Salut from the Regenstein

I'm happy in the library. Does that sound like an unlikely sentence? I don't really care. I am. 

Not only in the library, but in my apartment (which incidentally has many practical issues that I have neglected, it is time to call my lovely Croatian maintenance mafia again,) in Hyde Park, Chicago, the University of Chicago, here, today, now hello. Happy. 

I'm working on a midterm paper, the topic is Ebonics. Language, identity, nationalism, culture, self issues - questions that interest me. 

Reading over my last entry, it was soaked with Michael Silversteinian linguistic anthropology language(I mentioned deixis which is a linguistic term for locatability in time and space)...whew, last quarter was tough but I have come out smarter. Now I have to keep getting smarter, sharper, full of the intellectual tools that will allow me to probe the questions that stir souls. That may sound corny, but like the Mexican spoken word artist I saw tonight, I don't care. It's like Hogwarts but much more intense. Magical, powerful forces, spells, modern witchcraft that self-reflects. I used to secretly dream of knowing every language, of knowing everything really, of stirring the world with insight, it's like this super nerdy idea of paradise where knowledge penetrates, validates, harmonizes and connects everything. My paradise is knowing and learning. Understanding.

Omniscience is not possible, if it were, if there were some knowable limit, then it would all be so much less exciting. It's limitless, and that's fun. There is no end, there is an end to a human life but there is no end to the learnable, the knowable. There is an endless drive that connects us. Maybe this was part of that connection, that transnational, all-encompassing pantheism-like feeling, that I've had at times, the way I imagined it, my sense of spirituality.

Yep, I'm in a super corny, humanity-loving mood, and it's all good. Be a Jesus, an Anne Frank, be nice people, it does go around.

movement and stoppage

Hyde Park is stifling and liberating. Colorado is sunny. I will use simple, or somewhat simple adjectives to index my life here and now. Let's talk about deixis. Mine is free-flowing and ever marked by airplanes, tickets, airports, houses, apartments, locales, hermit holes, mountains, beaches. Languages, people, thoughts, moi.
I am cloudy, expanding, imploding, revolting.
Spaces are my hands, these walls, that doorway, the face with which I am speaking, the thoughts that I am segmenting into community-defined confinements a.k.a. words which you understand at least somewhat.
I pour my imperfect self into books, thoughts, attempts at metacognition, metalevel analysis of this ephemeral biological chance.
Happy holidays citizens of Abraham land. May you sleep well, eat well, think well. May your biology compliment your evolution as a self-aware entity. L'chaim.

The tradition of mid night attrition

I left dear Manhattan.
Manhattan was a lovely busybody man.
He was beautiful but he stressed me out a bit
and he never cleaned up after himself.

I then had a sweet honeymoon with northern California.
She was pretty and sweet tempered.
I had lunch at Google, yes you Google who designed this blog interface
and I drank lots of Napa wine and looked at pretty bridges and paintings
and whimsical things.

2 days until blast off - Fort Collins seems to be an appropriate military launching pad.
Chicago awaits. I'm coming, dear sir.

Fast, fast, slow

I am loving the chance to connect with another human being. Between these moments of connection I have been trying to learn spss statistics so that I can get something done for my research study like a mofo. Once I start grad school, there will be NO TIME.
Life is funny, love is funny, but connection is much needed, and my heart is a squirmy, confused little animal.

Weddings, and birthdays, and more weddings. Parties, parties, new york, new york, new york.

Monogamy, or something like it, has re-sprung itself on me like a hair rooted in the skin of my life. Shave it, tweeze it, but it always grows back.

Less than 2 months left of office drudgery, thank you sweet jesus. And then I can be a full professional nerd at last.

Though I may still be confused about men and love, and about how to deal with myself as a passionate woman always looking for a worthy vessel for that passion...at least I can appreciate human goodness. This wedding-studded summer makes me consider what I want. As my friends walk down the aisle and promise themselves to each other I see that this promise, this faith, this promise to struggle for as long as they both can in this complicated, fucked up, convoluted human existence in which nothing will ever be "perfect" is more beautiful than any fairytale.

Metamorphosis vs. Stagnation

Woman is a place. Just read Angier's Woman: An Intimate Geography, a wonderful book, which did much a few years ago for my envisioning of female sexuality and selfhood.

People are places. Therefore home is likely to be a person. Like you or I, or the combination thereof.

Groundedness is far more based on self-understanding and comfort than latitude and longitude.

People morph more quickly than places, more like frogs or butterflies, but like places in that we keep our foundations. The groundwork, all those geological layers unavoidable - certain volcanoes and tsunamis uncontrollable.

Is that not modern life? We are all either constantly in transition to becoming something else, or we are stuck - and then yes, there is a category of people that seems pretty content with its status quo.

The pressure to morph, the need to morph, the flapping of wings against the gauze, and then flight?

Death, rebirth, the rising of Frankenstein - rejuvenation, artificial rebirth, identity creation/recreation, we are our own creators?

Identity order and disorder: construct a city in your mind, construct yourself, deconstruct/reconstruct yourself, clean up the mess, the facades, the fake buildings (like in one of those old western flicks) - your self should not be a movie set, your city should be thriving full of warmth, nourishment, people, movement. I want people to empower themselves, to take control over the rotting buildings, to spring fresh life from the neglected earth.

"There's a chair in my head/On which I used to sit/Took a pencil and I wrote the following on it"
-K's Choice

Sprung

Twilit, happy, silly, floaty.
The season of love and baby-making makes me smile. New York smelled like the country yesterday. Overwhelmed by spring-ness I suppose.
I like where I am right now. I like who I am right now.
I've been meeting so many people lately. I've gone out a lot, gone on a few so-called dates, but mostly enjoyed myself with good people. I don't think I want to tie myself down right now, monogamy can wait, sorry suitors. Life's too good for haste at the moment. ;) (I think.)
Yay for the rebirth of earth. I always liked Ceres, though the mystery and power of Artemis inspires as well. I'm pulling my arrow taut this spring and aiming at the moon.
(Howls, smiles, goes back to work.)

Haunted hearts and pithy shorts

Walking home last night, my head abuzz with the stars of Tribeca, (the series of shorts, "Cold Feet" was pretty swell,) the hollywood and international actors/filmmakers were exactly in life as you see them on screen - no surprises, but oh the rapture of the flesh - my own life became cinematic for a minute.
- - -
I came upon a box of love chocolates from my past, near my front steps. They were staring up at me from the sidewalk, the plastic torn open by a bum, who-knows-what chocolaty creep crawlies spilling out. He must have rummaged through the garbage bins in front of my apartment building, upended the bags, discovered the lusty chocolates, left the torn box body like a sad little carcass for me to find.

I ended up talking to a hollow voice mail system for a moment, a loved voice explaining his unavailability to the world. For the best? Don't know. I proceeded to call an old friend, to bitch and screech and rejoice into the night. Until I passed out, of course.

Good morning.