Chronology Collapse

My past is colliding with my present is colliding with my future. It's all very confusing and scary.

The problem, I've realized, with my current situation is that nothing is in order anymore. I have to write an essay due next week at the same time as I have to figure out when my exams are next month at the same time as I have to contact my summer employers at the same time as I have to fill out forms for going to Japan at the same time as I look at the course calender for a school I may be going to in two years. I know having a five-year plan is a good idea, but not when five years of decision-making is compressed into two weeks at the end of term!

As Kobuta rightly pointed out to me yesterday, at least everything I have to deal with is good things (and here comes the guilt-spiral...). However, I still feel overwhelmed, and would really just like to run away for a few days to think about things. What does it mean to go away from family and friends for a year? What do I want to do with my life? How should I be budgeting my money this summer? How do I organize myself in an efficient way? Why am I so scared?

But sadly, I don't have that luxury. So I live moment-to-moment, trying to ignore the rubber band of time snapping back on me from both directions and to deal with things one at a time, as best I can.

I am grateful for people and places that provide moments of respite: good books and cheesy tv to lose myself in, my friend Catherine who took me out for dinner last night and asked me so many questions about her upcoming QCF presidency that I forgot my own issues for a few hours, Kobuta and wnd to be their hilarious selves who know how to take care of me -- namely, poking me when I get too serious.

In a time of too much memory and too much awareness, I am grateful for the occasional relief of amnesia.

Passion and Commitment

Today has been a day of passions. I have five hours of class today (which is a lot, for me) and all three classes contained professors who were Passionate (with a very capital P) about their topics. Whether it was 19th Century Photography, Milton's Paradise Lost, or autobiography in Alice Munro's short stories, these teachers of mine were fairly bursting at the seams with enthusiasm for their topics. Not only did they care, not only did they want to teach, they really believed that what they were teaching mattered.

In fact, they cared so much that their excitement actually got in the way of good teaching. Ironically enough, the topic meant so much to them that they couldn't impart it to us as well as if they felt ambivalent about it. They talked too fast, interrupted themselves and others, went off on tangents, didn't notice that their students were getting bored or needed to leave for another class.

And there were certainly enough bored students today. It's kind of sad, actually, to see a professor holding forth on a subject that means the world to them in front of students who care more about their hunger, or the pictures they took of last night's party, or the essay that's due tomorrow.

For my part, I was enthralled. Not because I intrinsically love Milton, or Munro, or photography, but because I looked at these professors and thought "I want to feel that one day. I want to have something that I care about so much that it doesn't matter if I make a fool of myself. I want to care so much that I'm afraid of failure, that I talk too fast, that I really commit."

And I suppose that's the realy issue here -- commitment. I'm a 22 year-old student: I've never spent more than a year doing one thing. I know what it's like to have new ideas flying at me all the time, everyday, constantly. I can, through dint of experience in the schooling system, contain all that newness. I can take the ideas and mold them into digestible units, form opinions on them, remember them or forget them.

But I can't do, and don't know, is long-term association and commitment. I don't know what it means to "settle down," in the broad sense of the term. I don't know what it's like to spend 20 years studying one thing, to teach it every year, to know it and make it a part of your life. I have no conception of the depth of knowledge one can acquire after decades of adult study, discussion, reflection, and engagement.

And so I am drawn, like a moth to flame, to those teachers who disply real passion. I came out of my classes today wanting to study photography and Milton and Munro not because I inherently liked them but because I wanted to bask once more in the reflected warmth of my professors' passion. I wanted to understand, if only in an incomplete, vicarious way, how you could feel when you had something memorized, when you really did know it inside and out. How does it feel to get comfortable, to settle down, to be devoted enough to "spend your whole life" on one thing?

A Matter of Perspective

I've realized in the last few days that how we see ourselves versus how others see us can be understand by a very simple comparison: Presence and Absence. We tend to see ourselves (and what we do), in terms of what is there: the extra belly jiggle, the act of replacing toilet paper, the zits, the good thesis in our essay. Whereas other people (be they teachers, friends, family, whatever) see us in terms of absence: a lack of indecision, the holes in our argument, the times we forgot to replace the toothpaste cap, etc.

Even as I write this, I know the problems with it. Not everyone analyzes themselves in positive terms -- many of us are profoundly negative about our own abilities, and need other people to shore up our egos. However, in that case the situation is simply reversed.
"I hate my lack of ambition/my bad vision/my procrastination." = Absence

"But you are a good person: you help others/have lovely beautiful eyes/do the dishes when it's not your turn." = presence

Whichever way you look at it, our impression of ourselves can be categorized in terms of presence and absence. Perhaps a person with low self-esteem is merely someone who sees more of what they lack than what they have. Perhaps someone who is "annoying" or "self-absorbed" is merely someone who has a habit of always seeing only what they do and what others don't do.

There you go. Perhaps not a ground-breaking revelation, but it was something I hadn't thought of before -- a new way of understanding the world and perhaps of better understanding how to connect to other people.

My foot may be bruised, but this dance I can still do!

This got sent to me by the inestimable Tuna, thanks to the archival skills of my friend-across-the-Atlantic, Zenobia. It has been given a classification of +2 Hilarity and +1 Pompous Language.

O proud left foot, that ventures quick within
Then soon upon a backward journey lithe.
Anon, once more the gesture, then begin:
Command sinistral pedestal to writhe.
Commence thou then the fervid Hokey-Poke,
A mad gyration, hips in wanton swirl.
To spin! A wilde release from Heavens yoke.
Blessed dervish! Surely canst go, girl.
The Hoke, the poke -- banish now thy doubt
Verily, I say, 'tis what it's all about.

(Jeff Brechlin, Potomac Falls)

It's also got a +1 Nostalgia rating for reminding me of my friend John from High School who once handed in an English test, sat back down at his desk, then suddenly started up and swore. "Did you write a question wrong?" we asked, concerned.

"No," he replied, still obviously angry at himself. "I didn't know the test answers, so instead I spent most of my time drawing a diagram of the Hokey-Pokey on the test paper. I just realized I drew all my stick figures backwards!"

...and Resurrection (sort of)

Well, I am no longer dying, no more fever or body which feels like it's about to explode apart. However, as the large pile of used tissues next to me eloquently attests, I'm not healthy yet.

And, in a twist of cruel irony, I now have another problem to worry about. You see, one of the events I skipped yesterday was an on-stage practice for my ballet recital next weekend. When I wrote to my friend Katie to explain why I hadn't been there, I jokingly quipped that "I would be at practice this Thursday even if I had two broken legs and a raging case of SARS".

Well, my legs aren't broken...

But, I did manage to massively stub my fourth toe on the couch earlier today. Stubbed so badly that it was all...bendy. In a very non-healthy way. So I hobbled my way over to the campus clinic, where a lovely nurse informed me that it would be EVEN MORE painful if it was actually broken, and that I'd just given it one hell of a sprain. So she taped it up for me, and now I sit here writing, feeling it throb and wondering vaguely what colour and how big it will be when I next take a peek at it.

Hopefully it will be better (or mostly better, at least) in a week and a half, because I *really* want to do the dance. I have a pretty costume and I practiced my pirouettes and everything!

(as you can see, four days of the the death flu have helped me perfect the petualant, whiny invalid tone I mentioned before)

Deathhhh....

I feel like Death. We're entering Day 4 of Lydia vs. the Flu, and the Flu seems to be winning. I can't sleep well, random parts of my body ache, my sinus cavities should be cordoned off as a disaster area, and I've developed the annoying petulant tone of the invalid ("Ooooh..My water is all gone. Ooooohhh, my hands ache. Ohhhhhh, I feel bad.").

I spent all day yesterday lying down and reading or watching tv. And yet I feel only marginally (VERY marginally) better today. If I don't feel significantly better tomorrow I'll have to go to a clinic so they can tell me to have beddrest (and hopefully reassure me that I don't have some really deathly non-flu disease).

Watching "Dead Like Me" is, ironically, my only real joy right now.

I had a plan. I planned it myself.

Oh Glenn. You are so intelligent, and yet so dumb. You give me great comments on my thesis, and yet you don't know when it's due. You seem to consider the Friday deadline as an easily moveable date. ("Oh no no, you can hand in another draft to me and your second reader on Friday or early next week. The final thesis will be due...oh, let's say.. late March sometime.")

During the meeting itself I just kind of nodded dumbly, but after I left it slowly dawned on me -- I had planned out this whole week with the knowledge that I would be handing my thesis in at the end of it. Tuesday I get Glenn's comments, Wednesday I would edit it, Thursday was taken up with other things, Friday it would be printed out in all it's colour-and-basic-design glory, then handed in. Done. Finito. And now I still have to hand it in, but it's just another draft! Boo.

It made me realize how much I love my plans. I mean, who complains when they get an extension on an essay? Well, I've now accepted the fact that my foray into academia hasn't quite ended, but it sure was a lesson in my own obstinate planning as well as in the inherent flakiness of all profs.

In other news, my computer is not dead -- merely suffering from a bad fan on the video card. Unfortunately, the fan can't be fixed, so I have to buy a new video card (probably a cheap one, since I'm verging on seriously broke). I do want it back soon though -- I'm tired of borrowing housemate's computers (although they've been great about it) and living in the computer labs on campus. It's like being digitally homeless.

Yet Another Short Post

I figure it's better for me to write short things on my blog than not update at all, so here's another wee dose of Bento to tide all you slavering fans over for a few days.

Currently I am on a computer at the library because my computer was making noises like chittering squirrels. I dusted the inside, found it to still be chittering, so I took it in to a nice local computer store. I should hear back about it soon. It may have just needed a good cleaning, it may have a malfunctioning fan, or my motherboard may be dying (again).

Thursday this week is my interview for Nova (the teach in Japan program). It's a three hour extravaganza that is very inconveniently located at exactly the same time as my art history lecture (which I need to get notes for because we have an assignment due next week).

My thesis is due Friday. I get my final set of comments back from my supervisor tomorrow. Eeek.

My neck has had a crick (on both sides) for the past few days.

Add that to my various and sundry other things (essays, presentations, various friend conflicts), and you get a fair amount of stress. I am consciously taking time off though (I'm learning...) -- I did absolutely nothing on Friday, and went to a fabulous coffeehouse/house party on Saturday night.

Okay, so maybe this post isn't so short after all. But that's what I get when my life is this busy...

Edit: I just noticed that this post neatly mirrors the post of Feb. 27. Sorry to be so repetetive (and redundant, and repetetive). I'll try to have more interesting things happen to me (or at least more erudite things to say about them) in the future.