In a crowded theater my body moves with the music. I brush my hair out of my face, my fingers laced through it at the nape of my neck. In that moment I can feel your breath on my skin and it is like nothing I remember.
Month: April 2005
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I am 17 and on the dance floor, two weeks from graduation. My best friend is there. Such a fateful night. We danced to that Whitetown song and sparkly confetti rained down from the ceiling. We were so young. I found glitter in my bed for a week, and every time smiled a secret smile.
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In the dark of midwinter we stand outside the coffeeshop under a streetlamp, too close and yet too far apart. Laughter plays in my eyes, laughter and anticipation. I who have always been one to make moments am to shy to claim this one, and so it passes, and another, and another beyond it. I want your hands on my face, your hands at my waist, your hand on the back of my neck. In that half light, the moment unclaimed, I exhale and you get in your car and something I didn’t know dwelled within me shattered.
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I am 19. Somewhere between Christmas and the turning of the year we sit in the hallway of my apartment, me in a dress, you all in black, both of us smoking cigarettes and shivering from the cold. You find a blanket – no, a towel – to cover my bare legs and we talk deep into the night about music, art, poetry, death, life, love. Somewhere in the watches of the night you look at me, eyes full on me, and say “I want to learn from you.”
You slept on my couch that night, and in the morning left with a stack of my books. Five years later I walked through an airport and heard your voice and something inside me seized up tight.
seder
Eight friends sitting around a table. Eight wine glasses raised to freedom. A hot kitchen, a table laden with food, laughter and seriousness. Hearts and minds were elsewhere with distant loves, pressing worries, ringing cellphones, and unfinished work – but for a few hours we were family. My family here is ever-changing, but sitting around that table felt like being home again.
Week 14
Things I have learned about grad school:
- Grad school is a profoundly lonely endeavor unless you’re in a track with a bunch of people doing the same thing.
- Going to extra lectures is fantastic especially when it allows you to expand your thinking in new directions – except when this means expanding the scope of research you’re already trying to narrow.
- Sometimes you’ll have a spontaneous conversation that ameliorates, if only briefly, your academic frustrations and lonelinesses.
- Sometimes you’ll get to meet very controversial and important figures in your discipline before you’ve had your morning coffee.
- Sometimes you’ll get to take courses from nationally recognized researchers doing really important work in your field.
- Sometimes you’ll sit in class on a Friday morning and feel your chest well up with pride and excitement about the field you’re studying (even if it’s not where you will end up professionally).
- And sometimes you’ll come home after a long day of lectures, work, class, the library, and more work and be so exhausted you can hardly function.
All of these have happened and/or occurred to me this week.
Mobile (in more ways than two)
I’m distracted tonight. I keep trying to focus on the paper I’m researching and writing, but after an hour or so at the computer my eyes start glazing over and I just want to crawl into bed. I’m getting there, though – not really anything written, but a lot of things thought about, and a lot of notes taken, and a lot of sources found. Really I don’t need to sweat it – but I have really enjoyed this course and would like to write a paper worthy of everything the course has made me think about and reconsider.
That said, I really wish we could restart the semester right now and revisit many of our readings over the last three months. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. My friends who teach have often talked about classes that just didn’t click – and then classes where the students just got into the rhythm of discussion and everything was wonderful. At the beginning of the semester, the mix of grads and undergrads was jarring, no one really knew what to expect, and the instructor seemed tentative though knowledgeable about the subject matter. Now that the semester is almost over, we’ve hit the ground running – the majority of the class is comfortable in discussion – students will challenge other students’ assertions or ask for another student’s perspective in an area where he or she is knowledgeable – and, perhaps most impressively, we’re comfortable enough with the subject matter and with the professor to speak frankly about the readings, letting him know at the end of each discussion section which we feel was useful, and which goes into the ‘suck pile’. It’s been fun to watch the class grow, and to hear the vocabulary change. I’m almost sad to see this one end.
On an entirely unrelated note, this weekend I’m going to sign a lease on a gorgeous little apartment owned by a friend of mine. I am beyond delighted and relieved, and I hope it will work out well for all involved. Before I move, however, there must be much merriment in my current apartment. I’m thinking a no beer allowed cocktail party in May. I’m thinking some sort of brunch on the porch in June. I’m thinking an “I’m moving!” party in late July (sangria?). I’m thinking many friends, much laughter, and hot nights in the shade. Do come. It’d be so much nicer with you here.
Let me just say that spring mornings are addicting. My sleep has been kind of weird and I’ve been waking up just before sunrise, watching the honeyed dawn through the window by my bed. There’s something really wonderful about curling up for an extra hour of sleep in a pile of pillows and blankets and sunshine.
Tonight my heart and mind are somewhere between the ocean and the mountains. The semester is winding down, but I definitely am not. After a couple of chill, quiet weeks without much responsibility (save, you know, the 20 hours at one job, 20 the other, and coursework), I have so much to do and so little initiative to do it. I’m throwing myself into work projects to avoid the schoolwork I desperately need to be doing. I have a paper due next week that I’ve barely started thinking about. I have a pile of articles to read, and an internship application to write. I have lectures to record and a networking project that simply won’t come together no matter how hard we try. I am so grateful (now and always) that I’m not teaching – and to think that in the fall I’ll be taking four courses instead of three.
Today I had a really good and encouraging conversation with a classmate about my career and educational direction. We started talking as class got out and ended up sitting in the empty classroom for 45 minutes talking about educational technologies, frustrations with departments that are interdisciplinary but don’t like to admit it, and the directions we see our careers taking. Sarah and I have had a number of similar conversations, but it was really good to have it with someone outside my inner circle.
I’m sore tonight after a really good workout. I’ve been going to the gym for a month and a half and I don’t know if it’s the music or the new-found dedication, but the my workouts have only gotten more intense. I don’t see much change from my “before” pictures, but I can feel the difference in my body.
At the beginning of this year I resolved to do more things for me, to do better things for me, to be healthier. I’m more stressed out now than I was this time last year, but the stress is ultimately a good thing. I spent a long time thinking about my life last week – and realized that there’s nothing I would change that won’t eventually change in time. I can’t tell you how wonderful that felt.
Today I have finished a lot of the work I needed to get done. That is, if ‘finished a lot of the work I needed to get done’ can be loosely translated as ‘sat on my porch and stared at my computer in a rather demented fashion’.
the here and now
I am so freaking frustrated at the moment. Both of my jobs are getting to me in “insulting my intelligence and competence” sort of ways, but this really isn’t the place to blow off steam.
On the bright side, my apartment hunt is looking up. Still no word from the lofts, but I’m looking at a couple of promising places next week. Today I looked at a place conveniently located 10 minutes from my office – unfortunately that was mainly the only thing it had going for it other than that it is owned by my hot-ass landlord. Note to self: don’t rent an apartment just because the landlord’s hot.
On another bright side, I feel fantastic. I’m still not entirely sold on my gym, but I have been noticing – and loving – the changes in my body and my energy levels. I feel way comfortable in skirts and sandals and dresses and all my springy clothes. Swimsuit season is coming soon, though, so I’ve got to keep working. I really kind of want to go workout crazy this summer – the gym, swimming, yoga. I’m not body obsessed by any means, but it feels so good to be active – and if ‘active’ can mean being in the sun, even better!
It’s gorgeous here again after a dreary mid-week. I want to have a house full of people all weekend, but I have to work – and when I’m not at work, I have to be studying and writing and reading. Hopefully I can do some of that on the porch. I told my landlord today that had he asked me if I wanted to keep my apartment on a day like today, I would’ve been hard pressed to say no. I’m hoping to have a party in a month or so – cocktails and such on the porch on an early summer evening – I wish you all could be here.
Coursework is set for the summer and fall – just one class over the summer, and four in the fall term. I’m quickly realizing that I’m in the wrong department, so now it becomes a torture weighing game – great career-minded job while in a department doing the wrong coursework vs no job in a department doing career-minded coursework. Oh, I don’t know.
What I do know, though, is that in half an hour I’m off to have falafel and hummus with my friends. I’m hoping that’ll make my cares go away, if only briefly. I feel so silly and superficial saying this, but things like hummus and balancing in stilettos make it easier to deal sometimes.
latterdaybohemian 