to let in the warm air.  It should be colder by the end of October, but it felt like spring, all humid and breezy.  I noticed an Italian bakery I hadn't seen before, and lights inside one of the beautiful glass terraces on our corner, making silhouettes of the draped ivy and spider plants along the walls.  I peered into the bar across the street, one of the few places that I've grown attached to here, and saw couples drinking wine, a group of friends sharing a crepe, the hot Native American bartender smiling.  I took the long way to Don Fruta, looking at the prices in the winery window and eyeing the legs of prociutto protruding from a corner butcher shop.

By the time I got home my moodiness had dissipated.  "I got the yoghurts," I said, lifting the bag.
"Awesome," Angad grinned.  "Where did you go?  Don Fruta?"
"Yeah."  I put the yoghurts in the fridge.  "Sorry I took so long.  I was just walking around.  I forgot how pretty our neighborhood is."  I paused, considering whether to confess that I'd been PMSing all morning.
"You know, the same exact thing happened to me yesterday!" he said.  "I was just walking around and I was like, 'shit, we live in a kind of nice place!'"
"Yeah, we really do," I said, taking off my coat.

tv shows of which I've seen a majority of episodes

Seinfeld
House
The Prisoner
Columbo
Thirtysomething
That '70s Show
I Love Lucy
Bewitched
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Sex and the City
Hey Arnold
Boy Meets World
My So-Called Life
the BBC Sherlock Holmes
Hitchcock Presents
The Outer Limits
The Naked City
I Dream of Jeannie
The Sopranos
The Wire
The X-Files
The Brady Bunch

an honest resume

this job is fucking killing me and I need a new one

skills:
notably talented at copy-editing, speed-reading, shoplifting, haggling, and walking in heels
can read three foreign languages and Middle English; unusually knowledgeable regarding early American science fiction, childen's books of the 1990s, Eddie Murphy movies, bel canto, fashion blogs, and the Platonic dialogues
can ride bareback, sail solo, operate a forklift, bike in Chinatown

weaknesses:
can't quit smoking, can't cook, can't drive, insomniac, huge feet, clumsy, forgetful, depressive, impractical, agoraphonic, can't hold liquor, hoarding impulses
has a hard time looking "clean"; awkward on phones, confabulates, talks in her sleep
snoozes for half an hour every morning, even with company
utterly ignorant of contemporary music and television
also, junk food & Italian men

I really really like living here.

in love with love

Every time you fall in love, you also have to fall in love with love itself again, to remember what it is and why it's worth so much, that fleeting knowledge —

Today I saw the McQueen exhibit at the Met, and although I didn't fall in love, I guess you could say I fell in love with love again — with the idea that by pulling together your deepest intellectual resources, confessing your wildest fantasies, abandoning your practical impulses, you stand a chance of making your life into something more, elevating things once mundane to elegance, sublimity —

I think that's what art really is: not what we fall in love with, exactly, but what reminds us of love, of its existence and its power and why we need it so terribly badly.

notice

From here on, in an effort to make myself smarter, wittier, more personable, more eloquent, and more driven, and also to find a better use for down-time at work than twitter and fashion sites, I vow to write one blog post a day, however short.

Today I have no thoughts, owing to menstrual cramps.  Bur I did find this:
From wikipedia:

According to the sources mentioned by Diogenes (all dating from the Alexandrian period), Plato derived his name from the breadth (platytês) of his eloquence, or else because he was very wide (platýs) across the forehead.

It's official!!

During a bout of insomnia last night, it occurred to me that the ability to take good photographs and the ability to fall in love are contingent on the same rare quality: being able to appreciate the present as it's happening, not just in retrospect.  Not that it doesn't take a certain sensitivity to be able to feel nostalgic; but how many people do you know who ever find the present beautiful?

Big Day

I guess the belief that looking for a job would be a constant struggle, that I'd be broke forever, that I'd always feel guilty about spending money — and that I'd always feel free, as a result, to pick up and try my luck elsewhere — was so much a part of my identity that I'm having trouble letting go of it.  As recently as yesterday, my list of tactics for making money in a pinch included Tao Lin's notorious strategy of shoplifting Moleskines and selling them on eBay.  I've still never paid for a bottle of nail polish.  And I can no longer spend more than six dollars on a meal without feeling horrible about it.

Helped Renata with a paper on Nietzsche and slave morality this morning.  Can't help but wonder if I've been rationalizing my low expectations for myself (or my parents') for so long that I can't even enjoy real success any more.

Same questions about love: have I been reconciling myself to the idea that it has to be difficult to find love, just because it has been difficult, for so long that I won't be able to be happy when the time comes?

At least I'll have my tiny beautiful Chinatown walk-up to romanticize and rail against and love and hate for the rest of the year.  I'm planning to get a disco ball for it.

excerpt from an email to prof. mann

Earlier this week, Professor Mann sent me a link to this fantastic article about How to Behave in an Art Museum, which was related to a conversation we had a while ago about awkwardness.

At first, I found it hard to say why I liked the article so much. It wasn't just that the author made a good point, or that he seemed endearingly self-aware and neurotic, while still being generally good-natured.  And it wasn't the subject matter, although it interested me, at least enough.  I realized after a while that what I liked most about it was the only thing the author didn't make explicit: his premise — or maybe it was his conclusion — that awkwardness isn't just an annoying and embarrassing phenomenon, a result of bad planning or ineptitude, but an indicator that something complicated is going on under the surface, something difficult to articulate. In this case, he's arguing that the feeling of awkwardness most of us experience in museums is indicative of our conflicted feelings about "high culture" and what constitutes art.

It's a daring piece, in a way: he's braving awkwardness himself by looking the problem in the eye; and when he manages to articulate the exact nature of museum-awkwardness, it's as though he's defeated it and vanquished it with words.

A while ago, a friend of mine interviewed a guy who'd written a bunch of novels imagining how Sherlock Holmes would behave in various settings, including on the Enterprise, and the writer (Nicholas Myers) argued that the reason Holmes is such a popular figure is that he stands for the belief that "life can be understood," that rational thought can parse even the most emotional and confusing events. I think a lot of the "lowbrow" things that tends to appeal to smart and curious people (i.e. "dorky" stuff like Star Trek, House, comic books, et cetera)(i.e. everything I care about) share that premise. Even though most of these productions/pieces don't seem to have been made for the purpose of being studied too closely themselves, they're enjoyable, at least in part, because it's fun to spend time in a world where people (or fictional people) believe that things can be understood. It's uplifting somehow.

The author of the Museums article actually alludes to that premise, at least obliquely, when he writes that

The closer we get to the top, it seems, the more likely we are to believe, or pretend to believe, that the ladder we’ve been climbing leads nowhere—is meaningful only to those who stare at its innumerable rungs from below. Self-improvement, we discover, is a sham. We were better off when we were just kids, when we knew what we liked effortlessly, when our passions were not learned. And so we end up in MoMA’s romper room, doing somersaults on the carpet, hoping to return to a state of innocence.

He seems to be saying that the awkwardness in museums is related to our innate desire to find things understandable, neatly-ordered, and objectively comparable, and the way abstract art threatens that instinct. But what's subtle about it is that instead of caving to the desire to lie down and close his eyes to the museum, he explores its source — and that's what ultimately separates him from the other visitors. He doesn't say it, but it seems to me that by doing so, he's implicitly taking a stand.

And I found that inspiring — not in a rational way, but viscerally: after I finished reading the piece, I felt charged, soaked through, with the same heady feeling I had my first year of college in Professor Lilla's class: the feeling that I had a lot of work ahead of me, a lot of big questions to consider. I still don't know, for instance, how I feel about abstract art. I certainly maintain a healthy dose of cynicism about nonrepresentational artwork, operas, and writing, sometimes to my detriment; but I believe in poetry; I believe that if done properly, saying less can express more. (And I wish I were better at that.)  (More on this subject later.)

I spent a few subway rides this week thinking about what a year it's been and how I want to do things differently when I'm 22 and what promises I'm going to make to myself. But I realized that what they all boiled down to (with a few pragmatic exceptions) was the feeling that I needed to recommit myself, somehow, to the endeavor that felt so urgent back then: the struggle to understand things, to figure out what I believed, and to parse the ambiguities and tensions I'd been living with once and for all.  The premise of the article is that emotions are intelligent and studying them, and attempting to articulate them, is intellectually fruitful.  When I felt most sure of that, my intellectual efforts felt like noble battles, struggles that one could win or lose on a daily basis.  My favorite classes have shared that premise and produced that effect; that's what I need to hold into when I graduate, when I won't have access to those rare individuals whose commitment to those ideals never wavers.  Leo once called this clarity of purpose "strength," for lack of a better word in English; I told him his word worked just fine.  I just need to be strong.

How to Make the Most of Third-Wheeling

It's a good question, don't you think?

(link)

black magic

I've been assiduously avoiding coffee for a few weeks now because, with graduation coming up and everything, my emotions were getting hard to handle, and I thought that stimulating my brain would just make me overthink things and come up with newer and more complicated reasons to feel depressed.  But I realized yesterday that in fact it has the opposite effect.  When coffee makes me more awake, I do think more about my problems, but I think about them in a more level-headed way, and I feel less desperate, not more.  By contrast, the other night, when I was exhausted and couldn't sleep, I found myself feeling worse and worse as the night went on (and less able to sleep, and more tired, &c).

It's a small discovery, really, but I still found it uplifting to observe that thinking more clearly makes me happier, not the reverse.  The last time I had drinks with Professor Lilla, he described going through dozens of old diaries and realizing that the question of whether ignorance and bliss are necessarily related had been plaguing him for decades.  For his next book, he's planning to figure out, once and for all, what that tension is about.

For my part, I'm not sure what I think.  Although there's a certain logic to the conclusion that knowing more makes you feel worse, and IQ correlates to propensity for depression to an alarming degree (something like a p value of .51, if I remember correctly), I suspect that at least in terms of relative states within a single lifespan, the opposite is actually true.  Even when I'm thinking about depressing things, I think I'm happier just because I'm thinking, because my own capabilities at those caffeine-fueled moments allow me to believe just a bit more that the world can be known and understood, that I can still make further discoveries and reach new conclusions.  People like to focus on how much crap is on TV and make apocalyptic predictions, but I think that even as the dumb shows get dumber (and more self-aware, interestingly — but that's another post), the smart shows get smarter, and gain wider followings.  I don't think shows like House, The Sopranos, or The Wire would be as big as they are if feeling smart didn't feel good to a lot of people.

Part of the reason I reached this conclusion today, rather than last week, is that I really thought that going to a bar party last night would make me feel better, and it definitely didn't.  Partly because the guy friends I'd hoped would make me feel better just tried to hit on me once they found out I was single, but partly because feeling drunk and stupid just made me feel... stupid.  But having a wide-awake conversation over dinner with Emi and Matt Mankins made everything better, and they were just being themselves.

I think I need to go to grad school.

schmoozing

Schmoozing is the antithesis of romance.  Whenever I find myself at a schmoozing-centric event, I feel like it's impossible to find love in New York.  Because the person you love and trust could just walk off after staring into your eyes like no one else exists and go schmooze with the rest of the rats and smile and show his slick ratty little teeth and spoil everything.

Blogging

I suppose it's early in the life of this blog to start writing about writing, but it's the subject on my mind right now.  I can't put a finger on why blogging as I graduate college seems so much less respectable than blogging did in high school.  I suppose that feeling a need to express yourself is sort of juvenile in itself.  But I don't think that's it.

Last night, after our last day of classes, there was a cheesy Senior Dinner in a tent on the southeast lawn, complete with a wine selection and nightclub lighting.  One nasal-voiced speaker after another took the microphone while I dismantled my free Class of 2011 picture frame and thought about jobs and apartments and breakups and Spanish and sex.  I spent most of the night people-watching and making slightly embittered remarks to Juan, who was sitting next to me.

"That girl was my neighbor freshman year," I shouted over the din, nodding as subtly as I could.  "I remember helping her move in."
"She's pretty.  I don't like her dress."  He was scanning the crowd even as he spoke.
"Yeah, it's not my thing.  She's always been really girly.  It's a trip to see her here, though.  I remember the first time I shook her hand."  I was talking more to myself than to him, and he knew it, but he knew better than to stop me.  Instead he said detachedly, "It really doesn't feel like four years."
"No," I agreed.
"I mean, I don't feel any different," he continued.  "Just older.  Do you?"
I thought about it.  "I just feel less precocious," I said.

Juan laughed in his good-natured way and I felt a rush of affection for him and for Joey, Anna, and Ruben, who were sitting on his other side.  They all looked happy and animated; Anna was laughing, cushioned in a giant purple tulle dress, and Ruben, crisp in his camel hair blazer, was gesturing expectantly towards a plate of butter, his eyes already eating.  Joey looked like a banker in a crisp blue shirt, but he was making an obscene gesture with one hand and grinning gleefully, looking innocent and mischievous all at once, like a lovable kid.   The alcohol was starting to hit me and at that moment, I just felt happy, and free, and grateful for the opportunity to be with them, and willing to forget about the future for a night.

I didn't think much about it then, but in retrospect, I do think the idea of precocity is part of what makes things so different now from before college.  Back in high school, I think I felt that because we were young, just attempting to write, just showing that you cared about things outside of yourself, was admirable.  Being "good" mattered, but being bad wasn't too embarrassing.  We had time to kill, after all; we were all just waiting, itching, to graduate and do all the things we'd been dreaming of — learn to drive, see the world, have casual sex, buy fake IDs and go to hip bars, seduce teachers, stay out as late as we wanted... being cool was a goal in itself, and you didn't have to justify your use of time if you made your own clothes or learned Dylan songs on the guitar.

You really see the difference in social attitudes when you think about bands.  High school bands are always sort of cool, even though they usually suck, because at least those kids are trying to accomplish something, to make something bigger than themselves.  There's not much to lose by starting a band in high school — as a former self-conscious and musically untalented teen, I can attest to that firsthand: there wasn't much risk.  As long as you knew a few chords it was all okay.  But the older you get, the more you feel like if you're going to be in a band, it has to be amazing, and you have to be good enough to make a career out of it — because otherwise you can't really justify the use of your time.  Your vocation, and how you spend your time, is who you are, and if you're not exceptional at it, you're not exceptional as a person.  So it's better not to spend too much time on things if you're not already good at them.  Your major in college, the parties you go to, the places you live, the articles you write — if they're not all aligned with your career goals, you feel like you're wasting your time.  And wasting time means wasting opportunities, which means that you yourself are directly responsible for everything you've failed to become.  And failure is the cardinal sin, at least in New York.  So "doing everything you can" starts to feel like a moral imperative.  The critics aren't just in our heads, either: in my experience, women don't want to date guys who waste time, and men don't respect women who have too many "hobbies."  Only people who've had their jobs for a decade, have spouses or partners, own their apartments, and are thinking about retirement can really justify wasting time — and even then, it's looked at as a sad state of affairs, "settled" and domestic and limited, unaspirational.  You can't just read books; you have to be on the path to becoming a writer.  You can't just like music; you have to be an expert at least, if not a musician.

"You can't just be any more," Ruben complained to me on Saturday, as I unburdened myself of my problems while he helped me jump a fence in Dumbo to soak in the sun by the mouth of the bridge.  We'd tried to go to a sample sale in Carol Gardens, but had found it overpriced and overcrowded and had decided to take a walk instead.  "A lot of the people I met in Mexico City were happy to just work at American Apparel and make rent and have parties together in the summer.  They didn't see a retail job as a dead end; they just saw it as an easy way of supporting themselves.  My landlords, for instance, just rented out apartments for a living, and spent the rest of their time doing drugs.  Obviously there are health risks to that lifestyle... but otherwise, I sort of respect it.  I've been worrying about what comes next my whole life.  I want to know when that ends."

"I know what you mean," I said.  "Our cultural mindset is really 'more and more and more,' and if you think about it, that can only lead to perpetual dissatisfaction."  The sun was warm and inviting and seemed to be tempting me to listen to him, to enjoy the present and disregard the future and the past as much as possible.  But even as the breeze teased my skirt and the sun grazed my cheeks, I found myself unable to give in somehow — to the sun, to Ruben's argument, to the bliss of forgetting about lovers and money and jobs.  Because even though I find the mentality of achievement somewhat oppressive, I also believe in it, to an extent.  Maybe I've lived in this city (and had these parents) for too long.  I believe in meritocracy, in being good, in objective value.  I believe that there are things that are more important than being happy.  And I hate the idea of wasting time.

As a result, my way of engaging with the arts and with the things that interest me has always been to see them as part of my formation as an intellectual, part of my education — ultimately, I suppose, efforts towards the acquisition of some sort of career, vaguely conceived as the sort of thing that would be characterized by phrases like "seminal work" and "public intellectual."  But now that I stand poised to actually acquire a real, and decidedly less glamorous, career — if I'm lucky — it's frightening to realize that when that happens, I won't be able to justify the pursuit of my own interests as in the name of ambition.  I'll have to accept that I'm doing things like reading and blogging and learning the Accordion (yeah shut up) for myself alone, things that won't add up to anything "tangible" "at the end of the day."  And I don't know if I'm ready.  How do you stay inspired when you already know, more or less, what your future will look like?

update

Things look a little less rosy now than they did last time I updated this.
I currently

 - don't have a job
 - don't have a place to live
 - don't have a boyfriend, quite unexpectedly, as of saturday morning
 - have no prospects of sex or romance
 - am on god-awful antibiotics for another week
 - am in some kind of stalemate with my dad
 - am cell-phone-less, because my charger is at my ex's
 - am two weeks away from graduating college
 - am getting nostalgic
 - have been drinking & smoking a lot

On the bright side, I got accepted to a teaching program in Spain for next year, and there's still a chance I'll get a job in New York.  I also got a bunch of free tampons today.  Have to stay positive.

graduation

hello

gearing up to start blogging again. I am
~ 5'7"
 - female
~ heterosexual
~ a red(ish)head, as of last night
 - possibly a hoarder, definitely a spendthrift
 - procrastinating.

Part of my ritual when I start blogging again after a hiatus is to take down all my old posts.  Usually, it's a welcome relief.  This time, though, I actually found some of my posts from last summer insightful or interesting (although I think I cringed as often as ever as I found mistakes and awkwardness in my old writing).  Does this mean that I've gotten better at blogging over the years, or just that I've stopped improving rapidly enough to find my old stuff embarrassing?