Notes on Progress

Today is the day that I finally resolve some long standing difficulties with financial aid. I'm 95% sure everything will work out okay, but I am still a little worried about it anyway. After months of living on the edge with respect to bills, I am really looking forward to getting a little ahead. I am reminded by Foghorn Leghorn's observation that "two half nothings is a whole nothing," but nevertheless I remain hopeful.


Notes

The above picture should give some idea as to what I have been busy with lately. Monday is a full day from morning to night: two graduate seminars plus an evening meeting at the Baha'i Center. This past tuesday, I recuperated a little bit from some previous overwork, but now, at Thursday, I feel refreshed enough to be completely back on track. Even though it is still the third week of the term, I am going to start working on my seminar paper now (as in this week), which means I am going to be spending more time in the campus library than anywhere else. I usually waited too long to start writing, so now I am taking an early-bird approach in an effort to climb back on top of the mountain of work I have been stuck under for the past few months. Right now, I feel grateful for the second chance at doing a good job at school and work hard not to screw things up again.

Chore Day

Today, I managed to clean the house, wash the dishes, and get the laundry ready. The laundry, unfortunately won't actually get done until Tuesday, but I have enough clothing to last me until that long. Those who know me fairly well would also be shocked--SHOCKED, I tell you--to learn that I made myself dinner rather than succumb to the siren call of cheap fast food. The result of this dinner is as seen below.


Basic Chicken Dinner

Of course, if the above dinner just looks like some bland ten-minute-affair, I assure you--it is. I could have added some spices to the chicken or potatoes, or I could have used some vinegar in the peas. But I will resolutely focus on the positive and pat myself on the back for resisting the temptation of Burger King or Jack in the Box. The only thing left for today is a couple more chapters of homework. I have just finished reading Beowulf (in translation) for the second time. Tomorrow is the marathon day of classes (9-11am, 2-5pm, 6:30-9pm), but I am looking forward to it. Until next post.

Motivation and Perspective

This morning, I got up and cleaned my house. Starting with the sink full of dishes, I moved through one end of the apartment to the other, ending up with four loads of laundry. I'll be honest. I haven't felt very much motivated to do much of anything. My comic has not seen a single update in over a month; ideas for it are hard to come by. My pile of work has not diminished appreciably for the last several months. And there have been too many days this month that I have spent in bed, not able to get out of the house until 9:00 p.m. So while it may not seem all that noteworthy to have cleaned my house, it really is.


Boulder

While washing my laundry, but before my short hike to the grocery store, I ran into one of the staff here at student housing. He was a middle-aged man, wearing a white t-shirt and brown pants. He appeared to be rather bored pushing his cart of cleaning supplies around the laundry room, but as I loaded my clothes into one of the washers, he suddenly asked me if I had heard any recent news about Hurricane Rita and if it had hit the coast of Texas yet. I told him that I had heard on CNN that the storm was downgraded to a Category 3, but that was about all I knew. He began telling me about the meeting the student housing staff had recently. Apparently, our Governor had told all the state agencies they should be prepared to accommodate the evacuees from the recent Southern hurricanes. Consequently, as the cleaning guy wiped down the dryers, he elaborated that this meant our State school was already housing an 82 year old man in the one of the student housing apartments. Maybe, there would be more to come. If I understood correctly, this elderly man apparently lives very across the street from me. The cleaning guy said that he had a conversation with him where the old man stated that if he didn't see Louisiana again, it would be too soon. There are many levels to this whole thing, and I really feel for the old guy, but I am glad he is safe. I wonder how he feels to be living in a neighborhood that consists primarily of twenty-somethings.

The old guy's problems helps me keep some perspective on the personal troubles I have been having lately. No matter how bad thins are, there are always some who may have it a little worse. At least I have an apartment, live close to friends and family, and have a relatively defined plan for the future. This old guy has to start completely over.

Watching Whales

Just this last week, a really close and dear friend invited me to spend some time with her and her brother on the Oregon Coast. I really had a nice time overall, especially gettting to see my friend again and talk with her about various things. I was/have been in a low mood for the last several months and this trip really went some ways to help perk me up a bit. It was really great of her to invite me. One of the coolest things that we wound up doing as a group was going on a whale watching tour on the boat you see below.


Whale Watching

Once on the boat--really just a fishing trawler--and among a group of about twenty people, we left the harbor and sailed out underneathe the large Newport bridge. Although they advised us that we may not see any whales because the fog was a little thick, once out on the sea we found that the fog had cleared up. Despite the sea being largely calm, it was interesting to note how the ocean in the harbor, the ocean just off of the coast, and the ocean miles away from the coast really had a different quality of waves. The slow, almost directionless, rocking of the ocean ten miles out impressed me. It was as if, while driving on a highway, a collection of small hills would be sliding underneath your car with a gentle rythym. It took more looking than was originally planned, but we finally saw about four humpback whales spouting and fluking out in the sun painted water. We could only spend about twenty minutes with the whales before heading back, but as a confirmed land lubber, I have to say that it was really neat. Everyone, except for maybe the captain and the crew, were pretty excited. I would recommend these guys again [Newport Tradewinds] just because they really seemed to work hard finding a whale for us to look at. I am super grateful to my friend for inviting me along. I just wish I had brought my camera.

A Month

A whole month has gone by without a post on the blog here. Everyone who knows me can guess the reasons why; let it suffice to say that it is the same old "boring" reasons as before, maybe combined with blog fatigue. I haven't really figured out what I should be writing about here.

In any event, I managed to clean my whole apartment today, including the bathroom. (Abandon hope all ye who enter therein...) Things had gotten to a point where it was hard to move around my living room without stepping on something that most people would rather not step on. The only thing left undone in the cleaning department is half a sink full of dishes. I figured it was best to let them soak, and if you saw them, you would think so too. And I finally did laundry, although thanks to a dryer that had no heat, it took me longer than I wanted. I even walked to the grocery store, combining some needed exercise with a shopping chore I was putting off.


Buddy the Cat

Blah, blah, blah. I know that this should sound like a normal work day for an average person, but considering where I have been at lately, this has been quite an achievement. I have actually spent a couple days during the last month or so laying in bed and acquainting myself with the various features of my bedroom ceiling, not really feeling motivated to do much else besides watch television coverage of the hurricane disaster. On the plus side careerwise, I've been reading some school books. And generally I've been working on becoming a better person overall. More on all of this later, I suppose. However, I figured it was time for a blog check in. Enjoy the picture of the cat.

Half a Month

According to the statistics on the blogging software here, it has been about a half of month since I last posted anything here. The classic excuse is to say that I have been way too busy to post anything on the site, but to be honest, that is not the whole explanation. In some ways, these last three weeks have been a serious period of introspection for me. My school career is finally at a crossroads. After several meetings with administration, professors, and various other bureaucratic University officials, the only thing left for me to do is my incomplete schoolwork. I can get no further in my academic career unless I show some progress in that regard.

But working things out at school has not been the only thing that has happened during this period. For example, while visiting my parents during the previous week, I nearly broke my foot. While negotiating my way through my mother's office, I stepped on my foot sideways and then fell forward. I think I even heard a loud snap that concerns me. In any event, after a couple of days a limping on an ankle that has swollen up to baseball size, I have developed a rather nice purple bruise. I can walk on it without much pain now, but I still feel a little twinge whenever I move it strangely.


Alsea Falls

The above picture is from a small excursion that I took on my way back home from my parents. A two-hour detour into the Cascade Mountains led to my discovery of Alsea Falls, a secluded state park with a series of hiking trails and connecting campgrounds. Strangely, when I visited the falls they were completely deserted, so I took the opportunity to take some pictures and think about stuff. I think if I get some more time to spend by myself, I'll revisit.

Finally, the other major event to occur during this period was my attending the funeral of a friend. The friend was more than twice my age and was afflicted with emphysema that worsened towards the end of his life. However, during (and after) the brief period in which I knew him--about a year and half--I considered him a very close friend. In some ways, I considered it an honor to be at his funeral and to be able to commemorate his life among his many friends. I only wish I took the opportunity to visit him more before he passed away. Needless to say, the whole experience led me to think about the heavy questions surrounding life, death, and spirituality. I haven't come to any real conclusions about any of those things, but I don't think that it is the point to come to conclusions. Rather, it may be more useful to occasionally consider these things and let them filter through your mind. It may be like letting the rain and sun work on the soil in which a seed is planted. The fruit of such thinking may come later, or may even develop slowly without your noticing, but as long as one thinks about it, the benefit will be there.

The River's Flow

The heat has been killing me lately making it rather difficult to fall asleep at night. Part of the problem is that I really enjoy the cool weather. If the world's thermostat was permanent set at 58 degrees Fahrenheit that would be just fine with me. Of course, there are some who would scoff at the idea of it being hot around here, but then they would also not believe the amount of water I have been drinking lately.


The River

I continue to make progress with work, but I am getting more "down in the mouth" about the prospects of getting it all done properly. Currently, I am studying the concept of cultural formation during the nineteenth century. Add to this a re-reading of Dickens and a book about Victorian Soundscapes. Like other grad. students who post online, I found that it helps to leave the laptop at home when I do my reading. A legal pad of paper seems like a good place to take notes. I've also found, in regards to my comprehension process, that it helps to read chapters or essays first, then re-read them with note taking in mind. I am still grappling with how to form these thoughts into a cogent essay, but slogging through the reading is helping relieve some of the stress of figuring out what to say. The kind help and emotional support from friends and family has been the greatest help to me, especially during the last few weeks. I'm not sure they'll know how grateful I really am. Also of great help has been a short dip in a cool river during a brief break. And if the weather continues like it has been, I might just repeat it.

Napping

Okay--so it has been way too long since I have last posted, but that has been because of a personal slump that I feel I am now just coming out of. And as far as the slump goes, everyone who knows me has seen it manifested as long naps during the day. The dreams asscoiated with these naps have been interesting. A few of them concerned my future (or hopes) as a professor. The one from yesterday included rafting down a river to escape alien oppression in a matrix style reality. I escaped with Gordon from Seasame Street with a freeze beam. (Thank you pop culture for shaping my subconscious.) Also, my allergies have acted up during the last week, so things have been just a hair's breadth away from miserable.

But a week of so-called rest and a visit with friends have helped me get back on my feet enough to get some work done. I think it was some chinese food and a desert cafe that really hit the spot. (Well, really it was the friends there that made the difference.) Once I finally get things sorted out on the personal level and get the ball rolling on my school-work, I think I am going to devote some more time to the artistic things in life. Sketching, maybe even experimenting with watercolor, is something that I would like to in the future. I'll try to post more in the future, but only after I have something to report about the work I have completed. (On that note, I have been to my office, checked my office mail, and renewed several of my library books about colonialism and the victorian era. That should indicate the direction of my studies for the next few days.)

Summer Reflection

I really should be posting here more often. Despite my good intentions, I seem to let an average of week slip by before I manage to get something new up on the web. Perhaps that is because I haven't really had much to say, or my seemingly inexhaustible supply of complaints about the amount of work I have is boring even me. It seems that during the last couple of months my personal life has reached a state that it seems difficult to sort it out online anymore.


Blue Forest

The biggest factor in my life currently is that I am still trying to cope with the recent breakup with my girlfriend. Add to that a host of personal issues/problems (or character flaws) that influences everything I seem to put my eyes on. Each day there seems to be something new to miss, something else to regret. But not everything is gloomy; in some ways, I am finding small ways to pull out a crevasse of inertia. Metaphorically, I think I am beginning to see the dawn horizons on my overall work problems, a horizon that fills me with a small measure of hope. For example, I am through several chapters of Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton. Even though the descriptions of real life poverty in 19th century England are a little depressing, it feels good to know that I am getting through the work in the field which I have chosen. I hope that things will begin to pick up even faster over the next couple of days.

As a side note to the previous post, I probably will not be taking classes this summer as that might be more of a significant distraction than a help. But in some ways, the new routines I am currently establishing should give me the same help that taking regular classes would.

Decisions

In the next couple of days, I have to decide whether or not to take summer classes from the University. The drawback is that I still have a lot of catch up work to do from previous terms, and of course, the summer class would potentially take time and thought away from that effort. But the benefit to this plan, a very tempting benefit, is the money I would get from financial aid, aid which might chase the proverbial wolf from the door for a month or two. (Actually, the money would be part of the aid that I did not use during spring term, so if I don't use this money during summer term, it is gone forever.)


Decisions

If I took an easy course, perhaps one which required little thought or effort, I might be able to pull it off without any problem. There may not be such a course as offerings are limited and my thinking could loosely be categorized wishful. But, without rationalizing too much, getting to campus on a regular basis may also help me develop a routine, which may also help my effort to get my other work done. I'm still debating the whole thing.

Frankly, my depression has done more to hinder getting work done than the lack of money, but I think things are turning around. I'm still trying to emotionally cope with the breakup with my girlfriend. My stress relieving techniques, watching television and eating junk-foods, is not serving me very well, but I never thought that they would. I still miss her. (Insert a heavy sigh here.)

Tomorrow, I take my bird to the vet which--thanks to the generosity of my sister--is actually possible. The bird's tail feathers, which had fallen out, are halfway grown back in and her injury seems completely healed. It is kind of amazing to see how fast those feathers grow. But now, seeing as it is 10:30, it is time to end this post and put the bird to bed.

Free Dinner

It has been hot around here lately, which isn't so bad for me during the day, but at night things get to be a little unbearable. The afternoon heat seeps into the walls and then pours slowly out at night in a claustrophobia-inducing miasma of dark warmth. I try not to stay up too late watching television, but is sometimes hard to go to sleep at a decent hour under a blanket of heat.

The other day, I decided to indulge in my bad habit of eating fast food. Although I had a good breakfast of eggs, toast, and whatnot, I skipped lunch and when 9:00 p.m. rolled around, I figured that Burger King was a good enough place to fill my belly. And, when I say fill my belly, I mean just that; after as many hamburgers as I have eaten in my life time, they all have that same cardboard-bland-like taste. I should have cooked dinner, but like I said, it is a bad habit.


Night Mountain

So, I drove eight blocks down to the restaurant, pulled up to the drive-thru speaker and ordered a number one with a coke. (For those of you who do not eat at Burger King, a number one is a whopper, fries, and a drink: $4.29 where I live.) As I pulled around the building, I saw a man--who looked homeless--digging through the garbage. As I drove around him, he had found a hamburger that someone had thrown away. He held it in his hand as he continued to search the trash can. It seemed as if he was looking for more food.

I pulled up to the pickup window, paid my money, and waited the few minutes to get my order. None of the employees seemed to have noticed the man, otherwise, I am sure that they would have told him to leave. In my several previous trips to fast food restaurants, I have been occasionally asked by homeless people to buy them sandwiches, and I have seen the restaurant employees chase these people away.

The man who had been digging in the trash for food left by the time that I got my order, but I drove back behind the building and tracked him down a couple blocks away. He was walking through the parking lot of an industrial building. "Hey! Buddy," I called out to him. "Are you hungry?" He stopped a looked at me for a brief second before answering that he was. He looked a little embarrassed to admit that fact. He also seemed to recognize that I was going to give him my all food, the whole order, which I did. After I handed the meal over, I drove to the next fast food restaurant, McDonald's, and got another meal for myself.

Injured Bird

Okay, so the other day, I decided that I was having kind of a bad day. It was already late afternoon, I was tired, but I needed to do much more work to get caught up for the day. It involved reading and writing, and I was already overwhelmed with that. I was also a bit depressed for various personal reasons that I won't go into. Since I had not eaten anything all day, I figured that the least I could do was buy some fast food and go to the local park. Fast food is a bad habit that I am trying to break, but since I needed to really get out of the house and I did not want to cook, I told myself that a burger would be a quick indiscretion.

After purchasing a meal I felt guilty for eating, I drove up to the city park on top of the hill. It is a nice park where you have to walk west for ten minutes to get a tremendous view of the entire city. Although there are some great trees with a lovely canopy, the view is high enough up to see the whole valley in which the town is nestled.

Finding a relatively secluded spot away from the occasional joggers and bicyclists, I sat down, ate, and opened a book. The breeze was cool and the sun was warm, and I was engrossed in my book. After about twenty or thirty minutes, something small jumped out of the tree at my head. I recovered a few seconds later to realize that a bird had just flew over my shoulder by only a couple of feet. And then I noticed that it wasn't a regular park bird, but a yellow and white cockatiel. It was obviously somebody's pet.


Injured Cockatiel

I sat and watched the bird as it watched me in return. Of course, I wondered where it had come from, but I did not see anyone searching the park with a bird cage in hand. Nor did I remember seeing any lost bird signs posted anywhere as I had driven up to the park. It appeared to me that the bird was a little distressed. It was shivering, fluffed up, and it seemed to be trying to gather the courage to dive bomb me again. I stood up and stretched out my arms. After was seemed like another thirty minutes of me looking like a statue, after a couple of more dive bombs by the bird, it glided out of the tree and landed on my shoulder.

My concern for the bird shifted slightly towards myself in that I now wondered what I was going to do next. I figured that I should try to take it back to my car and search for its owner. Slowly I began walking down the hill with the bird perched precariously on my shoulder. A few people, mostly joggers, walked by and gave me odd looks. One person asked me how I had trained my bird to stay on my shoulder outside. I explained the situation and asked if they were missing a bird. The stranger answered no, but his energetic dog frightened the bird back in the trees. At this point, I figured that the bird was not going to come back. But, as I did not try to harm it while we walked down the hill, it trusted me enough to come back to my shoulder after another patient twenty minutes. Taking no chance this second time, I grabbed the bird and walked the rest of the way to my car.

I drove around the neighborhood for an hour trying to locate someone who was missing their bird, but no luck. Long story short: the bird you see in the picture above has been with me for the past five days. It resides in a cage in my living room. A trip to the veterinarian confirmed that the bird had been injured by some other small animal. I think that contributed to the bird's decision to trust me, a total stranger. I will continue to search for the the bird's owner for a while, but so far nothing has turned up. It looks I will be keeping this bird for some time to come. Any suggestions for a name? (She's a female).

Status Report

It has been awhile since I have last posted here, but I've been alternating between doing work and catching up on sleep. Personal issues have kept me from getting everything I had planned done. However, I have managed to do quite a bit already. The most significant of which is a working bibliography for my next report. I still have a ton of reading to do, which I'm working on right now.


Rainy Day

I no longer have access to a digital camera. I used to be able to check one out from the college library, but that is no longer an option. I don't forsee having to stop posting pictures here on my site because I still have a few on my laptop that I have yet to post. The other day, I foolishly tried to win one. I won't explain how, except I will mention that it involved staying up nineteen hours in a row. And even after all that, I'm pretty sure I did not win. Oh well. Lesson learned.

Recovery

Some days ago, I got a phone call from the police informing me that my car had been found. As I mentioned in the previous post, I had been through this whole process before, but even still, it was still a little nerve-wracking. It seems as if I had been holding back my emotions until my car was found because some anxiety and apprehension came creeping back after I hung up the phone. The cop had said that he would wait about a half an hour for me to show up, after which time the car may be impounded.

I quickly checked the Internet to find out how to get to where the cop said the car was, which was about ten minutes north of where I live. I printed the directions, and drove the rental car back to the rental office. I tried to return it, figuring I could get a free ride to where my car was. And although I was in the office behing the counter, the manager unfortunately said that they were closing for the day and did not have the time to take their car back or drive me to mine. I couldn't stay to argue, not that I would have anyway, so I left without saying much beyond a mumbled "Ok," and I drove the rental out to my car.

When I got to the intersection where my stolen car had been abandoned, I saw the sheriff's deputy waiting for me in his patrol car. We both got out of our vehicles, and after assuring himself that I was who I said I was, and not like the disheveled homeless guy I looked like, we examined at the car togther. Although it was obvious that the theif (or thieves) had rifled through it looking for things to steal or sell, it was equally obvious that they hadn't stole anything. The ignition cover around the steering column was damaged. The cop said it looked like they "popped" the ignition. As my car was most definitely the huge pile orangutan crap that it appeared to be, the cop did not wait around too long to get any details. But before he left, he did tell me that he had recovered another stolen car, almost exactly like mine, in the same area just a day before. Apparently, Hondas made before 1996 are easy to steal. Just my luck.

Now by myself, I stood out in the street trying to figure what to do next. My immediate problem was that I now had two cars in one place and needed to get them both back home. After making a couple of phone calls to local friends who were not home, I slowly realized that I needed to drive the rental home and get a taxi back to the intersection. As I drove home in the rental, it was starting to get a little dark. It took me longer to search through the phonebook for a taxi than it did for the taxi to arrive to pick me up. The driver said almost nothing. He was listening to some real-estate investment scheme on the radio. I didn't feel like interuppting him too much. Thirteen bucks and an hour and a half later, I had my car back.

I'm glad the whole experience is over, and it is nice that I have my car back, but my insurance rates are going to go up (of course), and the deductible I need to pay for the repair is too much for me to even bother fixing the ignition cover. I bought a club, the cost of which will be barely covered by the small insurance payment I will get. In the midst of all of this, I'm trying to get my work done, but things haven't been going great for me during the last few weeks. Intellectually, I know that things can better, but right now, I'm struggling to keep on tops of things.

Stolen, Again!

The recent few weeks have not been going great for me, lately. My car was stolen sometime last Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. Last time my car was stolen, I went through the typical stages of grief, with a longer stay in the Anger phase. After the initial shock of this first act of theft, I envisioned all kinds of ridiculous revenge fantasies that really didn't help me cope with the fact that I missed my car. Now, I am not feeling a whole lot except maybe numb disappointment.


Stolen! Again!

My car, the above blue '89 Honda Civic, is exactly what you'd expect from an elderly car--almost a piece of junk. The picture gives it more credit than it deserves. I considered buying a club for it at the time, but I could never scrape the forty or so bucks together all at one time to buy one. Plus, I figured (stupidly) that probability was on my side. What are the chances that this junker would be stolen again? Next to nothing, right?

Well, just to hedge my bets, I figured that if I couldn't buy a club, I could at least engage in some "Urban Camoflague." I thought that if I put enough visible trash in the back, something like this but not quite as bad, the thief (or thieves) would reason that the there would be nothing inside the car worth stealing. Maybe the thief would figure that someone who allowed his car to be filled with so much trash couldn't really afford nice things anyway. Maybe the thief would suppose that if the car was worth stealing, it would be better taken care of. I guess I was wrong.

This time, I've got a rental car to drive in the meantime. I am also in the process of filing an insurance claim, a hassle that I really don't want to go through. This afternoon, I have to make a statement to the company and then wait a bit more than two weeks to find out what they might do. As for my car, I hope the police find it intact--and find it soon. Of course, the first time my car was stolen, but later recovered, may have been a kind of cosmic joke, a warning if you will. This time, I may not be so lucky.

A Day for Reading

Day Seventeen: Taxes are completed and are in the mail, something for which I am grateful seeing as how money has been unusually tight lately. The meager refund, approximately 200 hundred bucks, will help matters some. Taxes were one major task that I can cross off my list. I have also managed to arrange things at school so that I can stay in my student apartment until the end of Fall Term, even though I will not be attending class during Spring or Summer. Just today, I got the official approval I needed from the housing office. I had thought that they would need to meet with me personally, but the disability office worker that I have been talking to had smoothed things out for me. (The housing director wished me good luck with my plan to re-enroll in the Fall, an odd, but touching note. It struck me as odd in that it was a personal note out of what I expected to be a more bureaucratic process.)


Spring Weather

As for the other things that are still unfinished, I have yet to hear back whether or not my Leave of Absence has been finally approved. If it has been, then everything should be fine, and I can focus entirely on completing my unfinished papers. If not, I will have to quickly make other plans, including attending (as a guest) a couple writing classes taught by my colleagues--a requirement for one of my unfinished classes. I also need to meet with the Financial Aid counselor about some loan options. I have been putting this task off because I only have a very slim hope of getting what I want. Consequently, I feel a little intimidated and daunted by asking for something that I will not be getting. However, this is something that I definitely will do in the coming week, all feelings of trepidation aside.

My actual school work has been picking up. Currently, I am re-reading Mary Barton for my Victorian Class. From what I have gathered from the novel's Introduction, Elizabeth Gaskell, the author, wanted to write a novel about the working poor, thereby illuminating their plight to the upperclasses. And the upperclasses, having read her novel, would somehow be so moved by their feelings of sympathy for the poor that they would help alleviate their suffering. But, according to the author of the introduction, Gaskell seems to have omitted any recognition that the upperclasses were responsible for that suffering. Apparently, Gaskell felt that the poor's "problem" of being mad at the rich for their greed and luxury could be solved if the rich could learn how to emotionally sympathize with the poor, not rethink their own culpability in the economic oppression. I suppose it would be as if someone hit you in the head, and then said, "You poor dear! You somehow have gotten a bruise on your head." I've only just started, but I'll be interested to see if this is how the novel plays out.

Progress and Reading

Day Nine: When people ask me what I do, my answer is that I am graduate student studying English at a State University. Of course, mostly this means that some people think that I am mentally correcting the way that they speak, or am silently amused or annoyed by the way they use the language. And while inspiring self-consciousness in other people is fun for about a minute and a half, I actually have better things to do than to mentally grade the way people talk. ("You get a B- for the grammar of that sentence, but I'm afraid you get an F for originality. Begone foul abuser of English Tongue!") In fact, as a word nerd, I like the creativity of non-standard uses of English. Phrases like, "All your base are belong to us" is a source of enjoyment, not an opportunity to be a pompous idiot.

English majors are not the appointed guardians of language, and those you do critique the way people speak may have good intentions, but are really killing the life of the language and are fixing it for the grave of obsolescence. Besides, this is not what English majors do anyway. My insufficient, oversimplified definition of what an English scholar does is basically this: they take a "text," which can be almost anything, and interpret it to reveal the hidden layers of meanings behind it, or interpret it to reveal its simplicity, or reveal its comment about the human condition--whatever the hell that is. Of course, to oversimplify the oversimplification, English scholars "interpret texts."


Reading

With this in mind, I am going to interpret a 'text' for you, thereby showing you an example of what a Graduate Student in English might be doing instead of inwardly laughing at your use of spoken language. In this case, the text the above photograph. You can see three main elements: my feet, a book, and my computer. There are other elements involved, but I choose to ignore them.

The feet in this picture symbolizes my walking all over campus today. I went to the housing office, the financial aid office, and the disability services department today, something that is at least a couple of miles of walking. The book represents my studying. I need to do much more of this in the coming days. And the computer represents the writing that I will be doing in the future. Of course, these elements can combine. Walking involves "putting one foot in front of the other," and this is, metaphorically speaking, what I need to do with my papers. I have several miles of text to plow through and, like walking, I need to pick a path and start with the first step. The book operates the same way. I could go even further with all of this, perhaps suggesting that the window represents my "looking toward the future," or that my office represents an attachment to school and work. But, I think you get the idea.

SUMMARY
Here is what I still need to accomplish in the next few days: read my Victorian Book, file my taxes, and investigate my registering for summer term. I need to meet with a financial aid counselor to discuss getting a loan, and I need to see about getting some personal counseling off campus for the next term. Today, I turned in my Leave of Absence From and my Housing Petition. I met with the Disability counselor again. And, I read more of my Victorian Book. Tonight, I will clean house and do laundry. (And if there is any time, I will update my comic with a quick picture.)

Pathways

Day Four: This morning, after not too much sleep due to cartoon watching and videogame playing, I went to the student disability office for my appointment. I laid out the whole story for the counselor/social worker and asked for help with resources. Of course, I was told that there is no help with money, which means that I will have to figure out a way to pay my bills and buy groceries while I am working on my papers. I suppose that I could look into private loans, but without an income or any assets I'm pretty sure no bank will touch me with a ten foot pole. However, the disability office can advocate for me while I negotiate through the policies of the various college departments and facilities. For example, a letter from the disability office will make it so I don't get kicked out of my apartment just yet, that is as long as I can pay for it. I might just go through my collection of books and videogames and sell some of them if I can.


Pathways

So, as notes for myself, I am going to summarize what I need to do next. On Monday, I need to turn in my leave of absence form to the main office of my department. I need to get the petition from the housing office and write my statement of explanation, after which I contact the disability office again to touch base. I need to visit with the financial aid office one more time and discuss loan issues and the summer term. If there are any hiccups, I will have to contact the disability offices again.

As for the incompletes, I am going to focus on one class first and work through them all one at a time. I am still planning on developing a steady, solid routine that will carry me through the work that I need to do. I feel confident that I can do the work, especially now that I have worked out some personal issues. Now, I just need to dive in and do it.

Rainy Days

It was ten days since my last blog here on the site, but I am going to try and start posting with much more frequently. I've got a plan to use this blog more as a tool to help me keep focused, but there'll be more on that later in this post.

To be frank, I have a had a difficult past two academic years, the result of which has been the accumulations of incompletes in most of my classes. Most of my professors have heard my tried and true sad-sack excuses, which if they're not sick of them, I certainly am. But, I've always been pretty good at painting a picture of redemption. Perhaps my ability to admit to very personal (and vaguely embarrassing) difficulties, combined with my discomfort at doing so, seems to move my professors to pity. Inevitably, they offer me a second chance to do good. Now, I'm nearly at the end of the whole graduate school experience, but it is still not too late to turn things around. This is my last second chance to do well at school and work towards the career I want.


Rainy Day

This blog comes in as a tool insofar as I am hoping to use it each day to track my progress at getting my schoolwork done. There are two classes for which I going to work on completing first: 19th century Victorian City class, and Sacred Violence class. I will read: Bleak House, Samson Agonistes, and No-No Boy again during the next month.

Today, I went to the student health center for my one-time free followup meeting to meet with the Doctor. (As I am on a leave-of-absence, I can't use the University resources anymore like the student health center, nor get any finances.) The doctor will write a letter explaining how my difficulties during the last couple of years are attributable to a medical problem that I have just now begun to work out. Tomorrow, I pick the letter up. I will also take the letter to the disability services office tomorrow afternoon.

As for my accomplishments today, I re-inaugurated this blog as a work tool and read part of my book for the Victorian City class. This book, Victorian Soundscapes, is part of a three page paper that I will have done by middle of next week. I e-mailed my professor about getting a paper that I had previously turned in back. I need it for my records. Even though this is the second day of the new term, I am going to call this: Day One.

Workloads

Finals week is over, but that does not mean that work is over for me. I'm not sure if I have mentioned this here before, but I have some incompletes left over from the previous terms. Therefore, I am planning on taking off the next term to finish these incompletes up. This means developing a solid work routine that I stick to: read, write, meet with professors, and write again. My old system of working like crazy at the last minute of a deadline, or working day and night for a handful of days to get a final paper done, is dead and finished. That system does not work anymore. My plan is to develop a balanced approach where I can write every day, and then take time off to decompress from the stress of the exertions. I suppose this is not unlike starting an exercise routine in that it requires a lifestyle change for a permanent result. The raw intellectual ability is not an issue, but rather the issue is the development of new work skills and basic discipline.


Winter

But I think that this is not such a bad thing. The temptations to do other things, like watch television, as a means to avoid sinking under the weight of unpleasant emotions must be overcome. This is where the lessons of Beowulf come back to me. The traditional means we use to slay our monsters do not always serve us. Like Beowulf, one must be able to toss aside the sword and use one's hands to overcome their Grendel, even though it may feel more difficult. These next few weeks will be a new beginning, a pseudo-do-over.

Volcano Again!

In October, I wrote this brief post when Mt. St. Helens (Aka: Loowit) first began getting attention. I am reposting the camlink here because the mountain is rumbling again.



As you may have heard in the national news, the volcano had a relatively small eruption yesterday with a plume of ash and steam. I'm just a bit too far away to see it from my house, but my parents saw it from their house, which is still pretty far away. I did not live in the Pacific Northwest when Mt. St. Helens really blew its top in the eighties so some of the information that comes across the television news is interesting.

For example, if ash falls on the windshield of your car, don't use the wiper blades if you can help it because you'll scratch the heck out of the glass. Furthermore, your car's air filter will clog up with ash something horrible. And if you happen to live near the mountain, move already (or get volcano insurance). The daylight images from the Volcanocam have been really interesting lately. Check it out.

Two Academic Papers

The building that you see below is the place where I should be spending the majority of the next several weeks. I have two very important papers to write, but I am having some difficulty deciding what they should be about. Briefly, the first one should be about the nature of the "Victorian City," more specifically 19th century London. The second paper needs to be connected to the idea of "Sacred Violence." I do not have any strong leads on either paper, and I fear that this might have something to do with not knowing as much Literary Theory as I think I should.


Library

For the first paper, the Victorian City, I am completely at sea metaphorically speaking. I figure that I might try to do something about the nature of physical space and how class differences worked in those spaces. I guess what I mean to say really is this: if you were rich in the 19th century you had more space, more mobility, but if you were poor, you were more confined. Unfortunately, I don't know if this is something that I ground in some kind of theory. Right now, this thought is an observation and does not rise to the status of a fully realized, academic thesis yet. An added restriction for this paper is that it must include some kind of connection to Dickens Bleak House, but what that connection is I haven't the foggiest idea yet.

The second paper I may have better luck with. I am going to return to some earlier work that I have done on Tim O'Brien's book, The Things They Carried. All of the stories in this collection are about a group of American soldiers during (and after) the Vietnam War. I have managed to write two other papers about two different stories in this collection before. I think I can write another paper about a third. By using "How to Tell a True War Story," and some research I did on psychological Trauma, I may be able to analyze how this seemingly secular war story has an element of sacred Trauma within it. However, I will be leaning heavily on the scapegoat elements within it and that may be stretching the story further than it will bend. But there are other stories in the collection that I could try work with as well.

I think my main project will be to swallow my pride, gather my courage, and talk to my professors about my paper plans. Even though they may not be happy with my admitting that I am not further along in the process as I should be, it looks like I am going to need some assistance to get something turned in to them by the end of the term. With the end of the term in mind, I am really going to be focusing on catching up on my reading assignments during the next four days. My only choice is to work steadily through this mess rather than doing what I normally do: which, specifically, is finding novel ways to avoid it.

Dreariness

The end of the term is fast apporaching, so with that in mind, I really need to find a to get all of this term's work done in the next three weeks. Projects of note are two seminar papers, and one book review, which of course, requires reading the book. I have been doing pretty good with my assignments lately, but even still with my increasing productivity, I still have a backlog of stuff to do. This past week has been characterized with meetings with Professors and Program Directors. I think I have passed beyond regret stage about what I should have done, but I still can't help think that I really should have done this during last year.


Dreary Winter

As far as my personal life goes, I think I am getting a grip on my the balance between school and personal non-academic interests. Although I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, I have found that my knowledge as a blogging hobbyist is proving useful and interesting to the few people who know me. I have a paper pending about the nature of blogs and hyperlinks, but it has been a few months since I have worked on it, and I already see that I am going to have to revise it. Some of the information is already out of date.

As for the above picture, I think it represents the kind of drab winter days that have been visiting here lately. The iron grey skies carry a chill that is most intense in the mornings when you have to scrape the ice off your car's windshield. On these days, it is almost a disappointment if the sun happens to come out in the afternoon. If, like me, you are dressed for the cold, the afternoon combination of the lunch induced drowsiness and unexpected warmth sap all my internal reserves for concentrated study. Plus, for some reason, the whole building in which I work is constantly overheated. Even if it is only 40 degrees outside, it is sometimes necessary to open a window.

Resolved and Figment

I'll try to post here a bit more frequently if I can. Now that I met with the appropriate advisors and professors, and now that I have resolved some of my issues here at work/school, I feel I can do a bit better about posting with more consistency. Of course, there will still be stretches of days at a time when I will have to put my blogging priority on the back burner (probably no longer than a week), but I am still committed to it and therefore will continue to do it for the forseeable future. I think I am fairly visual person, and I am enjoying posting pictures here on my site. I am not a photographer by any stretch of the imagination, but I think the pictures look nice here, and it can be an interesting hobby of sorts when I am in the mood.


Winter Fountain

Today, after the high-water-mark of resolving a months long school issue, I decided that I needed a short break from the study routine, so I spent a little over an hour at the University Ary Museum looking at some of Andy Warhols' most famous prints. Of course there were the popular Soup Cans and Marilyn Monroe displays. There were also some interestings ones of Jimmy Carter and JFK. I am not sure what to make of Warhol. Now that I am older, and can look back with some perspective (no pun intended), I realize how many people in the 80's tried to copy him. The large blocks of bold neon colors and the sketchy lines next to those colors, most of which is layered on a screen printing of a celebrity really brought that realization home. Seeing his works in person is really a lot different than looking at them in some art book. I have a new found appreciation for his ability to make a artistic composition out of his "manufactured" approach.

But part of me wonders if Warhol should not be remembered most as a comedian than as an artist. Some of his statements really seemed to me that he enjoyed putting the public on. He claimed that he thought it would be best if instead of dying, one could just "vanish" or turn into "sand." He also said that he did not want anything printed on his tombstone, he just wanted a plain slab of rock. But in the same quote, he amended his comment to indicate that the one word he wanted on his tombstone should be "Figment."

Nineteenth and Twenty-Fourth Centuries

It has been over a week since I last posted, for which, all I can say is that the delay is like a result of my struggling with the increasing press of work at school. It is time to really start thinking about term paper topics for my seminar papers due in about five weeks. Research should start to take priority which means that I should be spending more time reading in the library than anything else. I would really like to read at home, but I have found that the allure of shows like Battlestar Galactica, Futurama, and Star Trek Deep Space Nine is nearly impossible to resist. My Victorian City class demands that I spend more time in the 19th century than the 24th. Thus, I commit myself to the Library on campus.


Rain

As far as spending time in the 19th century goes (specifically: London, England), it has actually been quite interesting. In 1851, there was a "Great Exhibition" of nations that drew large crowds to the "crystal palace" to see the so-called great accomplishments of mostly Western Nations. For example, the Americans brought their sewing machine (or Singer brought it, I guess). But one of my favorite displays was one from Germany which displayed the new achievements in Taxidermy. One display of animals had about five stuffed cats drinking tea, while another cat played the piano. It reminds me of the famous "Dogs playing Poker" painting that you see in thrift stores. This particular German display of animals in human poses was so popular that two policeman had to guide the crowd through the exhibition and prevent the usual crowd type problems. In any event, that is all for now. More on all of this later, I suppose.

Graduate Students and the Four Groups

On Tuesday, the professor for my class veered away from the lecture for a few minutes to tell us about how grad. students are the only group at the university who "know" they are not the top of the educational heap. He said that there a four groups at every university: Faculty, Administrative Staff, Undergraduates, and Graduates. The first group, Faculty, can say, "without us, there would be nothing to teach." The Administrative staff can say, "well, without us to organize the schedules, facilitate the registration, and pay everyone's salaries, nothing would happen." And even the undergraduates, who make up the majority of the student body can respond with, "we are the people who pays the money into the system by taking these classes. Without us, there would be no-one to teach."


Working at Night

The only group who really "knows" that they are NOT the top of the heap are the graduate students. They are the only ones who recognize that they are working for some other purposes, usually another professor. And the graduate students wind up doing the bulk of the drudgery work such as "grading papers, doing class prep. work, etc." I admit that I haven't heard this before, and when the professor said it, I felt that it was at least true for the college where I am at currently. Perhaps it is true for all colleges. I know that I have graded more than my share of papers, and I haven't even taught a course yet.

As far as my own academic work goes, I am still behind. But, I think I can catch up. I have a plan that might work, and what is more important, a new attitude. I now know that all I can do is my best work and turn it in, which essentially means to me that I don't have to strive for perfection. I can strive for "good enough." I have heard people say this before, but only now is the realization of it sinking in.

Shouting

The other night I was shopping at my local grocery store because I had run out of milk and eggs. It was about 10:00 p.m. at night, and on Saturday night. From the looks of the shopping crowd, there were more than a few decrepit-looking bachelors or young people on a "beer run." This is what happens when you shop at the grocery store at night. If you shop at the other end of the day, say around 6:00 a.m., you will be more likely to run into people over the age of 60. In any event, this stop at the grocery started out to be uneventful, and like most things in my life lately, dull.


Summer Tree

When I parked and got out of my car, a young woman, college aged shouted at me: "JOE!" I stopped and looked at her out of the corner of my eye. I wasn't sure she was talking to me. "Hey, JOE!" Okay, now she was talking to me. I looked at her. The passenger was laughing. The woman shouting at me, oddly enough, looked a little shocked, perhaps even slightly scared. Something weird was up, and she expected some kind of an answer. I said, "uh, no--sorry. I'm not Joe." "You not!?," she asked incredulously. "No," I said and proceeded to walk away. Next, for some reason, she decided to start cursing at me and saying some things that would make a sailor blush. "HEY! YOU &*&%^?! Why don't you (expletive) effing (expletive) You (expletive, curse word, and you guessed it: expletive)!!!!" As she was still shouting at me when I had made it halfway from my car to the front of the grocery store, I decided to stop. I turned around and walked straight over to her car. I got within 5 feet of her car and made a big show of reading her license plate. She stopped yelling. Without saying a word, I walked inside the store and did my shopping.

When I was done, her car was gone. So I went home without incident, and went to bed an hour or so later. But, this kind of thing really makes me wonder. Why do people do this to each other? I am a stranger to her, and the funny thing is, I think she knew I wasn't "Joe" all along. For some reason, maybe the thrill of adrenaline, she wanted to yell at me. In a weird way, the whole shouting episode makes wish it was August. I took the above picture then, and I keep thinking of how I would do some things over again if I go back in time to then.

A Slump to End Them All

As you can see from the bottom of my post, it is about ten o'clock. I got back from my class on violence about an hour ago. And, believe it or not, I have two books to read in the next thirty six hours. Subtract the time I need for sleeping, eating, an going to an appointment to the dentist tomorrow, and you'll find that time is actually much shorter than that. I've been able to read books in a single day before, but 650 pages of small typeface is going to be a killer, and I am not sure that I can really do it. It has me a bit depressed. Okay, I'll admit it, more than "a bit." But there is nothing that I can really do about it.


Bicycle and Car

Although I no longer have a cold and feel fine physically, the rather immediate school stress combines with the ongoing and increasingly difficult stress of my new home situation (I'll not go into it). I know it is a bore to read about other people's problems, especially on other people's blogs--but I got to tell you--I'm having more trouble than I normally do. Another way of saying all of this is: I actually have some good reasons for complaining this time.

One of the ways that I have been coping is by working on my webcomic in brief intervals during the day. It gives my brain a rest from the constant studying, and it helps me stop dwelling on my problems for a time. I admit I am becoming more attached to the webcomic than I ever suspected I would be. I really want it to become more popular, like Beaver and Steve or something like it. And I wish I had more feedback about my comic and how to make it better. My current stats suggests that traffic is increasingly slowly, but I wish it could go a little faster.

Out of Commission

For the last five days, I've been pretty sick with a nasty head cold. One the consequences of which has been that the dentist appointment that I had scheduled for today was cancelled. I've been spending most of my time writhing on the couch under a blanket or lolling on my bed looking like death-warmed-over. When I've been forced to attend class, I've tried to sit in the back next to window and cough discretely into my sleeve. Yes, I'm sure I annoyed the hell out of everyone with my icky display of illness, but when your graduate course only meets ten times in a term, you have to go to every class. However, that has been balanced by my recent realization that most of the students in the class were nerdier than I remember.


Reach for the Sky

So, I've been trying to do my best during the last few of days of illness, but it hasn't been too easy. The physical illness, in a way, is a just a token of the larger, more intense personal issues with which I have been struggling during this past half month. Work, which for an English Graduate student means reading and writing, has been both a refuge and a distraction from these other problems. Currently, I'm reading Charles Dickens Bleak House, a novel which is supposed to paint a portrait of 19th century London. It is sometimes been a challenge to wrap my poor, ill and infected head around a Victorian sentence structure, but I have been able to follow the gist of the plot anyway. Also, I've been reading Flannery O'Connor. There's nothing like a weird story than one written by her. And, of course, Faulkner will be coming soon. But by that time, I hope to be feeling much better.

School Again

The first week of classes here at the University are over, but I am not sure that I have fully got in the swing of things yet. Too much has happened during the last three or four weeks for me to have fully processed all of it yet. In many ways, I am still trying to recover some lost equilibrium. I know people talk about finding their "centers" or becoming a "centered" person, and I think that is what I may be trying to do, but I admit that I hate that terminology and cliche.


Farm Chickens

One of the major things on my plate for this week is figuring out how to resolve what, exactly, I plan to do in September, nine months from now. Nine months from now seems like a ridiculously far away date right now, but if I am planning on getting a PhD., I will need to apply to a school during this next week. It would have been better if I applied during the first of part of December, but as I was functioning on such a basic level emotionally, I was barely able to meet some basic needs. To be honest, I am still having a hard time thinking or planning for the future, but circumstances demand that I do, so reluctantly I will. This is the first thing on my to do list for Friday morning. If I can crank out the applications, I may still have a decent chance. I am still waiting for the results of my GRE English subject test, something needed for applications. I will let you know how I did when I get them.

Birthday Sabbatical

Well, I didn't plan on it but it seems that I have taken a month long, winter break, sabbatical. I won't go into any details about it here because it is too personal. Suffice it to say that I haven't been doing too well personally. I've had to go through some major life changes, especially within the last two days. These are the kinds of things that stay with a person for a long time. And even though I never seem to stop saying it here on the blog, I really am going to be super busy for the next few weeks. The reason: I am finally going to complete my unfinished school work. Everything is on the line.

On another note, today is my birthday. I don't normally come up with new year's resolutions because I am thinking about B'day kinds of things, so I am too distracted. But this year, I think I will try to go to the gym more often, learn to cook, develop my webcomic more, be more reliable, and generally be more consistent and confident as a person. Oh, and I will finish all of my school work. This summer and fall will be very interesting regardless of anything I do.

Finals

So this will be a very quick post just to let everyone know that I am knee-deep in work right now trying to slog the last of the term's papers. It is amazing how work these silly things can be, and perhaps the most frustrating thing about writing papers is that no matter how many of them I write, they never get any easier to do. In fact, sometimes, they are considerably harder. Of course, this could be due to a variety of reasons: my personality, the course level, the increasing demands of professors, etc.

Currently, I am working a paper for No-No Boy by John Okada. I think that it is a great book and could probably give a pretty good formalistic (note: jargon) reading of the book without doing any extra research. But of course, research is absolutely required, so the desk in my office is slathered in academic papers that only a handful of people have ever really read. But, I am not complaining. Last year, I wrote a thirty page bibliography for research I had done for my first graduate level paper. It was one of the most challenging things I had ever done, but I was glad I did it. I suspect that I'll be glad when I finally get this work done as well. I can't wait until it is all finished.

Thanksgiving Leftovers

For the Thanksgiving Holiday here in the States, I visited my girlfriend's family and had a wonderful meal of turkey, ham, and broccoli. (I know Canada already had their Thanksgiving a month before.) I wanted to post a picture of the delicious meal, but unfortunately my skills with the digital camera were sorely lacking the day I took the picture: everything turned out grey. It was an interesting holiday in that the most memorable part of it was spent raking leaves for my girlfriend's uncle who had recently had heart surgery and was still in the hospital. The raking work was messy, but I like the fact that we were helping out someone who really needed it. The town in which they live is very pretty, and I realized being there that part of me missed it. I hoped they enjoyed sharing their holiday with me, and that I was not too much trouble.


Thanksgiving Visits

That weekend, I made a special trip by myself to visit my family. (The picture above is of the barn at their place.) Most everyone was at my parent's house this time as my sister had driven up from her college in California. I spent some time catching up with them about what they were doing. I took a lot of pictures, but with exception of a few non-identifying photos of things like the barn, I won't be posting them here on the blog. They're the kind of family photos most people would find boring anyway. As for the nutria I mentioned in the last post, I haven't seen any lately, but wouldn't you know, I did see a possum. Sometimes, you can't win.

Ned the Nutria

For those of you who have not had the pleasure of ever seeing a nutria, then let me paint you a picture. Imagine a New York rat: a long tailed, beady-eye animal, with large teeth protruding front teeth. Now, imagine that rat growing to the size of a small beaver, throw it into some waterway like a creek, a ditch, or even marsh, let it live there to munch on weeds and whatever else it eats.

Now imagine that it is dark. You have come home two hours ago. And because you live in crummy student housing, you need to take your laundry to a building across the parking lot. You walk past the bushes and assume that the rustling you hear is just the neighborhood cat, a pleasant but annoying creature always trying to sneak into other people's apartments. While looking at the bushes for the invisible cat, you nearly miss stepping on the giant rat creature obliviously munching on acorns under your apartment mailbox. Since you have startled it, it dashes off towards the creek with an animal burst of speed, which startles you. Simultaneously, the rustling in the bushes dashes off towards the creek. After removing the various laundry items that you, in a fright, accidentally threw up into the oak tree, you realize you have met a nutria.


Ned's Home

I had called a couple of times before to complain about these rat like disease carriers, but today, I finally went to visit the apartment manager to complain in person. As the creek behind the apartment we live in is actually a wildlife refuge, the manager says that he will have to call the fish and wildlife department. I know that the nothing will likely be done because, as I go to a state college, and the creek is a local park, I am officially in bureaucratic purgatory. Ned the Nutria, you have won the day my friend. If I can capture him on camera, I will try to post the picture here. For now, I can only be content to post a picture of the creek in which Ned lives.

Fall Changes

It has been a full nine days since my last post. Things are getting busy around here, especially because it is getting closer to the end of the term, and I have a lot of work that I need to complete. I've got about two and half essays to write in about as many weeks. I'm not sure that I will be able to get it all done, but I have definitely changed some things about the way I have been working in the past. Rather than keep doing the same thing with more intensity, hoping things would somehow change, I decided I needed to do some completely different things to try and effect a permanent change.



Money has suddenly become an issue, which, is seriously making me think I should apply for a job over the winter break. I have noticed a few temporary agencies around town, and considering how winter shopping season is about to get in full swing, I figure I should be able to get a job an earn a few hundred dollars. I definitely need the cash. Still, I try to maintain my sanity in small ways: through time spent with my girlfriend, taking digital pictures when I can, and working on my comic occasionally. It definitely helps.

Fish Dreams

Last night, I dreamed I was a small exotic fish in a very large municipal pond of some kind. I enjoyed the wash of water rushing through my gills, and I enjoyed the strength with which my body threw itself against the barely rocking currents. Swimming forward towards the pond's above-water concrete edge, over towards the waving underwater vegetation and the kelp-like shapes of the fresh water plants, I found myself caught in the tall leaves, leaves which were poisoning me. The shock of the idea of being poisoned affected me more than the mere reality of it. Assuming a human shape, I climbed out over the edge of the pond to try and find the comfort of people I knew would take care of me, cover me with a warmth that would negate the poison of the leaves that were prickling at my damp skin.


Fish

Although I enjoy dreams in which I am other animals or people, I did not enjoy this one too much. At the same, for some reason, I can not stop thinking about it. Here it is nearly twenty-four hours after I had the dream, and I can still hold some of the imagery of it in my mind. Most dreams leave me after being awake for twenty minutes. It has affected me on a deeper level than I guess I really want it to. On a completely different note, I do appreciate the poetry of the dream, even though it bothers me.

Projects and Introspection

Last night, I finally finished a minor project for school that I had been working on for the past couple of weeks, and, thankfully, I think that I managed to do rather well on it. I will know for sure when I get my grade for it, but the instructor told our group that she thought we had did well. I definitely needed the academic ego boost. It will help when I turn my attention this week to the unfinished projects I am still working on from last term.

Primarily, we were discussing John Okada's No-No Boy, which for me, is a novel that depicts a young Japanese-American man's struggle to define what it means to be an American in a society that had rejected him. Although I live on the West Coast of the U.S.A., I think that we do not hear enough about the internment of Americans in these camps, even now when such discussions--hell, "cultural battles"--are being waged over what it means to be an American. There are all kinds of memorials, observances, and reminders of other parts of our history, why not this part? Just as most kids on the west coast here know about Lewis and Clark, they should know about this as well. If anyone ever had a desire to read this book, they should read it as soon as they can.


Waterfall Fountain

Finally, despite this press of work, yesterday my girlfriend and I decided that a trip the beach was necessary to take a time out from all of the stress and hassle that normally builds up from daily living. Just as one has to occasionally clear out the fridge from spoiled food, or clear out the accumulations of clutter in your living room, one should clear the soul and spirit from the clutter of daily routine with a refreshing communion with nature. There really is no place like the beach. I wish we had taken pictures, but we did not have a camera with us. Today at least, even though I am immersed in the daily routine of work again, I can still enjoy the mental images of yesterday's sunset at the coast and enjoy the feelings that were inspired by time well spent with my girlfriend.

NaNoWriMo

One of the things that I've always wanted to do was write a novel. Of course, I've dabbled with writing for several years, the most significant portion of which has been free verse poetry. (I try to take an imagist tack in the poetry as much as possible, and therefore I avoid meter, rhyme, and other things traditionally considered poetry. Like I said, I am a dabbler.) But, I have not really delved much into prose, except for a couple of ridiculously angsty short stories I tried to write on my own in my early twenties and a handful of short stories I wrote in my creative writing college classes. Therefore, when I came across the NaNoWriMo website, I figured it seemed like a good thing to try. Short for National Novel Writing Month, the NaNoWriMo group encourages everyone to write a novel in a single month and to keep track of their progress on their site. I figured, what the heck, why not give it a shot? As it is completely free, I created a user profile and signed up.





Their basic advice about writing is pretty sound. The thing they say is that the most difficult thing about writing is pounding out the first draft. Having written countless college essays and term papers, I can concur. Many of my composition courses, or training classes to become a composition instructor, have said the same thing. Consequently, emphasizing quantity over quality, NaNoWriMo is encouraging participants to write 50,000 words during November. As I still have a lot of my own work to do (writing several essays for college), I already know that I will fall far, far short of this goal. As with all of my creative writing, I only intend to dabble, which means I will work on this "novel" during slow moments, or when I can't stand to write another academic word. These brief moments of novel writing will be a way of loosening the stiff writing muscles for the heavier work of writing term papers. (I haven't forgotten which side my bread is actually buttered on.)

And I have a past history of doing something similar to this. During my undergraduate days, I would often try to write a poem or two (usually a bad one) before launching into writing a rough draft of an assigned paper. The assigned paper would generally come more quickly and be bit better after doing so. It is roughly analogous to stretching before running a marathon. And that is how my priorities are going to be, the real marathon is not writing a novel, but getting my own work done. The stretching will be the NaNoWriMo project. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Progress and Outlook

I finally got my computer cord during the end of last week, and I have been catching up on my internet usage for the past couple of days. I am also trying to get as caught up as I can on some unfinished projects at school. Yes, I have two final papers left over from the previous term that I need to finish quickly, as well as final papers from this term that I need to start soon. For those of you who are keeping score, these two papers that need to be finished are completely different from the previous two papers that I had talked about in months past. I did not do too badly on those papers, although I wish I had done them sooner.

Tonight, I am going home to clean up the house for upcoming inspections from the student housing office. Lest you think me an incorrigible slob, I must tell you that I am not being singled out for said inspections. Since I go to a state university, and have student housing (which by default makes it government housing), the entire student complex of over 1000 units is being inspected. They did this last term and I passed with flying colors, but that was merely because I had barely lived in the place for more than a few weeks before they came over. Now, after a full year, the house has more of a lived in feel, instead of the bare, stark, institutional feel it had back then. Consequently, I will need to make sure that the house is clean top to bottom. It should not be too hard.

But then it will be back to working on my papers. I am going to need to have the one done by tomorrow night or Wednesday. I think I can do it, but it will need some solid dedication on my part and a commitment not to get to get distracted.



Yesterday, I read the novel The Flower Drum Song by C.Y. Lee. According to the instructor, this was popular novel about a family in Chinatown that came under attack in the seventies for perpetuating harmful stereotypes about Asians. After reading, I have to admit that I was uncomfortable with some of the portrayals of women in the book, but I chalked it up as being a product of its time (which was the late 1950's). Of course, the book doesn't come close to the 1961 Rodgers and Hammerstein movie musical of the same name for stereotypes. In fact, the movie blows past harmful stereotypes straight into full-on racism and sexism. The fresh-off-the-boat Chinese woman Mei Li has no other desire than to get married to a stiff shirt who suffers from a father who apparently acts too traditional. I won't go into too much detail except to say that the younger son of this too-traditional father is wearing either a New York Giants baseball uniform or a 1776 American Revolutionary fighter costume through half of the movie. I did like the Samuel Adams Fong (no kidding!) character in that he seemed to be channeling a kind of Dean Martin persona with all the attendant 60's lingo. But, it is a movie I probably won't be seeing again soon.

A Conversation

The following is an actual transcript of a conversation that I had with my computer last week. To provide the appropriate background, I must tell you that I am college graduate student majoring in English, and therefore have a daily need for a computer to do research, note-taking, and of course, word processing. (Furthermore, I am a level 10 nerd, with plus one (+1) modifiers to all around geekery.) My computer is a laptop Toshiba Satellite A45-S150; let's call it Toshi.

Zhaf: Well, Toshi, time for another session on the Internet.

Toshi: Dude, are you kidding? That's like the third time today. Don't you have a book to read or something?

Zhaf: Yeah, but I just want to check my e-mail to see if the school has sent me something important.

Tohsi: Hah! You just want to post something on your other blog, and you use school as an excuse.

Zhaf: I do not!

Toshi: Right, and I'm not a computer. Listen, I'm so sick of eating all the cookies from the countless websites you visit, I could lose my "chips."

Zhaf: That's an exaggeration.

Toshi: Uh, actually, I do feel a little sick. My cord hurts for some reason.

Zhaf: Oh my god, your cord is frayed! When did that happen?

Toshi: Man, I don't know. Ow! Don't jiggle it! That makes it worse.

Zhaf: Just let me plug you in for a little bit to see if you'll take a charge. (a short moment later) Whoa!

Toshi: OWWW! Holy Crap! What did you do? That really, really hurts!

Zhaf: When I plugged you in, there was shower of orange sparks that shot out from your cord and melted the nearby plastic.

Toshi: Aw, geez. That's just great! Why don't you set me on fire to see if I will put myself out! Not a smooth move, dude.

Zhaf: Hang a second; Let me see if I can get you a new power supply.

At this point, I call around to several different computer and electronic stores around town. Although one could theoretically buy something called a Universal Power Supply that will fit most laptop computers, nobody within a 60 mile radius has anything that will work specifically with my particular brand and model of Toshiba. I call the warranty people from the store I purchased Toshi, and after much wrangling, I manage to get them to send me a new one free of charge. Unfortunately, it will take 7 to 10 days for it to get here.

Zhaf: Bad news, Toshi. It is going to be awhile before I can get you fixed.

Tohsi: Bad news for you, not for me. It looks like I am going to get a weeklong rest from your grubby fingers pounding on my keys.

Zhaf: Um, whatever. Look, I am going to have to let you sleep for about a week. We'll talk again when your part comes in.

Toshi: Good night, man.

And that is where I am now. I am using other people's computers to do most of my computer work, but for the most part, I am not using a computer near as much I used to do. I've actually been reading more. What that means for this site is that I will not post as much as I used to. I know I sound like a broken record when I say that (heck, I sound like a hundred broken records--a broken jukebox!), but this computer issue will be the reason why I don't post for now. I'll be back when the power supply arrives, which I hope is real soon.

Academic Monuments

I finally met my new office mate after three weeks of school being officially over. He seems like a very interesting person who wants to focus his English studies in film, which, as far as I am concerned right now, seems about as good as anything. I need to figure out this whole program of English study for myself sooner rather than later. I am still interested in books, but I hardly have time to read anything outside of what I'm assigned. I can't imagine having the time to watch a bunch of films, even if they are for a class I am taking. At this exact moment, I have about two hundred pages of rather dense material to get through of The New Rhetoric, a long treatise on the nature of rhetoric. I think I can follow most of it, but it is testing my ability to concentrate on the subject.

Anyway, My new office mate has be rearranging the other desks lately, and recently wanted to know if I cared whether or not he moved bookcase. Since I'm a pretty easy-going guy, I said that whatever he had in mind was fine with me. But, the thing about the bookcase is that at least one hundred student portfolios are sitting on it, waiting for students to come back and pick them up--something that the students have generally seemed reluctant to do. (These portfolios contain the three essays and three rough drafts that this cirriculum requires them to do, plus all of the writing they ever did in class.) Consequently, even though the students have long graduated, even though the graduate student instructors who taught the classes have moved on, the portfolios remain waiting for a pick-up that will never happen. They are sort of a dust-covered monument to the undergraduate, academic past.

In any event, the new office mate moved all of the portfolios to a couple of the desks that are not being used. As he has brought attention to these portfolios, I became curious about them and decided to thumb through a couple. I was most interested in the previous graduate students, the past teachers of these portfolio authors, because I am currently in the position--hell, I am in the same damn office--that they themselves used to occupy. I noted their names and began to google them to see what greener pastures had lay in store for them after investing their time and money in this particular instituion. Perhaps their success would indicate what may lay in store for me if I worked hard enough.

The results were sobering. Out of eight names, only one turned up: Brian S. And he currently works in an all girl boarding school in Conneticut, not a University or a Community College. I suspect that the only reason that he was able to get the boarding school job is that those types of jobs are harder to hire for, and therefore will accept anyone qualified person willing to work in those conditions. You will not find many people willing to choose to live with their students beyond the normal teaching day. Part of me had hoped that because the program I am at focuses so heavily on its unique approach to teaching that all of the students would be more valuable, and therefore more hirable, in the work force. I expected to see more than half of the names as instructors at community colleges around the country, and even one or two at a full fledged University. They, apparently, are not. I need to really laser my efforts here to not only overcome the previously difficulties I have had, but to acheive some measure of distinction that will help me get a lucrative job in the future. I am doing a pretty good job with my comments in class, but I need to keep up on the all of the homework and improve my writing skills by at least one thousand percent.

Ghosts and Warriors

Today I finished reading The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston for my Asian American Literature course. I am not sure what to make of this book. On the one hand, it declares itself a memoir, but interwoven throughout (in some places more than others) are mythological elements that fight against its being classified as a traditional autobiography. Overall, I enjoyed it, but since this reading was for class, I feel I need to understand a bit more.



For example, in the first section, a young Chinese girl, lost in wilderness, is found and taken care of by two mysterious old people who train her to take revenge on the the people who have made her homeless. She is trained as a swordswoman, like the traditional figure of Fa Mu Lan, which apparently is akin to Joan of Arc. (That is, all of this happens if I understood the narrative right.) The elderly couple is described as magical beings who hardly eat, and have powers of prognostication thanks to their crystal ball, which isn't a crystal ball but actually a magic drinking gourd. Contrast those images to the final section where a young Chinese-American girl working at the family Laundry in New York is frustrated by her mother, while she simultaneously struggles to define who she is and how she fits in the Western World.

I am oversimplifying here, but the thoughts that come to my mind are this: as this book shapes itself as an autobiography, should one think of the mythological elements as an ideological framework in which the more realistic elements are grounded? What I mean is this: does the mythology provide a framework that gives readers with no knowldege of Chinese culture a cultural background that is necessary to understand the autobiography? This book reads more like a novel than anything else, and as a novel, I am thinking along the lines of the "magic realism" style associated with Marquez. I think all this might be happening, but then again, I also think this is too technical for my blog, and I should be putting this on the class site instead. Actually, I think I am going to do that right now.

Volcano!

As everyone who has watched the news in the last several days already knows, Mt. St. Helens has been making some noise and has generated a lot of interest. My grandparents happened to be painting their deck when the big blast occurred in 1980. They watched helplessly as ash fell into the wet paint ruining it. Then it was tragedy, but now, it is a family story (which most of us think is kind of funny). Now, my parents live in that house, and the grandparents have moved ten miles to be closer to town. And guess what they are doing? Painting their new deck for their new home. I know it would be a lot of money to repaint a deck, but if ash managed to make it down here in a new explosion to ruin their paint job, I really would find that hilarious.

Anyhow, while looking, I found this link to the live webcam from the Johnston Ridge Observatory (named for the scientist who died in the 1980 blast). In the interest of science, I present the following to you. Enjoy.



UPDATE: October 4th, 8 a.m.-- Scientists have said that the lava dome, that big bulgy thing in the crater of the volcano that acts like a lid on a shook up soda bottle, has moved 50 to 100 feet! They were concerned when it looked like it had moved just a couple of centimeters. Another thing I have heard is that Volcanoes in the Northwest have a tendency to explode, shooting out plumes of ash rather than erupt with rivers of lava. It looks like the darn thing could blow at any minute. While I hope I get to see it when it happens, I also hope noone gets hurt.

UPDATE 2: October 4th, 6:00 p.m. -- This information about the Volcano is really interesting. I found it on one of the US Geological Survey sites:

Northwest Indians told early explorers about the firey Mount St. Helens. In fact, an Indian name for the mountain, Louwala-Clough, means "smoking mountain". According to one legend, the mountain was once a beautiful maiden, "Loowit". When two sons of the Great Spirit "Sahale" fell in love with her, she could not choose between them. The two braves, Wyeast and Klickitat fought over her, burying villages and forests in the process. Sahale was furious. He smote the three lovers and erected a mighty mountain peak where each fell. Because Loowit was beautiful, her mountain (Mount St. Helens) was a beautiful, symmetrical cone of dazzling white. Wyeast (Mount Hood) lifts his head in pride, but Klickitat (Mount Adams) wept to see the beautiful maiden wrapped in snow, so he bends his head as he gazes on St. Helens.

I want to hear more of these kind of stories about the mountains in the news, rather than see reporters get excited every time there is a belch of steam. Oh, and one final thing, don't make that Sahale guy angry. Apparently he has a temper.