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.

 
Well Rested

New blogger is pretty slick looking... Between the sun yesterday and the scrumptious and filling Father's Day dinner, I was out like a light at 7pm. Woken from a coma, I stirred a little around 11, took some sleep-aids and Aleve and right back to bed for me. I haven't felt this good in years - since I slept for close to 14 hours I can say that my batteries are fully recharged.

I had an embarrassing realization this morning. Let me preface all of this by saying that my computer budged an inch and the keyboard is up to its old shenanigans. Certain keys don't type at all. Pressing the space bar registers an "n" on the screen and the ever non-helpful delete key types "y" and sometimes deletes the unwanted letter. So that's a mess. For the time being, I am working on my sister's computer. Since Middlebury went and updated the Webmail long-on page, I was sure that I was doing something wrong and that was why I hadn't received any email at all for days. That fear was denied when I realized that I got junk mail today and hadn't had an email for close to a week. That pretty much sums up the state of affairs these days - not much to write about and not even a whole lot to hear about. The funniest thing about using someone else's computer is that you are exposed to their music choices - I have deduced that my sister loves melodramatic love ballads from the eighties - golden oldies like "Eternal Flame" by the Bangels, the kind of songs you imagine are favored at Korean karoke joints. She also likes more hardcore rap than I do, what a weird mix. My sister is a two-faced Gemini through and through.

I did talk to old friends this weekend who are setting up roots in old New York; new apartments, jobs, routines et al. I have to admit that having these conversations made me enjoy my complacency. I wouldn't exactly say that I am anxious about graduate school - but I feel unprepared to be taking up so much new all at once. I wish I had a few months to practice living alone, grocery shopping, budgeting... and then gradually phase in classes (one at a time, of course) and then balance teaching. There is something disquieting about the fact that I pride myself as a fiercely independent person - outgoing, self-reliant, good common sense, while I have never lived "entirely on my own." I've never lived that far away from all of my family and friends and even more importantly, to date, I've never had my own home apart from a dorm room or corner of someone else's house. Everyone has to leave the nest and since I see plenty of other people doing it, I know it can be done and after two months of it I am sure I'll wonder what I was ever concerned about, but for the time being, this is the worry of the moment and everything else is blurry in the background.

I am really fishing here for things to say (I haven't blogged much at all lately) so let's talk about the new Real World, a Paris. I am sure you've all seen it at this point, since I work all of the time and I've seen the first two episodes at least three times. Let me first of all make the obvious observation about the season thus-far. It is generally a terrible idea to send six sheltered Americans to another country when no one knows the language. This basically means that we can expect a season of our seven holed up in their Chateau in sordid love triangles because they will be unwilling and unable to meet new friends and soak up the culture. So far, the first two episodes have yet to prove me wrong. We have yet another beautiful and brainless cast on our hands. I feel like I know very little about these people, only who they are attracted to. And maybe it's a good thing to get all of this out on the table straight away, but I feel like these "characters" don't have much depth. This couldn't be more true than when Ace, southern-hick, leans over to Adam, token minority (but also token rich kid, what a clever pairing you MTV-types), and says "You're attracted to Mallory because you can't have her, she's 19, a virgin, and so naive." Okay, there you go, she has nothing to add and this is championed as her charm - we have a Julie, a Kat, an Elka, or a Colin, for a new generation. Maybe I am just too old to be watching this show because I've already figured out that the Real World translates into the Unreal World. There is very little entertainment value in watching people my age get trashed - like crooked-faced ugly CT drinking himself to the point of staggering on the second night in the house. At least when Ruthie did this, she had a confirmed drinking problem. Whereas this guy should be embarrassed by being 23 or something and not knowing his grappa limit. What a freshman mistake. I'm not saying that I don't go overboard from time to time, but I fully know what will push me over and what the likely consequences will be. I think he's more than a little obnoxious. I also can't wait to see how their "job" works out - because I am sure that a cocktail waitress, a sheltered nobody, a southern hick, and a full-of-herself blonde are going to be wonderfully talented writers and put together a very helpful and compelling travel guidebook. I think this would have been a good project for the Seattle cast and these Parisiens should be hosting a radio talk show, or to sit around and do nothing in a foreign country like they did in England.
posted by lmjasinski at 9:27 AM