Look with your eyes, not with your hands.


Such a minute fraction of this life do we live: so much is sleep, tooth-brushing, waiting for mail, for metamorphosis, for those sudden moments of incandescence: unexpected, but once one knows them, one can live life in the light of their past and the hope of their future.



A grad student muses on her life, film, friends, politics, reality televizzle, and music.

 
Temperatures Dip

It hasn't been this cold in years (consistently zero or "negative" for a week), ever since there were warnings that exposed skin would freeze and my friends and I bundled ourselves up in thick scarves and liquid vodka jackets and braved the extreme wind-chill to go to an Italian House party. Now I am really showing my age because I am talking about the old Italian House, which is of course entirely different than the new house with some Italian students as residents. I am talking about 91 Franklin Street and the institution of personalities collected therein, circa 2000. Speaking of the Italian House, I am feeling very pimped out with the recent arrival of my new (very good sale) black down vest from gap.com. Lots of sales on outwear this year - but also lots of things black in the last two months - raincoat, long sweater, vest, running pants, cowl neck graduation sweater, two pairs of gloves etc... I think I've scratched the shopping itch for a while and now I should up and move to a city where I won't feel quite so morbid or funerary. Just the same, I am not one to pass up a good sale and when you find something that works - like wearing black - why change?? Also the last two compliments I've received - one was that I've achieved "classic" style and the other being that I am always very well coordinated (at least wardrob-ally speaking) seem to be centered on the recent purchases, so maybe somebody notices. True to form, when I am feeling lousy my preferred outlets are junk food, a new mp3 play list, and a new wardrobe.

Also, there is something about the jpeterman descriptions that come to the rescue in the rut times. I had folded a page of an old JPeterman catalogue in my journal last year and I assume it was in anticipation of the trip to Africa I thought I would be taking. Without transcribing the whole fictitious nostalgia here, it tells of the colonists that came to Africa between 1906 and 1939 and for three decades learned how to hear, found paradise, and how it will never happen again. I don't remember doing this, but I am glad that I did. Fake histories and nice fantasies, and lines like "I'm not saying you have to choose between champagne and bathtub gin. But it's something to think about." I use to write descriptions like these for the people in my life, I had forgotten how much fun it was. I guess much of this kind of thinking is inspired by my frequent watching of The Royal Tennenbaums this week, including Wes Anderson's commentary. I think that this film does a very good job of boiling characters down into defining props, wardrobes, and habits. Perhaps my possessive side is shining a little here, when you put down this kind of two-dimensional bit of dialogue or a single scene to capture a person's essence, you pen them in, you turn them into something ownable, measurable, definitive. Like a photograph, it is something to hold onto and revisit. I don't know why this is exactly related to the same thought, but I feel there is a connection, last night was the first time I ever honestly considered making the cross-country road trip with Nathan. I don't know, maybe it's just that I need a little more fantasy / anticipation in my life right now, but making the pilgrimage to his Northern California vineyard never sounded quite as much like Mecca as it did late last night. I don't know - the next 8 months seem so open I guess I am bound to entertain a different set of options (with more freedom) than I ever had while confined by school and summer jobs. The prospect of a trip to California reminded me very much of going to Michigan two summers ago - just going to the lake, a new place, relaxing, and escaping. I guess we'll see, I am bad at following through and I am bad about "going to see" people, I am much better at welcoming guests and playing host.

It appears that it might be warmer in Montreal this weekend than it will be in Middlebury. That's just hard to imagine, but good. 10 or 15 degrees makes a significant difference. I think we've got a good case in the works, or so Jeremy tells me. He just read something in Rolling Stone that there are apparently a sect of gay men out there who find pleasure in becoming infected with AIDS through unprotected sex. I don't know much about this as of yet, but it has something, in a very skewed way, to do with regarding AIDS as a gift. This community thrives through Internet sites devoted to matching up infectors with the uninfected. Our case is going to be something like these sites should be blocked based on the precedent that similar websites encouraging anorexic behaviors were blocked because they posed a tangible health threat. Sounds interesting and it bring to mind all of the first amendment / Internet arguments that we're so fond of. We'll give the Elgin Marbles another go and we should prep at least one more. I'll see what I can come up with, I liked the "prisoner of war" / "enemy of war" status in reference to suspected Taliban members case Dan and I ran at Dartmouth - the one case we ran together - this is probably the most prepared I've ever been for a debate tournament. Since this tournament is in Canada, I don't want to run any American foreign policy cases. Anyway, that's neither here nor there - will report when I get back.

posted by lmjasinski at 12:38 PM