The Old Curiosity Shop

11:29pm: Reality's Hairy Gut
So after I write my strategic plan for taking over the world, reality rears her ugly head, belches in my face and scratches her gut. I discover that face belching kinda sucks, the gut is prettier than mine, and reality is her same old self a little bit of the ugly, a little bit of the beautiful, lots of the mundane.

My week in clips:

( 1. Rejections should come with initiation rites. )

( 2. I google image deserts at work. )

( 3. Chinese women think I'm hot. )

( 4. Newspapers are for toolbags. )

( 5. My coworker is a higher life form. Possibly a robot. )

( 6. I was slacker in college and I'm paying for it. )

9:49pm: Work, Write, Run
School is a dangerous business for the neurotics of life. For the past ten years the sole purpose of my life was to complete a pile of assignments.

I derived a masochistic pleasure from completing each task. A finished assignment meant I was a good student, and therefore buried under the tangled knot of my neurosis, there was a good person. So I never looked up from my books to trace out the arc of the assignments, examine the path they put me on. If I did stop to pause over my reading, all I could see was tables filled with students hastily scribbling away, and if we all stopped scribbling to look up, what would we see? An expanse of ugly carpeting and cement walls light by florescent lights in a basement without windows, a basement where it was impossible to see Saturday fade into Sunday.

Looking up was a waste of time so I didn’t. I’m not sure many of us did.

And so sometimes it is a shock to wake up in my bed, walk to work and wonder how I got here, where I plan to go from here, and how I’m going to get there. For about three months I socialized like mad until I realized I was spinning in slow circles in the sand, socializing was alright, sometimes it was fun but all it lead me to were restaurants with the same food, the same conversations with the same coworkers.

Developed a three part mantra to cope with life: for the past few weeks I have thought of it constantly for the past few weeks I have been happy and sane.

(Except for when I don't meet my daily goals. Then I'm a basket case...as I have been all weekend.)

( Work, Write, Run )

1:32pm: fathers + children
She says, “What’s it like growing up with a genius?

You choke on your tea, and say, “Who?” but you already know. They’ve been saying it ever since you can remember.

“He’s incredible, you know.”

“There’s no one else on earth like him.”

And then they look at you. You’re five, and you know all the stories, that boy who grew up in India and could only breathe in numbers, that lanky teenager who won physics bets to keep himself in chapattis, that young man who scared his professors and impressed the Nobel Prizers, a man with a dream, the man with the dream.

Play with the dream in the sandbox, fall asleep holding its hand, and when he says it will be yours too one day--swell with pride. Paint your face in your mother’s makeup, wrap yourself in sheets and old sweaters, polish his shoes until they shine, slip them on and clunk around the house screaming: Here I come.

They tell you you’re just like him, and you know you are. Cultivate the same duck footed walk, the explosive temper, and wait. Wait for the seeds of genius he surely gave you to flower into strange and wild fruit that you will cup in your hands and show the world—see how they glisten, see how they glow.

Beg and badger your way into advanced math classes even when the teachers tell you you’re a borderline case, take physics, keep taking physics even though the equations spin around and around in an incomprehensible dance, because surely the numbers will call to genius that must be there beating inside of you, that must be there waiting to waken.

Keep waiting for it as you enter the marble halls of college. Give up the math, the physics, say you’re a natural born writer instead. Parade past the professors wait for the genius to call to one of them, any of them. Hate the girls who know they're talented, curse the boys who never doubted it, tell people you’re a work in progress, talk to you later, goodbye.

Grab a shovel, scrub at the ground, dig holes to China, dig holes to Japan, dig tunnels shaped like donuts in hopes of finding your own dream curled in the dirt, a fat white grub. There is nothing but dirt and skinny worms. Ditch the shovel, collapse on the ground.

Scream at the genius it’s time, it’s got to come out, this game has gone on long enough. Shake it by the shoulders and shout and shout but it’s deaf, it’s dead, it’s out for lunch be back later.

Stare at the sky. It is blue and endless.

He calls and he tells you he can see your future and it’s wonderful, you and the dream, god the things you’ll do with his dream. He needs someone like you who can use words and tell the world what a dream built from numbers means, needs someone who’ll get all the men and women of the world to stand to attention.

“And my God, you have what I need,” he says. “Now isn’t the time,” he says. “Five years. Maybe ten.”

And there it is, his dream shining over tunnels to China and tunnels to Japan, no donut tunnels, no grubs, just the clear prism of his mind blazing through the mud and the dirt of the world, dreaming, dreaming on and on.

Put down the phone and get on a treadmill. Run until your lungs heave. You can see your face in the mirror opposite, it is an indistinct blob, very red and blank from exertion, with hair plastered all over it. Keep running, but the view doesn’t change, the face is still red, still covered in hair, still exhausted, still blank.

Take off your glasses. Everything beyond the tip of your nose blurs, but still your legs keep churning, carrying you somewhere, going nowhere.

Find it’s easier to run this way.

Put the tea cup down.
Tell her you don’t know.








Rough night. Bad morning. Panicked so much when I wrote this that I almost started crying.

I walked into a liquor store once and they sold “Wandering Poet” sake in a small bottle for thirty three dollars.

If I drank a glass of it would I be doomed to wander the earth speaking only in verse?

EDIT: In an attempt to take myself more seriously, I am trying to submit everything I write. If you have any feedback on this/for me, I'd greatly appreciate it. What you have to say can only help me grow.
Thank you.

3:12pm: Miss Manners Gets on the Phone
I love my cellphone to the point where it might be a new born baby fresh from my womb oven smelling of cinnamon and apples. It beeps, I pick up. It weeps, I hush hush into the mouthpiece.

But here’s the rub: everyone else owns one too and they behave the exact. same. way. And you get a world where people answer while they piss in public restrooms, yammer away while hanging out, and probably text while they’re doing unmentionable and scandalous things that I can’t talk about because I’m rated G. Quasi G.

My cellphone addiction=cute, understandable, totally reasonable.

Your cellphone addiction= Me take it and pitch it over the balcony.

Final result, everyone should be required to pass a basic etiquette class before they’re allowed to own one, but Congress is involved in some teensy debate about health care and that shizzle and with the economy and well…

I think I’ll have to take things into my own hands.

I’ve come up with some basic cell phone etiquette rules. I have broken all of them except number six because I don’t know how to put people on hold. Actually, let me be more accurate. I’ve shattered all of these rules and made pretty pots out of the pieces. At the rate I’m going:
A) I will have no friends
B) I will have no one to call on my phone

Therefore this is my attempt to save myself from a life of doom. These are the rules. These are the rules I must not keep breaking, but I’m writing about them as a victim because it’s so much easier that way.

( 1. Do not pick up the phone if you can't take the call. )

( 2. Do not pick up the phone if you don't want to take the call. )

( 3. Be mindful of where you use your phone. )

( 4. When you're on the phone don't have side conversations with the outside world. )

( 5. When you're hanging out with the outside world, don't have side conversations with your phone. )

( 6. Don't put people on hold, call them back )

( 7. If someone tells you they have to go, let them go. )



Naturally these are subject to change depending on the scenario and it really boils down to some cute punch like: when in doubt don’t pick up.

Thoughts? Additions? Stories? Cookie? Cookies!

11:48pm: My Man Godfrey
I want out. There’s the kind of love they tell you never to have. It’s for, oh hell, let’s be original, let’s be fresh, let’s shake up the litany and say: a man named Godfrey.

Godfrey is sitting down at the computer and vomiting all over the page until there’s nothing left inside of you. Godfrey is this poem.

Read the poem all the time, read it between spreadsheets and homework assignments, send it to all your friends, read it until it echoes in your head, a great ringing bell and know—

You’re nothing without Godfrey.

But Godfrey appears once a month and it’s glorious and then he says, “Goodbye sweetheart,” and he’s out the door, to London, to Paris, to fucking Bali, who knows, who cares and it is goodbye.

Goodbye Godfrey.

Only it’s never goodbye, its Godfrey all morning, Godfrey all afternoon, Godfrey all night. Godfrey, as you walk to work. You chase Godfrey down white sidewalks lined with scarlet and mahogany trees that form a canopy overhead. Godfrey is in the golden mist of seven thirty a.m. when the city is just beginning to wake and the sun still believes anything can happen.

Godfrey peeks at you through spreadsheets you work on midmorning, whispers, “What are you doing darling? Come here, come home to me.”

You count the hours, count the minutes, arrive home, flip open your laptop and…there’s no Godfrey.

Godfrey doesn’t exist.

Godfrey is never coming back.

You tell yourself you’ve given up hope. Any reasonable person would get out. Any reasonable person would invest their time in something more lucrative, or at the very least, if it’s that bad, board a plane, sail off into the sky, and find Godfrey. Look for him in the cobbled streets of London, hunt for him in Paris’s bakeries, coax him away from the beaches of Bali.

Instead you wait. You bake jam muffins, take Hindi classes, talk to your coworkers and laugh at their jokes and ache a little inside. They think you’re mad: can’t talk about TV, can’t talk about sports, doesn’t understand pop culture references can only talk about Godfrey, Godfrey, Godfrey.

“Give up,” they say.

“Get a life,” they say.

And you find, indeed, you have lost the art of conversation. You don’t have anything to say except, Godfrey, Godfrey. Goddamn you, Godfrey.

You start going to the gym after work. You run on the treadmill because you hear that somehow, running on circles sets people free. You run like it’s going to turn you into a great white bird and you’ll circle around the poor pathetic gym and then bust out of the apartment soaring over the trees and you’re never coming back—

And your lungs give out, your head spins and you slow to a walk, slow to a stop. Get off the treadmill. Walk around the gym, dazed.

Crawl back to your apartment, cram a jam muffin in your mouth and curl up in bed with your computer, a half creature facebook stalking other people to live their lives and you open Word and write:

“I want out,”

and right there, there’s goddamn Godfrey, beaming at you.

Suddenly you can live with yourself. Suddenly you rather like yourself and the future unfurls her red carpet for you and Godfrey and that is all you need....

And Godfrey doesn't show up the next day and you scream, and you bang your head against the wall, stop because it hurts, and then keep banging it because you know even if you pack up your books, throw down the pen and scream at Godfrey to go away, and he goes and you become an investment banker who speaks in spreadsheets, you’ll still wake up every morning thinking Godfrey.

8:38pm: Namaste Adam Smith
I have become a working student.

( Hindi )

( Economics )

2:17pm: How to Get an A in College
When people told me the college paper is an entirely different beast than the high school paper, I laughed. I rocked papers in high school. They walked up to me, I fed them grass from the palm of my hand, shot them, presented the carcasses to my teachers and received accolades.

Then I got to college and was utterly utterly demolished in my first few writing courses. The college paper is a heftier creature, more wily, more complicated, existing on an entirely different plane of existence. I had to rethink my whole philosophy and rework my technique. While previously I’d just sauntered into the savannah and strangle the thing with my bare hands, in college I had to sharpen my hunting knife and hide in the bushes for a good week or so before I even caught a glimpse of the beast.

I learned to revise my butt off, do prep work weeks in advance and meditate about papers. However, even though my grades slowly climbed from horrifying to respectable, I still couldn’t get up to my former high school standards. I was doing solidly but not brilliantly.

“I feel like I’m missing something,” I told one of my TAs, after receiving yet another respectable grade for a slightly mangled beast. “I really want to know how to write a truly excellent paper, and I’m not there yet.”

“You realize you’re close, right?” the TA replied. “You shouldn’t even worry,” he said, damning me with another B+/A-.

Not helpful.

But, during my last year of college I finally figured out what makes a truly excellent paper in the eyes of the grader. Here are the papers that taught me what it was.

( How to capture the college paper beast that stalks about rainforests )

12:25am: Taking Over the World
The writer’s block is a frozen mass of um, something that’s solid and really hard to um break down. Yeah. Words. Diamond. Yes. I have a solid diamond writer’s block thing. Shouldn’t I be able to sell it on e-bay?

I have lost the art of conversation.

Thankfully my friends haven’t.

Me: I’m bored.
Azzy: I was bored, so now I'm plotting to take over the world.
It looks like it will take a while.
But if I can find 3 other people with about the same abilities as me who are down with the plan, we can complete phase 1 five years after graduating.
Me: Can I be one of those people?
Azzy: Do you feel like learning how to operate a data center?
And are you roughly guaranteed to have a way to generate 80k/yr in spending capital after graduation?
Those are the current requirements for things to move efficiently.
Me: …are you rejecting me?
Azzy: Kind of?
Quite frankly, you'd be very very useful at around stage 3 or 4
But stage 1 or 2, the endeavor has to be run very tightly, and is based on a bunch of tech you don't know.
Stage 3/4, we need people who can talk to the public, so there you'd be useful.
But stage 1 is just capital generation and research.
(Essentially we [CENSORED])
At around stage 3 things get very complicated, so, almost not even worth talking about it yet.
Me: But that’s where I’m involved. I want to know!
Azzy: Fine. Stage 3 is where we need to get the US gov't to grant us a very small legally independent country.
We basically want to do this based on developing some weapons for which testing them on US soil would be very bad, then do some lobbying saying essentially (but in better words): "We can give you bigger guns, but we need to have an extralegal zone to do it, because law prohibits us."If we ever get to stage 3, I promise I'll explain 4, but if any of this ever comes to pass, I'd rather not have stage 4 written down in chat logs forever, just in case.
Me: I have issues with that!
Azzy: Don't worry. Realistically, I have a good chance of getting 1 and 2 to happen, but not 3.


Censored= Azzy gave me the full details of his plans but asked me not to post these details on my blog.

I think this is the difference between genius and ordinary schmuck. Azzy gets bored and takes over the world. I get bored and I watch j-dramas.

9:31pm: I will not be defeated by writer's block.

1:02pm: German Correspondence Course
The most successful piece I ever submitted for fiction class was a mock facebook wall I wrote. Naturally some clever fiend just had to say, “Well, I don’t understand the point. Could you just turn in a real facebook wall instead of writing your own? What’s the difference?”

Honestly, the difference is that the real wall conversations are much better. My friends Erica and Alex are doing a German correspondence course via facebook, and every morning I stalk them diligently and spend about fifteen minutes laughing my ass off.

Um, I should probably ask their permission to post this, but that’s extremely awkward so I’m going to be a plagiarist and just post it. (I am going to burn in writer hell, oh my God, but that’s okay, this is so funny I’ll be redeemed for sharing it.)

( German Correspondence Course )

11:46pm: Last Night at College
Late Fragment, Raymond Carver

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.


All day the agony of leaving has been sharp, relentless, the agony of leaving behind a full life, three years of loving, hating, and laughing with my friends.

Thank you for sharing moments of life with me.

4:49pm: Reading List
Two papers down, two to go. Promised myself I could have some time off to write this, since I’m ahead of schedule.

Book chat:
( Absalom, Absalom, Faulkner )


( Tyler's translation of The Tale of Genji )


( How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays, Umberto Eco )


( The Sunny Side, A. A. Milne )


( Self-Help, Lorrie Moore )


( Poetry of Pablo Neruda )


( Girl Got Game, Shuziru Seino )


Confession:

I’m reading these books differently (minus Girl Got Game). I tend to chomp through fiction, but it is difficult to read any of these for more than an hour at the time. The language gets to my head, I must run around the room, I must fall off of a sky scraper, it’s too much. After a while, the rush wears off and I suddenly want to go for a walk or stare at the ceiling and think nice ordinary thoughts in nice ordinary language.

8:23pm: Thoughts at 8:28 p.m., the end of a grueling week

Somewhere in the world there’s a train pulling away from a station, and it’s a train I need to be on. Commuting two days a week to an internship in DC means I live by the clock. A split second is the difference between getting on the metro and catching my train, or having the doors squeeze shut on my fingers.

 

 ***

When I miss the train, I buy myself a pastry and walk around DC, admiring the Capitol. Next week I think I’ll miss it deliberately and go to Chinatown for Peking duck sandwiches.

 

 ***

Lemon danishes make me feel like I’m cramming a summer’s day into my mouth.

 
***

 

I’ve started thinking of interviews as conversations where I get half an hour to peer into someone else’s life.

 
***

 

If I could be born again, I’d ask God to give me a singing voice. When most people say they can’t sing, they mean they are shy. When I say I can’t sing, I mean my choir teacher pulled me out for mandatory after school sessions and tried to beat some sort of tune into it.

But some days, I think the only real way to express anything, is to stand in the middle of the road and belt out lyrics at the top of my lungs. Perhaps that’s why I have no voice.

 
***

 

During  the  morning train ride to DC  I watch  the sun come up over fields full of dead wheat and fall in love with America, the vastness of the land, the pink streaks of sky. When the train pulls into the station a wave of commuters, dressed in their uniform pea coats, scarves, and leather gloves, descends. Heads bent, they clutch their coffee cups and iPods, bumping elbows as they jostle past each other in order to catch the next train.
When I join them,  I am filled with an overwhelming hatred for my fellow human.

 ***

Music is dynamite. I wonder how people can stand to walk around all day plugged into their iPods. My favorite songs bring on a rush of adrenaline and all at once I am desperately in love, desperate for glory, desperate to sing, dance, jump off a bridge and go down in flames.

I don’t listen to music often.

 

 ***

Oh please, please, tell me the name of that train I need to be on. Tell me where it’s going and when I’ll get there.





Good night.
 

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12:35am: Dim Lamps

These days I believe in magic eight balls, my uncle’s palm reading nephew and that blind fortune teller in New York my mother swears by—any dim lamp that will shed light on the future. For the first time I have no idea what life will look like three months from now, six months from now. I don’t know what I’ll be doing, I don’t know where I’ll be, and lastly, I don’t know who’ll be in my life.

I am lying to myself, actually. I know. I can hear the whirring wheels of the present rushing headlong into the future. I know each turn takes me further away from the various people I used to be, and thus the people I used to know.

( Detours )

5:25pm: Welcome Home...
May a sea serpent named Cataluna rise up from the foamy depths of the Atlantic Ocean and stangle me to death should I ever again make an airplane meal of:
A) California rolls
B) a Mrs. Field's chocolate chip cookie
C) virgin bloody Mary mix


On a brighter note, I am now closely acquainted with the upstairs toilet. There's brand name is stamped onto the lid like a tattooed name. Who knew?!

On the darker side, my parents are about to kill me because I keep singing my new song of woe between bouts.

"I am vomitose going on comatose
I know that I'm naive.
Pasteries I meet tell me that they're sweet
And willingly I believe.

I am vomitose going on comatose
Innocent as a rose..."

Ta. The savage wild call of porcelain, resounds in my gut and I must flee.


Edit: Okay, it's no longer funny, someone plz kill me and put an end to this misery. Kthanxbye.

12:31am: This Girl's Life (Rough Draft)

Merry Christmas everyone!

(This is usually how I write English papers.)

Assignment: Come up with what I want to spend the next fifty years of my life doing and a plan to achieve that goal.

Due: May 2009

5:38pm: Jakarta Kitchen Maid
at five you wake me
tapping on the door.

i dress for work in the dark
and curse this life.

in the kitchen you give
me breakfast

and pack lunch
without a word.

after i leave you will
spend the day cleaning

my laundry, my room
my floor, my toilet.

i still don’t know your name.
do you bless this life?

at nine i stumble home
you take my coat and shoes

give me dinner and
don’t say hello.

once i saw you
smiling while chopping lettuce

you stopped when
you saw me.

at ten we silently
retreat for the night

you to your cramped
kitchen bunk.

me to my king
sized bed.

we were all sisters
in a previous life.

8:03pm: Take Off
Written a week ago…

When the plane to Singapore lifts off, a grimy layer of insecurity slides off of my shoulders. It falls somewhere in the Jakarta cityscape that is receding from sight, from memory. I’d rather be flying home than taking a week to see Singapore and Malaysia. Our travel plans are ridiculous due to ticketing issues. My mother flies into Kuala Lumpur and I have to an eight hour train from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur ahead of me. Still, I am happy, exuberantly happy.
It wasn’t that I was unhappy in Indonesia, it wasn’t that anyone was unkind but rather that everyone did their duty so very dutifully. Spare me from gratitude. It is carbon monoxide poisoning. You do not know you are dying until it is too late to save yourself. How can you complain about oh- lack of conversation, loneliness, clashing value systems, not being loved- when someone who owes you nothing is steadfastly doing their duty towards you? Instead you bend and you berate yourself for appalling ingratitude until the stone monuments in your mind begin to crumble to dust.
I did not realize any of this until the plane left the ground, the world fell away, and I felt lighter than I had in weeks.
I had thought I was incapable of talking to people, had known that college and friendship was a delusion, but at the Singapore train station I strike up a conversation with a Malay dentist. She tells me about planning outreach programs in village schools, giving it all up to immigrate to America with her children, hating America and its stressed out materialistic culture, and how much she loves the warm relaxed pace of Malaysia. She gives me her address and tells me to call her during any emergency.
Perhaps, I’m too happy. Later when it is dark and the train still hasn’t arrived at the station I walk down the corridor and ask the first person I see when we’ll arrive at the station. The person turns out to be an architecture student who follows me back to my seat and plumps himself down. After a few minutes he gives me his number and address and insists I call him if I want someone to show me Kuala Lumpur. I huddle into my seat. He shifts closer and asks me for my screen name. His phone rings. He picks it up and I hear him say “American”. Two years ago I would have taken his friendliness for granted. Then, I imagined I had been granted an immunity (is this innocence?). Two years of nothing in particular happening at college, lets call it life, and my immunity morphs into a fear of male strangers.
When the train arrives he escorts me to a taxi and sends his regards to my mother. Safely ensconced in the taxi I decide he is a very nice boy, but I feel lucky rather than immune.
The taxi driver wants to know who I am and where I’m from. We stumble through a conversation, navigating past my strong American twang and his lack of English and I explain I’m Indian and Chinese.
The taxi driver winks at me and flashes me a thumbs up: “Very cute combination.”
I give him my best smile. Compliments have been rare this summer, and this is delicious.
Perhaps I still have some immunity.
Kuala Lumpur is a brighter, cleaner version of Jakarta. The roads are lined with the same lush greenery and tropical flowers, but here traffic moves instead of remaining bumper to bumper for hours.
I learn I am not a unique product. 25% of Malaysia is Chinese, 10% is Indian. There are frequent inter-marriages, and yes there’s even that extra dash of Malaysia (which is almost Indonesian but not quite) that I thought made me unique.
I start angsting because I realize I can’t angst about being unique anymore.
At the shao lin style temple my mother gets terrible excited because she thinks there will be monks and kung fu. I remember that a long time ago, back when my father was always away on business trips, she was the center of my world, as she has been these few weeks.
There are no monks, and there is no kung fu, but she takes me through the steps of prayer. Put money in the donation box. Take the incense. Light it. Stand before each alter. Bow your head, repeat your prayer. Do not scream if the falling ash burns you.
She tells me to pray for the health and wealth of everyone I care about. Then, and only then, can I pray for myself.
We visit the Islamic Museum of Arts. The museum was only built ten years ago and the collection is green and crude, but housed in a building that is worth visiting for its own sake. It is white and spare, full of empty spaces occasionally relieved by an outburst of intricate inlay. In front of the elevators is a large room that has a sheet of glass on either end. One end overlooks a blue star shaped fountain, the other a wave of trees. In the middle of the room there is a carved dome. In the mid afternoon sunlight, the gold blazes and the room is a dazzling, fiery white. It is a reminder that God is perhaps not the material, but the absence of it- ironic for a museum.
In Singapore we shop. I believe money is meant to be hoarded in a great nest underneath your bed. My mother takes it a step further and believes spending it takes a few years off of your life. This applies in all cases except: A) delicious Asian food B) overwhelming cuteness.
Overwhelming cuteness means so cute it’s a squeegasm.
Then we buy, no questions asked.
(We have the taste of five year olds. Seriously. We keep ignoring boutiques in favor of shops filled with stuffed animals and hair clips.)
This policy worked quite well until we ended up in Takashimaya, a Japanese department store.
There was a particular display that involved pastel colors, fat smiling cats on plump purses, hats, Kleenex box covers, walling hangings etc. etc.
Squeeeeeeeeee!
We looked at the price tags. I pulled out a calculator to make sure I’d approximated the conversion correctly.
So cute. So expensive.
My mom glared at me.
I put the calculator back. 1.35 Sing dollars = 1 US dollar, so it’s cheaper anyway, right?
Squeeeeeeeeeeee!
Squeeeeeeeeeeee!
Squeeeeeeeeeeee!
The sales person, who knew an easy mark when she saw one, kept trotting out and piling more and more in front of us.
Squeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Squeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
What can I say? The cuteness lead to a sensory overload that fried our neurons and rendered my mother and I temporarily incapable of doing math.
At the very end I calculated the price in USD.
Complete and total wallet massacre.
I considered throwing the calculator out. That or going on Prozac.
So cute + So expensive = So damn broke.


Sent the following e-mail to my dad:

Hi Dad:
Mom and I squandered the family fortunes on cute things with cats today. Plz. admire them when we come home and do not ask for the bill. That would be untactful and rude.
How are you?
More importantly, how’s business?

Love,
Me + the cats

My mom and I just talked it over.
We’re going back tomorrow.
We talked it over and there’s one backpack with a little cat peeping out of the pocket we can’t do without.

…We’ll take the money out of the food budget.
…For the next six months.


Addendum:

For today and tomorrow night, I am on my own in Singapore thanks to the abominable knot that are our travel plans. I am terrified by how much I hate it. I am grateful most of today was taken up by escorting my mother to her flight, but tomorrow stretches before me, terrifyingly empty. I’ve never spent a night at a hotel by myself. I spent a few hours wandering around the mall just so I could drown my loneliness in the ceaseless waves of people.

1:42am: Temporary Security
Some days I worry about privacy. The interiority of my life—more than most of my friends, more than most of my relatives, perhaps more than I know about me— is online. There is a blithe blindness in writing publicly. I am not considering the friends of the friends who potentially have access to this, the person who found this on a computer’s browsing history I forgot to delete, or the people who will track me down years from now.

Yet, when I stop to censor myself, to narrow the broad range of topics, to eliminate this or that person from today’s rant because my words may get back to them, it feels as if fetters are locking themselves over my wrist. I don’t want to be prudent; I want to write as if this were a cheap diary with a lock that I hid in my underwear drawer. It is not satisfying otherwise.

Instead I tell myself that there are so many people online, so many things to do, and so little time. I don’t imagine anyone could be particularly interested in stalking me.

So wrote the girl who posted her address online, the suicidal boy who transferred sophomore year, or the high school freshman who described her fantasies about her crush in explicit detail. No one seemed to care in real life, and it seemed impossible that anyone would bother to read them online, so they described their lives in morbid detail.

I read their blogs, waded through pages of bad writing and spelling mistakes written by people I barely knew, because I found it fascinating to watch their masks crumble to pieces on their faces.

Columnists like Anna Quindlen have written articles mourning the disappearance of privacy for the internet generation. I’m not sure how I feel. In high school I shared my blog with school mates. Most of the people I knew well did not read it. Somehow though, I got to know a small circle of people whom I never would have imagined befriending: upperclassmen I was too shy to talk to, underclassmen I had no classes with, people I liked but somehow never saw. I’m still in touch with several of them now. I love hearing from them, I read their updates, and I think about them from time to time. I hope they are doing well.

Sharing blogs with my college friends has allowed us to describe the details of our lives, capture the intensity of our emotions in the moment, or just rant about or day, at our own convenience. The key to relationships is time: time to sit down and talk over lunch, time to check in with each other, and that doesn’t happen often. Being able to read what’s going on in each other’s lives prevents us from falling out of touch when we don’t see each other.

Yet, I am worried about the day I slip up- perhaps I already have- and an employer reads something bad and fires me, or a friend of a friend of a friend that I wrote about somehow gets this address and reads something cruel I wrote about them, years and years ago.

What I really worry about though, is vulnerability. In my last blog a couple people left vitriolic anonymous notes that stung for months afterwards. I worry what I post is too honest, too full of emotion, and I have just sauntered naked across the screen for everyone and their pet elephant. Then one day, when I am comfortably ensconced in my post as mayor of New York, all of this will come out and my career will crash. Or that you, right now, are judging me. Are you the boy who sits next to me in class? Do you laugh when I write about despair because I know nothing about despair?

We are taught not to cry in public when we are small. It is loud, it embarrasses our parents, and it disturbs other people. Rather, we must put our best foot forward, learn to shake hands with a firm grip, and perfect our smile for the camera because the moment we are born we are entered into a grand competition for resources in the world: food, shelter, and the means to obtain more of each.

We are told to practice impression management because it will help us during interviews. We learn to present our best self, gloss over our mistakes and failures, and focus on moments when we have outshone everyone else around us. The result is a toxic cycle where everyone constantly feels outshone and constantly tries to outshine everyone else. People around me still talk about their SAT scores.
“Ooh man, I studied so hard and it paid off. I got a 750 on math.”
“Really? I took it cold and got a perfect score on math.”
“Oh, well, you know I didn’t study that much. Besides, they gave me a scholarship. Pretty awesome.”
“Sadly, I’m not eligible for a scholarship. My family makes too much money.”

Similarly, it becomes natural to snap something sarcastic at someone who hurts our feelings instead of saying: “You hurt my feelings,” because feelings make us vulnerable.

No wonder blogs are so compelling. It’s a relief to know how vulnerable everyone is behind the impervious iron smiles that go up every day. It’s a relief to know that other people are just like you: more vulnerable, fragile and beautiful than you could possibly imagine.

It’s also a relief because now you have blackmail material on them.

I am going friends only this summer for my internship.* Please leave a note if you've been lurking, and you'd like me to friend you.


*Mostly because I have a bad bad feeling that during my last internship my boss could have/maybe/probably did read this.



"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."
-Benjamin Franklin

5:48pm: <3 From the Universe
A heavy depression has been settling on my shoulders during the past few days. I got a flat B on the paper I’d poured my soul and a revolution into. Furthermore my grant proposal to fund an internship in Baltimore was soundly rejected without the saving grace of an interview. Finally, the thought of summer vacation makes me feel queasy.
As of now I have two internship offers. One is a Baltimore internship that seems low on content and resume value, but means a quiet summer hanging out with my friends. The other is an internship in Indonesia that has high resume value, and is somewhere on the Richter scale in terms of emotional stability. My emo poetry stage in life can be attributed to Indonesia. Even so, I have written a grant for funding for it too because I am a slave to my resume. Anyway. Everything else I applied to is somewhere between those two. I’ve been dealing by burying my head in books and hoping it will work itself out by May.
Cue in much angst, depression, and a general feeling that I ought to spend my life wasting away by a window over looking a pond. Woe is me! I worked and got poor results. I asked the universe why it had no validation for me. An A. Big shiny trophies. Parades. Pickles on sticks. I’d settle for pickles on sticks. I like pickles. But no. The universe seemed to reply that I was an untalented caterpillar I will never rise to the heights of butterflies. No metamorphosis in store for me...

It would have been appropriate if a deus ex machina had entered my life and sang songs and strummed a harp about how great I was and how my papers kick major ass…
Sadly the universe did not consider such actions appropriate.

However, it did send me an e-mail.

Dear Student:
Congratulations! You have been pre-selected to be a student tutor. No interview or application needed. Pay is __Double My Current Salary_ and hours are flexible!

I danced madly in my chair. I’ve always had this sneaking desire to be a writing tutor, but you have to have an English professor recommend you, and the way my papers are going that’s not happening.
Then I read the note at the end of the e-mail:

Note: We have pre-selected you to tutor in statistics.


Hang on while I giggle hysterically.
Math has only been my least favorite subject since I was thirteen.
Whenever someone asks me for help with it, I start hyperventilating into a brown bag because I have absolutely no confidence in my skills. I make lots of mistakes.
This is what happens when I help my friends with math:

Me: Hem hem, er er, oh pardon, I told you to do the wrong thing. Hang on let me think about it…ah, can I get back to you? *nervously shreds brown paper bag*
Friend: Sure?
Me: *frantic phone call to my dad* HeyhowdoIdothis?kthxbye!
*turning to friend*
I have it!! It’s really not a huge issue…you do la la la wa wa wa awooga.
Friend: You do what now?
Me: Oh dear…I messed it up. I’m sorry, it’s been like two years since I did any math and I wasn’t very good at it and I know I suck but I don’t mean to suck. It’s not my fault…Hang on let me call my dad. *dials number*
Friend: It’s okay, I figured it out. Also, you look kind of ill, are you okay?

I’m sure I’d make an excellent tutor.
And by tutor, I mean target for angry math students to throw tomatoes at.

I shook my fist at the universe and informed it that this was not validation.

Shockingly, it obliged me once again, and I got my second e-mail of the day:

Dear Student:
Congratulations! You have been selected to receive the ________ internship grant award for your summer internship in Indonesia. It was very competitive and only one student was selected. If for any reason you choose not to accept it, please let us know as soon as possible so we can notify wait-listed students.

I ooohed and felt my chest swell with pride. Then I read it again and the full ramifications sunk in. Funding for Indonesia. Must make decision fast. Can not wait till May and hope for the best.

Cue in long bouts of trying to decide if the ability to put internship and grant award on my resume is worth going absolutely fucking crazy and potentially trying to set off a volcano to bury the entire nation Pompeii style. (I did mention that I have issues with the place, didn’t I?)

I had the good sense to stop asking the universe for validation, but it wasn’t quite done yet…

This morning, as I walked to Moral Philosophy class, I realized the decision is so difficult because the two internships are exactly equal to me. They go around and around in my head. Indonesia. Resume Gold Star. All expenses paid. Award. Extreme loneliness. Culture shock. Boring work. Baltimore. Resume filler. I pay the expenses. Low prestige. Friends. Second home. Boring work.
Whee. Massive indecision. Whee. Massive stress because I hate not know my plans and holding out on people. Whee. Brain nearly shuts down. Whee. Panic. Panic. More panic.

Clearly the thing to do was shelve the issue and concentrate on other things. I thought about moral philosophy instead. My professor is wonderful. He rehearses his lectures and then freaks out in the next class if he thinks he screwed up. I have so much love for him.

He proceeded to begin today with a critique of his last lecture.

Professor: You just want to apologize for Monday’s lecture. It was terrible. I didn’t make many clear points…I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I want to say that I’m under a lot of stress right now.
Me: It’s okay. We all have off days! Hug?
Professor: I’ve got to make a commitment about what to do with my summer, and both of the options are just as good as the other.
Me: Seriously man, could we talk about something else…?
Professor: I have to decide where I want to go surfing. Costa Rica…
Me: Surfing? You jackass.
Professor: or Indonesia.
Me: ...!?!! *gibber*
Professor: Now there’s a principle of philosophy that illustrates this very nicely. Buridan’s ass is this donkey that can’t decide between which two stacks of hay to eat…because they’re so perfect. Only in this case it’s Indonesia and something else.

He drew a donkey on the board. On the left side he drew a squiggle and labeled it Costa Rica. On the right side he drew a squiggle and labeled it Indonesia. We spent the rest of the class discussing decisions and Indonesia while I attempted to end myself with a pencil.

I shall leave you with his concluding words:

Professor: You know what the ass does in the end? He can’t decide, so he shits himself, goes crazy and starves to death.

3:22pm: Writing Center
I just had a mind blowing conference at the writing center. The writing center is a our local help center for analytic essays and it’s located in quaint little cottage just off of the campus greenhouse. I’ve seriously considered petitioning the president to let me move in there, writing center be damned.
I’m not terribly fond of the writing center. On principle I bring every single paper I write there for feedback. Typically they tell me I’ve done a fine job, the paper is in great shape and they don’t really know what to say to me. However, I have yet to get an A on a paper in an English/Philosophy/History class.
I’m comfortably on the line of B+/A- and it’s driving me nuts. In high school I never got anything below an A. I plugged a thesis into the five paragraph format, made sure I hit the reader over the head with my point three times, and I was fine. But that’s not working anymore. Why?
No idea.
Most of my friends in the same classes are in the same situation, and we’re completely puzzled. We talk to our professors. We see our TAs. We use the feedback they give us. We write multiple drafts and start two weeks in advance. We go to the writing center, but it isn’t very helpful.
Then, last fall my English TA passed out an example of an A paper someone had submitted. I read it. I was thrilled. Then I was heartbroken.
I understood very clearly why I wasn’t making As, even if I write four drafts of every paper and ask multiple people to read it. There’s no way anyone could give me an A when papers like that were being submitted.
It wasn’t a paper. It was an odyssey through the text. You, the reader, were Dante, the writer was a tender Virgil who held your hand and pointed out the sights and sounds of hell. (Every text is hell when you have to write a paper about it.) Virgil never said, “this is what I will teach you.” Virgil never dictated a thesis. Virgil just sat next to you and chatted lightly. And when you came out you realized, somehow Virgil had spun the world on its head for you. It was as if the thesis was woven into the atmosphere of the paper, so all you had to do was breathe and it would come to you.
Humbled, I modeled my next paper after it.
I got a B-, and the TA slammed me for neglecting to put in a thesis. I’ve stuck to five paragraphers ever since.
Today, I took my faithful five paragrapher into the writing center. The instructor for the course had already read my first draft and dubbed it “good.” (I’m wise now, I know that means above a B instead of A). I was expecting minor surface changes and an overall “good.”
Not so.
The tutor leaned back in his chair, stared at me and said: “You’re a fine writer, and you’re clearly a smart reader but you’re repeating your point way too much. A really good paper is a cascade of insights; each one adds another dimension to your thesis. The repetitive five paragraph style doesn’t work anymore. You’re in college.”
At that point I nearly threw myself down at his feet and begged him to be my guru.
Everyone has said that college means more sophisticated papers, but no one has ever really told me how to do it, because there’s an expectation that we know how to write papers already.
Yes. I do. Five paragraph ones. Pardon, you want something else? Other types of papers exist? What?!
Anyway, he gave me a crash course. I’m still not sure I know what I’m doing, and there’s probably a huge risk of getting another B- but I’m thrilled. I’m finally learning something.




Also, on an unrelated note I’m feeling somewhat disenchanted by professors. A common concern for entering students is being taught by grad students instead of professors.
However, I've found often times the grad students are better than the professors. I find them easier to relate to, they have more sympathy for students, they are more interesting in hearing what I have to say instead of writing my ideas off because I’m an undergrad. They also tend to work harder to engage the class and show much more interest in teaching us instead of inundating us with their view points.
Furthermore they're attitudes about life and learning are much more congruent with ours. All of my grad student teachers, even the terrible ones, think hearing from the students is important and encourage us to contradict them. A lot of my professors are much more concerned with molding my mind around theirs. I call the molding the god complex and I hate it.
Seriously, good grad students should be let loose in intro classes. It makes much more sense to have students learning from good, if slightly less experienced teachers in intro classes, then from bad teachers who are the top in the field. Top of the field teachers can be saved for the more advanced classes for students passionate about the field.

9:03pm: Why I Love Humanity
Here's an anecdote as related to me last weekend. Everything is true and no facts have been altered (besides verbatimness).

Part 1:

“So my best friend at college is a vegetarian. Not the kind of vegetarian where you give up meat because you hate it, but because he thinks eating meat isn’t sustainable by the environment.”
“That’s one cool guy."
“But he really misses meat. So he found a solution….”
“Yes?”
“Every month he goes out on to the highway and looks for dead deer. Then he brings them back to his dorm, stores them in his shower, and cooks a few pieces every day. We have deer eating parties every weekend.”
“…”
“The first time he did that, they had housing inspections two days later.”
“…”
“Oh, and he got really tired of dragging the 110lb deer all the way back to college. So next time he found a shopping cart. These days puts the deer in the shopping cart and pushes it back home. He calls it shopping for road kill.”
“So if his pet cat dies will he…?”
“Oh my god, are you kidding me? He loves that cat. He talks to it on the phone every week.”

I’ve been promised a package of deer meat in the mail. I can’t wait!

Part 2:

“Hey dad, guess what I just heard?”
[Insert retelling of above anecdote.]
“Oh my God. You’re kidding me. That’s so awesome. I mean not only does this boy have convictions, he’s willing to do something about them. That’s pretty rare. I mean, we never do anything about our convictions. We just sit on our lazy butts.”
“Yeah. I was charmed.”
“I want to meet this kid! He’s so resourceful. I want to try some of this deer.”
“I don’t know if that’ll happen.”
“Oh well, if I can’t meet him, I can at least follow his excellent example.
“Uh…dad? What do you have in mind? Dad?!?”


Turns out my mom has something against the idea of eating road kill. I don't know if I'm thankful or disappointed.

12:32am: There are monsters living under my bed
Among the joys of being a neurotic basket case is the nightly ritual of dealing with the monsters under my bed. For most people, the monsters melt away once they abandon faith in the holy triumvirate of the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. However, instead of chivalrously dying, mine have grown fat off of dust bunnies and continue to plague me during odd hours of the night when my parents have gone to sleep, and there is no one to chase them away. Also, at the grand old age at twenty, one feels vaguely like they ought to be able to take their monsters out for a midnight airing and then accidentally lock them outside the house.
Sadly, it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe it’s one of those grown up things that occurs when you can legally drown your sorrows in large amounts of alcohol. Maybe I should look into illegally drowning my sorrows in large amounts of alcohol.

Let me introduce you to the three who’ve crawled out from underneath my bed, to keep me company tonight.

First off, there’s Squishy. Squishy is a thin and dapper gentleman who makes a favorable first impression. He’s charming, he’s got a highly moral character, and he sounds so reasonable. The general feeling is that everyone from fish in Finding Nemo to politicians, especially politicians, could do with their own personal Squishy.
Squishy’s the man who sits on your bed smoking a cigar after you tell your mother it was your brother who really broke the vase and he gets grounded for a week while you get off free. Squishy doesn’t say much, he just sits on your bed, peering at you through the haze of cigar smoke. Nasty stuff that smoke, it'll waft up your nostrils keeping you awake all night long.
The worst part is when Squishy decides he’s rather fond of you. He’ll sling an arm over your shoulders and though the sun will rise and morning will come, he’ll continue smoking his cigar by your side, his arm getting heavier and heavier until you twitch and sag underneath his weight.
He’s a good gentleman to have around, within reason. However, he's a bit clingy. Sometimes he’ll use anything as an excuse to visit.
Squishy decided to pay a call when I opened an e-mail from the person who is coordinating my big fat gold star backup internship. Having read my transcript, the coordinator voiced some concerns. The company is very technical, the internship might not work well in conjunction with my studies, I may be disappointed by the duties I’m assigned.
Squishy’s sitting on the edge of the window sill smoking. He hasn’t said anything, and he isn’t going to, but I think he wants to know what I’m doing spending my college career taking classes that have no practical value. He wants to know why I even had the nerve to think I could intern somewhere technical when really I’m just wasting the intern coordinator’s time…and I really have no answer for him.

Lumpy’s a tubby adorable little fellow. He’s jolly, or rather he would be jolly if he ever managed to wipe the woeful expression off of his face, and trump up a genuine grade-A smile.
Supposedly, there are a few people who’ve never had the pleasure of being acquainted with Lumpy, but my suspicion is they’re just good liars. Lumpy’s the kid who sits on your bed when you’ve failed a test, or a series of tests. He’ll sit and sigh with you, drawing his knees up to his chest. Aye, it’s a sad you failed, but it doesn’t really matter since you never had the ability to do well to begin with.
Who doesn’t love have a sneaky love for Lumpy? He is as comforting as warm macaroni and cheese, and as helpful as empty calories without nutrients. Lumpy will tell you, you’re wee and helpless, and there isn’t much you can do about it, so you might as well accept it. Lumpy and I are excellent friends.
Right now he’s sucking on a peppermint and occasionally patting me on back, comfortingly. “Silly, what were you expecting? You really don’t have many skills. It’s only natural that you should get a reply like that.”

Finally, there’s Spiky. I’ve never been able to figure out what Spiky looks like because he’s always curled up into a tight ball, with his back facing me. He’s got floppy hair that obscures the shape of his head and juts out into sharp and tiny pinpricks. I’m not even sure Spiky has a gender, I’ve always thought of him as a hedgehog. Spiky’s the one who spends the whole night shaking in his corner.
Spiky is the spirit of the boy who checks his room six times to make sure he’s locked the door. Spiky is the girl who clutches the arms of her chair in a white knuckled death grip for the entire nine hour flight. Spiky is the parents who lie awake at because it’s 3:00 a.m. and little Johnny still hasn’t come home from that party.
Spiky is my favorite. It’s a rare night when he doesn’t come, between panicking about test scores, my future, having to interact with someone I’m not perfectly comfortable with, riding the bus to strange and unknown places…Oh there's always a reason for Spiky to come visiting.
Tonight, Spiky’s sulking in the corner. He doesn’t like the fact that we’re packing up and going back to Baltimore tomorrow. Spiky wants to stay here at home, where he’s spent over a decade rocking in his nook under the bed. Spiky doesn’t want to have to deal with people other than my parents, and thinks maybe if he hides in the closet tonight, tomorrow- with it’s promise of change, massive amounts of people, endless responsibility, and that horrible moment when you’ve stepped off the plane and realize there’s no going home for another six weeks- tomorrow will not come.


I'm working on being more of an adult. I'll let you know when I get there.

5:50pm: Recipes from a Gourmet
I am now at the stage in life where my peers, driven by slender wallets and the horror of institutional food, have begun to experiment in kitchens and trade recipes. It would be mildly horrifying if it wasn't quite so delicious.
For a long time I have refused to enter the kitchen as a chef, claiming that my sizzled water, underdone toast, and overdone eggs have exempted me from the culinary arts forever. However, it is difficult to resist the stages of development for long and I have been forced to succumb to cookery. I even have recipes.
Here are three of my favorites. I promise you, if I can make them, you can too. You think I jest. I do not.
The others are uh, still works in progress.

Bon Appétit.


( Yogburt, ‘Appycots and Weird Crunchy Stuff )

( Om Nom Nom Spaghetti )

( Pan de la vie Boheme )

12:39am: Living the Good Life
Best day ever.

( Morning is a long time coming. )

( Spend the afternoon, you can’t take it with you. )

( Every evening I turn my worries over to God. He’s going to be up all night anyway. )