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Oh! how I wish!   
04:24pm 05/11/2009
  Graduate school in the sciences has filled me with a powerful desire.

I wish I were Chinese.

Oh! to be Chinese! and surrounded by other Chinese students who each agree to a person that school is the most important thing!

That 'work-life balance' is a Western myth designed to make us miserable and keep us from focusing on what needs to be done!

That the best thing in school is to be the best student with the best grade - not to squeak by with a barely viable B because you were at a kick-ass concert/party/whatever this weekend and couldn't be bothered to study. That you work hard in school, and therefore reap results.

And this is not to say that Chinese people are better at math or science than the non-Chinese among us. This is obviously and patently ridiculous on its face. No, what the Chinese are better at is acknowledging the reality of the sheer workload it takes to thrive in the sciences. They do not have some weird belief that if you're 'smart', you'll get things on the first try, and if you don't, then maybe you should consider a different career.

American students are often too caught up in this bizarre desire to 'have it all' at all stages of life. High school is not just where you learn Spanish and calculus, but also where you fall in love for the first time, go to Cancun your junior year, play soccer, and star in the school play. (Obv. this is not my HS experience, but I'm generalizing.)

What I long for is to be surrounded only by people who understand that I don't have time for late nights, drinking and debauchery right now. People who don't insist that there's plenty of time for me to study stats or physiology over the weekend, or later, or in the morning, or whatever. I want the force of my social circle to prod me toward academic accomplishment and hard work, not drinking and getting laid.

It's strange to think that here I am in this highly competitive program, surrounded by people who are, by their very inclusion in the school, the 'high achievers' of their previous schools, and this sort of anti-intellectual, anti-work ethic is still abundantly present. It goes to show that you cannot escape your culture, even when you are in its margins. There is still the fear of being perceived as overly enthusiastic to learn, overly geeky and too smart for making friends at college - the teacher's pet is still a terrible thing to be, even when prestige is present.

Ah. To be Chinese.		  
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modern anxiety monthly   
02:17pm 23/10/2009
  You know, I thought I had this thing licked. Oh, sure, there were still the hormone-related AM hour-long anxiety sessions, but that was like three days out of the month and self-limiting in duration.

Maybe this new development is temporary - some combination of overcaffeination and an overly full schedule. But damn, I hate it.

The question is, do I finally hate the anxiety I feel almost everyday now enough to get medicated? Right now, the answer is still no. I still think anti-anxiety meds are placebos with side effects, and so can pass, and also I don't have health insurance.

Here is a brief list of things that do nothing to alleviate my anxiety:
*Eating better
*Exercising
*Getting enough sleep
*Spending time with friends and loved ones
*Reducing caffeine intake
*Reducing cannabis intake
*Reducing alcohol intake

Here is a brief list of things that seem to exacerbate my anxiety:
*Being in Ann Arbor
*Being around my classmates
*Driving my car

Oddly enough, I seem to be developing an extremely weird need to shower like three times a day. This is most disturbing to my dirty hippie aesthetic, but I must say that my skin and hair are looking pretty good.

Let us hope this is hormonal fall-out from the unspeakable summer. These things will pass. In the meantime, I will get very good at doing that pencil-flipping thing that magicians and card sharks do to keep nimble. I will take a deep breath and listen to good music. And if I pretend hard enough, eventually it will cease to be pretend.		  
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this city that is not my own   
04:23pm 29/09/2009
  These days I spend most of my time in the honky dreamworld of Ann Arbor. I've been thinking for the past few weeks of how best to describe this place and my place in it, but I kept getting bitter and mean, and some of the truth was lost in there.

Because basically: fuck this town. The University of Michigan is surely a fine academic and research institution, yes. But the town that developed around it is exactly what you would expect of a place built on successive generations of straight-A, president of the student council, captain of the soccer team students. It is 'nice'. It is 'safe'. It is boring and conformist as an prairie small town of yore. And I am here, 13 hours a day, four days a week.

This is a town composed primarily of runners and organic food co-op patronizers; sweet bros and nubile coeds covered in school colors. The people here tend to be certain of their own talents and worthiness, that they have done something differently in their lives - in the choices they've made - that makes them better, makes this place better.

I never thought I would miss Detroit hipsters. The conflation of marketing and consumerism with counterculture very much bothers me still, but nonetheless, the Detroit kids smoke and drink and eat cheeseburgers and have ill-advised sexual encounters and take stupid risks and wear bold (if somewhat uniform) costumes and listen to rock music. Their skin is not uniformly radiant, their faces not uniformly apple-cheeked. The artists are poor, but prevalent.

Who are these people? Are these really the faces of innovative creators and researchers? Are these pseudo-Ivy towers the home of people striving to serve their fellow man or simply boost their publication numbers, their activities on the ol' CV?

Where are the weirdos, Ann Arbor? Not just a few patchouli-soaked retrofitted hippies playing bongos on the grass, but the people who look poor, the people who look tired, who survive solely on caffeine and carbs?

Anyway, I really don't like this place, but luckily I don't live here and will never have to. In two years, that's it - and onto browner pastures for the next Detroit, the next city that doesn't incite this blend of anxiety and annoyance, but gives pause to thoughts of progress or improvement.		  
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thinking these things   
12:52am 28/08/2009
  These days I've been trying to think of what would be comfortable and good for me to post in this online emotion depository, and the answer keeps coming back as roughly: nothing.

This summer's been rough on me in ways that I don't think I'll ever be comfortable explaining, let alone having to look at in the yellow and brown text that is my journal. Can I say, even in code, those thoughts that I can hardly bear thinking? The answer is still probably not.

So instead of these unspeakable months, let's just say I'll probably be visiting Philadelphia in November for the APHA convention/conference/preferrednomenclature. Between now and then, I'll have started my epidemiology program, and that is surely something.

But for now, let it be known that whatever was unspeakable about the forgiveness lesson is infinitely speakable in retrospect. As I rise and fall each season, I assure both my gentle readers and my less gentle self that learning is occurring, that the end result of this learning is something worthwhile, and on and on I continue this education.		  
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on the dole   
05:45pm 28/06/2009
  I'm now officially collecting unemployment - what, gotta catch 'em all? collecting? - no, I'm getting money from my already impoverished state to keep my perpetually impoverished ass in all the spinach and feta I could desire. Additionally, I have been oh so generously gifted another cat, albeit temporarily, but this is indeed a week that keeps on giving for me.

I imagine that in a few weeks I'll have garden fresh green beans, zucchini and whatever those round green squashes are called that I planted (not acorn). My birthday is next week. I feel about 20% less adult and responsible this year than I did last. But I got my Victory Garden up and running, and those leafy greens defeated the Kaiser, so at least I carry on in a grand tradition of responsibility in my Lebowski days.

It's nice here. The kitties sleep, new books get mailed here every few days, and I learn something I never knew before. Let it rest here a while.		  
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ponderousa   
11:16pm 04/06/2009
  My glasses got broken at a punk rock show. I was punched in the face by some punk (derogatory sense here) kid, who, when I shoved him away, bit my forearm. I wasn't particularly angry about the broken glasses - after all, these things happen - but upon further consideration, fuck that kid. Who comes into a non-Slayer show swinging fists at bespectacled ladies? Dickholes, that's who.

Needless to say, as soon as I was rendered essentially disabled by my lack of adequate visual skills, I got a call for a job interview. One that I cannot drive to, and hope to high heavens that doesn't require me to look intensely at anything.

On top of that, the usual revelation per minute type deal going on. It appears to me that my complete and utter lack of dedication to self-improvement is paying dividends. My muscles ache from exercises of a sort. My garden blooms edible vegetables.

Mostly right now though, I'm just beginning to get fucking edgy as hell from being unable to see. Unemployed and unable to watch cartoons. No funds or desire for Spaghetti-Os. I can't even enjoy this lazy ass period in my life. Go figure.

Instead, tomorrow morning, like this morning and this evening, I will go out to my pioneer garden patch, cut some lettuce and eat another in a series of fucking salads.		  
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my last eleven dollars and all   
01:31am 02/06/2009
  Times are tough for underpaid laboratory technicians. They (the times) are especially exacerbated by a lack of hours caused by lack of satisfactory lab oversight.

Let's not talk about the shoddy Michigan economy, nor my role within it. Let us instead dwell on the actions I take with my limited solvency.

Today for example. Walk the unruly dog to the liquor store with my last eleven paper dollars secured firmly in my left hip pocket, where I will give over those dollars in exchange for beer. What else can I do with my last eleven paper dollars? Gas? Rent? Bills? Fun times?

Yeah, right. I spend that shit on beer, chill out and wait for the graph of the world to point up again.		  
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these fucking cats   
01:48am 01/06/2009
  The cats have decided that by far the most awesome thing to do with their spare time (ie, all day) is to eat holes in the screens for all of the windows. Once the holes are large enough, they leap through them - to freedom!

Because of this most awesome thing, I find myself going outside to collect my wayward felines far more often than I would like. At first I didn't know how they were getting out, then I thought they had only got to the living room window, but now I must live in a closed window world.

Well, at least until I put up fucking chicken wire and make this place look like a kitty cat supermax.

(Please do not suggest I should just let them roam free - they are all lifelong indoor cats with all of the attendant survival skills that that pampered existence implies.)		  
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emits grunts and clicks   
08:55am 27/05/2009
  There is something magical I must do when I don't want to date.

It is at those times and seemingly those times along when a gaggle of potential suitors emerges from hither and thither, proffering conversation and drinks. It is nearly instantaneous, and only partially entertaining. I suppose it's better than never having a person attempt to woo, but still.

Not now, gents.		  
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grace   
08:55pm 11/05/2009
  I found an inner capacity for forgiveness, good will and all stuff like that. The first thing I would like to mention is how much I have grown to dislike the self-improvement movement for co-opting, and rendering bullshit, each and every conceivable expression pertinent to maturation. I mean, inner capacity? Who the fuck am I, fucking Dr. Phil?

But anyway, the point still stands, that's what it is - it certainly isn't outer, and capacity is vaguely neutral anyway. Right now, I have some contentedness that is uncanny, and has me absolutely convinced that it will be short-lived.

How I can overlook some small or big sin, depending on perspective of course, could be an interesting and worthwhile discussion, except, and this is a big except, the fucking self-improvement industry will have me sound like some mealy-mouthed, New Age, in-touch-with-my-inner-child kind of motherfucker, so I just can't do it.

Instead, I will mark this time in my life with a sort of internet commemorative plaque, vis a via my livejournal here, to look back on and say 'Aha! May is when we learned something important regarding the very personal role of ethics and morality in day-to-day decisions!' and try my best, like you do for commemorative plaques, to steer clear of any forced or cliched metaphors.

So I will not talk about the 'power of forgiveness,' regardless of whatever gains in emotional fortitude I have noticed come with the turf. Nor will I praise myself, in a humble sort of way, as being some kind of New Woman, baking apple pies with tears cried out of pure altruism, that sort of thing, no thanks.

But the important thing is, that in May, I learned something new, important and unspeakable about morals, ethics and the problems faced when life requires me to put my money where my big fat mouth is.		  
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your mom writes jokes for meaningless speech class speeches   
09:58pm 18/04/2009
  I'm sitting here, all well-bathed and girlish looking. My laptop was perched on the bathroom sink so that I could listen to music while reading a book in the tub, but now I'm done with that, for now anyways, and sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, writing a journal entry, my computer all perched on the bathroom sink.

It's 10 PM, on the nose, on a Saturday night.

Ordinarily, for a twenty-five year old girl to be sitting home alone at square on the nose 10 PM on a Saturday night would represent either a churchy devotion to leading a Good Life, or some sort of psychic/physiological deformity. I'm not saying that I am unordinary.

All I'm saying is, here it is 10 PM, Saturday night - it's beautiful outside, like a temperate 60 some degrees, a gentle wind here and there, only enough clouds to keep it warm, that sort of thing. Through sheer will, I resist calling friends, or answering my phone. I resist the urge to make plans, do things and the like. For one, the finances of a good time are fucking outrageous these days. In other words, I've done a cold cost-benefit analysis of good times, and have opted out.

While waiting for an incubation cycle to end at work the other day, I did one of those meme-y, tell us about yourself, sort of facebook dealies. This one dealt with adult things, like paying bills and going to work, and was therefore both boring and revelatory. One question was something like: Do you ever feel like a kid these days? Something like this anyways.

I answered that I don't remember what that felt like. But the truth is more insidious (ah, my favorite word these days). I think I feel the way I felt as a kid pretty much every day of my adult life: slightly bored, mistrustful, more comfortable alone than ever with anyone else. I find myself getting lost in books in ways that I haven't in years, and that has made me realize that I've been fictionalizing my own life, adult-lived and all, in, you know it, insidious ways.

Like this pre-occupation with aloof, odd-natured, but brilliant fellows. Because the lit directed at ladies of my persuasion has seriously been written almost exclusively by aloof, odd-natured, but brilliant fellows, and they each extol the virtues of these gents, while lamenting the failure of, you know, those kinds of girls to take notice of the quiet, gentle brilliance of the aloof and odd-natured young men.

But anyway, these days - making a religion of solitude. Annoyed when someone interrupts my reading with their chattiness. Involving myself in ever-more inward and solo pursuits. Invoking gerund forms inappropriately. And so on, like destroying the narrative that is ringing false to me these days anyway, until there is nothing so easily assumed, nothing that I can just narratize into having a cohesive place in the life story.

This experiment will probably not go well, but well, neither have the others, and at least this one is new, right?		  
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restore from saved draft? aka "Battlestar Galactica explains it all"   
10:14pm 05/04/2009
  Seriously, livejournal, I've not updated or looked at your for like two months, and god alone could know what I was planning on writing, and anyway, I don't really want to read what crybaby me was going to write in those halcyon days of youth.

I have been thinking about the insidiousness of depression. That sort of fatal way that it sneaks up on you, whispering things like "All you *really* want to do is sit on the couch, smoke pot and watch history documentaries until you fall asleep! And the awesome thing is - YOU CAN DO IT ALL AGAIN TOMORROW!!!!" Depression whispers the insidious with extreme enthusiasm.

And then the next thing you know, you're like coming out of your Stockholm Syndrome because you don't even have the money/energy to go around the corner for yet another in a series of pizzas. Then you just sort of pull your head back, almost angry, all "Fuck you, Depression! You promised me pizza!"

And that, ladies and gents, is just about where I am now. I just spent an entire day grooming myself, wondering just when and where I decided showers were optional, that it was entirely acceptable to watch my skin slowly transform into a wrinkled and ashen version of its former self, and to ever think that pizzas were an acceptable substitute for home cooked meals.

On the plus side, I basically never get drunk these days. On the many minus sides, I feel very much like I have completely lost track of whatever shreds of my femininity had managed to hang on the past couple of decades here.

So here's what I think happened. Sure, this year got off to a rocky start, but in spite of all that, I honestly believed I had nothing to be depressed about and therefore would not be. What I neglected to take into account is my brain's seeming inability to go lengthy periods without fretting on something or another, to be concerned that any potential move I make will be a mistake of the highest, and most obvious, order.

Accepted to my graduate schools. Graduating from college. Escaping my beloved and fair city. All of these things are scary, and I, with characteristic arrogance, pretended they were not. This is the same thing that got me in trouble in the first round of college, damn it, don't I ever learn?

I don't know. I'm beginning to think I don't. That the better angels of my human self are perpetually locked in struggle with the demons of my cylon self (and yes, all this has happened before, and all this will happen again.) Every time I think I have something figured out about a person, people in general, and so on, it starts snowing in April, and I revert to comfortable and stupid habits.

At this point, I just have to get away from those things that make me comfortable and strike out boldly. However, one of the best grad programs for my chosen field is offering me money, but it's about 20 miles from my house. Life. Don't talk to me about life. These things should make me happy, but no. It's just another thing to keep me locked here, to move those goalposts back another two years, saying to myself 'It's okay, cuz then I'll really be out here.'

So yeah. Welcome back to the Online Depository of Woe, right?		  
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yet another installment of 'how lindsay feels today'   
05:07pm 28/01/2009
  Today's emotion is somewhat related to the previous entry. It was triggered when my roommate asked me if a down-on-her-luck friend of his could move into the now-open bedroom temporarily. Because I genuinely did not care who moved into that room, I said sure. After all, I'm moving out by mid-February, have a place lined up, so even under the worst possible case scenario, I just didn't care.

I met this girl yesterday. She is cute, has long pretty hair, wears stylish clothing, keeps a modest and feminine room, is unfailingly polite, quietly laughs after every sentence, speaks softly and plays records. Okay, fine, she seems fine, if a little extroverted, but that could just be the initial getting to know you deal.

Today, however, I came home to find her cleaning my kitchen, which okay, was a bit dirty, but damn it, it is my dirty kitchen. I have been the main cook and cleaner in that kitchen for almost three years now, and I was immediately annoyed. My first impulse: 'So, my kitchen isn't up to Princess Pretty's standards, eh?' which is admittedly irrational, but damn it: why is it so hard to justify being annoyed with nice people, even to one's self? Why did I immediately assume afterward that she was just trying to make a gesture of friendliness to a stranger? Why do I care who cleans my kitchen as long as it gets clean?

She also talks on her cell phone about her problems with the ex when there are other people in the room.

The point is that it's one thing for her to move in and be prettier, more stylish and blah blah blah than me, but clean my kitchen?! This means war!

(current theory: her presence here now represents a gross imbalance of pretty, fancy people versus frumpy, science people. first, we frumpies had the lead, then we were tied, and now the world has turned upside down...)		  
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about a song   
08:59am 25/01/2009
  "My Girls" by Animal Collective
Lyrics-
Is it much to admit I need
A solid soul and the blood I bleed
With a little girl, and by my spouse
I only want a proper house

I don't care for fancy things
Or to take part in a precious race
And children cry for the one who has
A real big heart and a father's grace

I don't mean to seem like I care about material things like a social status
I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls

So I know the lyrics don't scan well for the reading, but with the music - this shimmering, upbeat, joyful, complex music - this song, man, I love it. Animal Collective are pretty hip, pretty cool, pretty respected by music snobs, and I wonder if the hip youngsters can really get into this song that is basically and ode to and a craving for domesticity. (I am not now, nor have I ever been cool - just to be clear that I am not some sort of self-hating hip youngster.)

As I get older, all the urges of my youth are going by the wayside. I'm favoring stability over spontaneity, being staid over wandering, being (ethically) ambitious over being a (good-hearted) slacker. It has been a source of conflict both internal and external for me, as I butt heads with friends and lovers whose priorities differ, and as I try to assess what it means to have my needs and desires changing as time passes.

Yes, there are pros and cons to both sides, and people on either side have a way of being all-or-nothing, as though a spontaneously lived vagabond existence is the only path to creativity, satisfaction and feeling as though one's life is not wasted, or domesticity and professionalism are truly the only paths to being responsible, the only way to raise a family and so on.

I see people who are my age or older, and it troubles me to see the 'spontaneous' path people are often miserable. Not wanting to be tied down, they often fail to make real ties to things that have always mattered to humans - the places we live, the people around us. It's easy to romanticize the facile nature of meeting 800 new people a year traveling, but what do you get to really know about those people? Is that why it's so romantic - the warts don't show up until you spend your time sharing space for months and years? Where are your true friends, your true loves, when you feel you can only truly be happy leaving all that behind?

I see people my parents' ages, who are discontent with their settled years, and now that the kids are old enough, well, they roam endlessly, filling their lives with the experiences they had to deny themselves while attending to needs of the family. But I wonder if their years of domestic stability have made them somewhat fearful of truly diving in and experiencing the world as vividly as in their youth.

Essentially, the question I have is this: is life just a collection of experiences that we can show off, treasure and keep, like so many photographs? Is it about getting the best and the most photos to be able to say to ourselves and others 'See? I did it! I really lived these things!'? Or is life something to be savored like some fine wine, with each second of the experience feeling slightly different, giving more complexity to even the simplest blends? Is that a slow life, a boring one, one that's been hardly worth doing? How does one balance the need to experience new things without it becoming an exercise in anxious leaving or a shallow cursory glance, a sampler plate rather than one well-prepared meal? How does one live domestically in family life without becoming constrained, without becoming shy of new experiences, without nesting?







But if Noah Lennox can do it, maybe we all can...		  
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glorious victory for me!   
08:52pm 16/01/2009
  So, I've put up all these bird feeders around my house. Over the course of the past year, a total of five seed feeders and three suet feeders hang in the trees along Hancock St, here in Detroit. The main goal of this exercise was to increase urban bird diversity from the usual trio of starling, house sparrow and pigeon.

In these past months, I've seen juncos, finches, cardinals, blue jays, the occasional ring-necked pheasant. I was pretty pleased with myself, but there was really only one thing I've wanted, my actual, real and primarily secret goal: birds of prey.

Yes, I love animals, sure sure. But there is one class of animal I have no tolerance for whatsoever, and loyal reader(s?), I'm sure you know that that creature is the rat. Birds of prey eat rats, with no poisons needed. The cycle of life continues, and so on.

So today when I got home from work and looked up and saw a juvenile red-tailed hawk just chilling in the large tree in front of my house, let's just say it seems like things are turning around here. I take my good omens where I can, and damn it, a hawk perched nobly not even twenty five feet from me is pretty damn good.		  
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the second joyful moment   
01:39pm 13/01/2009
  I looked out my window the other day, because my most beloved cat, Malchik, was standing on his hind legs with his paws resting on the window sill, as a ring-necked pheasant strutted back and forth along the sidewalk in front of our house.

Looking at that pheasant, I felt strangely overcome with an urge to get my slingshot, and nail it one really good one in the head, then skin it, gut it and roast it in a light, miso-based sauce, its own juices and a couple of cloves of garlic. The nice vegetarian girl that dominates most of my thinking put the kibbosh on that idea, but man, just imagine:

The roommate walks in, tired and mildly irritated by the difficulties that mark the beginning of a new semester, to see me, gloriously covered in pheasant blood - and maybe if I'm feeling very showy, wearing it's little pelt as a hat or something - while the aromatic smells of roasting bird flesh permeated the air. It would have been truly an astonishing and memorable moment, but alas and alack, it exists only insofar as I have imagined it.		  
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the art of androgynous love   
04:36pm 09/01/2009
  This will be my very last semester at Wayne State. In order to enjoy it some, I have enrolled in a course called Medieval Love, which has a spunky old medievalist as its professor. In my forlorn state, reading books on how one should love, what entails love, who is worthy of love is at the very least an interesting exercise.

One notion that has been becoming apparent to me over the course of my decade of romancing and being romanced is that, culturally and socially, the way that men and women are supposed to love is different, and that difference is at least partially responsible for my sorry state.

Without going into generic silliness of men being from Pluto and women being from A Somewhat Different Kuyper Belt Object, there seems a somewhat universal consensus that a man demonstrates his love with protection, integrity and honor, while a woman demonstrates hers with devotion, support and nurture. Being, as I may have noted before, a woman of a distinctly butch orientation, it is difficult for the kind of love I bring to a relationship to be understood, or well, that's my story for now.

For example, my sister is decidedly Not Butch. She loves her husband deeply, devotedly and all sorts of other positive girl ways of loving. While I lack the devotion to wait six months for a dude to return to me, she waited, almost mythically, for years for her husband to return to her. And if her place in Greek mythos is Penelope, then mine is surely Xanthippe, renowned for her bad temper and sharp tongue.

I wonder to myself why Xanthippe is decried as an emblem of what it means to be a bad wife, to be a woman who loves her man poorly or not at all, or why the Shrew should require taming. What I believe happens is that the nurturing, supporting impulse may, in some butch oriented women, reveal itself as a continual pushing. I see before me a man, who is loving and loyal, and I admire and love those traits. I admire and love his intelligence. And truly, on the whole, I love the man.

But my support, my nurture, requires a different kind of integrity. This is not the simple integrity of the man who tells no lies, never steals, and always refrains from planting his boot in the sides of puppies. Integrity based instead on the idea of integration - that a man who has cut himself off from this or that side of himself or the world deserves the kind of support that will help him find it. When sweet words and good intentions fail, I get bitter, it becomes nagging and finally the love dissolves.

Poor Xanthippe and poor Kate. All the shrill housewives of caricature must have gazed with dewy eyes at their fellow at some point, and over time the gaze became one that reveals that had she her choice again, any other choice would have been preferable. Is the problem that we demand something other than bare protection, as we feel capable of defending ourselves? That we deem our own integrity sufficient, and understand the difficulties of maintaining one's integrity, then push our men to push us back to remain so or even improve?

Sometimes, it seems to me that the support I give is the kind I crave in return - to be held accountable, and not simply adored, to be encouraged when trying and chastised when complacent, to be challenged. Is it so wrong that sometimes love asks that we not forget, that we not overlook, that we not settle for this housebound contentment, but that we work together to find wisdom, humility and our inner humanity?

I have been thinking about how our expectations of love are really what fail us, not the people we meet. More precisely, that my expectations of you and your expectations of me are two ovals far apart on some Venn diagram. I think from this understanding of expectations of types of love come expressions such as 'opposites attract.' The male role is opposite the female, and duh, they attract. And maybe it is also painful to be near someone who is not so opposite, someone whose natural flaws glare and grate on you because they are so familiar?

But I don't think it needs be that unusual that there can be a deep love when your partner is, in some ways, like a recursive mirror. To see the flaws in him is to identify them in yourself, and to know them is to change them. If he would only be perfect if he..., then I would only be perfect if I... Whereas with Opposite Man, to see the flaws in him is to realize that I do not have them, that they do not move me to better myself by their very existence, but cause me to act as a dark mirror to him. He knows when I see him, it is not the lightness of his being, but its tragic flaws, and gosh, I just think to myself, it'd be so much better if he were like me.

So anyway, this is, I guess, my paean to difficult loves, to the ones that make us better, if it is only to prove them wrong.		  
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the first of the joyful moments   
06:14pm 06/01/2009
  Lying here in bed, I'm watching Dr. Who, reading advice columns and occasionally mulling a crossword puzzle clue. Just now, it occurred to me that there was no reason at all for me to be dressed in jeans, shoes, and sweater.  
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animals are better than technology   
06:32pm 05/01/2009
  Man.

When your man leaves you on the day you attend a baby's funeral, you begin to feel, well, a bit down in the dumps. However, I made a bold pledge that I will endure my sorrows stoically and without the use of liquor.

Yes, I know that this is crazy talk, coming straight from a crazy person who is not in her right mind at all right now. But that is okay. This pledge means many things - chiefly, that I will not get sloppy drunk and have mistaken rebound affairs. It means that I will not wake up and call into work because I was sad and made a night of it. Most of all it means that my poor, dear liver will be happy with me, and thus I will enlist one ally body part in my crusade against the sleeping sickness that my doctor has optimistically labeled 'mono and/or anything else.'

And perhaps even my right foot will join in the battle, as all this sleeping has kept me off it for the past few weeks. Unless, of course, it is already in league with the sleeping sickness and is perpetuating my somnolent condition. This is something to be considered.

Instead of seeking pleasures of the flesh to ride out my sadness, I am stimulating the old grey stuff. I decided now would be the perfect time to tackle 'Infinite Jest' and so far I'm pretty sure I was right about that. Simultaneously, I am mowing down the reading list for my medieval love course this semester. I came up with my research topic in a dream, and was able to verify some of the basic sources. It's a productive sadness.

This sadness, I've decided, will be a liberating one, one that allows for me to break the old and bad habits that my previous contentment and complacency had permitted me to fall into. It's an alone time sadness, because self-improvement is never that interesting for others to watch.

Additionally, as I stared, listlessly and wantonly, at my bird feeders, I noticed a rather different looking sparrow. In fact, I said to myself, I think he is not a sparrow at all. Leaping boldly to my feet, I grabbed my bird book and some binoculars and Malchik the Cat and I stared at the impostor sparrow for a few minutes. My birdlist had informed me earlier of flocks of white-winged crossbills in the urban suburbs of Detroit, so I checked, and voila! A female, whose honey-poo followed after.

Typing this, one cat is curled up happily in front of me, and my fat orange cat is snoring audibly. It is reassuring to be at home. It is not the worst time of my life.		  
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sad turns to bad   
02:53am 04/01/2009
  When one's day begins with the funeral for a friend's five-week old baby, it hardly seems possible to get any worse.

Here is where we see that the universe in her cruel indifference would allow this to also be the day that the boyfriend decides to pack up and move out. Granted, we were on the outs anyway, but I still care for and respect him. It broke my heart a little that he would basically sneak out while I was away, instead of letting me know.

All in all, a terrible day, one that I am not even going to try to put in words, in hopes that these emotions will dissolve like so much sugar in so much tea.		  
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