64 posts tagged “university”

I witnessed an atrocity on the way to school today. I was feeling kind of weak, paranoid and vulnerable, kind of lost in thought (I usually feel this way the day after I cut sensitive areas), when I heard a loud group of crows ahead of me. I often hear crows on the way to school, there is a group of them around here, but today it was especially loud. I continued to walk toward school, and when I reached the crows, I saw a pigeon fall out of the sky and land on the grass beside me, injured and struggling, followed by the manic crows. They were all attacking the pigeon and grey feathers were everywhere. I stopped and watched for a while, but I couldn't really do much about it. I continued on my way after the pigeon died and other students noticed.

I suspected that I was anemic so I tested my skin with my mother's gold wedding band. The black lines that appeared were much more distinct than the lines I remember seeing when I was put on iron pills in high school. I am guessing that is a bad thing. Whatever, I am not taking iron again. I hardly ever have the opportunity to eat meat, it's not really part of my diet, I get my protein from eggs and seafood. Fuck iron.

I have my first piano lesson tomorrow, looking forward to playing some songs. The first draft of my research paper is due on Saturday, so I need to focus. I have been having trouble with that lately. Too much procrastination.

All those who have left,
have left,
white sun,
high at noon,
the bell rings,
warming my body,
my ashy skin,
and I'm not sure,
if we will meet again.

I am not sure if I should be proud, but I wish I didn't feel guilty. I ditched Tuesday, who has been wanting to see me for a few weeks. Problem is that Tuesday wants to meet on the early weekdays, when I have the most reading to do. I have made excuses the past couple weeks and this week Tuesday asked if we could spend the night together since there is a national holiday on Wednesday. I said that it would be perfect and got excited about the date, reassuring him that I would be able to make it, he hinted at big plans and inviting people.

That was Saturday morning. Saturday evening Ryu also asked me about the upcoming Tuesday. I told him I already had plans and that I couldn't see him. He accepted this without questioning further. But I really enjoyed being with him that night and realised that I would rather spend Tuesday with him.

What to do, what to do? One thing about me, I never ditch people; even if I am sick and sleepy, I never skip class. Even if it costs me something, I will be there if I promised you that I would be. I am offended when people are late, and I take pains not to be. So, I am not the type to switch plans like this. I struggled all day with the decision. But I called both parties in the evening after much mental struggle.

Ryu said that he had accepted that he would not see me on Tuesday, but now was so relieved. I felt like such a loser telling him that I wanted to see him and that I had changed plans. But it was the truth. I had to lie to Tuesday though.

Tuesday knows I am seeing someone else, I mentioned it on Saturday. I refused to give details about who it was. I don't think it matters to Tuesday, it just makes my excuses about school seem less credible.

I won't get into detail about the phone call, but there were lots of plans for us on Tuesday. Difficult arrangements were made, people were sent away, people were invited and dinner was arranged. All this preparation for me, I felt so selfish when I lied straight into the phone and said that I have too much work to do.

Ryu better be extremely worthwhile tonight.

P.S. I hung out with a bunch of CIA agents at the Deca Hotel (bad memories of that place!) last night, they were recruiting from my university. They invited Jackson school students for an analysis game, testing our analysing skills and showing us what it's like to work as an intelligence analyst. In the end, I decided it would be kind of boring and tough to be an analyst, but being a spy and getting the intelligence would be interesting. I am still considering applying to the CIA.

I have so much to read and so little time... Books piling up for school and for my personal reading. I wish I could read faster.

I read a poem last night at Revolution Books, I really like being there. I love having a space downtown where I can escape the university environment I am beginning to hate. It's hard to imagine my goal of being in graduate school for several more years. I am very tired of the institution and the focus of it all, the goals of the university. I feel like it is turning most of the students into useless office workers that will be victim to the oppressive capitalist system. I want to escape it so badly, but each day it gets harder and harder to see beyond the dollar signs. A creative career is a terribly rare thing.

Sometimes I just want to shut myself up into my room and forget the rest of the world. Well, sometimes I do exactly that.

I promised I would spend next Tuesday night with someone who destroys me and drains me, so I am about to face a trying week. I am spending tonight with Ryu, looking forward to seeing him, but I have some things to do in the meantime. I am preparing myself, reading and getting ahead before Tuesday and the subsequent empty days it will cause.

It's the sixth week of the quarter, which means classes will become more demanding, work will start piling up, and I will have less time to do all my favorite things (i.e. sitting around reading websites/books without direct application to my studies).

Dug through the university library catalog for sources for my research paper this quarter, social reform and nationalism in the Ottoman empire. I found some good books!

Had the "what are your life plans" talk with Ryu. It's simple. In two years he will be working twelve hours a day for some Japanese company and I will be beginning my master's degree somewhere on the East coast (if not farther away). He didn't seem very excited to hear about my uncompromising ambitions. And I told him I will be too busy this week to spend much time with him.

Signing up for piano lessons. My goal is to be able to play the first movement of Moonlight Sonata by the end of the school year. I've (re)taught myself how to read music and some of the scales and chords.

Also planning to read a poem at the second Revolution Books open mic this Friday.

Though it has been on the back-burner of my consciousness, I had not heard from the super competitive and bureaucratic International studies department about my application to the major. I applied a couple weeks ago, and I was kind of confident about getting in, but nothing was official.

I am pleased to report that I just received my acceptance email. Woo! Both of my majors are officially declared! yatta!

Date with Ryu tonight, he is so cute sometimes. More about him later, I have a comp lit midterm due in 55 minutes! I've titled it, "Sex, an Art of Tensions?" and it's an analysis of a sex scene in a comic we read for class.

---

So I'm at home, finished with the week. What do I do? It's always a rush to to finish. And afterward I still feel at edge. I still have a bunch of wine at my house from last weekend.... *pours a glass*

Ryu says he wants to meet later, around 7 for dinner. It's weird. I think going out in public with him will be strange. I will have a few drinks before I see him, otherwise, I won't be able to relax.

I had sex with him a few times, and I was totally sober. I'm preoccupied with the idea of it lately. Starting to feel perverse. No, I am not saying he was amazing, I'm saying that I am probably thinking about it a lot more than is normal. It is strange to be doing this with a student. He thinks I'm his girlfriend. No one has ever really called me that. Even Arihito last month in Tokyo, we saw each other pretty regularly but we were just friends. Even Yusuke... called me every day, but I was so busy and ignored him so much that I don't think even he could consider me a girlfriend.

Ryu on the other hand, is informing all his buddies back home that he has "made an American girlfriend."

Anyway, sex. As much as I try to convince myself otherwise, it is still not as good as a dose of really good H. Or alternatively (if you aren't into the needles and illegal stuff) a bunch of oxies. Seems like nothing will ever be.

I like how the effect of drugs lingers, I like how it makes me feel, what it does to my mind and how it changes the world. I need nothing else when I'm high, just me, satisfied with myself for a while. Sex doesn't do that. I really gave it a chance! I "liberated" myself from a previously very negative attitude toward sex. No I don't think it's dirty, I think it can be very sensual and it makes you feel good for a little while, even a day or two after, you might be thinking about that person. But to be honest, it's not really satisfying on the same level that I feel after writing something I imagined during a high, or the feeling of my body when I take opiates.

I don't want to say that I've tried everything, but I feel like I have, different types of people, different scenes, I don't even want to describe all the different situations, but it's still not as good as sticking a pen into my hand til I bleed or getting high out my mind. Nothing compares to the calm that I feel the day after I cut myself or after getting high and writing all night.

Today is auspicious. It's very windy, and somehow warm.

Two quotes from Polish-born American author, Isaac Bashevis Singer:

When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.

A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.

Today we spoke about autobiography as truth in my comparative literature comics class. A lot of the power that autobiographies (and memoirs, for that matter) have is based in the reality and honesty the genre promises. The reader trusts the author to tell the truth, his personal experience, his story. But perhaps autobiography is closer to fiction than we might expect.

It is completely up to the writer's discretion to decide what is worth retelling. And besides the glossing over and remolding of facts (as well as simply lying), to fit something as abstract as life into some sort of literary model, with a beginning, middle, and end is already distorting the truth, isn't it? Taking random, fragmented events in life and putting them into some sort of meaningful, organised form or narrative, isn't that a type of trickery? An illusion? A type of lie? And having one person's perspective on a lifetime of events, isn't that a bit limiting and unfair? Yes it is! And I think it's wonderful.

Fiction on the other hand, is the opposite. You have a story that never happened, people who don't exist, and an attempt to make the events seem as real and probable as possible. It's the reverse strategy. I'm not very good at it.

I met up with Ryu today after school for coffee. He says he "always wants to be with" me. He asked me if I would accept that, I said alright, sure. He's kinda cute, a typical, private, all-boys' school guy (middle and high school in his case) and studies international peace and conflict resolution. His English is pretty good-o, and-o he wants to hang out tomorrow.

Where are you?
A deep grey blue,
A heavy mood in the late afternoon,
Gloom enters my room,
Seeps through the blinds,
Clear lines,
A sort of bright, artificial night,
Darkness in the light,
Into a thick, cloudy white,
I disappear,
Under this cover,
Until sun sets,
The color of blood
I begin to see
An orange glow
Burning in the window.
Where are you?

Literary Quote of the Day today from Charles Baudelaire:

"It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself."

I would agree. Having no responsibility or work to be done is boring. Work can be interpreted as liberally as possible, I think. Any task to be done is, at least, something to be done. Having to amuse yourself with so much leisure time can and will become boring (and expensive), then, eventually lead to despair. Is this to say we should just work and work? Well, I think that notion can be used to manipulate people into becoming lifeless, soulless machines... all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy sort of thing (or homicidal freaks, in Jack's case). I don't know.

Either way, I have to say I am glad I am finished with my classwork for the week. I thought I would sleep but now I can get to my real work, writing, writing, writing... I hate it when I am in the middle of an assignment and writing about something in history, I put myself into writing mode, then get these urges to continue working on a story or something personal. I get the best inspiration in that mindset, late at night, and I have to put it all into an assignment.

I'm reading Shakespeare's sonnets and kind of hoping I can take a Shakespeare class in the Comparative Literature department soon. I am also getting disillusioned with the International Studies department, it's not what I want it to be, questions I have answered for myself and understand about international affairs seem to be what the professors are trying to teach kids who are more comfortable reading about it in a book than going out into the world and seeing it, understanding the concepts from real-world experience of human conflict, identity, division, and class. If I am going to read a book, I want it to be someone's story or expression, not what one person thinks about another's story. I will still suffer through the classes though.

I have a lot of work to do this week...

My first Arabic test is tomorrow, which will be really easy. I've got lots of reading to do (I'm enjoying Palestine, a comic by Joe Sacco) and a couple papers to write this week, including a final research paper proposal. I am thinking about writing about French colonisation, borders, and nationalism (some of my favorite topics!) in regards to Lebanon and Syria (effects/changes in the mindsets/identities of citizens with/and the creation of modern states) for the final paper.

I am shooting for a 4.0 in my SIS class this quarter (taking the tip from WH, shoot for the stars, and you will get closer to them than if you have low expectations). This class is made to weed people out of the Jackson school, so I gotta work hard! Still haven't submitted my application to the major... I have to do all this in the next two days because...

I have a date on Wednesday night!

Thursday is going to be busy. I have a mandatory Comparative Literature meeting for applicants to the major in the evening, then I have to rush downtown to Revolution Books for the open mic. It might be:

1. A complete waste of time
2. Really embarrassing
3. Kind of cool! We'll see

Well, I had better hit the books.

I missed a Socialism talk I wanted to go to last night because my brother was being slow and flakey. I got my new computer though, that is a relief. My brother got more weed from my older half-brother here in Seattle, even though he said he would only smoke on the weekends...

Today started off with a bee sting... it was a shock! I was walking to class, not in the best mood. After the bee stung me, I heard some girls walking behind me scream and laugh, She didn't even know! Well thanks for warning me. Bitches. It still burns.

Class was alright. I am stressing out because I am supposed to apply to my major but I don't think I can do it this quarter. Neither of them. I am going to be burning in undeclared hell for at least another quarter. Maybe. I am speaking to another advisor tomorrow morning.

Miyavi

It took me long enough to post about this... I heard from Heather that Miyavi was coming to Seattle, so I made plans to buy tickets. I am not a huge Miyavi fan, but I know he is really popular among J-rock fans. I think he is cute and I like his tattoos/image, but only a few of his songs. He is a skilled guitarist, and really entertaining as a one-man show, from what I can tell from his videos.

Anyway, after a bunch of drama trying to order tickets over the phone, I went downtown and bought three tickets for Heather, Shu (that girly Japanese guy), and myself. The show is on the 25th of October at the Paramount Theatre, a proper theater with fancy halls and chandeliers... not exactly a rock concert kind of place, I'd say! I am really looking forward to it, only a couple weeks from now, it is his first US tour.

In other news, the guy I mentioned in the previous post is also in my SIS class and discussion section. I will be seeing a lot of him this quarter.

I should be getting my new computer today! Hopefully, if my brother manages to intercept the UPS man. I had the computer shipped to my brother because I was not sure where I would be living. Now it is really inconvenient because my brother has to drive all the way to Seattle. Oh well, it gives me a excuse to see him!

I went to Uwajimaya yesterday and stocked up on zaru soba and chuka soba noodles. I want to make yakisoba for my brother tonight (if he shows up). I practiced yesterday and it turned out pretty good, I think he will like it. I feel like soba and udon are the only things I know how to cook. No complaints though, I could eat soba everyday!