"Are you an elitist?/18 revealing ways to know for sure"

one of my dearest friends sent me an article entitled, "Are you an elitist?/18 revealing ways to know for sure" (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/09/12/notes091208.DTL). it is a list of "elitist" stereotypes, one that is supposed to reveal how cool it is for you to identify with the given stereotypes. at the end of the list, i think you are supposed to realize that you are not elitist. you're just liberal, and thank goodness.

i've been reading alot lately. mostly reading just makes me think, "words are slippery."

what i am trying to say to(?), within, and (yet) with all this slippery language is that it's hard for me to hear/see values with which i identify ascribed to images with which i don't identify. it's hard for me to accept that images which hold value for me are viewed with such disdain by "liberal elitists." it's hard when the images in which i hold my values are used in ways that are not in line with... i won't say values. i will say that they are used in ways that are not useful, not helpful, and not understanding. ok, fine -- so used in ways counter to my values, i give up.

i've somewhat digressed. let me try again: i feel as though i've been robbed of language. how do i talk about how i feel when all the images have been claimed?

maybe, i am naive. maybe i am a product of too much time spent in my room. or maybe this man is a jack-ass. will you read this with me? this one is among my favorites, #15 in "ways to know if you are an elitist":

15. You speak a foreign language. This implies you might understand something of the world, have an interest in a culture other than your own, or have perhaps even traveled to some exotic foreign land that isn't Texas or New Jersey or Hawaii, a place where they like weird cheeses and don't fear gay people and ride bicycles to the opera.

because (starting to look glazed with strange annoyance), because if you "speak a foreign language" you clearly know, wait -- he said, "you might understand [my emphasis] something of the world." right, because all the people who ever spoke another language have understood others' experiences. because people who speak foreign (and note that "foreign" here means languages other than English) languages always treat people well. because language has clearly made this man such a kinder and more accepting human being, as he has clearly used his amazing ability to write long sentences in such a non-combative manner. because (and i don't care if he is merely trying to be funny) when he makes Texas an "exotic" country and figures it in opposition to another "exotic" country where "they like weird cheeses and don't fear gay people," he in one stroke has 1) expatriated me from his preferred slice of the United States, as i am from Texas, 2) located all the positive possibilities of "exotic" in Europe, which therefore 3) removes other "exotic" countries such as, say, China or Taiwan (where by the way, they don't always like cheese and might fear gay people) from the realm of acceptable oppositional forces, and has thus essentially (1-3) erased the viability of both my lived home and my family's imagined home.

clearly, liberals understand everything. and they never marginalize anyone. and i -- as i am from Texas, often pray, and enjoy eating pork-filled dumplings -- it is impossible that i might also be complex.

i have homework to do.

update

i sleep in my bed again. i also open the window, run a fan, and don ear plugs. honestly, it's not so bad, but i am loathe to give up my prior rage.

she returns

for some, blogs are written to reveal perspective, or written in order to share life events. i think, for me, it is time i accepted that my blog is about catharsis (cathexsis?)

in a past life, i would offer some rudimentary justification here. so... (insert rudimentary justification)

i live in an apartment in which there never ceases to be noise. most of it puddles at the corners of my bedroom. at this very moment, there is someone playing music; it sounds as if it is radio music. it is emanating from the far left corner of my room, but it is uncertain as to whether it is originating from under my floorboards or from next door. civil (if somewhat nagging) requests have returned me no peace, merely curses. i would complain, except that i cannot find the source of the noise. one neighbor blames another, and all neighbors are of the opinion that i should simply "get used to living in an apartment!"

persistent noise creates in me a persistent desire to do violence. instead (of say, burning down my neighbors' doors) i invent fantasies of rest, create actual fairy tales in order to cope. "my bedroom is actually a walk-in closet. and my living room is my bedroom" (yes, i now sleep in the living room.) "it's wonderful to have two rooms for the price of one." and i ignore that i am angry that it is necessary for me to learn to cope with my home. because home was supposed to be where one goes for comfort. the home i created for myself was supposed to be, was meant to be, should have been a space/a site of quiet, somewhere -- a where that was/is apart.

no, there was no way i could have known that my apartment is a sound-trap.

and such is the nature of broken fantasies. they create rage: strange, primal rages. and there is not much one can do about this derivative of anger, i have learned. at least, there is not much i know to do about such rage. there is nothing to do, really -- besides function.

and the only functional thing for me to do is to walk out of my now-closet, into my new bedroom, and go to sleep.

though tomorrow, i am calling the landlord.

Journal Entry

I have been reading Annie Proulx’s “The Soldier’s Tale” out of The New Yorker which I bought for $5.40 at a stray news stand.

I was at a Borders this past week. I have not been in a bookstore for a long time, not a large one. I stood in front of the bestseller rack and felt as if I were in a foreign country. I stared at the selection and surveyed what, in my head, was a cross-section of Americana. A new memoir by a “fat, mean girl,” an analysis of India and China, maybe a million references to elephants (Elephants meaning India, Elephants meaning Republicans, Fiction: Water for Elephants, etc.), a guide to men written by "an ex-bad boy" for women. I admit that I picked up the guide to men and leafed through it, also admit to making my friend at least a little annoyed because I refused to spend money on it but also couldn’t seem to put it down. He was hungry, “OK. I’m going to walk out this door. When you decide what to do, I will be outside.” I quickly put the book down and ran after him. Sometimes, drastic measures must be taken.

I doubt I would have been able to leave the bookstore on my own. While still inside and standing in front of the literary essays shelf, I picked up an Annie Dillard essay and thought about how I had never finished Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I looked at Joan Didion sitting next to her. I looked up at the new Michael Chabon hardcover and let my eyes wander down the shelf and remarked to my friend that being at this bookstore “makes me feel like a person who’s lost her religion.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I just felt like saying it,” I replied. By which I do not mean that I was lying, only that I did not understand the sensation.

I have started almost every sentence with “I.” I think I have what people term heartbreak. It’s a feeling of only being able to hear or see things that are very far away. It’s as if everything is very far away. I read the newspaper to remind myself that the world is still populated. But sometimes when conversing, I feel my eyes wander, and then I’m seeing a road over the horizon or the lights above the bookshelves in the bookstore and that person’s voice is a clerk answering a question or the hum of a car on the highway.

This is from “The Soldier’s Tale,” “They sat frozen, like survivors in the aftermath of an explosion…The air vibrated.”

emoting thesis

me: every so often, i have the urge to scream "i am awesome!"
just to remind myself
one needs to do these things when faced with a large, looming paper
A: haha
me: and an empty bank account

more from gchat

me: i can't come. i'm grounded on thursday
S: no worries, thought i'd send you the invite anyway. grounded? you been a bad girl?
me: remember, i haven't worked for like 3 months
S: oh, self grounded
me: instead i just sat down in a pile of nervous breakdown
S: better than sitting in shit
me: granted
S: or maybe not
me: nervous breakdown is cleaner. but then again, shit is easier to clean up
S: nicely put...

thesis progress

K: how is your thesis coming?
me: i'm having the issue of there being too many things i didn't know i didn't know with too little work done plus too little time to be only now knowing the things i don't know right now.
K: hahaha. awesome sentence construction.

Berkeley

To quote Brilliant Friend, "(It's) what fuels Berkeley -- Solar Energy and Criticism..."