Journey to the End of the Night

For my French lit class, we are reading Céline in translation. There is a remarkable amount of words that I am only loosely familiar with, and more that I haven’t seen before, so I decided to make a list of their definitions to improve both my comprehension and my own vocabulary.

New Vocabulary

pederast - a man who has sex (usually sodomy) with a boy as the passive partner

filiform - thin in diameter; resembling a thread

corpuscle - either of two types of cells (erythrocytes and leukocytes) and sometimes including platelets (syn: blood cells)

febrile - of or relating to or characterized by fever

peculate - appropriate (as property entrusted to one’s care) fraudulently to one’s own use

kepi - a cap with a flat circular top and a visor

moribund - 1: not growing or changing; without force or vitality (syn:stagnant)
2: on the point of death; breathing your last; “a moribund patient”

 

ok, here it goes

Another post.

 

I don’t have much but a piece of bread and an empty stomach. My head’s empty too, you know, and I should have been writing a story or a poem but all I’ve got is this weird feeling. So I didn’t really write and I didn’t really try. But this is still practice. Still putting pen to paper, figuratively at least. I want more than this but it looks like right now I can’t or won’t put the effort in. Sigh, right?

 

I have been writing some lines. They’re ok, but they’re not much to speak of at this point. Maybe later, maybe.

give up the ghost

Everyone talks about how there are phrases in other languages that describe events or actions in ways that you just can’t in English. Truth be told, those things actually can be described in English, it just takes more than one word. I like the option of taking a word and having to translate it into a sentence to make it understood: the perception of the author and their audience then adjusts the translation.

I like the flux in language. I like the change, the mutability of it. I like knowing that I could understand people speaking English more than a thousand years ago, but that they may be baffled by my speech. I want to travel thousands of years into the future and be baffled myself.

English has our own phrases too, our own words that don’t quite make sense when translated over to another language. Our connotations alone make it hard enough for a native-English speaker to appropriately communicate. Take the phrase “I like you.” Now, basely, it means that I appreciate your company, surely. Or that you have personality traits that make me want to be around you. But do I like you, or just like you? And if I do like you, is it in a middle school, I think you’re dreamy type way, or in an understated, I’ve actually been pining for years type way? Tricky, huh?

I like languages. I feel like I am naturally inclined towards them. I seem to be picking up French rather well, which has a ton of these little words and phrases that encapsulate whole thesis topics.

Failure.

I never failed a class in elementary school, middle school or high school. I came close twice in high school. Once, for a PE class taught by a bigoted bible-thumper who I couldn’t stand, but I managed to do a shit ton of extra credit and came out with a B. The other was a chemistry class, my first taste of experiencing a subject where, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t wrap my head around the concepts. I can talk to you about reactions, isotopes, elements and chemicals, but it was nearly impossible to a pass a test based on those things. I couldn’t translate what I knew or tried to know onto the paper, and felt the sting of embarrassment when the teacher passed my tests back face down. Again, extra credit pulled me through that disaster, and I came out with a C. Hardly anything to complain about, unless you knew the circumstances.

Of course, I failed in other parts of my other classes too. Sometimes I forgot to do the reading for history, or didn’t care enough to finish a chapter for English. A few zeros on reading quizzes never fazed me, because I destroyed exams and always did the papers and projects. 93% is the same grade as 100% on paper. I knew that my failure was mostly due in part to forgetfulness and laziness in those areas, and in the two and half years since that chemistry class, I forgot what it was like to truly fail at a subject.

In spring quarter of my freshman year of college, I needed a fourth class so I would have a solid 16 units. With most of my basic GEs out of the way, I figured that I would complete my math GE and be done with it so I could focus on other more interesting, liberal artsy things for the rest of my collegiate career. I scanned through the math classes available, and two came forward. A remedial math whose description read like a seventh grade class, and Calculus 1. I made it up to Math Studies in high school, which included trigonometry and basic calculus, and had an above average score on the IB exam in Mathematics. This background made me more confident that I could take the Calc class over the remedial math class.

But. Still. I was hesitant. Math isn’t my favorite, and it never has been. My friends and boyfriend were all either going into Calc 3 or differential mathematics at that point though, and they all assured me that Calc 1 was indistinguishable from high school math. If worse came to worst, they said, we can tutor you through it.

What really got me though, and this is the kicker, was that I wanted a challenge. I remember thinking to myself, “If I work hard, and pass this class with a B or an A, I can show my friends that my math skills are up to par”. I wanted to try something new, and not take the easy way. I wanted to learn something, to understand what my friends were talking about when they discussed their homework. I wanted that class. So, I signed up for it.

At first, it was cake. I couldn’t believe it. I was getting full credit on homework quizzes and could follow the lecture. Then came the first midterm. I failed it so badly the teacher wrote on top of the paper, “Can you come back from this?” And then I had to make it through another hour of class without crying, because I didn’t want to be that kid. Back in my room later that day, I did the math and figured that if I kept doing well on the homework, and got the barest Cs on the next two exams, I could easily pass. My friends passed my test around, and gave me practice problems until I could take the test again and at least pass it. Then I took the second midterm. And I got a D.

At that point, I called my dad and told him, “I might not make it through this class”. It was getting too late to drop the class though, and my dad said to keep up the practice and tutoring, and the final could bump me up to at least a D, which still counts as passing at Poly. So I took his advice. I studied for that class more than any other class that quarter. I put off reading so I could do practice tests. I did math problems on my breaks at work. And I took the final. And I failed the class still.

I never bothered to calculate what my grade was on the final. I knew it was, at best, a C. I needed a B or so to bump my grade up to D range, and that didn’t happen. I called my parents, and told them that I failed the class. I was heartbroken, in the way that a person who puts everything they have into something and gets nothing in return. I had a sudden, vague idea of what romance novels were talking about.

I managed to not sink my GPA that quarter by doing fantastically in all of my other classes. But the embarrassment stood. No one wants to hear about you doing well, they want to ask you, What were you thinking taking a hard math class? Didn’t you know it was above your level? And, all you can do is shrug and say that you tried. And, I did try. I think my heart was in the right place, but I got so mixed up in trying to prove something to myself (that I could do math) that I missed my chance to drop a class that damn near killed me.

In the end, it’s one class. I can take a different math class at another point. Will it matter five, ten years from now? Probably not. But the experience stands. I know more about myself, I suppose. I know that my friends are willing to spend way too much time helping me with homework, and that I will be editing all of their papers for them for the rest of our time at Poly. And, most importantly, I know to never take a Calculus (or Chemistry) class ever again.

15 days

I go back to SLO soon. A day over two weeks, and I’m out. Am I happy? Yes. It means meeting 15 new kids, moving into an apartment with my best friend, going back to work and starting a quarter that I’m really looking forward to in terms of classes. But. You know. It’s hard too.

This summer was good time to spend with my sisters, my parents and my grandma. I saw those five people the most, more often than I saw my friends or any other family members. Going back to school means getting time with peers my own age and testing the waters of what it means to be independent (almost, you know?).

It means feeding myself, on my own terms, which is sometimes an odd thing (I’ve lived for days on coffee and I have to say it is effective). It means not seeing little kids, or my parents, or any other family. It means fucking up sometimes.

And I’ll miss my family, more acutely perhaps because of future plans they hold. Will that mean I’ll be home more often? Maybe. I work Monday-Friday, and commuting takes an entire day. I’ll be home every holiday though, and I’m going to try my damnedest to make every birthday.

I feel like I am mostly ready to go back to SLO, except for the tangible things like packing my clothes. Everything else is organized into bags and boxes already. I need to buy plates, bowls, a colander, and maybe some pans. The intangible is harder to grasp. Do I need to do a big grandiose goodbye before I leave? Do a group family hug? Or walk around my home and wonder how many more times I’ll be there before it’s sold? I think that I will end up doing all of that.

I am a mixed bag. Assorted emotions. Every time I talk about moving, I feel like I’m pulling out a different feeling, and I’m rarely certain which one it will be that time. Hope, fear, nervousness, happiness, anxiety, sadness, nostalgia.

Anticipation.

That which depresses me.

“The relationship is always in control of the person who cares the least.”

“I can’t fuck her college degree.”

The internet is a brutally honest place, yet I am usually desensitized to the oft-misogynistic, misanthropic sentiments. But the two above? Utter sadness. Because to a lot of people, they are true. And, I suppose the first statement is, actually, true. A breakup is easier on the one who already had one foot out the door. Ryan and I refer to our relationship as us being binary stars–it’s comforting that we see each other as equal and level. To extend the metaphor of binary stars, it doesn’t really work. They orbit around a shared center of gravity, but never touch. But, binary stars is much better than a planet+moon metaphor, where the idea that one person cares more is more clearly illustrated.

The second statement is a little disgusting. I’ve heard variations on it before: “No man ever wanted to fuck me because I could play the piano.”, or “I can’t screw her personality”. It’s marginalizing a person’s worth to their sexuality and diminishing their other qualities and accomplishments in order to elevate their body. Sure, it is a joke. But I have a hard time seeing what makes it funny. Is it funny because it’s true? Or because it plays on old gender stereotypes, and the joke teller is utilizing irony? I have no sense of humor in this regard.

I have a thought.

I’m considering writing a book. Fuck, right? I haven’t even properly finished one short story, although I’ve started about a dozen. I write poetry more often than anything else, but I keep most of it private–apart from your prying eyes, dear reader. The worst of it is, that my book (hypothetical little thing that it is) would not be profound, or insightful. I seriously doubt it would shed light on the trials and triumphs of the human spirit, awash in the pretentious glaze of dime store words and bizarre grammar.

Kerouac wrote Big Sur when he was an alcoholic. Reading it is killing me, because he doesn’t capitalize anything (I know that I love ee cummings, but his media allows for it), he is full of misspellings and grammar errors and no punctuation but it is still beautiful and sad and terrible. He drinks with his friends, he drinks alone, he drinks on the mountain and on the side of the road. Where doesn’t this man drink? He could out-drink a fish.  Reading it is like watching a train crash in slow motion, except I and everyone else already knows the outcome. There’s no stopping it.

I would love to write a book, and then I walk through a bookstore and look at the thousands of god awful creations sitting on the bookshelves and think to myself, “Really?”. I get sent into this blind rage when I see books like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, or Android Karenina. I haven’t read them, I’m already biased against it. The names are clever, but what else is there? I don’t even like the original genre to begin with, so what can I possibly gain with the addition of some anachronisms? Anyway. There is so much competition and weird ambition prevalent in my field. It seems especially strange because I write for myself most often, except when someone asks me to write specifically for them. Which, I of course, oblige.

Poetry is my love. It is always, always there for me. When I am loved and in a relationship, it sometimes takes a backseat because I write more levelly and sharply when I’m bitter. But still, it remains. And, I do have so much in my life that I hurt over that it isn’t terribly hard to revert back to that anger. But mostly I ignore those things, and sometimes capture them in little vignettes in my poems.

I keep changing my mind what my book would be about. Sometimes, it would be a dry, serious-ish type look at how ridiculous my generation is. Other times, I want to write about dreams, that elusive subject that occupies me so much. My current thought is of a man, desperate, at a loss, who is committed by well-meaning but incredibly stupid friends to going on a new blind date every night for an entire year. I have a fun time thinking of his scenarios, the women he would meet, how he could keep things interesting despite going through the same conversations 365 times. He would learn something by the end. I would probably kill off his character midway though and reroute the story though.

It’s what I do best.

cherries

When I was in highschool, there was a guy who sat behind me in history every day. He never missed class. Until he did. Everyone noticed, of course, because this was Frankie, the quiet kid who was always there. A girl who was better friends with him than I was told us why he wasn’t there. Apparently, Frankie has been allergic to cherries since he was a baby. He also had the misfortune of loving cherries. This kid had gone seventeen years without getting to indulge in that pure, unadulterated cherry taste save for a few occasions when he would do an allergen test.
The Sunday before he missed school, his mother had brought home a bag of red, ripe cherries, newly in season. She left them in the fridge, then went to work. Frankie promptly decided to disregard everything that his parents, doctors and common sense told him, and ate almost the entire bag of cherries by the time his mom came back. At that point, his lips had swollen to twice their size, and the inside of his mouth was throbbing. Thus, Frankie got to take a few days off of school for indulging.
There are so many things that get denied to people. Frankie loved the taste of cherries, but eating it was a serious hazard to his health. Diabetics make a tremendous sacrifice every single day of their lives, and their families do too. People lose their jobs, they lose loved ones, they get denied. Life is sometimes a series of denial. Where no means heartbreak. But millions and millions of people deal every day.
I don’t even know what I’m talking about. I wanted to turn the cherry story into a poem, but I hadn’t thoroughly thought it through enough to write succinctly about it. Maybe now I can, but since the thought has been purged, I’ll most likely move on to something else.

the hazards of love

While away in San Luis Obispo, I saw him almost every day. Even when I worked and went to orientation meetings, I would see him for a late night dinner, and we would walk slowly back to the dorm rooms to make the most of our time. Some weekends one of us would go home to visit, during breaks and holidays the same. For longer breaks, one of us would go to the others’ home, dealing with 10 hour train trips and much more tolerable flights. The distance between our homes never seemed too bad; it’s not as if I’m a state or a country away. He’s in San Carlos, not Sri Lanka. When he would go home, I would miss him in the sense that I would really have preferred to be with him, but I was never heart broken that he was away. For the first time, I felt (and feel) that I am being more practical about minor separations.

Summer vacation has both drawbacks and advantages that are greatly detailed in other places. I am home and with family that I haven’t had quality time with for too long, I am eating better and I have time to catch up on little projects. Yet, I have a hard time keeping up with friends here, my Poly friends are (for the most part) in Northern California, and socializing here is equated to getting fucked up at a house party. I’m not digging any of these cons. The spare time here means I can do cool stuff with my sisters, but I have plenty of alone time to (over)think about things.

The things I think about are the little things. In a relationship, there is so much that you do together that you don’t realize. Being at home reminds me that I ate dinner with him almost every single night. And, that he would play with my hair unasked. Little, tiny baby things that I never realized I would miss. And I do miss him, in a big way.

Being apart is not a heart-wrenching, desperate feeling for me (and I suspect it’s not for him either). When we talk on the phone, at some point when the conversation has faded down, one of us will say softly, “I miss you”. That’s all. We’re not prone to drama. I don’t waste away and pine at home, like I might have (and probably did) when I was younger. Not that I’m so much older and mature now, but that I’ve dealt with slight variations of this theme before. Being apart for a month is, basically, nothing. It definitely rings for me that I have missed out on a month’s worth of little things, but I’m not crying over it. I’m ok with not constantly being together, but I most definitely prefer to be with him.

I suppose this whole thing is about how I miss him. It’s a slow feeling. One where I hear a song, and think about him, or laugh at a joke and try to remember it so I can tell him on the phone later. It’s a miss that makes me wish that I were better at writing letters so that I could send him notes and thoughts when I felt like it.

I’m glad to be seeing him soon. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t read this blog ha.

Advice for the Misguided (Myself)

1. Asking people about their secrets is rarely appropriate, so cut that shit out. During late night conversations with close friends, secrets are anticipated and expected to be shared. Almost every other time and place probably makes people think that you are, at best, rather gauche; and at worst, an insufferable, nosy twat. While no one has confirmed (or denied) these ideas, it’s most likely best to let people keep their information to themselves. You will seem more gracious and capable if you would stop being so inquisitive. Curiosity killed the Cat(e).
2. Do you know those people who have little personal problems all the time? Issues with their girlfriend, or parents, no money, can’t find a date, no one will sleep with them, and so on? That’s every fucking person on the planet. You can be a sympathetic/empathetic listener, but quit trying to solve every other person’s issues. You have your own to sort out. I’m pretty sure that 95% of the time that someone talks to you about their troubles (also, see #1 above: this is them coming to you, NOT you actively seeking out said persons), they just want to talk it out. Get it off their chest. Step out from under that raincloud that has been following them since Johnny So-and-So didn’t ask them to dance at the seventh grade prom. Shut your mouth, and listen. Be actively there for them, with the nods and the mmhmms that they want. That’s why people communicate at all. For reassurance and understanding and acknowledgment of their feelings. To be validated. Don’t try to make things better, because it’s unnecessary. Just being there makes things better.