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.

 
Now You Can Choose

No matter how good the trip, it's nice to come home to your own place after time away. From my minute anxiety attack last busy Thursday, I've come full circle, with great enthusiasm, toward Wisconsin, its people, the department, and even this terror-inspiring life as a poor grad student. Now I am just flighty, happy to be home and finding it hard to sit down and complete a thought after a long day bouncing between airports and four equally as transitory days. But, I am glad to say that it is all good, and whatever doubts I had (not many) were cleared up yesterday in realizing that current students share them (in that not everyone is life-purpose certain that finishing a dissertation is in his future), and just having a wonderful celebratory send off with some capitol-area bars... I really like that part of town and I was relieved to meet someone who lives in that area in an affordable efficency that is apparently big, nice, has free heat. The review was conferred by others and well, where do I sign? Hopefully I can find something there. It's hard to describe Madison per se, but it's a nice downtown area. I think living by there would actually give me a transplated New York experience. The main street in Madison, State Street, isn't all that different from my favorite NY stomping ground, Murray Hill, meets Burlington's Church Street in a pedestrian-only kind of way (this still isn't a perfect hybrid, I'll work on the description). Granted that you'll have to swap some of the martini bars for sports bars, but it has a similar feel - and I think this will actually be my most urban living experience yet - considering that I can walk to a remarkable number of coffee shops, bars, and ethnic food joints. I generally like all downtowns, this is more rule than exception. The aparment building is in walking distance of the aesthetically glorious State Capitol building and I have my wee heart set on it, of course, this is sight unseen, but it comes highly recommended. Last night we did a small tour of area bars after the screening of the 1960 Western "Comanche Station"... the bars felt like places I would gravitate to on my own and it was good company and just a pleasing night out. I think when you have fun going out with a group of relative strangers, you know that you're in for something good. It was a good note to leave on and I feel emotionally invested in the place and the people that I was lucky enough to meet for an extended period of time.

I must say that I am a little more than ticked with the slow service I am experiencing from my latest round of orders from the Amazon marketplace. Usually I am very pleased with my orders and they come promptly, but this time, it's not working out as well as I planned. I have been especially anxious for Wong Kar Wei's "Chungking Express" to arrive. Upon returning home, I see that I am still waiting on a number of books (including Bordwell's iconic Film Art). I did however recieve the Chicago Guide to Academic Careers. I think that this looks like a nice companion piece to the more chummy and anectodotal title I read on the plane (I've already championed this title enough). The Chicago Guide is more formal, a collaborative effort in which three "experts" chime in on every issue - but I think it lays some things out better (it spans grad school through tenure) including a lot of detail about questions to ask yourself and many dimensions as to weigh different career options and paths against one another. I will probably get into this in the next few days, I'll let you know how urgently you need to add one to your library. I also found my highly antscipated Tsai Ming-Liang's "What Time is it There" waiting for me. Okay, I've been in love with the description and stills of this film since last April when I was really into this slow and voyeuristic Director and much of Asian cinema... so I finally broke down and added it to the permanent collection. I was dissappointed to see that I clearly didn't end up with an official copy. It's a bootleg, I am sure of it because of the crappy looking color-photocopied cover and the really strange graphic looking design on the disc itself. I popped it in the ol' DVD playa and it seems to play just fine, so I don't have grounds to complain. I guess this is what they mean by buyer beware or whatever. I'll probably sink my teeth into that tomorrow because it is long and needs to be properly attended to (you can't very well watch a movie in Mandarin and be distracted). I'll let you know if it lives up to my impossibly high expectations. I am happy to get this title today because my watch has been in a real tizzy over daylight savings time and hopping back and forth into Central and Eastern time. I am just going to say this now, if this film isn't what I expect and I ever have to write a screenplay in grad school, I am so writing the film I imagine in its place.
posted by lmjasinski at 10:48 PM