[...]

I would say that the weather makes me lonely. But I got lonely on Saturday and Sunday, too.

The turn that April's cruelty and general weirdness (particularly in both my academic worlds) have taken is to leave me feeling incredibly fragile, yet still, somehow, unable to tear myself away from, say, Nerve, where I still see D. in the "who's online now!" section almost every day (why can't I block just one person...they should give you that, I think, as long as you don't waste it on garden variety awkwardness, as long as you save it for the person who kind of broke your heart even if you didn't know him that well) and which generates mostly time-consuming dates that don't make me feel better even when they seem to be okay. I really liked the guy from Friday, but he hasn't gotten in touch with me and I'm always the one who seems to like the other person more than they like me, so I don't email him. I spent Thursday night with the Australian and now nothing. I mean, I know he had a friend in town over the weekend and all, but a quick email to make plans, maybe? I sent him a couple sentences last night but it didn't go anywhere. And I'm sure that if I emailed him right at this moment saying I wanted to sleep over tonight, that would happen. But I don't want to have to send that email; it feels like a ploy.

Oh, and my old LiveJournal account got hacked and deleted. Just some other fun thing to make me feel insecure. Seriously, all of this is like being hollowed out, or slashed to shreds with a million papercuts.

And all of this keeps ripping me apart, but I can't stop doing it; it's hard to stay off the internet and I somehow have to get this article rewrite done at an incredibly busy time of the semester and I'm scared and my friends are annoying me but it's not their fault and I wish something here didn't have to be this damn hard.

But of course sometimes it's fine and validating and all that and so much stupid hope. I probably have to break the Nerve habit again soon, though. Two weeks seems to be my limit.

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.

Today's Zen Story / Yesterday's Commonplace Book

1. Today's Zen Story

I actually calculates the basics of my federal taxes back in January because I needed to get some numbers for a financial aid form. I found that I owed around $850-900. While I've owed that much before, this was particularly disheartening / panic-causing / traumatic / thwarting / depressing because I thought I'd finally gotten my withholding figured out at this point in grad school, when I wasn't freelancing, and so on. That was not a particularly stellar evening, to say the least. At the time I decided to take my dad's advice and just not think about it for a few months, keeping the money in the savings side of my checking account until April.

I revisited my taxes today, and, perhaps needless to say, I had to work through a lot of aversion to get there. Even when I finally sat down at my desk, I was procrastinating like mad, and I would stop every few questions to go through all the usual internet places: Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, my Not-NYU email account, Nerve (yes, alas). Since I hadn't figured out the exact tax back in January, I didn't know exactly what I was in for. And it wasn't encouraging to see that I'd made an adding error in my income that had it *under* by $100.

And then I realized that I'd missed one of the personal deductions, so that I'd calculated my income as several thousand dollars *over* what it actually was and was thus looking at the wrong tax table altogether.

I still owe a few hundred dollars (and I can't get the NYS forms to work on my computer, so I have to wait until Monday for that), but it's about $500 *less* than I thought it was going to be, than what I've been assuming and stressing out about for the last two months and change.

I can't even really describe the sense of relief, not unalloyed by sheepishness, that I'm experiencing.

2. Yesterday's Commonplace Book

"Already how am I so far
Out of that minute? Must I go
Still like the thistle-ball, no bar,
Onward, whenever light winds blow,
Fixed by no friendly star?

--Robert Browning, "Two in the Campagna"

In resisting idolatry, is the reluctant lover protecting himself against illusion? Or in looking for intimacy without risk, is he losing part of his soul? Because the heavy caesuras match the lover's halting heart, they contradict his boast of confronting no obstacles or barriers. Since the words that appear to lurch forward over the line endings are brought short by early-breaking caesuras they also inadvertently disclose to the attentive reader far more than the lover intends to say.

--W. David Shaw, "Masks of the Unconscious: Bad Faith and Casuistry in the Dramatic Monologue"

Also from Shaw:

But the despair of the jilted lovers in Maud and "Locksley Hall," like the anguish of St. Simeon decaying by slow degrees on his pillar, is a mere pretense. Such speakers act out a fantasy of anguish in order to escape genuine despair.

Is it so unreasonable

...to want to be more than the thing that distracts you from all the other things in your life?

In two years of sleeping with various people, some of whom I liked very much, I never once had the kind of relationship where I could come to a party with a date. There was a little of this with The Professor, but it was always fraught, and a couple of other theatre dates where introductions had to be made, and some awkward run-ins. But nothing substantial. Nothing that would ever suggest that I was part of anyone's life.

And even with The Poet--perhaps the most loving man I've ever met--dealing with me crying on the phone over D. (so over, as of today, but I basically had to ask him straight out just to break up with me already), meeting me after class to bring me a couple of Xanax--as bad as things are with me, they're almost a welcome distraction from what he's going through in his real life.

It seems like such a simple thing. I guess I have to stop thinking of it that way. Because there's no such thing as a reasonable expectation, not in New York, probably not anywhere.

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.

Not sure I'm doing it right

Well, okay, no. There's one thing that I know went right this week--I gave the best fucking conference paper of my life on Friday morning. It's not something that would have come about any other way than how it did, and every time I've thought back to it since I'm kind of amazed by it. Just in terms of the convergence of events, how I would never have had enough confidence to give this paper in this way at anywhere other than a grad conference at my own institution--but also, I think, in the sense that I both wrote the paper the day before the conference (in a particularly dismal/socked in exhausted six hours in the department lounge after a dismal and frustrating day of teaching) and that I had been writing it for the last two and a half years, more or less. The frame--autobiographical but not marked as such--was something I decided on the week before, a risk undertaken precisely because of the situation of the conference and feeling like I had nothing to lose. It was related to something I told D. before we met but also to a set of experiences I had last summer and an idea I blog about quite frequently. It turned out to be a disturbingly successful metaphor and frame. (I only wish K could have been there. We'd run into each other in the cafeteria a few days before and managed to have a nice conversation about a number of things, including this idea...but no such luck.)

The last conference I'd been to before this one was the one in Toronto last April, and I was struck by how much I *miss* conferencing without even knowing it. Even when no one says anything wildly earthshattering, it's still inspiring to think alongside new people, to spend an entire day or so thinking mostly about books and ideas. It's mentally regenerative even though it's physically exhausting--and, in this case, physically exhausting on top of the worst cold I've had in three years and one of the most horrible and draggeddown weeks I've had in ages--two of them actually, and I'm not sure next week is going to be any better. (More on that anon.) It was enough to make me think, in this horrible, paradoxical, "oh my god I really am an academic and in this economy that's seriously going to fuck up my life" kind of way, that many of my frustrations of the past few months can be traced to having gone to Wisconsin (where I experienced a lot of lethargy and frustration when I actually did want to think) instead of to MLA.

The conference, though, was wonderful, in spite of the fact that I had pretty much lost my voice by the end of the night. Sometime in the afternoon, D. sent me a piece he'd been working on....something crazy and brilliant that I read through instead of listening fully to the faculty panel. This made me grin, especially since he wants me to give him some feedback. (Also, he wrote me a song, he said, and sent the lyrics.) On the downside, I haven't seen him since we went to Edgar's show two weeks ago, and I'm going out of town on Thursday. This is precisely the sort of thing that makes me all stressy. But I'm realizing, though, that my saying last week that I didn't want to go back to The Poet was important, so I don't have to look to D. to provide a reason not to be with The Poet. I did actually talk to The Poet for awhile on the phone yesterday and got a better sense of what's going on in his head and his life--and all of this rather affirmed the fact that it's best I'm just a friend right now, and that he's using my breaking up with him as a way of thinking around something else that's actually much worse.

The rest of this week pretty much sucked, hardcore. I got everything done that I needed to, but it was miserable, sloggy, frustrating. I was almost in tears all day on Wednesday, feeling jerked around by stupid requests from professors treating me like a secretary rather than a colleague (too many flashbacks to my first job in Chicago), frustrated with my students, exhausted from the performance of engagement, too sick to go to the gym, everyone around me seemed to be dragging me down. I almost didn't go to zazen, though that at least temporarily made me feel better, even though I had to start running again right afterwards. I do not want people telling me that I am supernecessary for one group or another to succeed. If I ask you to do final proofreading on something, I do not want to get the okay to do the final copy and then hear three days later that there are changes that need to be made. And so on. I skipped my monthly field seminar on Wednesday night for the first time since I started grad school, was still in the library until after 7:00 grading papers, and so on, so on. The week before was like this too--just as busy but slightly less miserable--this past week--which was all supposed to be about doing my best to get everything done, suddenly had me on the rack.

The teaching thing is especially frustrating and overwhelming: this is the part where I have to keep telling myself: UR NOT DOING IT RIGHT. Basically, I feel like I'm back in my first semester at Erstwhile Teaching College, where I'm spending insane amounts of time on this thing with absolutely no payoff and then when the lesson plan fails because no one can be bothered to do the reading or, if they've done the reading, to talk about it, things only get more frustrating. I realized that part of the reason why I have an aversion to grading papers is that they seem, unlike drafts or even homework assignments, to be a kind of referendum on my ability as a teacher. Which is completely bullshitty, just not so much that I can believe it's not partially the case. And that, in turn, is clearly not helping my mood. I keep feeling like I'm failing this particular group of students and I don't know what's going wrong. Partially, it's teaching too many things I'm not familiar with, but--still. I think I'm better at first-semester comp than I am at second semester comp. But this, too, seems like it's emanating from self-centered reasons: I feel more secure when I know my students don't have anyone else to compare me to. So I think I get all weird in the spring. (Then again: the first spring semester I ever taught was the semester when I broke up with The Ex and got raked over the emotional coals with The Professor. And last spring I taught the fall version of the class, which made it the easiest semester ever. So perhaps it's time to give myself, and my students, a break.)

Right now the idea is basically to get better and get to spring break. The week is going to be pretty much running uphill. Today is grading, midterm evaluations, and the letter of recommendation for one of my fall students. Tomorrow is prep, hopefully being well enough to go to the gym (I haven't been in over a week and feel tubby--I'm sure this is also one of the reasons why this past week was so unremittingly miserable), getting a few stupid things done at school. Conferences all week, and somehow finding the time to do laundry, pack, maybe buy some cute shoes for spring. And then--down to Charlotte to hang out with one contingent of my extended family. And spring break, which is already being filled in for me, but I have to believe that things will get better after that, that I will eventually stop being sick, that D and I will get many walks through Prospect Park and that things will be okay for a little while.

I hope. Now zazen. Then grading.

Still kicking my own ass, though not as hard

He writes back something very sweet that helps set my mind at ease, just rights things again. Predictably, my own self-recriminations start immediately--everything was fine, what happened all of the sudden, why do I always *do* this, etc.--but I'm trying to do the thing where you just notice those thoughts are happening and then don't invite them to stay for tea (or, in my case, a Flying Pigs Farm pork chop, despite my not having gone to the gym today). Recognizing that my angst has little to do with him in a way, remembering that I am not actually clingy or overly expectant and that I can just continue to sit with this, as it were, because what else am I going to do? Holding lightly is always so much easier when...something.

I think I did the right thing in being up front about some things--like my recent readiness to actually be in a relationship if I had the chance, something that's a bit different from where he is--without serving up the whole plate of traumas and pastness. I gave general outlines and just said that the decisions I made in 2008 were motivated by a desire to mitigate my loneliness and heal a bit. That's all that needs to be said for now, I think.

At least I'm writing today. Did a first draft of the fellowship app that like 9,000 other people I know are working on just now. It doesn't fully hang together, but I can address that in an edit tomorrow. (Another day I probably won't make it to the gym, but perhaps that's also not the thing I need to beat myself up about today.) I still have four papers to grade after dinner that I didn't get to last night due to exhaustion and the bat call that probably started all of this. My other blogging duties may have to wait until tomorrow. Would love it if Not-NYU called another snow day, but this seems unlikely.

I feel not unlike an ass, by the way. But less so than I did with J. Some of this was at least illuminating, like when I found myself typing to him that I trust other people more than I trust myself when it comes to these interstitial kinds of spaces--the not just hooking up and one night standing, but also not the boyfriend/girlfriend thing. I think it's important that I'm even recognizing that.

Okay. Must do dishes if I want food.

The entire stupid play by play

Sent off the MLA abstract. Spent the next hour and a half composing a response to his email. Back on forth on how much to share, erred on the side of not a lot of detail. Too many flashbacks to a similar missive sent to J to little avail. Wondering how I can be so astonishingly deluded about the possibilities of my own life, even as I still think it could maybe be okay. Listening to Liz Phair because, of course. Steeling myself for the fellowship application and then grade papers; resisting the urge to curl up in bed for the rest of the day instead. Wishing I'd gone to the gym despite the weather, too late now. Hate this, hate this, hate this.

And I hope this isn't the beginning of another end

I don't know. I just don't. He said it wasn't intended to be grave and heavy, but still--the disappointment is there for me. I'm tired of all the waiting I have to do for people. I'm back to my old mantra about wanting to, just once, fully coincide with someone. You know, find someone who's already worked through some of their shit, like I have, finally, after two years of running uphill. Someone who can be here, just because I would like them to be, here. Someone to help me justify all of -- this -- whatever this is.

I want a boyfriend. Can I just say that and have it be okay? Something really simple. Or just simpler. Someone ready to be counted on. And I don't like this position--it makes me worry that nothing I do is based on actual affinity ever, that it's all just because I want it to work. The J. problem. And the fear that the only thing that ever worked was The Poet precisely because there was no way for it to work, because I still to this day don't really know what working would mean in that context, except that he managed to make me happy and save me from a couple pretty bad mental spots.

I don't want this to be so hard. Browning and MLA abstracts and faking interest in fellowships and planning classes--this I'm willing to allow to be hard. The rest of it--come on, universe, really? I would like someone I can trust myself to count on, if that makes sense. In some ways (and they may not, of course, be fully evident on the blog), I'm too good at self-sufficiency and dependability and non-clinging.

It's possible that this is all premature. There's a dialogue to be had, but I'm not sure it will end well for me. As much as I'd be willing to...I don't even know. I thought I was getting better at this, but what a fucking learning curve.

I have too much work to do to be thinking about any of this. I need to finish my MLA abstract, at the very least, before I write back, and this is going to require an enormous overhaul so I better get started, pretending it's still last week, or two weeks ago, slipping back into the generally possible and reclaiming the composure that I had that wasn't externally constructed.

The thought of going back to Nerve again--or, for that matter, of being more than friends with The Poet--these thoughts do not alleviate the descending bleakness.

Maybe it's all nothing, maybe there's a dialogue to be had. But I can't have it before I send in this abstract.

Psychology of the Snow Day

I got like 600 text messages from Not-NYU telling me that school is cancelled today because of the snow. That's lovely, but of course I don't teach on Mondays, so it has little actual effect on my life. (The snow is, however, likely to make me less excited about slogging to the gym, which also might be having a snow day.) Nevertheless, knowing it's a snow day is making it much harder to get work done; I feel like I should be able to curl up on the couch and watch movies--even though it's not a snow day for, say, turning in one's MLA abstract or grading papers. Augh.

I'm thinking of two other March blizzards. One was my first Spring Break in New York, when the cheap platform boots I bought at the Joyce Leslie on University Place basically split in half. It was also the Spring Break when my then-boyfriend showed up for the St Patrick's Day parade having Bic-ed his head. I had recently received The Worst Haircut of My Life at Astor Place (as one does while a freshman at NYU)--we made a fantastic couple. The St Patrick's Day parade I remember as involving beers hidden in winter hats, long lines for the bathroom at Sbarro, and high school kids from Long Island puking on the side streets. I have not attended since.

The other March blizzard was two years ago, the day of the new student recruitment event, which is sort of a perpetually weird day. (I just found out I'll be in Charlotte for this year's and I'm not sorry.) Before that I was at West Village Coffeeshop with The Professor and ran into someone from my very deep New York past--the archetype for a lot of things that happened to me since college and the sometime hero, sometime villain, sometime addressee of much of my LiveJournal posts circa 2001. It was awkward and came out of nowhere and we smoked a cigarette on the steps of West Village Coffeeshop and then The Professor decided that he needed to leave, so I ended up talking to this guy for awhile and then going to school and a lot of this is a blur. This may be why the snow day has left me somewhat unsettled, needing to focus and finish this abstract, make a decent effort to finish the fellowship application, and grade the rest of the somewhat dismal first set of papers from my class.

Well, that and the fact that I ended up on a bat call with L last night, found out about something The Poet did that I found somewhat less than amusing, came home at 1:30, made popcorn and sent D. a kind of gooshy drunk email, and then went to sleep and had a dream about my latest Facebook friend. Good lord.

So, Sunday. And, Saturday.

I think I'm kind of glad that February's over. It's kind of an overdetermined month for me to begin with, and it's one where, increasingly, its meanings aren't readable until much later anyway. It also inevitably seems long and sloggy--perhaps even because it's so short, you're always surprised it's still going on. Mostly I'll keep telling myself that at least I'm far less wretched than I've been at this time in either of the last two years.

And I feel slightly better today, calmer. Could be it's all just Saturday, something about the way I experience a week making it inevitably--something. I've never really had a comfortable relationship with the weekend, not when I was growing up or working a 9-5 job either. Saturdays rarely sit well with me, and I can't really remember the last time I felt like I actually accomplished something on them, other than going to the farmers' market and making a nice dinner (or going to the museum to meet a cute boy whose recent silence has me going a bit churny). Perhaps there's a lesson in this, about changing my expectations. (I feel much more ready to work today, much more ready to go to school and sit down with all this. The idea of going to school on Saturdays, especially if the next plan is to just go home when I'm done, is incredibly, crushingly depressing even now.) Like perhaps I could have gone to the afternoon sitting at the zendo yesterday--that might have been a good thing to do, something to take me out of the loop I got myself into. These happen once a month; perhaps I should look up the next one and plan for it now. (Of course, now that I look at their calendar, I see they don't have another one on there for awhile. Anyway.)

I suppose the point is that I should maybe ease up on myself where Saturdays are concerned. I'm starting to do that informally already, but even when I'm cleaning the apartment I feel a kind of guilt of how I should be reading or working; I sit down to read and immediately fall asleep no matter how much sleep I got the night before. Perhaps as the weather gets warmer (which is not happening this week--wtf, winter storm warning?) I'll just make a point of being outside, trying to do something to ease some of the anxiety I felt yesterday. Of course this will / would always be easier with another person around. I know what gets me on Saturdays a lot of the time is the solitude, which is why it was so great to have D around those couple of times. But right now I'm not sure that's something fully in my control.

But I'm feeling calmer this morning. I hope it lasts. About to sit zazen, then make an egg sandwich or something to fortify me on the way to Manhattan, which will probably suck. Going to hide out in the department as long as they'll let me, only going to the library under duress. (Though something tells me that if I do go to the library I'll run into K. Which might be amusing. I do occasionally wonder what he's up to, how he's doing.) Mostly, though, I want to spend today really focusing on the strength / productivity / creativity / non-wretchedness that's bigger than the last couple weeks of having D. in my life, something a bit more--grounded, perhaps? I don't know if that's exactly the right word--less contingent, maybe, or at least something that's expressing its contingency in a different way. Like one that isn't so tied to another person, because at least at some level, I know it's not, not entirely anyway. (On the other hand, I don't think that my conference paper for this Friday would be starting out the same way, but that was something I've been thinking about ever since I read Hegel last year.)

And maybe he'll call me. Maybe he won't. I don't know what I'll do in the latter case. I may call him and I may not. I'll see how I feel several hours from now; I'd very much like to get in a solid 7-8 hour workday if I can. (Which means I should have been sitting zazen like 20 minutes ago, but, alas.) I'm getting to a point where I'm simply ready to say: I want a boyfriend. If he can do that right now, if he wants to do that right now, then--great. I'll be in 100% as they say on teevee. If not...then I have to think of something else, someone else.

I often have a hard time figuring out my posture when I sit--I don't really have a good sense of my own body position, whether I'm actually sitting up straight or not. The foregoing paragraph is more or less an emotional correlative of this physical confusion.

Thoughts on a day that was less productive than I would have liked

Enlightenment and clarity of the mind occur only in response to the sustained effort of study and practice. Endeavoring in the way ripens the conditions of your practice. It is not that the sound of the bamboo is sharp or the color of the blossoms is vivid. Although the sound of the bamboo is wondrous, it is heard at the moment when it's hit by a pebble. Although the color of blossoms is beautiful, they do not open by themselves but unfold in the light of springtime. Studying the way is like this. You attain the way when conditions come together. Although you have your own capacity, you practice the way with the combined strength of the community. So you should practice and search with one mind with others.

A stone is turned to a jewel by polishing. A person becomes a sage by cultivation. What stone is originally shiny? Who is mature from the beginning? You ought to polish and cultivate yourself. Don't diminish yourself. Don't be lazy in your study of the way.

--from Enlightenment Unfolds: The Essential Teachings of Zen Master Dogen, trans. Kazuaki Tanahashi

I think I am slowly learning things about myself, belatedly, perhaps, about the way I work, about the knots that I will have to untie. I ran myself ragged in my teaching week--Tuesday I was "going" for about 18 hours--woke up at six as usual, then teaching, looking at drafts, going back to Brooklyn to run errands then go to the gym then do laundry, then look at more drafts, answering personal emails then finally sleeping a bit after midnight. Wednesday it was hard to do anything except sit zazen and have lunch. Thursday was much like Tuesday, without the gym and with seeing Caroline later. I have three major, unbreakable deadlines next week in addition to all the teaching stuff. While I haven't exactly pissed away the last two days I don't think I've exactly rocked them either. I understand that I need to rest. I'm not sorry I had some time to myself finally. And yet--

I miss D. Already. It's stupid how fast I got used to seeing him regularly--even when he went upstate, I'd seen him Thursday, but nothing this weekend, not even an email since Thursday. I know he's going through a lot--more than I can imagine--and yet...I miss him. I missed having someone here, just to break up the work. I think I have sort of a base level of productivity for a weekend, and it would be nice to see him. It's much easier to be self-sufficient during the week; I feel like the writing I'm doing would be more interesting if I had somehow been able to be in his presence. We talked on the phone a bit Thursday night. It was the first time I ever called first. I know he's just going through a lot. I wish we'd made firmer plans. I'm not obsess-y, yet, really, not like I was with J., but still...I get unsettled. I start to doubt. I start to overcompensate for the doubt. This time, I can see it happening. I've tried to sit with it. I've tried to walk with it. I've tried to write with it, to read Dogen with it, to cook with it, and to drink mediocre white wine that I will not be purchasing again with it. And still. Jittery. Spending so much energy calming down my own restlessness and gnawing loneliness that I can't do anything. Feeling the edge of missing The Poet. And it's not like we even had plans--it's just...I get used to good things fast. I know that in some sense I always wish I could start in the middle, skip this part. I said this with J., too: I'm fun on a first date and I'm a very good girlfriend. I am horrible at the part that comes in between. I'm trying to be careful with him. I am trying to sit with this, to do the nonattachment thing, to not invite all the usual worries to sit down to tea with me. My apartment's pretty damn clean. I made a good dinner tonight. I had some inspiration yesterday, but my classes for the week are not prepped, the MLA abstract due on Monday is not finished, the statement of interest for fellowships that I am not interested in but must apply for anyway by Wednesday has very few complete sentences in it, and the paper I am giving on Friday will be fine by then but is not fine now.

Perhaps needless to say, I will be going to school tomorrow to try to deal with all this somewhere other than my apartment.

And I guess I'm learning something about myself. At least I can see it all happening now, and not completely confuse some of my work/life balance issues with either being madly in love with someone or rejected by that same someone.

I hope this all works. And I kind of hope he calls me first tomorrow. I think we really complement each other and that I could be much shinier with him around. But I worry that I'm going to trip over his neuroses, or he mine. And that's a hard place to start from.

I do think I must like him, though. For what that's worth.

I clearly don't do guarded optimism

I've never had a correspondence quite like this one. The rest of Nerve bores me. I listened to his voicemail three times.

And next week at this time, I will either be ridiculously, foolishly happy (with the bittersweet task of once again telling The Poet we should see other people, not long after he was talking about how he'd totally come see me in Duluth if I got a job there)....or I will be banging my head against my desk, failing to focus on prep, and wondering why I once again let myself get textually invested in someone before meeting him in real life.

Mid-January funk

Yeah, so that New Year's resolution lasted about as long as Robert Browning's one about writing a poem a day in 1853, except for the part where he wrote "Childe Roland" on the third day. (I've been doing somewhat better at the weekly project I've undertaken at the place where I blog under my own name.) I think a lot of it was just the reality check I had last weekend when I realized that the start of the spring semester was a lot closer than I thought it was--and this is a really intense prep this time around. (New course, new material, not a topic I know much about.) I spent a lot of last week going back and forth between the library and the adjunct office at Not-NYU so I could use the photocopier, it's been ridiculously cold, and my shoulders are still in a lot of pain. I don't have the huge amounts of emotional angst that I had last January, but I don't feel grounded or productive or engaged--not like I did in the first week, but I wasn't really working efficiently then either. I've done really nothing dissertation-related since the latest draft of my fellowship application; I was going to do another draft today but just never really got around to it. My syllabus is due on Wednesday. It's closer than it was, but there's a lot that's still vague and unread, some holes that still need to be addressed. A bunch of offices have been moving at Not-NYU and I don't know what the tech situation will be this week.

Being on Nerve has been a bust so far, though at least I got to see an interesting play. Have been on two dates that went nowhere and that were clearly going nowhere from the first half hour, though for different reasons. The highlights of last week lay elsewhere. Mostly having to do with The Poet. I sent him an email when I got home last night that basically said, I wish I'd been able to know you at 40. I don't indulge in that feeling often, but I had been feeling this powerfully as my eyes glazed over while reading the profiles of all these dudes who are just that--dudes--not men. I know that some forms of masculinity get a bad rap, but I want to believe that being a douchebag is not the same thing as being a man.

J. seems to want to get back into my life, but I told him I wasn't going to have these text-message exchanges again.

I haven't been as good about going to the gym as I could be. I also seem to have very little lunch-appropriate food in my apartment, so I ate brussels sprouts at like 2:30 and now I'm starving and I still haven't read The Craft of Research and my shoulders and upper arms hurt, and I gave up on zazen today and it's hot in here and I'm going out in 45 minutes. So what I'm probably going to go do now is make a to-do list and marvel that this is the last night of the Bush presidency.

Where frustration and watching Private Practice online while drinking white wine leads:

I rewrote and then reactivated my Nerve profile. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Epigraphical poem of the day

(Presented in full and without much comment because--well--just because, I think. This is the best I can get in words from a day like today and I'm simply trying to read and work so I have one less reason to feel frustrated, thwarted, and alone by the end of the day.)

Robert Browning, "Now" (1889)
Out of your whole life give but a moment!
All of your life that has gone before,
All to come after it,--so you ignore,
So you make perfect the present,--condense,
In a rapture of rage, for perfection's endowment,
Thought and feeling and soul and sense--
Merged in a moment which gives me at last
You around me for once, you beneath me, above me--
Me--sure that despite of time future, time past,--
This tick of our life-time's one moment you love me!
How long such suspension may linger? Ah, Sweet--
The moment eternal--just that and no more--
When ecstasy's utmost we clutch at the core
While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut and lips meet!

--

I kind of just wish I could figure out what I'm doing wrong, why I can't work and focus, while I'm always tired no matter what I do, why certain reversals and changes of plans still bother me and wreak a kind of bodily sensation of being dragged down. I want to break out of all this for more than a couple hours at a time. I'm afraid of it catching up with me and then this entire charade is up.

Solstice

The comforting thing about the Winter Solstice is, of course, the reminder that the nights can only get so dark, that no matter what, at some measurable, identifiable point, it will start to get lighter again. And I am trying to take comfort in facts like these today, when it's gray outside and the rain is washing away all of the snow and everything is sort of damp and dampened. And I still feel like I am losing control of my life. Not in the huge, dramatic, at-least-it-makes-for-a-good story ways of 2007 and certain moments of 2008, but more like a kind of erosion whereby those piles of crap on the floor that were meant to be a temporary solution turn out to have a kind of permanence, where one day of not exactly forgetting to sit zazen turn into two days of not sitting, where opportunities slip through my fingers, where I spend too much money and don't have enough fun, where the meals seem constantly to come from restaurants and include fries (in spite of much money spent on healthy options at the farmers market), and so on and so forth. Work is not getting done. I should really grade the papers that came in on Thursday before I get the papers that will come in on Tuesday. I should read more Browning. I should try again to face my fellowship application. I should clean my apartment.

This is how it's been for weeks now. I'm getting by, of course, because I always do, and in many ways I'm better off (or look to be so) than I was last year at this time. 2008 did not destroy me the way 2007 did, and I did heal...and yet: I feel as if in some cases the healing took a weird turn. Like I'm back together but maybe not all the bones set right. Or that I reentered the world too quickly, without a long enough convalescence. (As if any of us ever have long enough for that.) Which is all to say that this time around, it's all almost frustratingly subtle and elusive, and nothing adds up to why I suddenly found myself crying on the train last night.

But then again. I have more friends, and stronger friendships, than I did last year. Occasionally, this makes me sad, too, even though I'm well aware of how pointless that kind of thinking is. (The kind of thinking where I remember how I had to go through all the really bad stuff more or less alone, except for people like K and the Professor coming into my life precisely when they damn well pleased or needed me for something.) I wish I could say that friendship could be enough, that it would keep the cosmic, gaping loneliness at bay, but of course it doesn't. Nevertheless, it's helped me salvage a few nights recently, and that's not all bad. And outwardly, I am so, so, so much better, I am impeccably successful and my not-NYU students now want to be Facebook friends with me, and I'm letting them as long as they aren't registered for my class next semester. (Incidentally, about 1/4 of my students and 3/4 of my best students are transferring out of not-NYU after one semester, for many of the same reasons why other not-NYU students put the institution in the news last week.)

The accidental trajectory of this post is a good example of the ways that reflection remains a treacherous proposition for me, an activity that I know I have to undertake, that eventually I will have to undertake without as many guardrails at some point soon. This fact is somewhat tangentially behind my desire to go to San Francisco this summer, but I don't know if it will be able to wait. Which is why I need to sit zazen like mad until the end of the year. If that can even work.

I have been at odds with other people--mostly strangers--to an unusually damaging degree lately. I've always hated tourists, but now I yell at them, or at least mutter things loudly as I walk past them as they block entrances and staircases. Being on the subway makes me want to gouge my own eyes out. West Village Coffeeshop is almost impossible, and I've been driven out of the library through sheer claustrophobia. You'd think this would be less of an issue since I live alone, but of course when I'm home I just futz around and wish I had someone to hang out with. But this sort of constant anger at strangers in the world is exhausting, and I don't like the kind of person it makes me. I'm sure I did this for years without thinking about it--I suppose Zen practice kind of takes the fun out of directing one's self-hatred outwards.

I can already see that things with The Poet--his situation and mine--are moving back to something like the situation we were in around June and July. I can't go back to that, so I know that there will have to be some letting go on my part soon. This time it bothers me less that I care about him and about seeing him--I'm more comfortable knowing that I do love him--and perhaps it helps too that for various reasons he's less marginal to the rest of my life than he was when we first got together, that I no longer have to defend him as a person, a fellow student, that I don't have to worry that my eyes are somehow clouded when it comes to him. Nevertheless. I expect that we're going to be breaking up again soon, who knows for how long or what the outcome will be, and that this time I don't exactly have someone like J. (oh, he of the laceratingly hot Facebook profile pictures) lined up to write me notes and make me swoon about more or less age appropriate dating again. I mean, the plan was always to do some online dating in January. But I worry about the emotional stress of "putting myself out there," as it were. Though, if 2007's foray into the whole thing was any indication, it's not like I had to do much work beyond the profile. And I'm not going to chase people.

I did, of course, find myself doing my Christmas shopping on Wednesday afternoon with a dude who probably is going to need his own pseudonym (and probably a whole host of changed personal details) at some point. I may have mentioned him in the last post, but for various reasons I can't give too many details because it could be even more quickly revealing than most things I post here. (Let's just say that he's really easy to Google and I don't really want to make that easier. Also I feel like I've been incredibly burned and somewhat manipulated by this kind of thing recently and by the idea that the development of a kind of information ethics is long overdue.) So, um, yeah. There's this dude. I met him a couple of months ago when I made a scheduling change on Wednesdays. We have good conversations and occasionally lunch, and this week lunch stretched into some leisurely holiday shopping that I had been planning to accomplish anyway. He's really nice. He plays a musical instrument and is quite good at it. I am actively trying to leave things at that, if only because I have a feeling that he is far too good / healthy / spiritual for me--and his only interactions with me have come at the point in my week when I am most at peace, kind of blissed out and relaxed and cleansed and all that. And because I did not make this particular schedule change in order to meet dudes. Nevertheless.

I've probably been writing this for too long; it certainly isn't solving any of my performative-constative writing conflicts. But perhaps the Solstice demands it. Let the darkness of the night reach its fullness, stretch out to what seems to be an interminable length, let it be what it has to be. After all, it's perhaps useful for me to remember how close I live to the abyss. The morning has slipped away, though perhaps not entirely unproductively, since I don't feel tired and I've written this post, and there is still a lot of day ahead of me. I want to go to the Brooklyn Museum at some point for a final round of shopping (I kind of want to get these candelabras both for myself and my mother). I need to get this place cleaned up before my party on Wednesday. I can sort through my papers from the semester and before. I will perhaps grade some papers, read some poetry, allow myself to think, reflect, perhaps write some more. But first--it's time to go sit on the cushion, as I haven't done since Thursday.

Where was I...?

Yeah, so it's been awhile. I don't know why I fell silent here...I've been doing slightly more consistent writing in my paper journal and elsewhere, but everything that I could have put here seems to have become deflected in some weird way. And I wouldn't know where to begin to describe the last month. There was St Louis, the news that my sister in law is pregnant already, the party my parents threw for her and my brother, the displacement of seeing a bunch of people for the first time in ten years, and the ultimate of feeling like an asshole because I was too drunk to enjoy most of my reunion. Also, the realization while sitting zazen in my childhood bedroom that I'd positioned myself in the same place, facing the same direction even, as I do when I'm sitting zazen at home. (To the right of the door, facing south.)

For some reason after I came back from St Louis I felt absolutely lethargic. I still sometimes feel that way--chalking it up to it being the end of the semester and just being run down from all these 8:00 classes and the fact that I'm now getting up in total darkness. (Might be time to invest in a sun lamp.) Somewhere along the way my prospectus got approved, but really I feel like I've been phoning things in, that I have these brief moments of clarity and energy that disappear before I can realize they're happening. I want to get back to a moment I had a couple weeks ago when I was sitting at the zendo and halfway through the second half hour everything just clicked into clarity and it was amazing. But then I had to go meet with a student and all of the sudden it was Saturday and I was exhausted and dissipated and having Thursday night existential crises where I was beginning to feel constrained by my friendships and all this encouragement to drink and stay out when I just wanted to go home on my own. And it's all more complicated than this, but that's the basic part.

Oh, and right before I went to St Louis I saw Synecdoche, New York and it just about broke my heart.

I don't really know what to say, what to tell you, what to tell myself. I feel like I've wasted another day, even though I did get a few things done. I want to do the whole Paterian gemlike flame and burn continually and just feel engaged with all this and be able to trust myself in the world. All these things are connected. The weather is doing this weird thing where it's 20 degrees one day and 55 the next. I wore these red Prada shoes with 4-inch heels to my department party--I bought them back when I was living with my ex years ago and only just pulled them out this weekend. I didn't go out with everyone after the party. I feel so old. I feel like I'm missing something. I wish I could shake this sense of dissatisfaction--but I'm beginning to realize that this may be zazen doing its work, showing me what needs to change in my life. I no longer feel like going out and partying with everyone every night. Or drinking a bottle of wine on my own. But there's so much to change. I don't even know where to start.

K. made a brief appearance back in my life a couple weeks ago, just in time for his birthday. We never did manage to get together. Maybe that's for the best. The Poet tells me he loves me, and I believe it, and it's okay, but I'm not sure we're destined to live in the same state ever. But I am grateful for his presence this year. The last person I ever dated on Nerve called me up last week on a slim pretext wanting to hang out. We had a nice phonecall, but that part was never the problem. I accepted a Facebook friending from some dude I've never met but who knows a friend of mine. I spent $9.99 at iTunes downloading the latest album by this other guy I've met recently and...augh.

When I first started blogging it was performative rather than constative. It's been constative for a long time. I miss performative. It's probably time to go to bed.

My favorite piece of gym equipment has always been the elliptical machine

Something unexpected (at least, to me) happened on Friday night. It's proved to be disruptive on a number of different levels, some of which are very vintage 2007, others of which threaten whatever semblance of balance I am occasionally able to attain in my life. It happened, as these things often do, with someone else, and in this case there are some complications related to that, too. (Though not the usual ones that I have--I know what you're thinking.) And for all these reasons--the sheer unexpectedness, the complications provided by the circumstances of how we met in the first place--I need this person to say, simply, "yes, that thing happened." That's all. But this confirmation has not yet occurred, and it's left me feeling epistemologically and phenomenologically abandoned at a time when things would be hard enough without it.

I wonder what it will take for me to feel safe in the world. I wonder what it can possibly mean to be gracious with these stories, to be gracious with myself.