Keeping two blogs is disorienting, so I've completed a merge of my livejournal with this site. As a result, no more entries will be posted to this page. Bloggishness from February-October 2004 remains. For new blog, go home.

1. Started therapy about a month ago. It is good?

2. I have never before been as severely and consistently sleep deprived as I am this semester. I used to wonder how people could possibly function on mostly 4-6 hours of sleep a night for extended periods of time. Now I know. You do what you have to do.

3. I graded my first set of student papers. It was a horrific experience. But at least next time can't possibly be any worse.

4. Remember when I said I feel like a slacker in comparison with other grad students? Well at least I'm no longer suffering from that affliction. I am wildly proud of how diligently I am working to not only discharge my many responsibilities, but to do an excellent job.* While still keeping up with a dwindling but crucial few non-homework activities that are important to me (cleaning house, eating, communicating, seeing maybe two friends, scaled-down LJ, little bits of fic, organizing next semester, sanity). (*TV paper I must write by, like, yesterday excepted.)

5. Thus, I remain severely ambivalent about the justification for continuing to play in orchestra, given that life is like this post-TAing. I may very well take next semester off. I talked to the conductor about resigning my co-principal position.

6. My jaw hurts. I believe I have started clenching my teeth in my (precious few hours of) sleep.

7. Thankfully, only one term paper, so I WILL be DONE before the holidays. And next semester? Will rock. My faith in this makes it all OK.

8. My mom and I both had the same reaction to the Bin Laden tape: how frightening and wrong is it that I agree with what he says about the mideast crisis more than with what my own leaders say? It's a topsy turvy world.

9. The election is hurting me. It looks much better as a video game (read the whole thing -- you won't regret it). If only I had faith that it was ever going to be over. To add insult to injury, even The News West Wing sucks right now. I voted a "straight" ticket. I feel dirty.

10. Marc: "I never believed red and pink could go together until I met you." So I'm doing my part to change the world, heh.

1. I have been cultivating what I've termed a blogger subjectivity. An adapted consciousness in the world, wherein experience doesn't flow through me without resistance, but is filtered for density, for the bits and pieces I want to keep. Some thoughts and moments and processes and flotsam are found to be sticky, and I think, this one is for holding onto, let's write it down. It's an archival mode of being.

Having been so rapidly and so thoroughly subjected by the blogosphere, I am frustrated by the inertia of minds and practices incompatible with my new zones of communication and connectivity. But I understand, from experience, that reading a blog is more than a logistical undertaking. If you're not here (yet), you're excused (for now).

2. I realize that marveling at the poetic absurdity of email spam is so 2003. I mean, we all get essentially the same spam to marvel at or delete as we see fit. But I just can't resist, as there have been a few gems lately. The award for most sinister goes to How one can be a terrorist? from the strangely innocuous shadowcrew, which hawks a "large selection of bombs and different kinds of rockets such as surface-to-air, surface-to-surface and weaponry available at reduced price. With the following types of rockets you will be able to commit terrorist attacks, destroy buildings, electric power stations, bridges, factories and anything else that comes your mind." I found Perfect identity design. This is why people come to us. perfectly postmodern -- though its sage advice that "Psychology says that the majority of population perceives information through visual channel. It is the fastest, the most capacious and effective way to convey not only the idea, but also your company spirit" is perhaps more mundane. And I adored the garbled logic of Earth is not round! It's dirty! -- can you guess what that's advertising? "A Soft Tab is an oral lozenge, mint in flavor, containing pure Tadalafil Citrate [i.e. Cialis] that is placed under your tongue and dissolved. Easy and imperceptible to take. Take just a candy and become ready for 36 hours of love. This is most modern and safe way not to cover with shame." Right now I'd prefer 36 hours of sleep, thanks. Then there are the exotic genre hybrids, like pain is killing your girlfriend -- porn? no, "VIC0D1N". Finally, no post about spam is complete without links to spamblogging and various spam poetry sites.

3. Everyone at Brown is getting a cold. But not me! I'm armed with my brother's doctor's trademark immunococktail:

• Zinc ~ 50 mg/per day

• Vitamin C ~ 500 mg: 2 pills twice a day (=2000 mg/day)
• Vitamin A ~ 10,000 IU/day
• Echinacea ~ 1000-1200 mg (read the label to determine how many of your brand's pills to take) up to 4 times a day [the doc didn't provide a dosage here, so I made that up based on what I usually do]

Here are also some momish words of wisdom from mecurtin, who points out that nothing helps much once you're already sick. You shouldn't take this all the time either, though, because it will lose its effectiveness, and so much zinc isn't good for you. Strive for balance in all things.

4. On the airplane (Atlanta! wedding!) I was making icons in photoshop, reading "Introducing Benjamin", and using a brochure for "netmonsters & other digital spectacles" as a bookmark. An observant seat-mate could have inferred much about who I am and what I do. I am mourning the indiscriminateness of myself as an artistic dabbler, once, before growing up meant specializing. I used to think theatre was my destiny. I used to write poetry. I used to dance, and I miss that intimacy with my body. I used to take photographs, and even paint a little. (I'm determined to at least start knitting again -- must order yarn for the Sweater.) And more than all of these, I played the viola. (That I still do, but the future is not simple.)

5. ✵ is the sort of thing my new LJ software knows how to do. In fact, it would appear that this is a unicode character and OS X already knew how to do it. My baby is so precocious! It makes a wee American flag appear in the menu bar so I can make stars and hearts and flowers whenever I want. I am ambivalent about the former aspect, but not the latter. Oh wait, I went into System Preferences (International) and figured out how to make it an Australian or Canadian or British flag instead! I'd hate to be taken for a patriot.

1. Upon arrival, subject attempted to ply me with bizarre alimentation such as sugar wafers, mango juice concentrate, and other $0.99 goodies with illegible packaging from the Brazilian store.

2. Subject appeared overwhelmed by the decor of my domicile, describing it as a "fun house" and "Julie's house of blogs" (when forced to join the Borg collective livejournal).

3. Subject began cackling hysterically when informed that I am teaching this semester (suspicious, isn't it, that she claimed not to be privy to this information already?). When pressed, she characterized me as too complex and unique to interface with "normal" students.

4. Subject poured coffee on the only pair of jeans she brought for no apparent reason, and was unperturbed. Zoo animals also unaffected.

5. Someday subject will be the mother of my children. I love her more than almost anyone.

1. I have decided that, since President Bartlet is the president ON television, that means he is the president OF television. All the various shows you watch that are set more or less in the contemporary USA, but without explicit references to national politics -- Bartlet is president of that USA, along with all his entourage. Just, you know, keep that in mind.

2. Shana tovah -- wishing you a good new year. It may seem strange that Yom Kippur is my most beleved Jewish holiday. Its focus on self-reflection, human fallibility, and personal and collective responsibility is always a profound spiritual experience for me. I went to (the "gay" synagogue) CBST's convention-center-sized Kol Nidre services in NYC, and gathering with thousands of people is an experience in itself. And I met friends there, which was especially lovely. I don't think I've ever missed Kol Nidre -- it seems I'm actually rather superstitious about its function of legal as well as spiritual absolution -- but I've often attended by myself in recent years. I cried a lot, as usual. The prayer book included commentaries on every page, which is so geeky and made me fall in love with Reconstructionist Judaism all over again. The rabbi's talk was about the tension between exile and homeland as the founding myth of Jewish culture -- how we have all been in exile and all found home (and often they co-exist in us), how (chillingly) even the Jews in Israel haven't reached the promised land, how exile is (biblically and actually) often the place of revelation. To mark the end of the days of awe, I removed my string. So I'm on my own again.

3. Last year's beanbag chair (aka my surrogate girlfriend) is rather deflated, as the styrofoam beads inside have become squashed under my incessant sitting. Being the obedient consumer that I am, I decided to just buy a new one rather than trying to refill it with more styrofoam beads. Let's all welcome the foof chair, which is filled with polyurethane foam that (they claim) will stay cushy forever. It molds around one's form somewhat less effectively than the beanbag, and I miss the extra back support of the pear shape, but it is so sooper soft and comfy and orange and also HUGE (in spite of being called "medium"), too big in scale for the space but I can fit my whole self in it. Love!

4. OMG I went grocery shopping! This may not seem like a momentous event to you, but it is an iteration in the overcoming of one of my primary and perpetual life-blocks. I hate it. Also cooking. I'd been subsisting on emergency provisions like microwave pasta and cereal from the drugstore. I made a resolution this summer to do better at feeding myself this year, but as I got swept up in school it immediately became clear that was merely a pipe dream. The logistics of food are hardly a priority. The end to my deferment is all thanks to Yuri, who reminded me that there's a post office in the grocery store where I could mail my packages, thus fortuitously marrying both errands. So now I can eat Healthy Choice TV dinners (quaintly compartmentalized and bringing back memories of childhood) and tomato soup with cottage cheese and goldfish crackers and veggie burgers and baby carrots with low-fat bleu cheese dip and almonds and other goodies. This makes life better. And I proved to myself that I can do the grocery store in half an hour and restrain myself enough to be able to carry everything home. (Which comment I know will immediately send my mom scurrying off to order that wheelie cart she's been talking about.)

5. AWAD, via Nori:

levin (LEV-in) noun ~ Lightning; a bright light.

[From Middle English levene. Ultimately from Indo-European root leuk-
(light) that's resulted in other words such as lunar, lunatic, light,
lightning, lucid, illuminate, illustrate, translucent, lux, and lynx,]

"Broad and frequent through the night
Flash'd the sheets of levin-light;"
Walter Scott; The Dance of Death; 1815.

"See! from its summit the lurid levin
Flashes downward without warning,
As Lucifer, son of the morning,
Fell from the battlements of heaven!"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; At Sea; 1851.

My own name, and I had no idea! (Levin the name, of course, is etymologically a variant of Levine, from the Hebrew tribe Levi. But still, cool.)

1. I hate this semester. Officially. I was hoping every week wasn't going to be like this -- but no, it is. TAing is the culprit. I fantasized that it would in fact be less work than taking a course. Ha. I refer you to my schedule -- which may not look so compressed at first glance, but consider that until monday afternoon I'm frantically reading for that seminar and until tuesday afternoon I'm frantically reading for that seminar and after that I take a quick breather to watch SVU and answer emails and then wednesday I'm frantically reading and preparing for my sections. I've gotten two hours of sleep the past two wednesday nights, which is really not an effective game plan, I realize. But there's nowhere to snitch the extra time from, so it becomes a matter of striking a balance between the inverse proportionality of prepared and awake (to paraphrase Michael's advice). I appreciate that awake is important, but I also don't feel it's a wise idea to show up to teach having done any less of the assigned reading than I'm already pulling off. So, a conundrum. The sections themselves are fine, and I'm reasonably good at teaching and not at all nervous or confused in the end, and my students are great, and one of these weeks I'd like to talk to them when I'm actually fully functional.

The ostensible advantage of this schedule, as you see, is that my week is completely over thursday at 12:30pm (except for an orchestra rehearsal). Let us now turn to fig. B: how I will be spending my leisurely three-day weekends for the rest of the semester (dates are the fridays)

1. There’s no particular reason I’ve adopted lists of five as a format for blog entries. But I’m enjoying it. So I hope you are too.

2. There's a constitutional amendment barring gay marriage on the ballot in my home state of Michigan (along with many others, I'm sure). If you can, please contribute to Coalition for a Fair Michigan to help stop it. The situation is dire, and they need all the help they can get.

3. Until grad school, I was a weekly TV watcher. I had one show at a time. For years, Voyager was enough. Then there was a brief affair with X-Files, a growing appreciation for West Wing. My overwhelming adoration for television, via my new girlfriend Cox Digital Cable, is one of the most notable transformations of my life since coming to Brown. I wouldn't say it's a bad thing, but it is occasionally vexing. One symptom seems to be that the pace of my obsessions is accelerating. Each semester I'm hankering for a new show to commit to -- and it has to be one I can watch nearly every day. Is it time again, now that I've seen most of the West Wing and SVU episodes? I was sucked in by the CSI marathon this weekend. The show is newly syndicated on SpikeTV, and I'm appreciating the high production values, the convoluted cases, the rich ensemble cast and well-developed principal characters shrouded in a miasma of angst. Could Catherine and/or Sara be the (next) one? And will I ever reach the limit of how many TV girlfriends can I realistically devote myself to?

4. ACT(tm) "bubble gum blowout" flavored mouthwash is my favorite thing about oral hygiene. Recommended by my dentist to strengthen tooth enamel. And yes, it really is that color. Yum.

5. Surprisingly, my orchestra audition went well, in spite of the inevitable hand-shaking. The conductor intimated that I'm now on the short list for co-principal of the viola section, which was flattering, especially given the great respect I have for the skill and dedication of several of the other players. He was more impressed than at last year's audition, so apparently it's true that I've gotten my chops back somewhat. But there is a lingering discord between this success and my musings as I was walking to the rehearsal hall earlier today. I wondered why it is that I continue to commit this time to music when I'm not working at it in a way that allows me to truly excel, when I'm not taking lessons or practicing much or improving even to the point I was at 4-odd years ago. In that moment, this activity seemed a relic of someone I once was, and I couldn't see how to map the trajectory from that life to the things that are important to me now. No doubt these gloomy thoughts are an effect of the stresses of this transition, which leave me frayed and preemptively weary. Last year I found that when I was actually in the midst of symphonies I didn't have to ask why that experience was fulfilling, and there's every reason to expect a repeat of that certainty. But this is more broadly a part of my recent difficulty with not being perfect. In everything I do, lately, I feel my performance falls short. I'm frustrated that I can only dabble and wondering why I bother -- why write if I'm not going to be a Writer, why play if I'm not going to be a Violist, why study if I'm not going to be a truly gifted Thinker? And why indulge this sort of messing about, this six hours a week I spend in rehearsals, when it's time taken away from something else I'm struggling to succeed at? Does striving for what I've called a "balanced life" mean being jack of all trades, master of none? It's an uncharacteristic sensation, at odds with my usually sweeping passions, and will probably pass.

1. I don't have the energy to say much about the symposium, save that I wish I knew what one might label this discipline, so I could apply that label to myself. Network theory? I don't have the words to explain what it is that I study, which distresses me. I was excited, though, and thinking "yes, I want to bring this together with TV/fandom studies, which nobody seems to be doing.” Though I’m less convinced now of the wisdom of attempting to interweave disparate things, which I’ve always thought of as my greatest intellectual strength. It seems there are an awful lot of things to learn, and precious little time in which to learn them.

2. Finally, I got a haircut! Instead of attending the morning panels. I’m bald again, and have high hopes that my brain will awaken now that it’s unmuffled in the dreaded shaggy fuzz.

3. After the last panel we headed to the screening of After 911, which was a moving way to commemorate what was of course the anniversary of 9/11. The film pulls the highlights from several conferences that have taken place at Brown under the auspices of the Watson Institute and combines them with haunting music and images, achieving a captivating, thought-provoking effect. It's an artistic style that's avowedly opposite Michael Moore's, and although After 911 doesn't have a more concerted overall shape, its various sections reinforce, without polemics, the apocalyptic sense that an epic battle between good and evil is stealthily swirling around us.

4. Then it was waterfire with Marc and Yuri -- a rare outing. Marc felt, as I do, that to have waterfire described to you can't capture the startlingly profound beauty of the event, undampenable even by the throngs of tourists. It's so cinematic -- with the bonfires, their crackling and smoke, the gorgeously well-programmed soundtrack piped through the speakers -- that we felt like we were inside a movie. As Yuri put it, it was our anniversary: the three of us met almost exactly a year ago. So we remembered that along with the way the world changed in 2001. Plus, we ate fried dough with sugar on top, and nothing beats that.

5. Fall is asserting itself. It is a balmy 80 degrees during the day, sunny and glorious, and as the afternoon wanes the temperature drops toward a crisp 50's night. You have to change your clothes for the chill of evening, and close the windows to keep in the evaporating warmth. If only this were the eternal state of things, rather than merely a fleeting portent of the approaching winter — which the barber predicts will be severe.

1. It occurs to me to point out that I was remarkably accurate in my predictions of what I would and wouldn't have time to accomplish by the time summer sets. What I didn't factor in, though, is that with one seminar not meeting until Monday and no sections the first week, there is this final bonus sliver of freedom after my initial two days of classes. Not that I've spent it being particularly productive -- mostly it's been eaten up with having a cold and puttering and watching the CSI marathon and worrying about all the homework I will have to do all too soon. I did, however, clean my apartment. Not the sort of top-to-bottom overhaul as when I moved in, but I mopped and dusted and scrubbed the bathtub and other things I don't regularly do. So that is satisfying.

2. The thing about my apartment is that, while with much hard work and help from my friends I have beautified it into an adorable cozy home, underneath it is inescapably a crappy grad student apartment. In particular, the windows are ancient and thoroughly permeable to dust and bugs. Black deposits collect on the windowsills. And I have a lot of spider friends. Mostly tiny ones. But I killed a rather big spider in the bathroom today -- I am so butch! I also see the occasional centipede, which I like despite their terrifying appearance because apparently they eat spiders. I hereby declare, though, that my *next* place, whenever that may be, will be all nice and newly renovated.

3. I have to reaudition for orchestra, which makes me extremely grumpy. I tried to get out of it, but no dice. So I am preparing a piece in 3 days, and will most likely suck (of which the conductor is now duly forewarned). I love orchestra, but my hatred of five minutes solo performance is near-equal to the year's worth of this love. Moreover, having lost all my calluses and muscles over the summer, my fingers and neck and arms are now all sore, and I can't practice even as much as I would like. But c'est la vie. And since, as per item #1, this weekend is turning out not to be otherwise stressful, it's not the end of the world.

4. Given that I don't yet have homework as an excuse to skip out, I'm attending much of this symposium on networks here at Brown. More details tomorrow, perhaps.

5. Remember when I said that I haven't yet been thoroughly humbled by grad school to the point where I feel dumb? Well, now I feel dumb. Shouldn't I have brilliant observations to make about culture right now? This too shall pass. And, I'm looking for a therapist.

I just about died when a classmate pointed me to this bush/kerry slash piece in The New Yorker. It is so brilliant in every way. It is slash, published in a mainstream publication. So at least one good thing came out of this horrific election season.

It's as if I compressed the entire summer I'd been fruitlessly hankering for into the mad crush of its ending. It's been an exhilaratingly efficient, gloriously elastic sliver of time. Now, it's all beginning, with the lists and the stress and the responsibilities knotting into my stomach. But I'm at peace with the carnage of fall(ing), because in the past TWO WEEKS I accomplished the following:

We had our first TA meeting. My two favorite professors and two of my favorite friends. It's going to be glorious. Then L and W invited themselves to dinner with us -- and treated us. We're going to have our second TA meeting in L's swimming pool on Wednesday. Happiness.

Talking to professors socially, still, is like getting drunk or winning something or meeting a new crush -- euphoric, giddy. Also, it's like public speaking or the first day of camp or middle school -- nerve-wracking, unworthiness-inducing. I assume I'll eventually adjust.

L didn't like my paper as much as I'd hoped. I agree with her criticisms. Nevertheless, I'm going to be carrying that weight around in my stomach for a little while.

All my grades from last year are in. All A's! But on term papers I got more A-'s. Sigh. It's hard for me, sometimes, to be told I still have things to learn.

The first thing I'd forgotten about school over the summer is the emotional roller coaster. It's the vertiginous sensation of growing up.

This NYT article about anti-spam spam was both hysterical and thought provoking. And if you get as much spam as I do, you could probably use more of both of those responses in your life.

Took the train from Newark to Providence today, which meant passing through Penn Station. Lots of cops on the train, which is atypical. Amtrak usually has all of zero security, beyond actually making you sign your ticket if you buy it with a credit card. I'd left my bag up at the front of the car, and one officer held it up and I had to identify it as mine. What struck me, though, was that he certainly wasn't doing this for every bag. All the ones up in the overhead rack might or might not have belonged to the people sitting beneath them. It seemed like the biggest hurdle to leaving, like, a duffel bag on the train with a bomb in it and having it go off under the Garden was that we were running 20 min. behind schedule. Hi Ashcroft, you can bug my apartment now. There was a dog on at one point, though, presumably sniffing for bombs. Phew.

When I got to Providence, an airplane was flying in circles with a banner advertising Dunkin' Donuts(tm) iced lattes(tm) streaming behind it. You know how in every town there's one store or company that seems to virtually own it. Like in NYC it's Duane Reade, and in Philly it's WaWa I guess. Well here it's Dunkin' Donuts (note the 15 DDs w/in 3 miles of my zip code and the Dunkin' Donuts Center). What I was actually thinking was: what a cool job, flying a plane around in circles all day.