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.
Showing posts with label incoherence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label incoherence. Show all posts
12.15.2008
3.11.2008
For not to think of what I needs must feel
(With apologies, of course, to Samuel Taylor Coleridge.)
So for the last couple of days, I've been house-and-cat-sitting for one of my committee members and her partner while they're at an international conference. They don't live all that far from me, but it's a much nicer/cooler part of Brooklyn than where I make my own home, a part that I've always loved without actually being able to afford living there. It's a nice place, without being over the top or pretentious--though they're clearly people with very good taste who take pictures of themselves looking photogenic in culturally important locations. They are also the kind of people who don't keep any processed food around, and when they do, they put it in glass jars in the cupboard. (That's actually a good lesson for me, since I've already been making halfhearted attempts at living less on things that come from freezer sections and snack aisles.) I know they are doing me a favor by giving me this chance--and my committee member was right, it is really nice to be liberated from my own belongings, books, and distractions, but it's also left me feeling more than a little displaced as I muddle through the rest of my life at the moment. It's not a bad thing, and I'm certainly grateful, but I suppose I was hoping for a little, I don't know...inspiration? I mean, I've gotten a lot of reading done (this week, it's Rousseau's Confessions, Genette's Narrative Discourse, and a lot of guilt feelings about Tennyson), and it's not like I haven't been writing at all--it's just that the writing has mostly been notes on George Eliot novels and responses to my students' paper drafts. (At some point I would like to do a post on the amount of writing that goes into teaching comp--it's not something that I've seen covered before, but it's been on my mind, as several of my students have mentioned in conferences that they were pleasantly surprised that I read what they write and respond to it.)
What I really need to do is write my conference paper. There were a couple of minutes yesterday where I felt like the intro was coming together, so at least that's good.
I don't know what to do, though, about my larger feeling that I'm just existing. I mean, I do actually have things to blog about. For one thing, I saw The Professor last week. Those of you who came over from the last blog may remember the rather large role The Professor played in my life from mid-2006 until about six months ago, when he bailed on me as a friend shortly before my abortion. (Yeah, since my Ex doesn't have access to this space, I can just come right out with that one--but most of you know that already, and it still feels better just to have that in play, period--someday I'll do the narrative of what was by far *not* the worst thing to happen to me in 2007.) Anyway, he shows up late to the Victorian Seminar my department runs last Wednesday, and he's sporting this awful beard. Like, "adding ten years and the suspicion that you're kinda sketchy" awful. And in that moment, I realized I was completely over him. It was awesome. We did end up talking at dinner--almost like old times--but as we left, I felt this unfamiliar sensation--the sensation of feeling....nothing. It was good, but also contributes to my general detachment and coldness.
Bonus fallout from last Wednesday: an outburst of jealousy from Our Mutual Friend. This has always been kind of rumbling in the background, but it took several days and a certain finesse of emails to get it out. All I can say is, would that The Professor had ever found me "disconcertingly beautiful." My life would be much less complicated now. As it is, I find myself the object of a crush from someone I am just not attracted to and I feel guilty about it.
Tonight I had dinner with my old friend A. She is clearly worried about me. It's funny, though. Both The Professor and my friend J seem to think that I am doing well, but A doesn't buy it. I don't feel like I have much in common with her anymore. It's not so much the student thing. It's more living in Brooklyn on no money and not getting invited out and they're all busy being engaged to age-appropriate people while I go out with a dude who's not that much younger than my dad and who I can't really talk about with anyone. And everyone seems to have that friend they're going to introduce me to....
Is it wrong of me to just admit that I can't completely make myself happy, and that even waking up to --- is better than nothing, even though I know better?
I think I will appreciate my home when I return to it.
I know I have stopped making sense. I should post this and go to sleep so I can regret this in the morning.
I miss inspiration, though. The last time I felt it, really, was the brief period with the first married guy, whom I'll call the Evanescent K, currently playing the role of the self-proclaimed douchebag who avoids me in the library.
Discussion question: Am I scary? Because there are, apparently, plenty of dudes who think I am? Complication: My students apparently think I am fun and happy and nice all the time. I shocked one of them as we walked to class last week when I said that I sometimes yell at tourists who are moving too slowly on the sidewalk.
Yes, I have been drinking. I went home briefly on my way here to drop off books, check mail, and get my own towels, and decided to bring a bit of bourbon over here. But I can't judge alcohol when it's in a vitamin water bottle, apparently.
I am actually kind of homesick for my own apartment. I think that's a good thing.
So for the last couple of days, I've been house-and-cat-sitting for one of my committee members and her partner while they're at an international conference. They don't live all that far from me, but it's a much nicer/cooler part of Brooklyn than where I make my own home, a part that I've always loved without actually being able to afford living there. It's a nice place, without being over the top or pretentious--though they're clearly people with very good taste who take pictures of themselves looking photogenic in culturally important locations. They are also the kind of people who don't keep any processed food around, and when they do, they put it in glass jars in the cupboard. (That's actually a good lesson for me, since I've already been making halfhearted attempts at living less on things that come from freezer sections and snack aisles.) I know they are doing me a favor by giving me this chance--and my committee member was right, it is really nice to be liberated from my own belongings, books, and distractions, but it's also left me feeling more than a little displaced as I muddle through the rest of my life at the moment. It's not a bad thing, and I'm certainly grateful, but I suppose I was hoping for a little, I don't know...inspiration? I mean, I've gotten a lot of reading done (this week, it's Rousseau's Confessions, Genette's Narrative Discourse, and a lot of guilt feelings about Tennyson), and it's not like I haven't been writing at all--it's just that the writing has mostly been notes on George Eliot novels and responses to my students' paper drafts. (At some point I would like to do a post on the amount of writing that goes into teaching comp--it's not something that I've seen covered before, but it's been on my mind, as several of my students have mentioned in conferences that they were pleasantly surprised that I read what they write and respond to it.)
What I really need to do is write my conference paper. There were a couple of minutes yesterday where I felt like the intro was coming together, so at least that's good.
I don't know what to do, though, about my larger feeling that I'm just existing. I mean, I do actually have things to blog about. For one thing, I saw The Professor last week. Those of you who came over from the last blog may remember the rather large role The Professor played in my life from mid-2006 until about six months ago, when he bailed on me as a friend shortly before my abortion. (Yeah, since my Ex doesn't have access to this space, I can just come right out with that one--but most of you know that already, and it still feels better just to have that in play, period--someday I'll do the narrative of what was by far *not* the worst thing to happen to me in 2007.) Anyway, he shows up late to the Victorian Seminar my department runs last Wednesday, and he's sporting this awful beard. Like, "adding ten years and the suspicion that you're kinda sketchy" awful. And in that moment, I realized I was completely over him. It was awesome. We did end up talking at dinner--almost like old times--but as we left, I felt this unfamiliar sensation--the sensation of feeling....nothing. It was good, but also contributes to my general detachment and coldness.
Bonus fallout from last Wednesday: an outburst of jealousy from Our Mutual Friend. This has always been kind of rumbling in the background, but it took several days and a certain finesse of emails to get it out. All I can say is, would that The Professor had ever found me "disconcertingly beautiful." My life would be much less complicated now. As it is, I find myself the object of a crush from someone I am just not attracted to and I feel guilty about it.
Tonight I had dinner with my old friend A. She is clearly worried about me. It's funny, though. Both The Professor and my friend J seem to think that I am doing well, but A doesn't buy it. I don't feel like I have much in common with her anymore. It's not so much the student thing. It's more living in Brooklyn on no money and not getting invited out and they're all busy being engaged to age-appropriate people while I go out with a dude who's not that much younger than my dad and who I can't really talk about with anyone. And everyone seems to have that friend they're going to introduce me to....
Is it wrong of me to just admit that I can't completely make myself happy, and that even waking up to --- is better than nothing, even though I know better?
I think I will appreciate my home when I return to it.
I know I have stopped making sense. I should post this and go to sleep so I can regret this in the morning.
I miss inspiration, though. The last time I felt it, really, was the brief period with the first married guy, whom I'll call the Evanescent K, currently playing the role of the self-proclaimed douchebag who avoids me in the library.
Discussion question: Am I scary? Because there are, apparently, plenty of dudes who think I am? Complication: My students apparently think I am fun and happy and nice all the time. I shocked one of them as we walked to class last week when I said that I sometimes yell at tourists who are moving too slowly on the sidewalk.
Yes, I have been drinking. I went home briefly on my way here to drop off books, check mail, and get my own towels, and decided to bring a bit of bourbon over here. But I can't judge alcohol when it's in a vitamin water bottle, apparently.
I am actually kind of homesick for my own apartment. I think that's a good thing.
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