another dull post

you are what you love
and not what loves you back

Yay Jenny Lewis.

Yay being bored at work, procrastinating my homework, and watching “Coupling.” It’s amazing how much I can multitask at just so I can avoid my proposal for my ethnomusicology project.

All of a sudden college involves actual work and lots of different research projects. In the next month, I have to develop my own neuroscience paper, do this ethnomusicology project, prepare a pre-1820 text for modern readers, write a couple concert reviews, and do regular homework. I guess I should be excited, since I’m always complaining about not having any challenges at school. Hooray, lots of work along with my actual job and my actual internship. Oh, life.

This winter I’ll be going to New York and Israel, though, so that should be a nice break. I should probably start learning some Hebrew and pay a little more attention to what’s going on in Israel at the moment, because I’m definitely an uninformed Jew when it comes to that. :-p

so.

I think I feel happy. I’m also terrified of school, because it’s actually kicking my ass like I never knew my ass could be kicked, and I don’t know what to do about that, because school has never been that for me. I should be happy for the challenge, but flailing through neuroscience isn’t really a challenge the way a hard piece of literature is.

But aside from that, I think I like where my life is headed for now. I feel a lot better about what’s on my plate, and about people who are becoming more important in my life. It’s like I’m calming down.

too many books

I’m moving on Saturday. Then I decided to go to Lake Tahoe on Sunday. So I need to be almost finished moving on Saturday, and then I’ll have about four days of work and moving to finish when I get back, before I leave for Georgia and my old lease runs out.

This wouldn’t be a problem, but I have a lot of crap. I’m a very material person, not because I particularly love shopping and labels or anything, but because I can’t bear to part with books or essays I wrote in English in seventh grade or 3D glasses or a keychain or anything. It’s very bad. I also have a limited amount of boxes. I just packed up all the books I own, textbooks aside. Eight boxes of books. I now have three cardboard boxes left for the rest of my stuff.

I managed to decide to get rid of six books that are not worth having on my shelf. This is really huge for me.

These boxes are going to be impossibly heavy. Then, I’m going to throw them on the floor of my new bedroom, hope that at least three of my four bookshelves fit in my bedroom along with my bed, desk, dresser, nightstand, record player, record table, and possibly my piano. Then I will return to my soon-to-be-former house and pack up clothing, toiletries, kitchen things, tchotchkes, and other stuff. AKA I am going to have to get rid of a lot of stuff and learn to live small. Bleccch.

But G-d, moving sucks so much. Always avoid it.

a cold summer in montevideo

It’s funny, because I love to learn languages and meet interesting people and experience new things, but I’m learning that I am really not a good traveler. Like, I really don’t like to be away from home. Who knew that after spending my entire childhood and adolescence begging for boarding school, for my mother to accept a job working abroad, for college out of state, that I would end up a homebody who loves spending time with her family? This is some weird sort of karma.

It’s not that I don’t like being in Montevideo. On the contrary, I was actually really happy yesterday to return after a weekend in Buenos Aires (beautiful, beautiful city, but snooty people and lots of dirt and a somewhat unpleasant hostel experience). I’m sad that I haven’t gotten to take full advantage of my classes or internship, having missed more than a week due to my flu, but I really like working at NGOs, and working at a Latin American NGO is twice the experience, because it’s work experience and language practice. But traveling in a group is just not my thing, and I feel very off-balance not being at home. I’m too accustomed to being settled. Apparently I don’t like change. Apparently I actually like my life in Tucson. Interesting.

Something that has always astonished me is that I can’t really write when I’m on vacation, even though being in another country (or just another state–pretty much everything is different from the desert) gives me a lot of inspiration and generally feels exhilarating, at least for awhile. But I don’t feel compelled to pick up my journal, I think partly because there is so much to say that I don’t know where to begin. All of a sudden there is a new climate, new streets to learn, a new culture of people, new stores and restaurants and foods, new phrases, and now a language that I’m starting to think in. It’s like there’s so much to say just superficially, just to establish my new place in a new world, that I can’t actually get to the point of talking about my feelings or new friends or specific experiences. It’s a daunting task, and I simply can’t say anything without spending two hours just writing in a journal. And there’s no time for that, because I’m on vacation on a specific program and I have things I need to be doing. And on days like today, when I spend my afternoon alone in my hotel room on my computer (though I was actually looking up important information for the rest of my trip, like hostels and bus fares and things), I feel like a failure on both parts, because why should I be in my hotel room when I’m neither experiencing the country I’m in nor doing something I would do at home, like work on my writing? I don’t have all the things I need to feel at home, but I also feel a bit overwhelmed always being here.

So while I can’t bring myself to be totally me, neither can I stop myself. I really want to be writing. I want to be working on my novel, and I want to be working on my essay for Ann’s book, and I want to be working on that other novel I started, and I want to start developing some really good short pieces, because it’s about time I started submitting stuff and making money off my writing, and it would be prudent to start publishing in the genre I want to have a career in, rather than in all the others that I just do for fun. But I can’t work on things here, because I’m very materialistic and high-maintenance, and I don’t have all my drafts or my big old desk or my things. Things, things, things. This is why I’m a bad traveler. I can’t pack light. Physically, mentally, or emotionally. I have lots of baggage.

It’s not all that bad. I’m learning, and that’s really all I care about. This is probably the first summer experience that doesn’t feel like summer (which it shouldn’t, because I’m in the southern hemisphere and it’s freezing). What I mean by that is this is the first summer experience where I’ve gone away to a program and have not felt like it’s completely magical or that I’ve made friends for life. In fact, the only person I see myself really remaining friends with is the one person I knew before coming, though I really did not know her very well. That’s totally fine, I guess. I am a huge cynic, and since college I have become a lot more particular about the people I make friends with. I know lots and lots of people, and I really like it, but I also really like just having a handful of really, really good friends, not a bunch of friendships that are all high-maintenance. There are people I have a deep necessity for, and they generally make me happy. The rest make me happy, but they’re not necessary. And that’s the way life goes. In this group of people, I feel very, very old and stuffy, and I guess I kind of am, but it’s also just how I’ve developed within this group of people who are not very much like me. And it’s fine. I am enjoying my learning experiences, and I am very excited for my two weeks of travel with my friend.

I am all over the place. And where I’d really like to be is home, but I know if I were there, I would be complaining about how I never go anywhere. There is definitely more to traveling than just appreciating where you come from, and I hope I am doing that. I think I am more meant for individual and small-group travel experiences than strict programs with boisterous personalities. I am slowly drawing into a shell, and I really shouldn’t do that.

BUT planning for my traveling is so exciting! Another three days in Buenos Aires by myself, this time to meet my grandmother’s cousin and to go to museums and experience traveling the way I like to do it, then a bus ride to Iguazu, a stay at a hostel for a day or two, bus ride back, boat back to Uruguay, perhaps a day in Montevideo, then travel to the hot springs! It’s going to be a packed two weeks, but it’s going to be great.

crowd theory

I’ve realized that the reason I don’t enjoy large, loud concerts is because I am less capable than most at succumbing to a collective. Last night was the huge stadium concert, which actually looked fairly unimpressive, because the stadium seats 56,000, and about 12,000 people actually showed up to the concert, though close to none actually went to the entire six-hour event.

Anyway. Not my point. (But they should have had it in McKale so it would look more impressive.) I really, really enjoy good concerts. I do. I adore music, and there is something really special about witnessing its creation and performance live. But I am really not a very flamboyant spectator. This is how I know I would not be a good famous singer, much as I’d like to be famous. I can’t really free myself to move around a lot or scream or anything. I sing along, yes. That I feel almost compelled to do, and it’s hard to keep my mouth shut. But moving around and waving my arms and showing “my diamonds,” as Jay-Z asked us all to do, is hard to do.

Waving my arms is the worst. I feel supremely uncomfortable and self-conscious when I am doing that. I’m sure it’s actually gotten harder since leaving high school, since I don’t dance anymore. But it’s never been something I’ve been able to do naturally. It’s a strange feeling, but even though I feel stupid not doing it, I feel like I have a physical aversion to doing it if I actually try to be one of the crowd.

There’s this thing called crowd psychology, and you can google it or look it up on Wikipedia if you like. I think the best example of this is English soccer fans, if only because I’ve already had a long conversation with my friends about that particular theory and how it’s manifested in that group. But basically, it’s the idea that people do things they would never do otherwise when they’re in groups, and it’s also very easy to be caught up in a sort of collective conscious and feel the same, act the same, and react the same. This is how people can end up rioting after they win a soccer game, or how they can feel an amazing rush of adrenaline when they and their friends go after a rival team’s fans and start beating them to a pulp. Ahh, the rush of physical fighting! Such a guy thing. I really don’t get it.

This is also how people feel when they go to a school football game and find themselves with a passion for their team that they never knew they had, or they notice that they’ve never had such a potty mouth before, or they realize that they and everyone around them is saying the same things, “oh!”ing at the exact same time, stamping their feet together, clapping the same rhythmic pattern, or what have you. Crowd psychology. Try and say you’ve never experienced this.

But I swear I don’t have that. I feel detached from other people almost all the time. I have definitely felt some moments of belonging, so I guess I’m not a complete alien, but those moments are things like bonding with the party room crew while we were sitting by the haunted house at Bennington College, or snapping a photo with my Kenya group soon after we’d returned, just before we went inside to graduate from high school. Group pride, certainly, and a sort of collective understanding and a feeling like in that moment, I loved those people more than anyone else, but never have I really lost myself in a moment that became a collective moment.

Even when Obama won the presidency, ecstatic as I was, I felt like I was faking it. I cheered because, yes, it was a wonderful thing, and because everyone else was doing it, but it was conscious. That’s not crowd psychology. It didn’t take me over; I just observed it and blended as well as I could. And even then, in a moment that I was truly happy and hopeful, I was not part of a collective conscious.

So last night, though I loosened up as the night went on, and I shouted the lyrics to “99 Problems” like nobody’s business, I felt completely aware of how out of my comfort zone I felt. And shouting the lyrics and dancing a bit was the only thing I did. My arms feel too heavy to wave them like everyone else; I don’t understand that whole diamonds thing because I’m definitely not as cool as I like to pretend I am; I did not shout out to Kelly Clarkson, “Kelly, I love you!”** repeatedly, and even if it had happened to be a Mariah Carey concert and I was thinking that same thing, I wouldn’t say it. I was lost in the musical conscious, but that’s not tangible, and it’s not even human. I am incapable of being part of a crowd.

I take back my earlier statement. I probably am an alien.

**This same girl at one point turned back to me and asked me something; I think the question was, “Aren’t you so happy right now?” which, looking back, is a really nice feeling to have, and I just smiled, because I wasn’t yet ready to buy the whole Kelly Clarkson deal (though after her entire set, I am sold–hers may not be my favorite style of music, but the girl is well-trained. She can belt, she can sing, she can scream–all in one song). Later, Kelly played a song from her new album, and this girl immediately grabbed her BlackBerry and googled the lyrics so she could sing along. Best. Concert. Moment. Ever.

***Also, check out Cindy Pon’s blog, book, and contest. She’s giving away a beautiful brush painting/bookstore gift certificate, plus a signed copy of her book, which looks awesome. You should click on the book cover now. Do it.

there must be someplace here

I am my own worst enemy. I am that because I am my own worst student, which is the number one reason why I cannot be a teacher like everyone else in my family. Who am I to tell people what to do if I can’t tell it to myself? How do you tell yourself, “Do as I say and not as I do?”

I had this vague idea for a short story for awhile and then today during my lecture on recording contracts I began writing it. I’ve already revised a bit, I have a pretty clear picture of the world it takes place in, and I actually have a somewhat complete plot arc, when usually I rely on characters and a couple distinct scenes to get me writing and just hope for the best. I have a free night tonight and a nice, easy day tomorrow with my nice, easy new job, a fairly nice and easy Spanish essay to write, and hopefully nice and easy sight singing to learn for my singing test Thursday. It’s a night for writing, and it’s been so long since I’ve been stress-free(-ish), headache-free, and health problem-free. I have candles lit and two of them smell delicious, I have my late night writing playlist, “eine kleine nachtmusik,” going through my fake vintage radio that is actually an iPod dock, and I’m ready to go. I want to be writing. I am writing.

But I’ve lost the thing in me that used to make me write for hours on end. And I’ve gained something new since I was 12. This Mac has the Internet. I have stuff I want to say. Right now, as I write this, I’ve run out of the bloggy inspiration I had for a moment and I want to go back to the story, where the next line of dialogue has been running through my head for at least five minutes. But I feel absolutely compelled to waste time, procrastinate, and not create. I’ve become a writer who doesn’t like writing. Or something. I hate my generation. I hate multi-tasking and lack of an attention span.

But this story. I think it may be a good one.

I’m going to go write that line of dialogue, and then I’m going to waste more time updating the playlist section, since I didn’t have a March one at all. Fail. Then maybe I’ll get back to doing that thing I always talk about doing.