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Spring, sprang, sprung, sprong, spreng
A lot of what I study and do in school hasa kind of an 'oh, duh' aspect to in as much as nothing is terribly earth-shattering. Nothing I produce is going to drastically rearrange the world and nothing I read about is going to drastically shape my views on the world we currently live in. When you look study policy and people, most of what you find is common sense, just an empirical quantification of that sense into facts. There is no poetry and there is no physics, most of the time. However, my little often neglected project of looking at arts education and some spin-off materials made me realize why so few people in politics really care about what people like me do in regards to education. Education should not be so easily categorized, quantified and put to such stringent standards as we expect highway funds and tax studies to adhere to. I think I knew this already, to a certain degree, when I would secretly hate the 30 academics in for a conference for telling me that my parents limited my academic achievement by not providing their standards of adequate childcare. They may have unintentionally, and unknowingly damaged me in other ways with their childcare choices, but I hated the middle class assumptions that were made about how poor people raise kids.
This happens now and again when suddently I feel like I can open my eyes wide (because I honesty cannot do this), and I wonder what it is that I am doing. I am trying to understand what works in government and what helps people live better lives, but sometimes, I feel as if I am just making myself a pawn. Sometimes.
Today is one of those days when you can't decide if you want to go into the deli that jurors frequent for coffee or to walk around the block to go to the always empty coffee house for a chai. Today is one of those days when you wonder how it is you can be so tired for so many consecutive hours, without the feeling get better, or worse. Today is one of those days wehn you contemplate if a shower is worth the time it will take, if eating if worth the time it will take, if breathing is worth the time it would take. Today is one of those days when you wish you had a bottle of water, completely forgetting about the one you bought 10 minutes before. Today is one of those days that, at 4:30 in the afternoon, you realize that you've been wearing two different shoes all day long. The scary part is that the 2 week "to-do" list I have written only lets me know that today is not going to be the last one of those days for a while but it is just the beginning. The end of the Spring semester always seems crazier than the end of the Fall. Maybe is the long days or knowing that school will then be out for months. Maybe it's the fact that I am working early morning and carrying four classes that have assignments due in close proximity to each other.
Although these days seem impossible to get through, like how the men on ESPN who are clawing the ground while pulling an 18-wheel truck behind them, there is a great satisfaction in knowing that all of this work accrues to me. I am not working late nights for the man. I am not trying to balance acute alcoholic partying with a full-time job. I am not able to match my shoes because I am bettering myself.
I downloaded a free piece of software that was to allow me to take music off the internet and place it on my computer without paying a fee. I felt the need to not be an iTunes sissy, I believed that I still had to show how hard core I am. I did not want to turn my back on one compute empire to bow down to another. So I placed a piece of software on my shiny computer that hadn't as much as groaned when I downloaded competitor's software on it.
"That show's you that you can't get something for nothing." I knew what was causing it and was having a heck of a time getting rid of it. It was like a slow-healing scab, watching snails race. It was obnoxious and not worth it just to be able to blast "Gloria" in my car whenever I so chose. I finally decided that with the semester coming to too quick of an end that I could attack. I would take my computer back, I would give up to the simplicity of paying for superior competitor products. After I returned home, after buying a new $55 plastic hubcap because I have a problem with curvy curbs and hit them and shredded my hubcap, after replacing this hubcap so I now have 3 dirty and 1 shiny hubcabs, I went on the offensive. I cleaned every inch of my hard-drive. I deleted everything that wasn't salient. I re-started and paid for better virus software. I spend the most of my night doing this, I spent pretty much all of my night doing this. And it worked. Now I can have more than 4 things open and manage to switch between them without getting caught up in zillions of ads and other roadblocks, speed bumps and generally obnoxious tasks. I have simplified and mainstream. I have vowed to pay $0.99 for each song and not believe that you can ever really get anything for free.
Also, if you are missing a lighter, chances are, I have it. I don't know how, but I have "acquired" over 10 lighters in the past few weeks. I don't have a cigarette to smoke any more, I do it to fulfill a subconcious urge to steal from friend and loved ones. I appologize.
Sometimes I think am going to die. I don't feel as melodramatic as I should to have such a thought, but sometimes I just know I am going to die. Chances are, I will. But there are times when I am convinced that something inside of me is going wrong and something is going to happen that will shortly kill me. I become nuerotic and scattered and find it harder than usual to concentrate. I search for sympathy but realize no one can ever tell me what it is that I am looking for because I am not really sure what reassuring words I need to hear.
And then it goes away. Maybe for a few hours, or a day and then longer and longer. It just disappears and I forget to worry about dying from unknown diseases and biological malfuncations in a manner of minutes. I possibly am completely nuts with an associative disorder, or some other jargony term which means just not dead inside. When I am not worried and wondering when I will die, it is more enjoyable because I know what it feels like to be cracked out.
Would I prefer it if there were no bumps in the night, tingling sensations in my brain and looks that I take the liberty to interpret as judgemental? No. I just wanted everyone to know that I am prone.
I have been waking before the sun is up several times a week. I am out of the house just as the the sky turns ocean blue and the clouds are purple and orange. I head towards the north entrace to the parkway rather than south as I normally do. I have to remind myself to go nborth and not go into auto-pilot. The streets of the ghetto are mostly empty and all of the shops are tightly shut behind riot gates.* There are buses and dated cars and me. The breaking sun above the long and temporarily abandonded avenue looks almost beautiful. As the sky brightens, I move onto the parkway and try to get into the left-most lane as soon as I can so tha I can speed. Speeding in the morning doesn't seem as fast as it does at 4 pm. It seems still dreamy, as if I am not going very fast at all as I sip coffee and try to decide if I want to listen to AM talk radio or Howard Stern. A half hour later, I get off the parkway and drive through a pretty old subruban town. It looks much like the town I left when it was still dark except maybe the houses are even bigger and there is no ghetto right at its border. The houses are huge and painted in colors that we think they would have been painted in 1935. There are sidewalks and people walking to the train or bus with newspapers tucked under their arms. In the town center, there are no gates covering the closed stores with big trucks in front off-loading merchandise that yuppies feel are appropriate for their lifestyle. I am the only car in front of a meter, dropping a few coins and taking my black canvas bag with my school's logo predominately displayed. I walk to the train platform, taking out a manila survey and before I am usually awake, I start to talk to strangers. I am not just awake, but I have this voice that sounds pleasant and kind. I speak clearly when talking to middle aged women and people with British or asian-infused accents. I allow myself to slip into a quicker abbreviated Jersey-tone when talking to middle-aged men. I have learned that people prefer these voices. The first want me to be clear and focused, the second want me not to take up too much of my time. I thank people and watch them get on the train, waiting for more to come to ask if they will please take my survey, will they please help me out. By 9, few people are getting on the train and I get back in my car. By then, I am yawning and ready for another cup of coffee. The rest of the world is finally awake with me and I pass stay-at-home mothers stretching against lampposts and waving at each other. It is only 9 am, and a full day is still ahead of me even though I have already earning some money and can fill in hours and milage on the colored sheets I keep in my office desk drawer.
*Seriously, could we get a better name than riot gates? Riot gates assume some impending social disturbance. Riot gates seem to only be in towns that are riot prone.
Since the beginning of this year, I have lost several hundred dollars in Atlantic City. Although I am a willing to do whatever the boy would want to do for this birthday in 3 weeks, the idea of Atlantic City turns me off. Suddenly, I don't have the same money I used to. I am more cautious and frugal and would rather not be in such a temping environment for a weekend. Regardless, his birthday is the weekend before the end of the semester. Since I am a procrastinator, there is very little chance that I won't have 125 papers to write, 56 exams to study for and pages of to-do lists to accomplish that weekend. A weekend away doesn't seem that great of an idea given it comes so close to the end of the school year. Then I heard on the news while driving to school today that Jennifer Lopez's mother won millions in Atlantic City. As if she needs to win. The story insinuated that Ben Affleck had turned her onto gambling, and his gambling is what ultimately broke up their relationship. It's ironic then that her mother should win doing something that ended J-Lo's engagement. Lately, I've been lookng more for this signs and signals, trying to figure out the more subtle correlations in the world.
I am not sure what to make of what happened to me this morning though. I was certain that yesterday morning I had set up an appointment for an interview for the fellowship I applied for this morning. I dressed all pretty today, trying to look as formal as my casual wardrobe would allow for without putting on one of the suits I had bought when looking for jobs 3 years ago. I arrived at the building 10 minutes early, re-read my aplpication and made sure I still looked as nice as I had when I got in my car. When I went to meet with the person who had set up the appointment, I was informed that there was no way they appointment would have been for this morning as one of the people who is interviewing me is currently teachign a class. Instead, my appointment was clearly for tomorrow. I knew I would not have accepted an appointment for Wednesday morning because I have to wake up with the birds to do stuff for my second job. I thanked her for setting up a new appointment, and walked out of the building in my gray flannel skirt and blue twin set, feeling like a complete idiot.
I tried to be clever today on my way to school and thought that I would be basically the only person in New Jersey to ever find this route to get to school. I thought I was really clever. Until I realized I was driving over the lower bridge I've always seen when driving over the "Great Green Bridge", therefore heading towards south Jersey. The "Great Green Bridge", by the way, is the actually name of the bridge for all those who live in Northern Jersey. It is the clear transition from the north to south part of the state. It is the furthest that someone in from the northern part of the state will go, beyond that is considered too far and "pratically down the shore". Given that, I had driven practically down the shore just to try to figure out a different way to get to school since I have exhausted the possible ways to get to and from school. It's like trying to figure out a new story in one of those "make your own ending" books, really. There are only so many ways I can go, I should know that by now. But after months of driving 50 miles round-trip for school, lately I've been desparate for a new way. So deparate that I'll drive around a block just to make things different. In the end, I just put a couple more miles on my car, realized that pratically down the shore is not too far from just to school, and wasted a half hour that could have been better wasted at school.
Last night when I was stuffing envelopes in my dining room for my second job, I realized that I broke a promise to myself. For three years, at an attractive $10/hr, I stuffed envelopes. I was very fast and efficient. I was a commodity and did not have cuticles through my early 20s. When I graduated from college and left that job, I promised myself that I would never stuff an envelope again. I decided that my fancy degree, written entirely in latin so I do not understand it, granted me the right to refuse to do such a demeaning task again. Surely, I have stuffed folders twice in the past 5 years, but only for 1 working day each. Now, this second job requries that I stuff the envelopes that I will eventually hand out. It's worth it though, because my B.A. means I am a $15/hr envelope stuffer rather than the $10/hr one I was 5 years ago.
Entropy is not the rule, it's the exception. The little crocus growing in the middle of the gray-brown-muddy woods can attest to this as they grow only in that little patch on the other side of the hill, below the parting of tree branches, that the Spring's long sun rays summons frmo a year long sleep. The pebbles on the paths aren't the neat and ordered paths that yuppie parents drove strollers on last fall but are the paths after a Winter's worth of abuse that has sorted into big pebbles to the outside, tiny pebbles and mushy dead leaves from last year in the center as flowing water sorted matter into ordered ways. Maybe, at first glance, everything looks chaotic and one may say the winter has created havoc to the woods. But instead, all I could see was order. Water always wins and parts ways to paths the county park workers repair each year. The rocky outcrops are angular or smooth, never both or never neither. Rock either cracks or smooths. Entropy is an ideal. Order is what is underneath it all. I think we want to believe that there is some way that there could be no order at all, but the closer you look, the more ordered it all is. The little stream flows in ordered ways that fluid-dynamic physicist can tell you all about. Willard Scott can explan why I am shivering and sweating at the the same time. The world turns in circles. The galaxy spins in spirals. I wonder, then, where is entropy?
For the longest time I declared myself a severe victim of SAD (seasonal affected disorder). This is marked by depression due to the lack of sunlight. I had something else entirely. I had seasonly reflective disordered marked by the lack of time to enjoy the world, to walk outside and think about absolutely nothing. In the long walks, or even runs that make my ribs ache for hours afterwards, I have that time to notice and observe, reflect and enter into something that only bald Asian monks who spend their days studying martial arts and meditation can describe.
Not that it should come as real true surprise given my obsessive studying habits and the fact that my school isn't the most competitive, but still, I feel proud and it made me excited. I got a 93 on my mid-term. A 93 in the first test that I've taken in 5 years. I can still study for a test, but I hope that my two finals are the last that I will ever have to take. Tests are a bit creepy and reguruitive for my tastes.
I watched 'The Others' tonight. I really wasn't dying to watch it or anything, my father just had started to watch it when I cam home so I figured I would watch it while I ate dinner. I thought I knew something about the "twist" at the end, but it was much like what I knew about 'The Sixth Sense' in as much as the "twist" I thought I knew was worse than it really was. I remember when 'The Others' was in the movies and my younger sister was raving about how much it scared her and I mentioned that it looked just like 'The Sixth Sense' and I was right. A mixture fo the constantly changing weather, the school building that was about 99 degrees and 135% humid and pretending like I don't smoke when I do led me to have "cement" sinuses last night. I popped a few asprin and was whining on the boy's couch. "What is that channel you like?" he said, "the one with all the home shows and stuff you watch?" I rattled off the only three channels I watch (TLC, Discovery, HGTV) and he changed the channel from the mid-90s sitcom he watches endlessly in syndication. "You'll feel better now, this home stuff will help you feel better." I don't know if I laughed harder at that or at the sense from 'In the Mouth of Madness' from the night before where the female lead suddenly has her head on backwards. Never was a aware of the fact that home-decorating shows were part of a prescription of getting rid of a headache from hell.
For most of the semester, I had very little work assigned to me from my boss. I would say I did about 1 hours worth of work a week which amounted to constantly emailing my boss to ask for work. But I never got any so when the opportunity to take on another paid job came along, I took it since I had sort of over-spent in the past few months. Of course, as soon as I was told I got this second job, my boss threw enough work at me to keep me busy until the end of the semester. And soon I am expected to be working early morning handing out surveys to commuters. This always happens because this is the only thing that ever happens.
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