If I could have it my way, I'd like to live my 20s a few times over. This decade of life makes all the difference once it is completed and none when you're in the midst of it. Not accomplishing anything substantial by the time you're 25 is not really a big deal. There are flimsy excuses and legitimate reasons aplenty to offer if you're not well-established and successful--at least by the world's standards--at that age. As a twentysomething, life is an exciting and frightening welter of possibilities; you can dip your toes into the pool of adulthood without being required to get all the way in. But come 30, your stars should be aligning...or, you should be calming down, anyway.
I actually believe that these years are vital, irreplaceable for the development of character, real values (not what Mom and Dad so graciously conveyed to you), and the lifestyle that will typify the rest of your adulthood. Still, there is an open-ended and giddy quality to the twenties that I'm keen to hold onto. If I could be in my 20s several times over I would opt for the following...
...a PhD before age 30. Serve as a TA, slave over a dissertation, get an impressive credential, move to a small town to teach ungrateful undergraduates who don't look much older than me...
...service overseas. Work among the poor, speak another language, write about what I see, have an open door policy, own less clothes, never want to come back...
...a few kids--have more energy for this in my 20s than I will in my 30s. Buy small shoes, read children's books before bedtime, take trips to the library, nap in the afternoon, have no kids in the house after age 50...
...independent musician. Quit my job, live out of my car, sing in interesting bars, play piano and learn guitar, get a few tattoos, make a living by age 30...
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Oh that? It's a black hole/television
With my budget, if I lived by myself, I would either have a 10 inch television with 2 channels, or I would have no television whatsoever. But I don't live by myself. I live with my aunt, who, a few years ago, invested in a large, sleek, flatscreen TV with HD ("High Definition" for those of you still living in the 1990s). It's a miracle of science, really, and, to be honest, I enjoy basking in its glow. Lazily reclining on the couch and watching an episode of "Mad Men" is one of my favorite ways to check out. And there are worse means to escape, I hope you agree.
Now, relatively speaking, I don't watch that much TV. There are a number of people I know of who have "shows" they watch or TiVo (read "record") every evening--"I have to get home to catch 'my shows'". Nonetheless, I wonder what sort of person I would be, or what kinds of things I would have done, had I never watched one minute of television. What an idea!
Television, it seems to me, is just another way to shield yourself from the world, from its cold realities, responsibilities, and overwhelming possibilities. TV is insular in the way that suburbs are, or personal cars, or large bank accounts; it induces the same passivity, the same softness.
Ironically, I'm actually too tired now to finish this post...if I hadn't viewed x number of hours of television, perhaps I wouldn't be so soft and could stay up later. Regardless, I'd like to lay this out more adequately in a future post...
Now, relatively speaking, I don't watch that much TV. There are a number of people I know of who have "shows" they watch or TiVo (read "record") every evening--"I have to get home to catch 'my shows'". Nonetheless, I wonder what sort of person I would be, or what kinds of things I would have done, had I never watched one minute of television. What an idea!
Television, it seems to me, is just another way to shield yourself from the world, from its cold realities, responsibilities, and overwhelming possibilities. TV is insular in the way that suburbs are, or personal cars, or large bank accounts; it induces the same passivity, the same softness.
Ironically, I'm actually too tired now to finish this post...if I hadn't viewed x number of hours of television, perhaps I wouldn't be so soft and could stay up later. Regardless, I'd like to lay this out more adequately in a future post...
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
stale is the only option
I'm tired of the same old words. They are like ash on my tongue, dishwater on my fingertips. To write "regarding," "please note," or "it is requested" till the end of time could very well bring on a premature death--perhaps not literal, but every other kind of death that is referred to in the literary realm.
The past few days I've been looking through a book of vocabulary. Call me ridiculous, but I've been making flashcards for words I only half-know, or don't know at all. I'll flip through them, maybe at stoplights on my way to work, or during commercials when I watch TV on Sunday night, or at the kitchen table after a long day.
Studying is like slipping on an old, worn, but friendly t-shirt. It's familiar and comfortable. It reassures me that things aren't so bad, that they'll get better.
The real challenge, I suppose, won't be thumbing through the definitions on a semi-regular basis, but actually making use of the words I'm studying. There's no modest way to insert "bellicose" in the middle of an e-mail. It's pretentious, no two ways about it. It's like wearing a siren red suit while working in a grey cubicle under dim artificial lighting. You can't help but notice. And who do you think you are anyway, throwing around "desultory" and "edacious"? What's the occasion for that suit? Trying to show you're more than just common. Warding off an identity that is already upon you--might as well give in. In fact, it is requested that you do.
The past few days I've been looking through a book of vocabulary. Call me ridiculous, but I've been making flashcards for words I only half-know, or don't know at all. I'll flip through them, maybe at stoplights on my way to work, or during commercials when I watch TV on Sunday night, or at the kitchen table after a long day.
Studying is like slipping on an old, worn, but friendly t-shirt. It's familiar and comfortable. It reassures me that things aren't so bad, that they'll get better.
The real challenge, I suppose, won't be thumbing through the definitions on a semi-regular basis, but actually making use of the words I'm studying. There's no modest way to insert "bellicose" in the middle of an e-mail. It's pretentious, no two ways about it. It's like wearing a siren red suit while working in a grey cubicle under dim artificial lighting. You can't help but notice. And who do you think you are anyway, throwing around "desultory" and "edacious"? What's the occasion for that suit? Trying to show you're more than just common. Warding off an identity that is already upon you--might as well give in. In fact, it is requested that you do.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
reprints
Throughout all four years of college I made intermittent entries in e-journals I affectionately named in honor of each year. These titles aren't especially ingenious and could actually be a source of embarrassment to me if I publicize them. Perhaps on another day when I am feeling more bold...
Still, not all of the material contained within the journals is rotten. Much of it should be picked up again and developed further. Now, I'm not at all interested in telling you any sordid and intimate tales of love and loneliness. As I so clearly stated when I began this blog, unreserved self-disclosure simply isn't my style. I like to keep some cards up my sleeve when writing, going on first dates, or socializing at work. Therefore, any of my journal entries reprinted on this blog will be carefully selected and edited, if necessary. And I may not always tell you when I've done the latter. All of that being said, here's a little something from a night at the library junior year:
November 28, 2006
Call me crazy, but sometimes I really enjoy working. Adam's curse does not always pan out in life, thank goodness. I had this epiphany as I was working on ideas for my senior paper and taking notes for an upcoming Romantic Literature paper. Any time I try to develop ideas and logic for papers it takes a long time. I must sit quietly, not writing, just thinking. Then I must re-read works, often taking painstaking notes (but not always, mind you). In regard to productivity, it must be likened to watching paint dry. Yet, when I get an idea, when my brain is in fire, and I scrawl down some beautifully profound connection, it's total euphoria. There is this satisfying feeling that usually causes me to sigh with pleasure, and shuffle my papers vigorously, setting them back neatly to signify that similar order has now come to my thoughts.
As of now, I'm unsure that this evening's work is worth that satisfaction. My senior paper idea has not been approved, and I have not officially started writing my paper for Romantic Lit. Perhaps when I do the real work of writing I will kick myself for feeling mildly happy about the work completed tonight: Stupid, stupid...that wasn't even close to insightful. You were just taking up time doing mindless drivel so that you could pretend to work.....Oh gosh, I hope that is not the case. And now it is too late anyway. This journal entry has just interposed doubt into pleasurable feeling and it has subsequently turned it into a sickening feeling. In writing about a hypothetical future I have made it my present. Yuck.
It's funny how little journal entries, so disheveled in their organization and feeble in their offerings, influence when I only intend them for reflection. All I wanted to say initially was: I feel good about the work I did tonight. What I ended up doing was second-guessing myself and souring any sense of accomplishment. In five minutes, in two hundred and fifty words, you can end up falling back into cynical patterns and convince yourself that things are really worthless after all.
Still, not all of the material contained within the journals is rotten. Much of it should be picked up again and developed further. Now, I'm not at all interested in telling you any sordid and intimate tales of love and loneliness. As I so clearly stated when I began this blog, unreserved self-disclosure simply isn't my style. I like to keep some cards up my sleeve when writing, going on first dates, or socializing at work. Therefore, any of my journal entries reprinted on this blog will be carefully selected and edited, if necessary. And I may not always tell you when I've done the latter. All of that being said, here's a little something from a night at the library junior year:
November 28, 2006
Call me crazy, but sometimes I really enjoy working. Adam's curse does not always pan out in life, thank goodness. I had this epiphany as I was working on ideas for my senior paper and taking notes for an upcoming Romantic Literature paper. Any time I try to develop ideas and logic for papers it takes a long time. I must sit quietly, not writing, just thinking. Then I must re-read works, often taking painstaking notes (but not always, mind you). In regard to productivity, it must be likened to watching paint dry. Yet, when I get an idea, when my brain is in fire, and I scrawl down some beautifully profound connection, it's total euphoria. There is this satisfying feeling that usually causes me to sigh with pleasure, and shuffle my papers vigorously, setting them back neatly to signify that similar order has now come to my thoughts.
As of now, I'm unsure that this evening's work is worth that satisfaction. My senior paper idea has not been approved, and I have not officially started writing my paper for Romantic Lit. Perhaps when I do the real work of writing I will kick myself for feeling mildly happy about the work completed tonight: Stupid, stupid...that wasn't even close to insightful. You were just taking up time doing mindless drivel so that you could pretend to work.....Oh gosh, I hope that is not the case. And now it is too late anyway. This journal entry has just interposed doubt into pleasurable feeling and it has subsequently turned it into a sickening feeling. In writing about a hypothetical future I have made it my present. Yuck.
It's funny how little journal entries, so disheveled in their organization and feeble in their offerings, influence when I only intend them for reflection. All I wanted to say initially was: I feel good about the work I did tonight. What I ended up doing was second-guessing myself and souring any sense of accomplishment. In five minutes, in two hundred and fifty words, you can end up falling back into cynical patterns and convince yourself that things are really worthless after all.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
sunday afternoons
In general I dislike Sundays. It has probably been that way for the past four or five years. If I actually kept the Sabbath, I'm sure I would enjoy enjoy it more. But Sunday always seems to take the brunt of the consequences for my procrastination during the week and weekend. Cleaning and bills and emails and grocery-shopping and laundry and getting-a-hair-cut and scheduling and cooking and calls home and paperwork are perpetually shuffled off to that block of time called the weekend, which appears during the frenzy of the week as a vast, empty piece of real-estate burgeoning with opportunities for productivity. May your to-do list be writ 20 items long--a Saturday will always do to complete it! Now, either I am simply undisciplined or the weekend is a cheating little son-of-a-gun--promising acres of time and only providing about 10 square feet once you actually arrive on the property. Either way, I rarely accomplish over the weekend what I set out to when I pull into my parking spot on Friday evening after my commute home from work.
Of course I can't do anything on Friday night. Grocery shopping on Friday nights is for single losers and married people. I may very well be a single loser, but I would rather not advertise that fact to my fellow Evanstonians by taking part in those kinds of activities on a Friday night.
And then Saturday...gosh, it's nice to sleep in a bit, make breakfast, listen to talk radio, read Dostoyevsky on the couch. Errands are for the afternoon, tasks that require the most time, the least brain, and offer the most satisfaction when you press pen to paper and cross them off of your list. Evening arrives, and I've got plans and all day Sunday.
So it comes to pass: around 12:30 p.m. on Sunday I walk into my kitchen after church and I gripe about all that I must do. I want the couch and a novel; a nap or a movie; a walk or an afternoon concert; an hour on the piano; a glass of wine and a conversation. I don't want to write a check and send it away; I don't want to fill out tax forms; I don't want to renew my stupid parking sticker. Monday cometh, and such banal tasks only seem to speed its arrival. The only respite, the only mercy, is Sunday afternoon NPR. At least I can listen to Tavis Smiley while I wash dishes, or to BBC News while I compose message #43 in a thread of e-mails about something that really shouldn't have gotten that complicated...
Really I should be more diligent on Saturdays. I used to be when I was in college. It wasn't unusual for me to wake up at 8:30, pack up my laptop and book it to the library to stay until 3 or 4 p.m. Perhaps I just need to commit--really commit--to a schedule on the weekend. Maybe then I wouldn't hate my life on Sundays...
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Even though they are decontextualized...
I find the following quotes positively enchanting. Last night around 12 a.m. I was sitting on the floor in my room and began to page through a small leatherbound volume where I occasionally record particularly delicious quotes from books I'm reading. As I sat there, I thought, to hell with sharing recipes on my blog, I'll post these. Ok, ok, the language is a bit strong. And I still may provide you with instructions for making savory meals--that's just not especially high on my priority list at the moment. The mind and spirit before the body: I have Jesus himself to back that up, per his forty days in the desert. But I'm really taking this too far. All I want to do is allow you to enjoy the following:
"I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I'm sick of myself and everybody that wants to make some kind of splash."
-Franny in J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey
"Like so many Americans, she [Billy's mother] was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops."
-Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse Five
"We are not slaves bound to suffer incessantly unrecorded petty blows on our bent backs. We are not sheep either, following a master. We are creators. We too have made something that will join the innumerable congregations of past time. We too, as we put on our hats and push open the door, stride not into chaos, but into a world that our own force can subjugate and make part of the illumined and everlasting road."
-Virginia Woolf The Waves
"Thou from the first/ was present, and, with mighty wings outspread/ Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast Abyss/ And mad'st it pregnant: what in me is dark/ Illumine, what is low raise and support;/ that, to the heighth of this great argument/ I may assert Eternal Providence/ and justify the ways of God to men."
-John Milton Paradise Lost
"We've got ninety-nine percent the same genes as any other person. We've got ninety percent the same as a chimpanzee. We've got thirty percent the same as a lettuce. Does that cheer you up at all? I love about the lettuce. It makes me feel I belong."
-Caryl Churchill A Number
"Once you have mathematical certainty there is nothing left to do or to understand. There will be nothing left but to bottle up your five senses and plunge into contemplation. While if you stick to consciousness, even though the same result is attained, you can at least flog yourself at times, and that will, at any rate, liven you up."
-Fyodor Dostoyevsky Notes from the Underground
"Leonato: Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.
Beatrice: Not till God make man of some other mettle than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a piece of valient dust?"
-William Shakespeare Much Ado About Nothing
"Nick went into his room, undressed, and got into bed. He heard his father moving around in the living room. Nick lay in the bed with his face in the pillow. 'My heart's broken,' he thought. 'If I feel this way my heart must be broken.'"
-Ernest Hemingway "The Northern Woods" from The Nick Adams Stories
"The hands of the King are hands of healing, dear friends..."
-Gandalf in J.R.R. Tolkien's Return of the King
"I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I'm sick of myself and everybody that wants to make some kind of splash."
-Franny in J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey
"Like so many Americans, she [Billy's mother] was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops."
-Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse Five
"We are not slaves bound to suffer incessantly unrecorded petty blows on our bent backs. We are not sheep either, following a master. We are creators. We too have made something that will join the innumerable congregations of past time. We too, as we put on our hats and push open the door, stride not into chaos, but into a world that our own force can subjugate and make part of the illumined and everlasting road."
-Virginia Woolf The Waves
"Thou from the first/ was present, and, with mighty wings outspread/ Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast Abyss/ And mad'st it pregnant: what in me is dark/ Illumine, what is low raise and support;/ that, to the heighth of this great argument/ I may assert Eternal Providence/ and justify the ways of God to men."
-John Milton Paradise Lost
"We've got ninety-nine percent the same genes as any other person. We've got ninety percent the same as a chimpanzee. We've got thirty percent the same as a lettuce. Does that cheer you up at all? I love about the lettuce. It makes me feel I belong."
-Caryl Churchill A Number
"Once you have mathematical certainty there is nothing left to do or to understand. There will be nothing left but to bottle up your five senses and plunge into contemplation. While if you stick to consciousness, even though the same result is attained, you can at least flog yourself at times, and that will, at any rate, liven you up."
-Fyodor Dostoyevsky Notes from the Underground
"Leonato: Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.
Beatrice: Not till God make man of some other mettle than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a piece of valient dust?"
-William Shakespeare Much Ado About Nothing
"Nick went into his room, undressed, and got into bed. He heard his father moving around in the living room. Nick lay in the bed with his face in the pillow. 'My heart's broken,' he thought. 'If I feel this way my heart must be broken.'"
-Ernest Hemingway "The Northern Woods" from The Nick Adams Stories
"The hands of the King are hands of healing, dear friends..."
-Gandalf in J.R.R. Tolkien's Return of the King
Saturday, February 7, 2009
i'm trying to be back
It's impossible to make reparations for a four months' absence from my blog. Not that an apology is particularly necessary--life has been busy and I highly doubt anyone is pining away for me to make new entries. The issue is that now I would like to begin writing here again, and I'm not so sure that anyone is still visiting my little site. I guess it's no matter. To everyone or to no one, here are five recent happenings in my life:
1. I went to South Korea for two weeks over Christmas and New Year's to visit my dear friend, April Hope.
2. Starting on January 1st, I began making a new recipe each week. Highlights? Korean bibimbap and Chicken Mexican stew. Tonight I'm making Vegetarian Mediterranean Stew.
3. I went to Hawaii for one week (see picture).
4. I started a new job at the beginning of December.
5. Super Bowl Sunday marked the conclusion of my first year in Chicago. Much has happened over the past 12 months, and I'm grateful for the place in which I find myself.
Stories, pictures, and possibly recipes upcoming...
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