because jamilah leant me to this book, see, called "Friday Night Knitting Club." the writing is pretty mediocre--what i'd write, if i was still trying to write fiction--but it's all new york, all women, all knitting all the time and i just couldn't not anymore. too, i finally asked myself what would make this a vacation and not an endurance test and i said well, knitting and reading and i realized i was doing neither. so i bought a paulo coelho i haven't read, bought some historical fiction, bought a guide to surviving the zombie attacks in french. a girl cannot be too prepared.

the nightmares were familiar this time: i know these stories by now. first, a mock war that got bloody, and i made friends with someone who looked like peter petrelli. then the aliens invaded, and i was in charge of the rebellion. they let us go, you see, both peter petrelli and i, but we had to stay to fight. by the time i got around to sleeping with him, i saw it coming. looks like the newest addition to the stress-dream canon is infidelity, but it's hard to feel guilty when it happens over and over and you know it's just a dream. then, a rocketship ride over a bedraggled planet and i knew where we were, again, and andrew (the roommate) was there, too. by the time i woke we were still in chains. but the thing is, i know that story--must save planet/friends/country from invading whomever/cult/aliens--and i can overcome that particular anxiety. leave it on the pillow and move on.

so now i've got about ten inches of blue and gray striped sweater back, and more books than i can read at once, and i'm happy as the proverbial swine in its own excrement. i'd toyed with going to cernac today, to see the monoliths they still call menhirs (men, in breton, means 'stone', and hir means 'big'), but i asked myself what i wanted again, and everything's coming up knitting. well, and i want to do yoga today, which i won't do if i travel. and two votes is enough for me.

i'll be in brooklyn in a week and a half. in two weeks i'll see my sister, which could only mean that in three weeks i'll be home with the boyfriend and the kitten and august yawning open before me. robin is visiting; there are apartments to find, and a decision to make at some point about that apartments' occupants. not today, though. today i'm probably going to finish rewatching heroes and i'm going to see what i can't do to make me a sweater back.

that i stayed up all night and woke up exhausted.


the dreams have been getting me lately. the other night i turned my cat into an ant and killed her on accident and woke up crying. then i was at a conference in austin, but i had to look my best and also make it to class on time. last night i dreamed i saw robin and her dad riding bikes on the highway while thomas and i tried to figure out how to tell our SOs we'd cheated. i woke up horrified. then someone tried to steal my bike and i saw him and i yelled fuck you, that's my bike. and he said something and i said fuck you, that's my bike. fuck you, that's my bike. FUCK YOU THAT'S MY BIKE until he relented. after which point, naturally, he made me feel really bad because he was homeless, sad, something else, i'm sure. stress dreams are my least favorite. but what do i have to be stressed about here?

i'm lonely as hell, so that's part of it. i go on walks, hikes, and am happy when i'm on them, but come back and feel empty and sad all over again. this house is too big, vacuous, empty, echo-y. and i haven't talked to my mother in weeks. maybe not something that'd make you all sad, but it makes me sad. i miss my boyfriend a lot; i miss my cat more. i keep turning my head and thinking i see her out of the corner of my eye.

i think about annie, the sister who's been in ukraine for the peace corps for two years, and how hard and lonely that must have been. at least i mostly speak french. granted, they speak so damn fast here i can barely understand them, but still. and that, too, is a goal i feel like i'm failing at: i haven't read anything in french, haven't even watched french TV to improve my skills. i've been here literally a week.

i remember something paul said to me when i first graduated undergrad and was trying desperately to deal with all the free time. he said one of the things i learned when i retired was to make a to-do list, and only put one or two items on it. you can't do everything in one day or you'll have nothing left to do for the rest of the week. granted, paul never actually retired, and he's still trying to balance free time and obligation, patience and impatience, just like the rest of us. i said once, at lunch at bluephies when i couldn't have been more than 20,  that i had such a hard time being patient and he said me too and i said, half joking, you mean it doesn't get better with age? (paul is 84 or so.) he laughed at me. oh hilary. you don't figure things out as you get older. you just learn to keep your mouth shut and manage.

i feel pretty shitty, complaining about being lonely when i've got all of france--in addition to the gifts of my parents' house, their car, their money--at my disposal, but lonely is what i am, and lonely, right now, is how i feel.

it gets me every time.

For Monday, June 15 -The universe is challenging you right now to be more tolerant. This may feel like your patience is being tried by forces -- or people -- beyond your control, and this can be mighty annoying. Do something active to get some energy out, do your best to go with the flow -- and smile while doing it. The first step might be to cut yourself some slack, thus making it easier for you to do the same for others.


i've already almost been hit by an old man who thought a one way was, well, a two way street, and been thwarted by the garage door, the ATM, and the cafe i was trying to visit. being alone after being with is so hard--i'm responsible for my emotions, i don't have this reliable, consistent buffer to tell me to let things go or that it will be alright. too, i find being schedule-less stressful. and thus the thwarting.

i have picked up a new favorite habit, though: hot chocolate for breakfast. it makes just as much sense as tea, and has more calories, which means it's both drink AND breakfast. now i'm going to go watch game 5, which i taped last night when i was too sleepy to keep watching.

okay. deep breaths and small smiles. i can do that.

i went to post a comment--i couldn't even begin to enumerate the details of the absence of rigor in this self-congratulatory opinion piece--and someone from bemidji, MN, did it better than i ever could have:

"Count none happy but the dead, advise the great ancient tragedians: till a life is over, any attempt to rate its happiness is premature and silly. Be that as it may, to measure happiness of the living through self-reporting is a fool's game, and any argument based on its results is about as worthy of attention as one based on seance surveys of the deceased.

— Rhetor, Bemidji MN"


the original article is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/opinion/26douthat.html?em and it encompasses almost everything i hate about modern political discourse. and i love me some new york times, too.

other than that, things are swell. the guest lecture went swimmingly; things with the boyfriend are lovely; i've usually got good songs in my head. saturday i take my preliminary examinations--like a timed, take-home quiz of everything we've read this year, and guess who can't find half her articles?--and monday i get paid. i've paid off my credit card debt and opened a savings account, and i'll be putting another 400 in it. it feels better than i thought, and i thought it would feel good.

my boyfriend is listening to "Another Day in Paradise" by Phil Collins in the shower and it's the best.


fucking new york times op ed, man.
 

my face really likes the "kiss my face" product line. remember that time haleybug learned the lesson about her face disliking chemicals just like her brain does? yep. it's nice. and now i've got a lovely lavender soap that's for both hands and faces, and i love it.

my boyfriend will sleep as much of the day away as life will let him. this is a fantastic thing for us to have learned, since not everyone in this relationship has equal amounts of work to do.

i've got a lot to do. i've got more to get done in the next 20 days--literally three weeks from today--than i can keep straight in my head or in my dayplanner, and lemme tell you, i can keep a lot in those things. i've got a tentative plan, a series of intentions to balance out my hyperproductive and hyperachievement tendencies, which ultimately do more damage on my health than my casual relationship with cigarette smoking ever could. my mission, as i have chosen to accept it, is get the right amount of sleeping, eating, and resting done while also doing everything in the world ever. seriously. i have so much to do.

i'm going to france in three weeks.

yep.

and, thinking i had an hour and a half until tom comes home, smoked a little, turned up some tunes, and started getting shit done. when he walked in the door fifteen minutes later, i was delighted--he trumps hanging out alone, almost every time--but he was surprised to me (we can't keep each other's schedules straight to save our lives) and, i think, disappointed that i'd smoked without him. he was terse and distant, and i almost let it ruin my mood but i caught myself. i went into the kitchen, i listened to NPR while i made dinner; i had the hour i thought i'd be having. fifteen minutes later, he came into the kitchen and kissed my neck and started talking about his day (which had been frustrating, as mondays often are for him) and then it was over and we were us. if you ask me, that's a lovely lesson to learn. my mood is mine. i am responsible for it and responsible to it. what i really love is that most of my day prepared me for this lesson, as i had multiple small lessons in patience, and its pleasures, before i got home. it's just nice to know, is all. my moods are mine. how liberating.

i hope all is well in your worlds. i feel out of touch with almost everyone i know; the combination of california, first boyfriend, and this being the first stages of my future academic life have not left me much time for facebook and emails. it makes me sad because i didn't want to break with new york, wanted to maintain my relationships this time. i am unconditionally and electrically excited about my return in July, though. Haley, consider yourself marked, in addition to the three or four other folks i missed last time around. i think i'd forgotten how much showing up for events and leaving in a blaze of glory can be.

scuse me. i have cuddling to do with boyfriends and kittens while we eat pizza and watch basketball games.

happens when she asks a question and directs it at "baby," and someone else in the family responds. she says, "no, my other baby!" and just laughs and laughs. i don't think it's that it's a funny thing, per se; i think it makes my mother so delighted, as she basks in the lavishness of having multiple person to respond to baby, in the love of her family, that she cannot help but laugh out loud. if i don't get to hear this joke during a visit home, it feels a little hollow.

anyway, i just asked the cat what she thought about opening up the shades, and tom said "sure, baby," and i said "no, my other baby."

man oh man.

by and large, as happy as i've ever been. but not in a oh-god-what-if-it-changes way, because it's definitely going to change. more in a huh-this-sure-is-nice way.

today was my birthday. there were no parties, no drinks; no one gathered, and i only absorbed a whole lot of love, instead of more massive amounts of the stuff than could ever fit in a room (although we always do just fine). i don't know if i'd say it was my best birthday ever (surprise parties, personal catering and such), but it fit more beautifully into my life than any birthday ever has before.

thanks, world. i'm glad i was born 26 years ago today.

i am taking french classes for the first time in five years and they're my favorite. i finally understand pronouns, say hallelujah. i have homework, though. i should get to that.

i came very close to leaving my boyfriend last night. i'm still not ruling it out, and things will be changing. i am still working through how they will change. i still love the crap out of him, but we'll see. there will be bridges to cross in the future, and when we come to those bridges, at least one of us will cross. and hey, if i had a magnificent six months of falling in love and lots of good sex and good basketball games, and learned as much as i've learned, that's well worth the heartache that may be on the horizon.

what i'm grappling with more than anything else it is up to me. it's my decision to make. running has always been so much easier than staying, and i know that. i'm doing yoga, and trying to find space and calm. we'll see.

I'd like to hereby acknowledge that I am fully aware of the following fact: I will, after a few decades of philosophical, juridical and ontological investigation, return to music. When I do, I will be following in the footsteps of Kant, Nietzsche, Adorno, and countless others of these people whose thoughts I keep thinking and rethinking. I secretly believe I will be mostly like Nietzsche; he's the one who spent decades figuring out how it all worked and then declared it all a fucking joke and retired to spend time with his music and his art. Let's hope I can avoid the whole going-nuts-and-having-a-Nazi-sister-glorify-my-work-posthumously-for-the-Third-Reich thing.

one--wherein the process of re-learning to write, for me, entails a learning, for the first time, of precision, of holding myself accountable to the rigors of a delicate, complex, and imprecise concept we know as language;

two--in which this parenthetical aside contains so much of the delight and grace and hostility of this work:

In his later work, [Nietzsche] often claims that "the subject" is a grammatical form that we consistently mistake for a metaphysical entity.



I mean. Right?

of relationships is alone time. i love the shit out of it, especially my new tuesday night habit: we part ways post-class (mental note: today that was easier because i biked) and i go home to get some shit done, talk to myself, scratch my balls and otherwise not brush my teeth before i go to sleep. i listen to tom waits' "better off without a wife", watch tv he can't stand, eat popcorn for dinner. (don't worry, haley, i had pasta with "meat"balls for a late lunch and i'm going to eat an orange here in a minute.) i sing along with miles davis. it's great. it's the best thing ever. i love my bed, love sleeping with my fan on, love everyting about being alone, in my room, with my stuff. i spend all day wednesday without him, mornings reading alone and afternoons in class with my friends. by five pm, when he's finished with section and walks through the door, i could just pounce on him. i've simultaneously got so much to tell him and want to tear his clothes off.

it takes him longer to get used to the shifts, to parting and reappearing. if i think about the lessons we both could learn from this, we both are learning from this, i think these two are entwined: i am learning that i can leave and be loved when i come back, as long as the leaving is not sudden or abrupt or unfair; he is learning that a person can say they will come back and do so. they are fragile lessons and deep, and so it will take us awhile. which is perfect, because i think we both deserve time to practice.

i do have moments of clarity. i get caught up, but i also have moments of clarity.

- i just tore my jeans on the front right thigh. you know how i did it? pulling them up. i am at office hours, do not have time to head home even if it was irresponsible, and i will be standing in front of students in 45 minutes. with a hole in my gd jeans.

- i hate my reading for one of my classes. hate it hate it hate it. it's a waste of my time and everyone else's. the readings are almost applicable to our question for the course, their application almost helpful, but at the end of the class we're all invariably annoyed and frustrated. this appears to be getting better, but i'm not holding my breath.

- i'm really fucking annoyed with my boyfriend. really fucking annoyed. which is great timing, since amy jane and jeremy (neither of whom i've seen for at least three years) are en route right now. i think instead of me crashing at T's and them sleeping at mine, i'm going to crash with them at least one of the nights so A and i can stay up all night talking. like, tonight. actually, i already feel better having made that decision.

harrumph. how do you tear jeans by tugging on them? i bought these literally two months ago. there's no way i have the receipt anymore, and i imagine it doesn't matter, but christ on a pony.

- i'm realy tired of PMSing. i've decided three times in the last 48 hours that i'm leaving my boyfriend, that he doesn't love me, that i don't love him, and that we're doomed. i'm getting tired of talking myself down.

- i'm smoking again. i haven't bought any, but i probably should just so i don't bum all of amy's all weekend. sunday it's over.

okay. time to read for awhile, go teach (please god it passes quickly) and then watch the lakers trounce minnesota. then it's miss amy jane and the weekend. i'm overwhelmed again, and i know what i need to do to get out of it, and i will. but i'm not there yet, and so am miss grumpy mcgrumperton, at your service.

christmas was about as perfect as could be. new york was even better--i missed seeing almost everyone i meant to see, which is kind of impressive, but i spent massive amounts of time with jamilah, gcv, and the lovely misses dasha and hanna (is misses the plural of miss? if so, how do you spell mrs.?). new year's eve was spent on drugs and with most of the aforementioned, laughingly distanced from the drama and the noise. it couldn't have been better. the flirting was kept to a minimum; i didn't get the drinks i tentatively planned on getting with any of the temptations i could have enumerated. that is to say, i was a good girlfriend. and it turns out that it's pretty easy, when you really like a person. who knew?

the newest tattoo hurt like a mothertrucker, and was well worth the pain. you can has pix: please feel free to take note of the goosebumps on my arm. it was the coldest night in brooklyn and the tattoo shop believes in space heaters. by the end, i couldn't feel my hand, but my arm was not numb at all. harrumph.

the story behind it is a brief one: i love the brooklyn bridge, certainly, and new york has felt like a bridge to the possibilties of the rest of my life; too, i'm learning that not all bridges need to be burned just to see what their fire might look like. sometimes you leave a place, a person, and leave the bridge up just in case you want to come back. this is my bridge to new york. or nowhere, as you like.

the homecoming was victorious; the boyfriend picked me up in the car, the welcome-home sex was even better than i hoped. (should i have filtered this? probs.) megan comes in in an hour or so, and i'll pick her up in andrew's car and then convice her she wants nachos. i missed that girl. i missed this boy, too. he said what are you up to later? and i said hanging out with you and he said perfect. last night i said you make me happy and he said good. i tell you, for a girl who dropped the L-bomb right and left in talking about this boy, telling him he made me happy was hard. baby steps.

man. i'm hungry. i've got peanut butter, salsa, and croutons in the cupboard, and miso in the fridge. the prospects do not look good.

2008 was an incredible year, challenging in all the best ways and full of learning and laughter. i know many of you had difficult 2008s, or big changes came your way: new babies, new parts of the country, new loves. i hope that the struggles and challenges are mostly over, and that the joys of 2009, the reaping of what you've sown, are manifest and plentiful. and i hope you all have lots of sex and do lots of cuddling. that's what i plan on doing,  anyway.

i had pinned it firmly on the boyfriend--who, as a sidenote, i keep wanting to call T, but i can't, because GCV already owns that initial and you can read anything you like into that, dasha--but i think i knew more about it two weeks ago when i texted hanna from the boyfriend's couch. i'm terrified of my trip to new york, i said, and bless her heart, she knew that was one she needed to respond to.* she asked after various exes--and worse, the boys whose beds i never managed to grace, whose pull is always stronger than the ones you did bed--and while it would be troublesome if any of them got grabby (there is one, in particular, who i think intends to test the boundaries of fidelity just to see if he can), that's not my concern about new york. boys, for all that they are lovely and fun to fill time and empty bed space with, are only a distraction.

i am worried about new york for two entirely contradictory reasons. that is, i'm terrified that new york will overwhelm me, eat me alive, swallow me whole the way it does without regard or care; in addition, or maybe in conjunction, i'm terrified that i will fall in love with new york all over again and never want to leave. i'm scared that the happiness that i have carved out here--no, that's not accurate. i'm scared that the happiness that has so easily fallen in my lap here, the calm and warmth and repose that have so easily lent themselves to my life here, i'm scared that those things will pale in comparison to how happy new york made and will make me. i'm scared that i'm going to realize that what i want is to be in new york, more than i want to be here. i'm scared that new york will undermine the happiness i've made here. that's where my anxiety is coming from.

it's kind of lovely, the relief that comes from that action. i know i'm anxious about new york, and i know i can't change anything--anything--about either that city or this one. as such, worrying today, worrying this week, will not be necessary. i will take the long bus ride, probably on sunday, and i will spend the first hour of it thinking about what i'm doing; the rest of the time, i will be impatient or wishing the person next to me wasn't so liberal with her elbows. i will do the sunday night candlelight yoga at yoga to the people (and hope melanie isn't there; not because of any resentment or frustration or bad feeilngs, but because i think it would interrupt her flow) and then maybe meet up with some folks on monday. or maybe not; maybe i'll just stay in chris's apartment and play videogames. until then, though, i've got books and my parents' food and more TVs than i can count and my family. i'm excited.

aaaannnnddd my flight is delayed to chicago. time to rearrange some luggage, since i can only assume it'll get lost if i miss flights. see you on the other side (of the country).





*hanna and i have this great arrangement where i text her lots of dorky relationship-y things and she doesn't have to write back because as long as she doesn't mind reading them, i don't mind them not being responded to.

that i'm posting it, where i found it, the embarrassing fact that it resonated with me:

Love is actually like life. You know its going to end badly, that it's going to end too soon and there is no hope of its lasting, but you go on living all the same. And so people love, in the same way they live, longing for it to last but without any hope of its lasting. They love with their eyes closed and with an uneasiness that permeates their happiness, and they don't think and they don't want to think.

in other news, fuck beach towns in the winter. wtf was i thinking, going to LA? next time i'm going to ask myself if it's really a good idea or if i think it might be a good idea because i saw it in a movie once. to paraphrase my second favorite no-nonsense lesbian, yeah, don't worry about the first fight--you'll have lots of time to perfect the process. my favorite part of fighting so far is the part where we're nicer to each other after.

i'm going to go put together a glow-in-the-dark dinosaur puzzle and watch the sarah connor chronicles. don't tell my boyfriend--i told him i'd wait for him so we could watch them together.

but at the end of my review session, they very much did clap for me.


it doesn't make the tired and sick and tired go away, but it makes those things feel much, much better.

things like getting my period this morning. god bless birth control.

things like finishing puzzles and starting new ones. you know how it goes.

things like working through what may be one of the most powerful things i've ever written. this is different from the piece itself being super important or powerful, just indicative of my own progress. it's neat. i'm talking about maps. i think i'll be able to argue that they help us abdicate responsibility for war after all. neat, huh?

things like sneaking a peek at the evals my students are writing for me. maybe all TAs get glowing responses; I don't know. but i'm stoked that that's what i'm getting.

things like adding to my list of reasons the prof i TA for is a nutjob. the woman puts out misinformation all the time, literally doing the opposite of what she's supposed to be doing. i have one more lecture with her and then i never have to work with her again. i hope.

things like procrastinating on the aforementioned paper with livejournal posts. just because i'm pleased with how it's going doesn't mean the writing process is any simpler or less like pulling teeth.

things like being broke even though i get paid on the regular. turns out money sucks even when you get a little of it.



back to work. just wanted to say hi to the internet, since i've been avoiding it lately.

you'd think i'd have gotten used to it.

last night's jon stewart reminded me that i'm happy to already be looking back on this era of politics. in the interest of continuing to compare contemporary leaders to those central to the birth and tenets of our nation: if barack obama is abraham lincoln, then george w. bush is andrew jackson. and mccain is goddamn well welcome to teddy roosevelt's legacy, as he's certainly another blowhard fascinated with guns and overly interested in his legend and his masculinity (not to mention the conflation therein).

no, seriously, guys. tonight i am meeting the boyfriend's best friend, who has only recently heard about me. (which is indicative of tom, and not indicative of me, and i know that, but i am having to remind myself a few times nonetheless.) tomorrow, my mother arrives. she is staying with me. on sunday, tom and my mother and i are getting dinner. i think this weekend is why i'm not dreading paper writing at all; i have done paper writing before, and mostly know how it goes. everything else is new.

oh, also, the roommate's ex-girlfriend from new york is staying with us this weekend, we're hosting the pre-thanksgiving festivities on tuesday, i'm realizing that the downside of having students who want to put in extra work is that i have to grade it, and the chair of the department in which i TA wants to talk to me about the failings of the professor for whom i'm TAing. the paper? fuck the paper. my advisor wants an open letter about things we're interested in. this is baby steps, man. i can write a fucking paper.

ahem. i'm going to go listen to ira glass and clean my apartment. watch last night's jon stewart if you like jokes about dead presidents. and who doesn't?

it was a Rape Aggression Defense class, and was utterly delightful. i mean, it was intense and emotional and exhausting and it makes me want to beat the shit out of folks and also never ever ever have to use any of this stuff. but i'm so glad i went. and so glad i honestly feel like i learned something from it.

they videotaped a simulation at the end with two 'aggressors'--a women's center volunteer from campus and a cop. beating the shit out of a cop while yelling "fuck right off"? even more enjoyable than it sounds. watching the video afterward definitely reminded me that i cuss like a sailor if i'm not careful.

i'm going to look into kickboxing or martial arts classes. i like the sense of power, but more, i like the focus on increasing strength and awareness in individual areas of my body. also, i think it would be hot to be able to beat up anyone i meet.