What I'd forgotten...

was more or less the affective stress of being on Nerve. There's a certain addiction to it, a not-so-secret narcissistic indulgence. Getting in a loop of clicking to see who's been looking at me, not that I have any intention of meeting most of them, not that I write most people back. Sometimes there's a sense of regret in this, since it's not like I do a particularly good job of picking the people I do end up with--it all feels like a kind of willed randomness sometimes, undermining the sense that I think I'm getting better at all this.

I wasn't on the site long enough in January before I met D. to remember what this was like. It's only this week that the frenzied loops have come back, that I feel my schedule closing up, a kind of running running running and most of the time it never gets past that point. It's not entirely ideal to be doing this during the semester, especially when I have two writing projects on, but to some extent I know this is all related, that there is a necessity here, that this right now is part of the path in some sort of crazy and occasionally sordid way. After the whole thing with D. collapsed, the weekend I spent convinced that I was going to move to St Louis in less than two months, the weird convergence of various academic rockstar stuff, and going back on the site--at some point I feel like my entire sense of identity broke open and suddenly I'm asking myself questions about who I am, who I want to be with--basic things that I more or less try to ignore are suddenly pressing on me with a kind of urgency, and the thing that I realized about Nerve this weekend is that this is part of it, that I'm more or less trying out different identities in conflict with different people, trying to figure out who I want to be, trying to articulate some kind of sense of who I am--not so much in the sense that I have to be with someone to be anyone but more in the sense that being with different people helps me work out where I can find myself.

I'm not sure that makes any sense. But, then again, I'm not sure what I'm doing makes any sense. Not internet dating per se as much as the weird extremes my dating life in general seems to swing to, where I can go from The Poet to D. and learn what I gain and what I give up--and the truth is, I haven't decided yet, would like not have to decide, who I'm going to be. Suffice it to say there's a very big difference from being the 28-year-old woman with the 57-year-old man and being the 28-year-old chick with the 34-year-old guy and that some of these differences are irreconcilable. (Though this may help explain why I'm most comfortable with guys who are in their early 40s, even though this may also end up being a less happy medium.)

There are things about all this that I can only say elliptically. This is largely an attempt to empty out my own head, but keep the specifics to myself, the idea being to focus on a proposal related to my MLA panel tomorrow and so on. So I went out on dates Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The dude from Friday night was like many of the dates I remember from before. Very cute (in a kind of hipsterish, of course you live in Bushwick kind of way) with a lot in common with me on paper. We had a perfectly cordial and chemistry-less conversation over drinks and dinner, went our separate ways on the subway.

The guy I went out with on Thursday was in his mid-40s, runs a for-profit cultural organization out of his apartment. He's tall, big, kind of goofy-looking (think a more fit version of Jack Black, perhaps), and exactly as brash and unapologetic as you'd think a guy like this would be if he were also Australian. (As a result of this last thing, though, it's possible that I'd be willing to talk on the phone with him forever.) He was a little intense when I first met him, but we had a good time together. He turned out to be really nice. But not in that pushover nice-guy way. More in the way that The Poet is nice. Like, kind. I wasn't sure what to do with it all immediately afterwards. There were some complications, as there always are. But I found myself thinking about him (well, when I wasn't thinking about D. or The Poet) for a lot of the rest of the weekend. I sort of wish I'd been able to swing my own work to see him tonight; in a way it might have been comforting, though I know it's better to go to bed here relatively early, go to the gym so I can continue to fit into my skinny black jeans, head to the zendo to focus, and then work on everything else ever instead tomorrow.

Yesterday...yesterday is one of those days I probably won't ever talk about with anyone. If nothing else, it proved that I'm still capable of doing things that are kind of twisted and not all that enjoyable in the end. And it reminded me of something I really had blocked out about Nerve--the possibility of ending up meeting someone who, over the course of a day and several beers, brings out some of the worst things about you, who pushes you to something without even having to try, who under other circumstances you'd be indifferent to, but the right day, the right mood....And you will always be the crazy chick with the Snoopy tattoo for him to talk about and the next morning you're still a bit shaky, but it's mostly because--well, as I said before, it reminds me of what kind of things I'm capable of doing--and not in a good way. I am trying to let it be instructive. Fortunately, this doesn't happen to me often, but...wow.

Starting to line up a couple of other things for next week. One guy's really on the young side...I think he's okay, but I'm going to have to be more on guard than I'd like. I think I'm pretty much going to stay away from guys under, say, 38, for a bit...the younger ones tend to bring out the crazy.

Right now I'd very much like someone with decently broad shoulders to lean on. That I know for sure.

I'd be lying to say that your band sucks, but I am an academic rockstar

Deciding that this will be the week of some kind of rebound--not that I'm going to go trolling specifically to get laid or anything, but only that I will be focusing on awesomeness and focus. Admittedly, it hasn't started out quite like that. Didn't go to the gym as planned this morning because I was in a lot of pain, and I've been futzing on the internet for most of the weekend, only barely getting the teaching stuff done. Nevertheless. The zendo is now open on Mondays for midday meditation. I owe far less money in taxes than I'd been assuming I did. The decision about St Louis is no longer contingent on my mental state on May 1: at this point, I'm prepared to make whatever move makes sense based on the funding situation. Writing fellowship, I stay. Dissertation year fellowship or no funding, I go. Simple as that. I mean, not simple. But less fraught than it's been.

And I'm not saying it wasn't incredibly exciting to wake up yesterday morning to an email from the scholar who has perhaps been most influential on my work over the last five years--inviting me to contribute a longer version of my MLA paper (which was accepted, but the panel still has to be) to an essay collection. The collection proposal is uncannily similar to my dissertation proposal, and it dawned on me that--against all odds and without setting out to do this explicitly--I may have just actually read the field correctly.

I had my recurring dream about K. last night, the one where his wife is always finding me or in danger of finding me. It's weird to be having these dreams now: we haven't even been alone in a room together since last September, and it's been almost two years since everything happened. I saw him last about six weeks ago at school and have had this dream twice in the last three. Strange.

D. did finally break up with me on Friday, which I can't remember if I mentioned here or not. There were some things about it all that were shady, especially the part where I saw him online on Nerve last night. But I've archived his email, poured out the half and half, thrown away the hot chocolate, and that's all there was. I still can't quite walk past the Brooklyn Museum (managed to avoid it in everywhere I went this weekend), and sometimes I hear one of his band's songs in my head. But all the knifethrusts went on last week; Friday was just the last stage in it all. It's something that'll make me sad in the back of my mind for a long time, but I got a kickass conference paper out of it, I rediscovered something about myself as an artistic writer (though I always work better with an audience, alas), and it all provided the occasion (albeit painful) for rethinking several of my personal narratives--including the one about how I *have* to write my dissertation in New York.

And so. On with the rainy day.

New set of plans

My options for next year are something like the following:

1. I get Fellowship A. Fellowship A would mean working at a college in New York, secretly keeping my job at not-NYU to maintain library access, etc. It would be an insanely busy year, but it would buy me at least one more summer of diss work. If I get Fellowship A, I stay in New York, but try to move somewhere nicer / cheaper around October.

2. I don't get any fellowships. In this case, I move back to St Louis by mid-June.

3. I get Fellowship B. This one is less money, but more prestige and no strings attached.
3a. I get Fellowship B and take the money to St Louis. Financially, I could live on Fellowship B in St Louis, though I might pick up an adjunct gig for easier access to libraries.
3b. I get Fellowship B, continue to teach at Not-NYU, and stay in New York, at least attempting to negotiate a rent reduction or move

If #3 happens, I will set myself a goal of July 31 for making the decision about whether I stay in New York or move to St Louis. The decision will be made on the basis of whether I'm happy here. If I had to make this decision today, I would be planning to move back to St Louis the day after classes end at Not-NYU this semester.

There's a Zen center in St Louis. My parents say they'd help with a car and getting my stuff back to the midwest.

Yes, it's come to this. I'm too worn down by this city to remain committed to it. I've been absolutely wretched all weekend. Some douchebag called me a cunt at Franklin Park last night, which means I won't be going there again, and I probably will also be avoiding Soda Bar on Vanderbilt because it's the same owners. I haven't gotten any work done for my teaching stuff today, mostly because I've been crying. I'm trying to pull myself together enough to go get cash and food and possibly cigarettes. Because I don't care right now. I probably have to apologize to everyone who was in a meeting with me on Friday. I think I'm falling apart. I don't want to talk about D. right now. I just need someone to hold me through this night, through the remainder of the weekend, but it's not an option I have. I try so hard. I'm not clingy. I'm not unattractive. I'm smart but not pretentious. I'm good at what I do, but not snobby about it. I'm trying hard to be a better, more spiritual, more compassionate, more flexible person. Somehow that's not enough here.

Energy seeking, in bullet form

* I've felt increasingly stable emotionally, but I feel like I'm missing a connection with my work. I'm still doing a lot of futzing. There's not a lot of time for futzing. I need to figure out how to regain focus on both teaching and on my own research.

* I wonder if some of the lack of intellectual energy has to do with the change in the ways and contexts in which I talk about my work. I don't have the same kind of aspirational emotional investment in the people I talk about work with these days that I had with, say, The Professor--and part of that is because I'm no longer a still-in-coursework grad student trying to impress some guy I really liked with my knowledge of iterability. I talk about some of these things with friends and with The Poet, but the relationships have shifted. At the same time, I don't really want to get into the same kind of thing I had with The Professor with someone else. So a more substantial identity shift needs to take place.

* I did have a nice conversation this afternoon (completely unexpectedly) with a girl who I've known since I started in the program, but had never talked to her. I had been sort of casually suspicious of her for years, mostly based on stories that I heard about her, but as I've lived through a lot more--well, let's just say I understand how those kinds of rumors and things get started. She's much more settled than her previous repuration suggested, and I really enjoyed talking with her. I need more conversations like this.

* As I was leaving school, I saw K. from across the lobby. We waved, but that was it. It wasn't until I was on a Q train much closer to 14th Street that I realized what I should have done.

* It was one of those days: had I not gone home when I did, I could have seen The Poet. As things stand, we don't get to see each other until next Thursday.

* J both texted and emailed me first. I answered the text, and then he wrote back with something that didn't really move the conversation forward. Then I went home and saw his email. After some agonizing (okay, more like futzing) I sent a couple lines back to that, seeing if it's easier. I didn't really feel anything either way. And I have no idea what I want.

* I thought about going to the MeditateNYC open house at the Boundless Mind Zendo in Park Slope, but inertia and fajitas set in. There's another sangha I may try on Sunday. But the thing is that evening mediation is always going to be hard for me, especially on days when I teach--that 6 to 8 slot is a prime time for my wanting to nap. I really like the midday zazen thing. But we'll see.

* I think my teaching observation is going to coincide with my attempting to lecture on Derrida. You will recall that I am teaching freshman comp.

* I love Boston Legal, but I'm pissed off by their treatment of abortion in the most recent episode. This whole mushy liberal discourse of "it changes you forever" is incredibly condescening bullshit, and I was disappointed to see it voiced by Candace Bergen's character. All kinds of things have the power to change a given person forever, and to privilege this as the one thing that is so powerful that a woman can't be trusted to make the decision--I call bullshit, and I do so as a woman who had an abortion and does not think that it was the worst thing that has ever happened to her. The show itself eventually (more or less) affirmed abortion, but the qualifications they put on it (pro-choice arguments in the mouth of a headstrong 15 year old girl who may or may not have been engaged in a gender-selection abortion) were incredibly insulting. It triggered for me the memory of the "I'm pro-choice but I get squicked out by certain kinds of women having abortions for certain kinds of reasons (generally 'birth control')" meme that was going around the internets (especially those areas populated by female academic bloggers) a couple of months ago. That made me want to scream because, from a number of perspectives, my abortion was basically birth control, even though it only happened once. My life wasn't in danger. I wasn't a teenager. I suppose that if I really wanted to have a baby, I could have convinced E. to be on board with it, and we'd either have some sort of resentful partnership or I'd have moved back in with my parents or something. But I didn't do that. And I'm not sorry. Sure, there were things about the experience that were traumatizing, but they have more to do with the atmosphere at the clinic and the ways in which The Ex and The Professor both (at different times afterwards) responded to it. (The Ex: "Let me tell you how your abortion affected me." The Professor: "If it were mine, I would have wanted you to keep it. But I wouldn't have been with you or anything.") But it wasn't the most traumatizing or destructive thing that's ever happened to me in my life. And even if it was, to legislate with that in mind would be disgusting.

* I did not mean to make this into a post about my abortion, but it's possible that some of my immediate listlessness tonight was related to watching Boston Legal while consuming my dinner. And maybe now it's time to curl up in bed with Anne of Windy Poplars. For the record, I'm mostly excited about going to St Louis for Thanksgiving so I can retrieve the rest of the Anne of Green Gables books and Little House on the Prairie.

It's not so much the way you hurt me, it's more like the way you make me want to hurt myself

Whatever J and I had is over.

He talks about wanting to be friends. I don't really care. And I told him I wouldn't make plans with him more than an hour in advance of anything.

I feel sick. I want to claw my own eyes out.

And most of all, I hate myself, I hate my own reactions to this, I hate the crazy, and I hate the fact that no matter how low I think my expectations are, I still manage to get so cripplingly disappointed.

I hope someone responds to my Facebook message.

I guess I can give my dad the CDs I burned of the new Dylan album.

At least The Poet still loves me. And that's not entirely horrible.

I hate this so much. I need to get out of the house, but I don't know where to go. I was hoping that if I called J before zazen it would be better, but now I don't know how I'm going to get on that cushion or what will happen when I get up.

And I think what makes me angriest of all is the fact that the week I met J was really a turning point of my being in the world, that it was the week I felt that things were changing for me, that I'd made some progress, that I could finally stop getting so hung up on specific people and really be grounded enough to face the world.

What a fucking joke that was.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. How am I supposed to work today? What am I supposed to do? How am I going to get through this wedding?

I kind of want to throw up. Or...I don't know. Buy cigarettes. Something. Erase everything good I've said about him during the past few months so my friends don't think I'm a complete fucking idiot.

Oh, and it's not just that this weekend was the weekend before the wedding. Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of my abortion. It's not that big of a deal in itself, but it did cause me to mourn what I could have had with E, if we'd managed to stay together longer. So the double abandonment. Yeah, not a whole lot of fucking fun.

I wonder if I should go back on Nerve when I get back from the wedding. That'll at least make for fun fucked up stories to shock people at my h.s. reunion.

I kind of wish I were on the market this year so I'd have something else to care about other than the stupid, quixotic, should-know-better-by-now attempt to try to make a decent life for myself here. After 10 years I should probably get the fucking hint.

Fuck. Just fuck. I wish I had a place I could scream.

Oh, and he was totally making it about the sex. Douchebag. Fucking douchebag.

And I think now I just let The Poet love me.

Awesomeness of the day

The Guardian has a slideshow of Bush at the Olympics with LOL cat captions.

It is awesome.



As seen on my lunchtime browsing of Jezebel.

Short rant because I'm not doing as well today as I was hoping I would.

I really do understand why showing people the soles of your feet is considered insulting in certain cultures. I finally just had to pick up and switch computers entirely because the guy sitting across from me has had his feet up all day, pretty much at my eye level, so that every time I looked at the screen, I could see his feet more or less in my face.

Seriously, if you're looking for a place to be *that* comfortable, then maybe the library (or public space in general) isn't it. He's also engaged in another library pathology that I hate, which is sitting at a computer but using his laptop. Douchebag.