Fanfare for Ms. E. F. C

Meine Dame Und Herren und everything in-between or beyond that spectrum,

I give you Em Le Fay
Erstwhile Englishwoman in the County of Fyfe (after the Thane thereof)
Scholar and Soon-to-be Asset Manager
Cross-Atlantic Nomad
All-Around Encyclopedia of Minutiae
Former Co-President of the Dramatic Society
Receiver of a Glass of White Wine
and
my friend, Former Citizen of My Heart

Quoth the Economics Student, "It's not like I'm going to be happy anyway, so I might as well do a job that makes me a good deal of money. Then I can retire and do what I like." Quoth the Follower of Dr. Johnson and Adam Smith, "It's hard to do a thing you love, why ruin it? Get out, while you can." Quoth she, "No one around me has got their head screwed on right."

I give you Em Le Fay
Wearer of Sensible Winter Coats and Good Jeans
Attendant of Assessment Pools
(which I gather are rather like group auditions)
Applicant to the Financial Giant J.P. Morgan Stanley
Half of Matt and Emma
Recaller of the Tiny Details of the Political Machinations of the Alma Mater
(and Extensive Recounter thereof)
Drinker of Blue Drinks
Giver of Earfuls
Former Partner-In-Crime

I can't really remember half the people she mentions in conversation. My mind is going is my excuse. That time I puked so hard vessels burst in my eyes cleared away most of 2004-2005. Don't mind me, I'm listening.

She says, "You know, [insert favorite teacher here] once told me that she was worried about you. Sort of unsure of where you would end up. Of who you'd be." I open my mouth to speak as this is news to me, but these days it's hard to get a word in edgewise. The last time we saw each other, she was but two days out of the removal of her wisdom teeth and still talked my ear off for nigh on seven turnings of the hour. I think, "We're not all that different, you and me, scrabbling for happiness on this unhappy plain."

I think, "Remember the evening when we were at school late and no one was around and it was pouring (like it is tonight) and we ran out onto the field made of ASTROTURF and dumped cans of Coke onto their precious and expensive lacrosse/field hockey pitch in an act of nascent radical violence? Before we knew those words? And how we howled in the night and ran giggling back inside to the stares of our less-bedraggled classmates and winked at each other for the offense we had committed? Do you remember? Well, do you?"

Exit Em Le Fay
Helena to my Hermia
Shylock to my Bassanio
One Half of a Pair of Strange Little Girls
Citizen of My Heart

BAO!

fuck all states

i cant, i wont, i dont have time. im supposed to be writing, or thinking, or sleeping, or buying a plane ticket to singapore, or dancing,  or or orrr or

my visa expires in six weeks. i dont want to leave. i have to leave and spendspend spend sending my money to jetairways or kingfisher so they can buy petrol and shoot me over to the land of fast bureaucracy where visas are fast and plentiful, 

if i can

if they allow foreigners to put their life and lineage and intentions on a PDF and pay $150 and get a stamp in a book and get punted back across the bay, sea, ocean to the land of slow bureaucracy and classical dance festivals and trains to the mountains

at this point it's just cheaper to come home in six weeks

fuck everything

i have a 10 page paper due about ________ by sunday morning (it's friday night). i have one paragraph written. all my friends are leaving tomorrow by 7pm. alex and chloe are ready to go, samantha never wants to leave, hannah is going to delhi to meet her parents and "do" rajasthan. i'll see her in chennai later. then pondicherry, ooty, and back to delhi? names names names and places i've seen so many places. im writing about temples... when they are sacred and when they are not. ive been in 9 active temples, 9 places of ambiguous or informal worship, and 18 abandoned temples. if there is no image in the center shrine, and if the image is not bathed and fed and adorned daily by a brahmin, there is no normatively sacred space but i still take my shoes off and stay quiet like a museum. why are ruins museums? 

hannah has returned to use her computer

now my room is hoppin

life is complicated

i hate a lot of things

but am confused and feeling so many thingswordswordswordsss

Poopsicle.

"On these warm days, I feel a strange sense of foreboding, as if something is about to go terribly, terribly wrong," quoth I to Ricky Dicky Micky Sticky Licky Douchebag. "I love marijuana cigarettes," quoth he to me. I think, "I should be a wall, not a person."

Today, this week, this month I find myself incapable of abstraction but capable of abstract psychology. I whirl around naming hang-ups and neuroses. "Seek counseling" quoth the counselor. "You would," quoth I. But I am far too busy analyzing to be analyzed. I refuse the flocked chaise but I'm putting baby there all the time. Brecht and Artaud gather snot in their noses to smear on me at a later date. "Look at yourself, concerned with persons not people!" Then they mime masturbation. I feel sassed.

Inevitably, I come back to the fact that there is often a cat in our bathtub chasing his tail or cats hissing at each other in the hall. These are points of contention for me above all others. I cannot name this feeling, because it is not so much a feeling as a symbol that has no signifiers but feels like a symbol for my life anyway. When I see them I think, "Am I waiting for grown-upness to happen to me? I wait for a lot to happen to me. I am in the waiting-room all the time. In the waiting-room reading the boring-ass, crappy fucking magazines about things I don't care to know." Cats make me think. Maybe it's the smell.

What I am saying is, I fold. Count me out.


I am too childish to play this game. My dad beats me at Monopoly, he's been doing it for nearly twenty-two years and I still tear up a little. "Look at yourself," quoteth Brecht and Artaud, "sell back our books to the bookstore and give back that one you 'borrowed' because your fingers are stinging our pages." "You would," quoteth I. Then I snot on them before they can snot on me. "Ha" I say. "You would" quoth they.

So much for being a sophisticate. For being urbane or academic. So much for being abstract. I guess I won't be the caftan wearing type.

a privy for your thoughts

today's been pretty average so far:
I listened to a goose symphony
I explored two different forgotten ruins (one tiny and dirty, one vast and unclean)
I skipped two lectures (one physically, one mentally [note: the second lecture hasn't ended yet. I think])
I thought about money and class in multiple contexts
I lost my favorite hat (it'll show up at the grounds - or it won't! so therefore I can tell the future)

and then in the process of losing my hat, I realized that there was something nagging at me all day long, metanagging if you will, I kind of annoyance at having to wonder what's bothering me, the kind of thing that can only be solved with a nice, sting-y tentacle-slap.
but I think I'm tired of being slapped by the same tentacles all the time.

A thought experiment:
I think I figured out ruthlessness.
You can only be ruthless when you know the end (the goal, the conclusion, &c.).
Then you can ignore all the distractions en route (and thus the chief virtue of ruthlessness is its efficiency towards the thing you want to do).
I would argue that if you already know the end
that is to say, think you know the end
then you've already done something wrong - and here's why:
say you know the outcome of a thing.
you're either right, in which case, why bother doing the thing?*
or you're wrong, in which case, maybe ignoring all the distractions en route wasn't such a hot idea after all.

Very abstract, yes, but we can now apply this, for example, to show why my papers always get mediocre grades (left as an exercise to the reader).
*A bonus critical thought question: how does the above theory apply to xtianity? to your own metaphilosophy?

To conclude this particular ramble,
I desperately need more ruth in my life.

Situation Normal All Fucked Up

Today is dreaming in my stockings, too hungover to do much more brain work than absorbing so fuck thinking and producing, cold cold cold, quiet up in the bell tower, clanging ringing of my shoes on the floor, feeling like the Hologram Museum lady opening doors with my oversized key, and food tasting like it's maybe a joke that's being played on me by the world.

It's been a weird fucking week. Two weeks ago, I thought I had scrabbled together the foundations of some personal aphorisms, but the past five days or so have proved me wrong. I can feel how unsettled everyone and everything feels. Like right now, my nerves are dampened by the dull sheen of an affected brain but still I can feel the the blood drawing away from my fingertips and my toes, receding ever backwards to my heart. It makes me want to set up a nest of blankets and tossed aside scarves wherever I go, so I can keep warm and retreat whenever I need to. Almost as if, I have in some instinctive way decided to be a nomad now that the times have sprung upon me.

That sounds maudlin. I don't mean it to be. Things are changing, which is fine, just a little sooner than I had hoped or expected. Maybe I have to work on not worrying about permanence. For so many years of my life, everything was always the same. I think sometimes I want to hang on to that, as repulsive as it often was to me. It might be time to let go of that need. I wonder what that would do.

Do you have a sense of permanence in your life? Or an attitude towards transience and temporariness?

P.S. The Renaissance Society kitchen is a wonder to behold. There are so many bottles of Pellegrino water.

path to knowledge

recently i am reading "the teachings of don juan: a yaqui way of knowledge." it is intriguing. more on that later because i am low on juices.

today i am in pittsburgh
this morning i was at oberlin college in oberlin, ohio, which alex tried to convince me was about 10 blocks by 10 blocks but i insisted was more like 12x15. probably more like 11x9 depending on how you count them.

last night presented 3 serendipitous events in close proximity (10 minutes):
1. on my way to a questionably compelling party "above the coffeeshop," i saw a familiar face and pointed and said "i know you!" he stared and started and it turned out to be theo, my ex-girlfriend's ex-roommate's boyfriend. too complicated. but a kid i met several times when i hung out at the shoreland 2nd year. possibly a little worse for the wear, but lovely once he overcame his shock.
2. someone found my lost bali shag tobacco pouch (nearly brand new) and returned it to me! of course i rolled em a spliff in return.
3. i met nikeel's (sp?) sister while smoking outside this too-full party. she did not deliver a philosophical manifesto. she was also lovely.

actually i realized that i visited oberlin exactly a year ago this weekend. upon my last visit, i wrote a love letter/thank you note (are they so dissimilar?) to oberlin (here if you's curious). what a strange regularity--when my plants grow in spurts and my period comes as often as now and laters to quik snax or rare as laundry day (that is, not often)...it is funny that such cycles would reveal themselves.

i took deep breaths and watched people work and live. i smoked too much and watched a college scene from the outside. it made me want to go back to school and also never go back to living in academia.
i also thought about how many young lives thrive in close proximity and how easy it is to not wear a helmet and accidentally get run over by an 18 wheeler. i think i'll start wearing a helmet. i advise you to consider it (if you haven't already).

all for now
love to the baohaus&others

more robot theorizing

what is robot?
robot is
anti-individual
un-aesthetic
spiteful
(how do robots feel spite, you may ask. I save this as an exercise to the reader)
predictable
boring
and, most of all
robots follow the code.
which code? any code they're given. but they must follow it.

When you need to cross a busy street, do you wait for the walk sign or for the lull in traffic? why?

I don't hate all robots. there is value in code and protocol. however, I find myself aligned against them in the interest of freaks and shamans and mutants everywhere, because the robot code is capitalism's code and I stand for a DIY ethic that is quickly losing its place in our society. Thus, I must take a stand for individual weirdness, against the robots. Let it be known that I do this mainly for my own (metaphysical) amusement. My anger may have arisen out of sexual frustration, but by now it's become something much more valid and serious.