I was gonna write a post to let people know what's going on, but Sarah already wrote one that pretty much explains everything in better detail than I could, so check it out:
http://somethingaboutkudzu.blogspot.com/2008/08/gustav.html
Also, check out some pics of our new place. with any luck it'll still be here next week...
http://somethingaboutkudzu.blogspot.com/2008/08/pictures-of-awesomeness.html
Now I'm going to go duck and cover (that works for hurricanes as well, right?)
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
soporiphic ruminations: my next door neighbor
she is old. i have seen her on three occasions.
1. sarah needed a place to lock her scooter up. we live in a lovely area but around these parts, lovely does not entail safe. our landlord, a wonderful woman, warned us to keep any flammable objects off our front porch and gave us specific instructions as to how to unlock the various chains and padlocks that lead in and out of our back porch. this was our introduction to our neighborhood, spanish town. i’ve been meaning to post pictures, but i haven’t has the inclination to drive to a place that will develop them, yet. anywho, the place is really lovely but not very safe, but in comparison to the area across the street, it’s like we live in a medieval fortress town. still, sarah needed to tie up her scooter.
the fence next to our driveway is actually the property of our next door neighbor. our landlord suggested that we go over, introduce ourselves, and ask if we could lock the scooter to the fence post. we went around to the back of her house to find the door slightly ajar. we rang the bell and after a few moments a slight older woman in a nightgown and coke bottle glasses answered the door, with a huge smile on her face. we skipped right to the introductions by briefly telling her our names and that we had just moved in next door. before we could say anything else, she immediately began to relate stories of all of the previous tenants of our place and how they all seemed to stay for just two or three years. she seemed awfully puzzled by this. we told her that they were most likely graduate students and were primarily here for the education. she smiled at us. then she began in on a story about how she used to live in the house on the other side of her. the house she currently lives in once belonged to a woman who was older than her and during this woman’s declining years, our neighbor cared for her on a regular basis. when the woman finally passed away, our neighbor inherited the house and all that was in it. which included a plethora of antiques. she invited us in to take a look at them but we politely refused and asked for a rain check. we were on our way out and had just stopped by to introduce ourselves and to ask a question. before we could ask, however, she told us that ever since her husband passed away (he was a driver of a concrete truck, and a very good one at that. one day, as he swerved to avoid someone that had stopped illegally in the middle of the street, he hit a huge pothole and his truck flipped. he lived for about another year but was in pain the whole time. he would have killed the person in the car in front of him, but managed to avoid it and in so doing, killed himself. she never said that he was a hero, but in her eyes we knew he was) she had made a living selling the antiques that she had inherited. we told her we would simply have to take a rain check, and proceeded to ask our question.
she said that that would be fine, and then walked into the yard with us. it was a sunny day. she remarked that her daughter told her that she wasn’t aloud to go in the sun because of her medication. we could tell that this bothered her. she led us around to the side of the fence and pointed to the place that would be best for us to keep the scooter. in that time she also informed us that her daughter stayed with her roughly three to four days a week. just to visit. and to take care of her.
2. it was a cloudy day. i saw her in profile. she was staring into the highway that runs parallel to our street. she stood for a minute before she turned and went inside.
3. it was overcast. our neighbor and her daughter were salting for slugs. they seemed to be meticulous about the lawn. it is nice. the house which it encircles is grayish with years of dirt and dust from off the highway and cracked. but the yard is immaculate. i watched as they leaned down close to my car which was on my driveway. i tried not to stare, but i was worried that i had parked too close to the lawn, possibly on it, and that they would be mad. after they went back inside, i went to inspect my car to find that it was a good foot from the edge. i was relieved. i went back inside...
a day or so later, sarah went to get on her scooter. we’ve been biking most places and avoiding motorized transportation unless necessary, for the most part. she came back inside with an exasperated look about her. she looked more hurt than angry, but there was definitely anger there. she said that her scooter had trouble starting...and that the key had trouble turning...and that when she pulled the key out of the ignition, she found salt on it.
had we offended our neighbor? surely not. unless...unless something she said to her daughter made the daughter feel the need to take some sort of revenge on us. but for what? what had we done? maybe they were both really religious, and the fact that we were living in sin made it so that they felt they should meet out some sort of punishment on us. maybe the old woman told her daughter that she had taken us outside to show us where to tie up the scooter. the daughter, realizing that we had taken her poor mother out of the house when it was sunny out, decided that we should pay for endangering her mother and decided to pour the salt then. or maybe something else happened. but that was the last time i saw her. sarah tried to knock on her door. the windows were open. it was a sunny day. her daughters car was in their driveway. no one answered.
1. sarah needed a place to lock her scooter up. we live in a lovely area but around these parts, lovely does not entail safe. our landlord, a wonderful woman, warned us to keep any flammable objects off our front porch and gave us specific instructions as to how to unlock the various chains and padlocks that lead in and out of our back porch. this was our introduction to our neighborhood, spanish town. i’ve been meaning to post pictures, but i haven’t has the inclination to drive to a place that will develop them, yet. anywho, the place is really lovely but not very safe, but in comparison to the area across the street, it’s like we live in a medieval fortress town. still, sarah needed to tie up her scooter.
the fence next to our driveway is actually the property of our next door neighbor. our landlord suggested that we go over, introduce ourselves, and ask if we could lock the scooter to the fence post. we went around to the back of her house to find the door slightly ajar. we rang the bell and after a few moments a slight older woman in a nightgown and coke bottle glasses answered the door, with a huge smile on her face. we skipped right to the introductions by briefly telling her our names and that we had just moved in next door. before we could say anything else, she immediately began to relate stories of all of the previous tenants of our place and how they all seemed to stay for just two or three years. she seemed awfully puzzled by this. we told her that they were most likely graduate students and were primarily here for the education. she smiled at us. then she began in on a story about how she used to live in the house on the other side of her. the house she currently lives in once belonged to a woman who was older than her and during this woman’s declining years, our neighbor cared for her on a regular basis. when the woman finally passed away, our neighbor inherited the house and all that was in it. which included a plethora of antiques. she invited us in to take a look at them but we politely refused and asked for a rain check. we were on our way out and had just stopped by to introduce ourselves and to ask a question. before we could ask, however, she told us that ever since her husband passed away (he was a driver of a concrete truck, and a very good one at that. one day, as he swerved to avoid someone that had stopped illegally in the middle of the street, he hit a huge pothole and his truck flipped. he lived for about another year but was in pain the whole time. he would have killed the person in the car in front of him, but managed to avoid it and in so doing, killed himself. she never said that he was a hero, but in her eyes we knew he was) she had made a living selling the antiques that she had inherited. we told her we would simply have to take a rain check, and proceeded to ask our question.
she said that that would be fine, and then walked into the yard with us. it was a sunny day. she remarked that her daughter told her that she wasn’t aloud to go in the sun because of her medication. we could tell that this bothered her. she led us around to the side of the fence and pointed to the place that would be best for us to keep the scooter. in that time she also informed us that her daughter stayed with her roughly three to four days a week. just to visit. and to take care of her.
2. it was a cloudy day. i saw her in profile. she was staring into the highway that runs parallel to our street. she stood for a minute before she turned and went inside.
3. it was overcast. our neighbor and her daughter were salting for slugs. they seemed to be meticulous about the lawn. it is nice. the house which it encircles is grayish with years of dirt and dust from off the highway and cracked. but the yard is immaculate. i watched as they leaned down close to my car which was on my driveway. i tried not to stare, but i was worried that i had parked too close to the lawn, possibly on it, and that they would be mad. after they went back inside, i went to inspect my car to find that it was a good foot from the edge. i was relieved. i went back inside...
a day or so later, sarah went to get on her scooter. we’ve been biking most places and avoiding motorized transportation unless necessary, for the most part. she came back inside with an exasperated look about her. she looked more hurt than angry, but there was definitely anger there. she said that her scooter had trouble starting...and that the key had trouble turning...and that when she pulled the key out of the ignition, she found salt on it.
had we offended our neighbor? surely not. unless...unless something she said to her daughter made the daughter feel the need to take some sort of revenge on us. but for what? what had we done? maybe they were both really religious, and the fact that we were living in sin made it so that they felt they should meet out some sort of punishment on us. maybe the old woman told her daughter that she had taken us outside to show us where to tie up the scooter. the daughter, realizing that we had taken her poor mother out of the house when it was sunny out, decided that we should pay for endangering her mother and decided to pour the salt then. or maybe something else happened. but that was the last time i saw her. sarah tried to knock on her door. the windows were open. it was a sunny day. her daughters car was in their driveway. no one answered.
Monday, August 25, 2008
The Long Road Home Part 2
I begin this blog by sending thanks to the ever wise and beautiful Paul Boshears who reached deep into my last blog and pulled out what I was truly trying to say. A few things that I left out of my last blog that Paul pointed out are that the heart is not a finite thing, but rather an entity (though that is so not the right word) that is at once tangible and fleeting, controllable and chaotic. It is, as Paul suggests, something more fluid. His analogy of a heart as belonging to the "vast ocean of humanity" points to the depth and the complexity of our emotions, and does a good job at framing where I sit today, or rather, where I swim. For the last few weeks I've been treading water through a new river. I haven't been fighting the current, but I haven't been allowing it to take me with it either.
If it is indeed a river that I find myself in, moving and mingling, constantly on my way to something new, and always connected to this great life force, the term "river teeth" comes to mind. One of my favorite authors, David James Duncan, has a collection of short stories titled "RiverTeeth," and in it he explains that river teeth are the fallen debris that litter the bottom of rivers. This debris then lets some of the river sediment through, all the while capturing more debris until the pressure of the water finally breaks through and frees that which was once stuck.
And maybe that is another analogy for broken hearts. Maybe the debris that is first taken by the river teeth only to become river teeth, might contain some of those who are weighed down and venture too close to the bottom, to the murkiness... those that have trouble enjoying the the flow. After all, the river teeth are constantly struggling against the flow. But I feel that I am taking this too far and have too many other fish to fry at the moment. But again, that might wait for another entry. For now I have just finished my first week of classes. My hopes and fears, for the most part, have all been proven to be well founded. I came here prepared and was not disappointed. I look out my living room window and watch the sky, split into various shades of pink and gray and blue. They tell us that a storm is coming and to be prepared. Tomorrow I'll go stock up on some bottled water.
If it is indeed a river that I find myself in, moving and mingling, constantly on my way to something new, and always connected to this great life force, the term "river teeth" comes to mind. One of my favorite authors, David James Duncan, has a collection of short stories titled "RiverTeeth," and in it he explains that river teeth are the fallen debris that litter the bottom of rivers. This debris then lets some of the river sediment through, all the while capturing more debris until the pressure of the water finally breaks through and frees that which was once stuck.
And maybe that is another analogy for broken hearts. Maybe the debris that is first taken by the river teeth only to become river teeth, might contain some of those who are weighed down and venture too close to the bottom, to the murkiness... those that have trouble enjoying the the flow. After all, the river teeth are constantly struggling against the flow. But I feel that I am taking this too far and have too many other fish to fry at the moment. But again, that might wait for another entry. For now I have just finished my first week of classes. My hopes and fears, for the most part, have all been proven to be well founded. I came here prepared and was not disappointed. I look out my living room window and watch the sky, split into various shades of pink and gray and blue. They tell us that a storm is coming and to be prepared. Tomorrow I'll go stock up on some bottled water.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
I live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I have been here for three weeks and am still in a sort of state of shock about the whole thing. This entry, then, is about two things. The first part is about what it means to be home, and second, what it means to try to make Louisiana my home.
I have long believed that home is not a place, but a presence. Home exists when and where you exist in a particular way. For me, home is about family and friends. For example, a few years ago some friends of mine and I were shooting a short film. One of the locations was in the middle of a town called Tonopah Nevada. Tonopah was a silver mining town in central Nevada that, by the time we had arrived in 2005, seemed to have pretty much dried up. The point is that despite the fact that there was little, if anything, to do ther
e and that the towns population had reduced from 10,000 to roughly 2,000 in the matter of a few short years, for the few days that we were there, it felt like home. We were never at a loss for something to do (we were filming, but not all the time), and no one ever got bored, or depressed about being, literally, in the middle of nowhere. Had I been there alone, I would not have felt the same way.
The point being is that I think that there is only so much time spent alone that can be helpful for a person. It doesn’t matter if they are in London, Honolulu, or Tonopah, what makes a place home, and what makes a place worth living in are the people who are around you and care for you. This gets me to that old adage, “home is where the heart is,” and leads me to question if, and how much we possess our own heart. When we’re kids we think in terms of “best friends.” I think our hearts are objects that we divide up and dole out as we see fit. It’s bad form to hold too much of your own heart, if any, so we immediately give it to others to hold. When we’re young, we don’t have as many people as we would trust with it when we are older, so it belongs to fewer people, and the biggest piece goes to your best friend. As we grow older we cut it up into more and more pieces and continue to hand them out to more and more people. When someone gives their piece back to you, it could be devastating. It’s not that the heart is literally broken, but it feels like that must be the case or they would have kept it. And then we don’t know what to do with it. What if it is broken and we just can’t see how? It would seem unethical to give the broken piece away without fixing it. I mean, really, who wants to inherit a broken anything? Then if we can get convince ourselves that it’s not broken and that it works fine (even if that’s not really the case), we try to force it on someone else or we just hold onto it and pine on the one who once cared for it. But there is no set standard and no guidebook as to who to give it to and what to do should they give it back. It’s a scary process.
I have lived in a lot of places in my life, from California, Georgia, North Carolina, and for a couple of months, Ireland, and now I live in Baton Rouge. I am about to start the process of cutting up my heart again and handing it out. I need to do it soon, but not so quickly that I overestimate the sizes I need to give out and the amount that I need to give out. There is also the fear of stepping too timidly. Some would say that I never have this problem but that doesn’t change the fact that I feel like I do have this problem...
This ends part 1. Part 2 will present a little information about why the Long Road home can only take place in Louisiana. It’s a section of the country unlike any other...
I have long believed that home is not a place, but a presence. Home exists when and where you exist in a particular way. For me, home is about family and friends. For example, a few years ago some friends of mine and I were shooting a short film. One of the locations was in the middle of a town called Tonopah Nevada. Tonopah was a silver mining town in central Nevada that, by the time we had arrived in 2005, seemed to have pretty much dried up. The point is that despite the fact that there was little, if anything, to do ther
e and that the towns population had reduced from 10,000 to roughly 2,000 in the matter of a few short years, for the few days that we were there, it felt like home. We were never at a loss for something to do (we were filming, but not all the time), and no one ever got bored, or depressed about being, literally, in the middle of nowhere. Had I been there alone, I would not have felt the same way.The point being is that I think that there is only so much time spent alone that can be helpful for a person. It doesn’t matter if they are in London, Honolulu, or Tonopah, what makes a place home, and what makes a place worth living in are the people who are around you and care for you. This gets me to that old adage, “home is where the heart is,” and leads me to question if, and how much we possess our own heart. When we’re kids we think in terms of “best friends.” I think our hearts are objects that we divide up and dole out as we see fit. It’s bad form to hold too much of your own heart, if any, so we immediately give it to others to hold. When we’re young, we don’t have as many people as we would trust with it when we are older, so it belongs to fewer people, and the biggest piece goes to your best friend. As we grow older we cut it up into more and more pieces and continue to hand them out to more and more people. When someone gives their piece back to you, it could be devastating. It’s not that the heart is literally broken, but it feels like that must be the case or they would have kept it. And then we don’t know what to do with it. What if it is broken and we just can’t see how? It would seem unethical to give the broken piece away without fixing it. I mean, really, who wants to inherit a broken anything? Then if we can get convince ourselves that it’s not broken and that it works fine (even if that’s not really the case), we try to force it on someone else or we just hold onto it and pine on the one who once cared for it. But there is no set standard and no guidebook as to who to give it to and what to do should they give it back. It’s a scary process.
I have lived in a lot of places in my life, from California, Georgia, North Carolina, and for a couple of months, Ireland, and now I live in Baton Rouge. I am about to start the process of cutting up my heart again and handing it out. I need to do it soon, but not so quickly that I overestimate the sizes I need to give out and the amount that I need to give out. There is also the fear of stepping too timidly. Some would say that I never have this problem but that doesn’t change the fact that I feel like I do have this problem...
This ends part 1. Part 2 will present a little information about why the Long Road home can only take place in Louisiana. It’s a section of the country unlike any other...
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
political/Social interrogations: I don't want a revolution
It seems to have two very different usages, one being to come full circle, as in "the revolution of the earth around the sun takes one year," and the other to bring about a complete change, as in "the face of governance was forever changed by the American revolution." It also connotes going around something, but not touching it, which, may be the factor that connects the two usages. Inasmuch as the earth circles the sun, the sun is a part of the revolution. In the same way, inasmuch as the colonies worked to distance themselves from Great Britain, the revolution was always constituted by their relationship to Great Britain. It seems then that any revolution is always already limited to what it can become. This can be seen simply by looking at the historical texts that influenced and informed governmental texts that arose after any major country achieved it's revolution. We can also see how any revolution, though it may have the best of intentions, is still something that goes around in circles. It is still something that is influenced by and not necessarily contrary to that which it is revolting from.
So, why do we call for revolution? Does it come from a need to act? A need to see our actions change the world? That's all I can think of. I don't want to sound corny and say that I think it would be more productive to strive for evolution instead of revolution, but I can't think of a better way to put it. The problem with evolution is that there is no significant change that we can see in our lifetimes. There are no significant changes in evolution that happen over a hundred lifetimes. However, it seems to be the only way that things do change permanently. We have seen many times, in the last century alone, where the moments of revolution breeds change that then continues revolving until it's back to where it started. Think Stalin. Think Hitler. Think the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Real change, it seems, would require something greater and more frightening than bloodshed. It would require a certain amount of faith in ourselves as well as in others. It also requires that this faith would be equal in both cases, i.e. I must have the same amount of faith that I have in myself that I have for others. For one to be greater would be to tip the scales. For me to say that I have more faith in others is to breed lethargy, whereas to say that I have more faith in myself might lead to me thinking that I am better/stronger/more capable than I actually am.
So, the question I have then is how do we start/formulate/initiate an evolution? Should we strive to make our own communities better places to live? It's a start, but can a cultural evolution happen without organized action? I would like to think that that is the very basis of what a cultural evolution would be. I feel like we spend a lot of time trying to organize projects saying that we need such and such a number of people to start. Why not, instead, choose a project that can be accomplished on your own, and allow the positive effects to trickle through the community. A hypothetical: you decide to plant a community garden. You buy a small piece of land and place a sign in front of it that says "community garden." you plant a few things but no one else does. you keep tending the garden until you get old and die, or until you move on, and in all that time, you are the only one who has tended it. There are a million possibilities as to what might happen to the garden after you have left it. One of those possibilities is that someone else might take up where you left of. They might expand the project and make it bigger, and more people might join in.
Sure, it's idealistic, but I don't think so much so. If people never come to the garden, that should be no bother, as you would still be able to appreciate it for yourself. You would still be doing as much for you as you were for others. The worst case scenario seems to be that the patch of ground would go untended and eventually get built over. At least you had fresh vegetables for a while. If you start out with hopes of evolution you still might end up with only a slight revolution, but at least you moved something.
So, why do we call for revolution? Does it come from a need to act? A need to see our actions change the world? That's all I can think of. I don't want to sound corny and say that I think it would be more productive to strive for evolution instead of revolution, but I can't think of a better way to put it. The problem with evolution is that there is no significant change that we can see in our lifetimes. There are no significant changes in evolution that happen over a hundred lifetimes. However, it seems to be the only way that things do change permanently. We have seen many times, in the last century alone, where the moments of revolution breeds change that then continues revolving until it's back to where it started. Think Stalin. Think Hitler. Think the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Real change, it seems, would require something greater and more frightening than bloodshed. It would require a certain amount of faith in ourselves as well as in others. It also requires that this faith would be equal in both cases, i.e. I must have the same amount of faith that I have in myself that I have for others. For one to be greater would be to tip the scales. For me to say that I have more faith in others is to breed lethargy, whereas to say that I have more faith in myself might lead to me thinking that I am better/stronger/more capable than I actually am.
So, the question I have then is how do we start/formulate/initiate an evolution? Should we strive to make our own communities better places to live? It's a start, but can a cultural evolution happen without organized action? I would like to think that that is the very basis of what a cultural evolution would be. I feel like we spend a lot of time trying to organize projects saying that we need such and such a number of people to start. Why not, instead, choose a project that can be accomplished on your own, and allow the positive effects to trickle through the community. A hypothetical: you decide to plant a community garden. You buy a small piece of land and place a sign in front of it that says "community garden." you plant a few things but no one else does. you keep tending the garden until you get old and die, or until you move on, and in all that time, you are the only one who has tended it. There are a million possibilities as to what might happen to the garden after you have left it. One of those possibilities is that someone else might take up where you left of. They might expand the project and make it bigger, and more people might join in.
Sure, it's idealistic, but I don't think so much so. If people never come to the garden, that should be no bother, as you would still be able to appreciate it for yourself. You would still be doing as much for you as you were for others. The worst case scenario seems to be that the patch of ground would go untended and eventually get built over. At least you had fresh vegetables for a while. If you start out with hopes of evolution you still might end up with only a slight revolution, but at least you moved something.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
bits of this and that: graduate school, part 2
Around October of my first year of graduate school, I became something that I had never truly been – promiscuous. I was promiscuous when it came to my personal relationships in just about every way possible. I was also promiscuous when it came to my work and to my self. I began drinking a lot more than I wanted to and pitied myself a lot more than was healthy. I kept to my regular schedule, up at dawn and down as late as possible, but my waking hours were filled with less and less work, and more and more procrastination and slacking off. In a way, however, this wasn’t all bad. When I began graduate school I was so gung ho that I thought I could do everything as I had always done and still manage school as well. I even drove home to Atlanta for both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, a combined seven days of travel. I also agreed to work as a production assistant for a show that my then advisor was directing/adapting. I took on much more than I should have and by the time I lost it in late October, I was so jaded that I really didn’t care at all about being in school anymore. And to think, it took just three months. So, what was the positive thing about all this? If I hadn’t gone through all of that, the rest of my graduate career would have most likely been marked by a whole lot of very uninteresting work.
Here’s the scoop: My promiscuity didn’t allow me to get very close to too many people (those that I did get close to, I have remained dear friends with and probably wouldn’t have made it out of graduate school without…I very well might have just run home). It did, however, get me out of the house almost every night where I drank and chatted with a lot of different people. The fact that I didn’t embarrass myself or others too much during that period helped make it so that a lot of people knew me enough to know that I had a decent personality and could be fun to hang out with. It made it so that when I eventually did have my shit together, I found that there were a lot of people who would at least hear me out, if they were unable to help in other ways. Basically I ended up with a lot of people who I could draw on for a variety of reasons. I also ended up with a healthy amount of distrust and cynicism towards graduate school and communication studies in general. This was and is by no means a total distrust. It is, I believe, necessary in any field to question what it is you are a part of, and to know that it will always be larger than yourself and fairly uncontrollable. It should be kind of like skiing a double black diamond. You know that you can do it, and you love doing it, but you also know that at any moment the mountain might turn on you and swallow you up.
I passed the winter alone, house sitting for one of my advisers. During that month I read a lot for pleasure and spent many, many quiet nights alone. During many of those quiet nights I thought back to the previous semester, my determination to stay in school, and what doing so might mean. Primarily, I realized, it meant that I had to conquer those parts of me that wanted to run like hell. I had to find out what they were and confront them to the best of my ability. Though it might sound corny, I had to confront my demons. To help me, I had my new friends and acquaintances, my distrust for what I was about to do, and a commitment to do something that I wanted to do, and not what I was told I should do. Though people had been telling me that I should do what I wanted to do since I began graduate school that fall, I never truly believed them. It wasn’t until I had that time to myself to reflect on that awful semester that I realized that if I didn’t do what I wanted to do, I would really lose it.
Here’s the scoop: My promiscuity didn’t allow me to get very close to too many people (those that I did get close to, I have remained dear friends with and probably wouldn’t have made it out of graduate school without…I very well might have just run home). It did, however, get me out of the house almost every night where I drank and chatted with a lot of different people. The fact that I didn’t embarrass myself or others too much during that period helped make it so that a lot of people knew me enough to know that I had a decent personality and could be fun to hang out with. It made it so that when I eventually did have my shit together, I found that there were a lot of people who would at least hear me out, if they were unable to help in other ways. Basically I ended up with a lot of people who I could draw on for a variety of reasons. I also ended up with a healthy amount of distrust and cynicism towards graduate school and communication studies in general. This was and is by no means a total distrust. It is, I believe, necessary in any field to question what it is you are a part of, and to know that it will always be larger than yourself and fairly uncontrollable. It should be kind of like skiing a double black diamond. You know that you can do it, and you love doing it, but you also know that at any moment the mountain might turn on you and swallow you up.
I passed the winter alone, house sitting for one of my advisers. During that month I read a lot for pleasure and spent many, many quiet nights alone. During many of those quiet nights I thought back to the previous semester, my determination to stay in school, and what doing so might mean. Primarily, I realized, it meant that I had to conquer those parts of me that wanted to run like hell. I had to find out what they were and confront them to the best of my ability. Though it might sound corny, I had to confront my demons. To help me, I had my new friends and acquaintances, my distrust for what I was about to do, and a commitment to do something that I wanted to do, and not what I was told I should do. Though people had been telling me that I should do what I wanted to do since I began graduate school that fall, I never truly believed them. It wasn’t until I had that time to myself to reflect on that awful semester that I realized that if I didn’t do what I wanted to do, I would really lose it.
Monday, August 4, 2008
bits of this and that: graduate school, part 1
My first attempt to choose a graduate program was not totally thought out. I was substitute teaching and found myself working with ESL classes and students most of the time. In addition to having a lot of fun with these kids, I was hankering to get out of the country, or at the very least, Southern California. I completed a last minute application to the Linguistics program at Cal State Long Beach in the hopes that I would also earn my ESL teaching accreditation and eventually go abroad for an extended period of time. I ended up turning down the offer that CSULB sent me, particularly because I realized I had very little interest in linguistics as a primary field of study, but also because I didn’t think I would be happy being so far away from family and friends for such a significant period of time. At the point where I had turned down the offer from CSULB, I had recently finished production on a short film and had watched as it was summarily rejected from every film festival my friend Dan and I had sent it to. The process was great at points, but also put a tremendous amount of strain on my friendships. Despite the rejections we were able to see the significance of what we had accomplished with very little funds, time, and energy. The itch to leave SoCal was now accompanied by an itch to do something meaningful and wonderful and beautiful with my life. It was about the time of this realization that I received an email from the admissions office at UNC Chapel Hill saying that my application was incomplete. The funny part is that I didn’t remember filling out any part of the application…
I traced back in my mind the application process to Long Beach, and remembered looking at other schools. In order to get some more information I had begun to fill out a couple of the applications, but at the time didn’t really give any serious thought to the prospect of trying an academic career. I called up my friend and mentor, Dr. Gentile, from Kennesaw and asked his advice. He pointed me in the direction of Northwestern, in addition to UNC. I also applied to the program of Religious Studies at Brandeis and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. JTS told me that I needed further undergraduate classes, which they encouraged me to take and then to reapply, and after looking deeper into Brandeis, I realized I didn’t care as much for religious studies as I might have thought, so I left the application incomplete. I committed myself to getting in to either UNC or Northwestern, with my backup being a career at Starbucks (I hoped to go into coffee roasting and purchasing and eventually into international relations, and probably an MBA to help me on my way. I’m very happy with the choice I made, but I think this other path would have been pretty interesting as well). Shortly after the deadline for admissions past, I received a letter from Northwestern saying that I was not accepted into the program. When I inquired as to why, they said that my test scores were not up to par. I figured this meant that I would also be rejected by UNC and began to call in favors and set up interviews with some of the higher ups at Starbucks. Before any of these interviews were to take place, however, I received my acceptance letter from UNC. I cancelled the interviews with Starbucks, put in my notice, and cemented plans with Jesse, my girlfriend at the time, to spend the summer in Europe, before we would again be forced to live at opposite coasts. Though the last two years were amazing and life shaping, the first few months of graduate school were probably the most trying of my life. I adjusted quickly to the workload, but not in a healthy way. I had no idea what to expect and in order to do what I felt I needed to do I ended up damaging many of my personal relationships. I fell out of touch with close friends, broke up with Jesse, and fell into a four month troubling depression. All the problems of the relationship had expanded for me and became more complicated with the distance. I found myself sleeping at school, if I slept at all (something I had often done my first semester of undergrad as well), and emotionally distant from family and friends. It was at this point that I also began the arduous task of picking a topic for my thesis. As much as I danced around my choice, I knew that the best project was going to be something where I would reach deep into and embrace the darkness that was engulfing me. I wanted to confront it, if not conquer it. Short of working towards that goal, I felt I would be trapped in a permanent state of emotional retardation.
I traced back in my mind the application process to Long Beach, and remembered looking at other schools. In order to get some more information I had begun to fill out a couple of the applications, but at the time didn’t really give any serious thought to the prospect of trying an academic career. I called up my friend and mentor, Dr. Gentile, from Kennesaw and asked his advice. He pointed me in the direction of Northwestern, in addition to UNC. I also applied to the program of Religious Studies at Brandeis and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. JTS told me that I needed further undergraduate classes, which they encouraged me to take and then to reapply, and after looking deeper into Brandeis, I realized I didn’t care as much for religious studies as I might have thought, so I left the application incomplete. I committed myself to getting in to either UNC or Northwestern, with my backup being a career at Starbucks (I hoped to go into coffee roasting and purchasing and eventually into international relations, and probably an MBA to help me on my way. I’m very happy with the choice I made, but I think this other path would have been pretty interesting as well). Shortly after the deadline for admissions past, I received a letter from Northwestern saying that I was not accepted into the program. When I inquired as to why, they said that my test scores were not up to par. I figured this meant that I would also be rejected by UNC and began to call in favors and set up interviews with some of the higher ups at Starbucks. Before any of these interviews were to take place, however, I received my acceptance letter from UNC. I cancelled the interviews with Starbucks, put in my notice, and cemented plans with Jesse, my girlfriend at the time, to spend the summer in Europe, before we would again be forced to live at opposite coasts. Though the last two years were amazing and life shaping, the first few months of graduate school were probably the most trying of my life. I adjusted quickly to the workload, but not in a healthy way. I had no idea what to expect and in order to do what I felt I needed to do I ended up damaging many of my personal relationships. I fell out of touch with close friends, broke up with Jesse, and fell into a four month troubling depression. All the problems of the relationship had expanded for me and became more complicated with the distance. I found myself sleeping at school, if I slept at all (something I had often done my first semester of undergrad as well), and emotionally distant from family and friends. It was at this point that I also began the arduous task of picking a topic for my thesis. As much as I danced around my choice, I knew that the best project was going to be something where I would reach deep into and embrace the darkness that was engulfing me. I wanted to confront it, if not conquer it. Short of working towards that goal, I felt I would be trapped in a permanent state of emotional retardation.
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