My perverse fantasy

Involves living in a city that does not require me to own a car. I hate driving. The city I currentlly live in is for all intents and purposes a pretty walkable city. Except that it's not. There are huge patches of dead zone. There is no pedestrian culture. And I bike sometimes, but because it lacks a pedestrian culture, I also think it lacks an understanding of bike culture. (Also, I am getting lazy in my old age, and this city is surprisingly hilly...not SF hilly, but more like long continuous hills. At least in SF I could figure out a route with the fewest and shortest hills. And if I got really daunted, I would get off and walk.)

Anyway, this site is cool, though its measurement of what constitutes making a neighborhood walkable is a bit different than what I would use as a measurement device. But then, I am a social science nerd who is constantly trying to show why data are faulty. (For example, the site includes items like Starbucks as markers of things that are within walking distance. I do not consider Starbucks' proximity to my home an attribute.)

Still, for future moves it may be useful. Though the truth is, I'm not sure I need an online tool to help me figure out if my neighborhood is walkable. I don't plan on living in the suburbs anytime soon...hell, NEVER. (Yeah, I fear famous last words...)

A comfort-food kind of blog

I'm sure no one else will find this blog that relevant or comforting, but it's one of my favorite things to read from someone I do not know at all. I'm not a big fan of other people's blogs, and I don't quite get why anyone would read other people's personal blogs (yes, I realize this is deeply inconsistent with the fact that this mini-insignificant blog even exists). But I love Jill's blog. I think partly because her reflections on the world feel and sound so familiar. It's like she's me in a decade (or so). And even though she admits her limitations and foibles, she sure makes it sound like she has her shit together. So, I think she might be my hero. (Not to mention she's a philosophy professor, but in a cool way, which gives me hope. I could never hack it in the academia of philosophy...I ran away to the social sciences.) I realize this could be border-line weird and creepy, but maybe those who have been blogging more consistently and longer than me, are used to strangers' fascinations and obsessions.

In other news, a panel I submitted a paper for was accepted for the annual academic conference. Strange how it actually made me feel bad instead of elated. This is a problem I've been having with my successes, that I end up feeling incredibly ambivalent, when I should be proud and excited...right? Ambivalence seems to be my mainstay emotion these last six months. It's like I can't handle emotions, so I seesaw between them, rather than just choosing one. It's exhausting, and sort of stupid, too. I used to think I was a cynical optimist, but I'm starting to think I'm just a pessimistic pessimist.

arrrggghh

Really, when will it end? Stupid pharmaceutical ads that reduce women to inane stereotypes to get their "message" across. Seasonique's recent ad

Found this on the well-timed period, whose website I greatly appreciate. I don't always agree with her feelings about menstruation, but I am glad she's stirring up the debate a bit. She objects to the insistence of pharma and media that the placebo week of bleeding is still being called "menstruation" -- I object to the grab to keep hold of the contraceptive market by introducing "new" pharmaceuticals. I wonder if insurance companies agree to cover Lybrel (the no-withdrawal bleeding pill just approved) or Seasonique (4x a year bleeding). If so, then shouldn't they also cover more than 12 months of other oral contraceptives? (You can accomplish the same no-bleeding effect by taking any contraceptives without their placebo week, which a number of sources have pointed out.)

Malcolm Gladwell's article "John Rock's Error," from a number of years ago (2000), is an interesting explanation of how the Pill was developed and why certain attributes (28-day cycle) were standard for so long.

I have lots to say on this, but no time right now -- trying to finish the exams!

I really like this cartoon. It feels like the last year of my life. From (unsurprisingly, perhaps) The New Yorker.

Was it ever really love, and therefore is any love lost?

The end of another relationship. One of the more tulmutuous ones. I think I had a lot to do with its tumultousness. I wanted particular kinds of love, particular kinds of future-orientation, particular kinds of...well, security (a false idea I know, but hey, I wanted it anyway). And there were moments when he seemed to promise this great love potential. The oddest part was that he would declare how wonderful I am to his geographically-distant family, but when it came to the everyday friends, I felt effaced. I could never figure out how truly serious he was about me. And in ending (again, and again, and again), he claimed I had only needed to ask for certain things, or to have asked him to wait while I figured out what I wanted. But I think I did -- as much as I could knowing that there were certain things that were non-negotiable. It seems like it was a bit of a double bind. I was supposed to ask, but for what? What was ever up for asking? I wasn't in love with him, and I'm not sure I ever could have been, but it seems, at the same time, that things were foreclosed before they could ever begin. As though we lived in a state of indeterminacy and paralysis before even knowing if something else were possible.

But even worse, I have a tendency to want to be really done with someone once I (or we or he) end the relationship. I don't want to stay friends, because I find it too painful a reminder. And I find the intimate knowledges uncomfortable after the intimacy is gone. But I wonder if that's just strange and neurotic. Why do I feel so unnerved by the fact that someone once had a particular kind of knowledge and access to me? What difference does it make? And I am so hurt if he does not seem to pine or think of me -- I want to be irreplaceable but also distant. And I think that distance only really ends up hurting me in the end. I end up feeling isolated and awkward and lonely and unmoored. Yet, is it not me who has set up the terms to be this way?

Striving toward the present

Where have I been for the last few weeks? I seem to have somewhat regular bouts of...shall we call it melancholia? Where it really does seem my life is an abject failure. Objectively, even when in the midst of such melancholy, I know this is not true. But it seems my friendships all feel tenuous and not meaningful, and that I am directly responsible for their imminent demise. Such anxiety then, of course, seems to feed back into itself, creating more anxiety and more insecurities, and then it's more of a wait-it-out state than anything that I can do that is actually productive. I like tangible concrete problems (not that this has ever been my line of work in any real sense) -- but I like seeking the solutions, the methodical steps that can produce a satisfying resolution. Life seems to be non-compliant on this measure. And somehow, I have the strange fantasy that there will be a moment at which I will come out on top, where it will be a vast plain of manageable emotions, problems, circumstances. As if.

Why do I persist in preserving this mythology? It obviously does nothing but make me feel anxious about its never being attained. I suppose this is a bit like why I am skeptical of religions that promise some higher afterlife. I mean, you never can fully disprove that it could happen or could exist, but the idea of living in some suspended anticipation seems a bit futile. I have an old friend who is determined to be president some day. So much of his life is about planning to do the right thing that will secure his path to ascendancy. It's so odd to me, because it has started to seem to me (as we hobble toward our thirties), that this life is a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. Somewhere along my philosophy studies, I realized I am far less interested in the former. Life ought to be an end in and of itself. If there is some greater reward at the end (whether while still alive or after), I really feel that it's pretty irrelevant. Sure, this could slip into total hedonism and self-interest (which it has at moments), but it is a lot more present-minded.

The irony is, after all this proclamation of a particular life philosophy, I clearly don't live this way. So I guess that's sort of my goal. It's what yoga has been teaching me. It's part of what I talk about in therapy. And yet it's so damn difficult.

The next step...finally coming to pass

Grant #1 just came through. Unlike the subsequent grants I submitted, this one was done with no assistance from anyone. My sociopathic advisor was conveniently unavailable as I was trying to pull this together. I don't think she even read it. But of course, now that I've gotten the money, it looks good for her -- not that she needs the recognition. As numerous people from whom I have sought counsel when the sociopath was too much to bear have pointed out, the sociopath is a STAR. So, given that I don't have a lot of alternatives, I stick with it, even though working with her feels like a bipolar nightmare of ups and downs and regular emotional thrashings. She tends to operate on the passive aggressive neglectful approach, until moments like now, when suddenly my ideas are legitimated by external funding sources. Wait...where was I? RIGHT...my accomplishments.

The great thing is that now I can leave this mid-sized east coast city a lot sooner than I had thought. It's scary. It means I really am going to do this research thing. It also means that after living here longer than anywhere else since childhood, I am going to leave. It's both liberating and terribly frightening. It's like a return to the real world. I feel like I've been on hiatus for the last half decade, even though I've tried not to think of it that way. Real life is happening all the time.

Home again

I returned home yesterday. Big city. Bustle. We biked across the Manhattan Bridge to Brooklyn to see an amazing dance performance for DanceAfrica's 30th anniversary. I once took a class taught by Chuck Davis. I miss dancing, particularly African dance. My father agreed to go with me, but it was clear that this is really not his thing. And I was trying to figure out how my romanticized notion of my upbringing could possibly connect to his seemingly increasing traditional and benighted ways. I know, it's normal to have the moments of disillusionment about one's parents, but it's strange that this is happening in my late-20s. For a variety of reasons, my father has remained pretty unassailable in my mind. The last few years, though, we have actually had a lot more tension than ever before. I suspect that as a teenager I knew I had no alternative, and so I didn't object to his comments, didn't push back against him.

The first time I remember really challenging him was when he had hired an Israeli handyman to repair something in the house. I came back from college, and my dad was out. The Israeli started talking to me, and he started asking me about my sexual experience. It was so jarring and so inappropriate (I'd known the guy for about 5 minutes, and he was in my house, where I was totally alone) that it really freaked me out. When I complained to my dad, he seemed pretty indifferent and pointed out that the Israeli did good work. My father raised me to be a feminist, socially conscious, and my father is gay...I thought that would increase his understanding to what it might be like to be a young woman alone with a strange man who is asking her about her sexual experiences. Apparently not. Ten years later, my father still hires this person to do (shoddy in my opinion) work on the house.

4 months, 3 months...time ticks away

I am counting the days, the weeks, the months until I take my qualifying exams (to become A.B.D.). I am in a bit of a panic over the last exam that I am working on right now. But...my goal is to get everything done in time to go to this....I've been trying to go for nearly a decade, and things, people, life keeps thwarting me. But this year...I have the ticket (though last time I tried to go, I did in fact have a ticket, so that is no guarantee, I guess), I've been collecting things for the event, and I'm plotting some costumes. I love costumes.

the other thing that this is for

Is to keep track of all these strange emotion things since I broke up with someone I loved very much. While I realized when we were dating that I loved him, the last 10 months without him have actually been about realizing quite how much I cared for him. It's very unnerving, and yet it keeps hitting me at strange moments. This deep pang of longing. The amazing sense of attachment I felt the first time I realized I loved him. And the very many things he taught me.

More than anything, right now, I miss the fun. Life with him felt perpetually absurd. He revealed the absurdity in this world better than anyone else I'd ever met. Sitting in my room talking or going out into the world, it was all a huge playground, a huge surreal experience, whether sober or occasionally not -- I laughed an awful lot.

There have been two men in my ilfe who made life fun, who reminded me on a regular basis to loosen up, let go of expectations and failed attempts to 'fit in'. Perhaps this is the secret, that I have never ever fit in, not just in some sort of angsty teenage way, but in point of fact. I am one of those people who has been raised in a series of very non-traditional situations, and I feel like I'm constantly trying to reconcile this with the world around me.

In high school I read women's/girls' magazines compulsively for a couple of years trying to figure out how I was supposed to be. Early form of social observations, I guess, but I knew that most things about my life did not match most people's experiences and upbringings. But somehow I was supposed to participate and fit in. I never do. I always get in trouble somewhere along the line -- I can't handle authority, for example, and yet I'm part of the elite who succeed partially because we're good at following rules (for example) -- like the rules of school, of studying, of committing to an upstanding path. But I hate it, and my compliance freaks me out. I think I've spent a lot of time trying to sabotaging my weird success at participating properly.

So this is where these two men, eight years apart, yet both really significant come in. The first one turned out to be a real fuck-up, and I worry about him a lot, since the few times I hear from him, it always sounds like he's in some bad situations. The more recent one -- I can't be in touch with him right now, as much as I hate to refuse his offer of friendship, it is just too difficult. He got in contact with me a few months ago, seeking a reinstatement of our friendship -- and while his email was as close to perfect as a heartbroken person might want, I realized after agreeing to meet with him, that his request to meet was in fact awfully selfish. The email could have stood alone, and it would have really been enough. Asking to see me was really for his benefit alone.

Still, after that one time seeing him again, I realized all the reasons we can never be together (not that this is a real option, but just a reminder to myself). But I also have been missing more and more all the things that were really good and really unusual about our relationship. And that makes me sad.

Fondness for black humor

I'm quite in love with this New Yorker "Shouts and Murmurs" from last week. And then, the first part of this one kills me every time I read it...the dialogue from the dinner party is perfect.

Entry 1, a return to form

This is a strange project to start up again. In the mid-90s I learned basic html and had a webpage on my college server. I was constantly torn between desire for notoriety and the desire for anonymous outlet. Of course, having the page hosted at my college, under my actual name, did not really help for the anonymity -- so perhaps it was the conceit of pretend anonymity that I desired.

I am feeling restless and anxious today. I'm preparing for my departmental exams, which will lead to the ABD status, and the chance to go off to the field to conduct dissertation research. I am currently aiming to finish my PhD within 2.5 years. It is perhaps total fantasy, but the prospect of really being done with school, after 5 consecutive years of graduate school (thus far) is so delicious -- and frightening. Once I take the exams, I'll get to leave mid-sized American city on the east coast that I'm quite sick of. Having grown up in one of the largest American cities on the east coast, living here has been really bloody difficult.

I've been getting quite serious about yoga recently, and I am hoping to use this medium as a chance to reflect on some of my experiences with that. Anonymously, of course. I just took an extended workshop that met once a week -- and for the month and a half of commitment, it proved relatively challenging. What I find even more challenging is sustaining the revelations and insights that I gained during the workshop back out in the world. Yesterday I was charged and energized by the experience. Today I am mopey and tired and achey (we did some unusual exercises in our path toward enlightenment that seemed to have pulled more muscles than I knew I had). I didn't make it to yoga class today, I didn't take the run I thought I would substitute it with, and....sloth sloth sloth. It almost seems like I could write this whole entry on "things I did not do" -- which seems awfully negative and pessimistic. I've been trying to learn not to beat myself up so damn much about things I don't accomplish. It's such a waste of energy, and tomorrow really is another day, so dear god, please shut the fuck up.

The major revelation yesterday, cheesy and trite as it sounds, was to really focus myself on the present moment. I am far too caught up in past slights, deep anxieties about things that have already happened, and vague attachment to some better future not yet now moment (which of course never really comes to pass, as it is always a hypothetical fantasy that never reflects the way things usually progress). In addition, I realized that I live the way I do, in this state of purgatory, because I have chosen it. It feels so easy to get restless (cf. today) as though there were something else I should be doing at any given moment. Something better something different something new something something something.

I tried to remind myself yesterday that what I am doing, when I stop and think about it, is really fucking cool. I love the research project I'm working on -- which took a few years to fully develop (and which I can't disclose here as it would totally give me away and that (not so repressed) vanity of wanting to be the first or at least avant-garde-ish prevents me from talking about it). I'm in the drudge work phase, but it's what needs to be done in order to get into the field and how cool is it that my chosen field includes fieldwork, where I get to travel, see new places, interact with people different from my familiar confines of mid-sized American east coast city (m-s.a.e.c). The whingeing and moaning must stop.

Still, it's been a very intense few years. I don't think I would have ever expected my late twenties to feel so roller-coastery. I really think I'm going through a bit of a protracted adolescent crisis. Yet, the superego that has a tendency to rule my life still feels like it's got a firm grip, which can be exhausting and irritating at the same time.

All this is to say, somewhere in the midst of the above babbling (I have a tendency to be on the loquacious side) is the reason for starting this blog/diary/internal monologue again, ten years after the first time I did this. I have deleted my friendster profiles (twice), refused to join myspace, tribe.net, orkut...etc., and hesitated to join the insane barrage of blogs. But to be perfectly frank, this is here for ME....welcome to the late Aughts, total solipsism, total self-indulgence, total gratification. At least in cyberspace.