Nonono. I never post here anymore.
Haven’t you learned?

Oh my, it’s been ages.

I promise to start again soon, I pledge it.

In the meantime. There’s not a lot to say.

“l’ennui”

I’m not happy here at home. I keep messing everything up as soon as I take a breath from bathing or napping. It’s not even stagnation, it’s regression.

But even though I hate Plath, most of the time, this pretty little poem makes me feel warm inside.

And look…a scan of her copy of The Great Gatsby.

[Via Blackbird]

Blogging from inside “The New School Occupation.”
They’ve turned the cafeteria of the GF building into a public space, pushed all the tables off to the side of the room.
Kids are painting banners on the floor, played music from their laptops, sipping whiskey from flasks.
A crowd of supporters in on the street out front, yelling and marching in support.
Security won’t let anyone in or out, periodic threats occurring from the NYPD of impending arrest–but it seems unlikely.
There’s too many students here, and they’re rowdy but peaceful.
Earlier today, the kids took the building. They barricaded the fire entrance with crates and canvas, before security charged in. Picked up a girl that was sitting on a crate and threw her against the floor. Someone got it on video.
Civil lawyers on site.
They’ve closed down every other New School building.
The goal of all of this is to get Bob Kerrey to resign.
Last week, 95% of the faculty voted no confidence in him when he appointed himself Provost.
Graduate students of the NSSR met on Sunday and formulated a list of complaints: lack of fiscal transparency, and emphasized on commercialism and branding-making instead of on nurturing an academic community are, for me, real problems that need to be addressed.
The New School was established on progressive intellectual thought and social justice. It was a safe haven for the exiled.
Bob Kerrey is not the right person to be running this institution, but some of this is out of hand. When he passes by the plate glass windows (all of our rooms here are fishbowls, and that needs reform too–but that’s another story) students press up against the glass yelling “War Criminal!” in unison. Mean-spirited taunting will not get student demands met any faster, and it makes us look irresponsible and immature.
I don’t like the provocation, but I think it’s incredible to see how many people showed up in solidarity–including students at consortium schools across New York City. Students should have the right to yell, to organize, to ask for change. The kids in this room are passionate, if nothing else; some have been here for 44 hours.
Glorified revolution is part the equation here, I know, but coming from a generation known for emphatic emotional detachment–this spirited commotion is a welcome change from apathy.

But it’s not as romantic as it sounds. It’s hot, everyone smells, and they just cut off our access to the bathroom.

I just finished the first draft of my play.
I’m so disgusted with it’s flaws, that I don’t think I can look at it for a week.
But I have a draft! A skeleton of potential.

It’s called Without Light, and it’s messy, epic, bloated, and bombastic.
There are dead people and living people hanging out together all the time, scenes that make decade-plus jumps forward-and-back in time, and “orgiastic” light shows.
I’m actually pretty proud of it–as a first draft.
I included an epigraph, and that’s the only part that I’ll let you see until it’s picked up by a theater and in production.
—
This craft of ours, sacred and bright,
Has lasted too many years to tell…
The world is lit by it without light,
But, still, a poet has yet to dwell
On the thought that there’s no wisdom or no hell
No age and, perhaps, no death as well.

–Anna Akhmatova, 1944
—
I’m ambitious, surely–but Kushner says that “pretentiousness and grandiosity are [one's] birthright as an American.”

I’ve been feeling particularly patriotic lately.

Reading, I’ve decided, is dangerous.
Good books make you fall in love with the writer–and almost always he doesn’t deserve your love. Like you, he crawls out of bed in the middle of the night and sneaks into the bathroom without bothering to put on pants. Like you, he overeats when he’s lonely and spends too much time standing in front of the mirror sucking in his gut. Like you, he thinks people are always looking at him, thinks that his fears and hopes and dreams are etched onto his face.
Reading is dangerous; for those poor sad sacks that need imaginary friends.

I’ve been working so hard lately–on my papers for school, on my play, on the libretto. And I’ve been getting the best possible feedback. It feels so good for a day or two; it’s a drug.
But here’s the problem: past work is never enough. At a certain point, it doesn’t feel like a part of you. It feels like an accident, like some wonderful thing someone else did and let you sign off on. Good work is worthless once it’s finished, even worse–it holds you hostage. The promise of new work, fresh work, better work, becomes inconceivable.
So when I sat down this morning, I froze up. After everything I’ve done the past week–on joy rides and Catholics and open letters and the living dead and cursed men–I worry that I have no more good ideas left.
And so I stare into the mirror, at my face, looking for clues.

The Anatomy of Wandering - Anh Doung

Although two of my finals are total throwaways (Buddhist regurgitation and five-pages of rambling prose about art and war), I’m actually working on three projects I care a lot about. for school! yes!

One: my play. My first full-length, the first thing in a year that broke that awful self-consciousness I have about my work. I finished the final scenes last night, and they don’t stand up in quality to the rest of the work–but still, it’s all taken shape and now it’s just a matter of pinching here and sewing there.

Two: what had initially been intended as an analysis of abortion and the Catholic Voter in 2008 turned into a referendum on religio-political rhetoric focusing on the issue of abortion. So much fun! Really, it is! I just get to watch youtube videos of politicians talking all day and read editorials by people disagreeing about what the politicians are actually saying! That’s like, all I ever do anyway!

Three: Well, I haven’t quite started writing it, but preliminary research suggests that it’ll be right up my alley. A profile of The Weekly Standard from conception (1995) through the 2000 election, concentrating on the wonderfully smug neoconservative, Bill Kristol. I love my neocons.

And that’s all folks. Nothing matters, but this.

Oh, I know, I never write here anymore–but I’ve been caught up in the turns of life.
Still, I want to note that what initially started off as an awful-terrible-no good-very bad day suddenly brought to me the sweetest of surprises.
And even though I have to spend the next two weeks typing like crazy about god-knows-what into my computer screen until my fingers fall off, I think that there might not be a better time to throw myself into my work.
Don’t be to surprised if you don’t see me around on here for a little bit.

I’ve reached this wonderful point in my college career where every single one of my assignments resembles procrastination.
Which is why I get to spend my afternoon having much-too-much fun with street views on Google Maps. In place of actually leaving my house with a camera and taking photographs of all of Bed-Stuy’s religious manifestations, I can sit in front of my laptop and toggle keys down the virtual street.
(Have we talked about how creepy Google has gotten? I mean if it hadn’t been before, it’s now really getting out of control.)
Anyway, so after a couple of nice screen captures and drag-and-dropping, I have a delicious little presentation taking shape with minimal effort/movement on my part.
To celebrate, I’ve decided to take a walk in Chicago.

Oh, old house! I miss it! Overgrown with trees and a bus-stop out front–right there, everything I’ve ever loved about Chicago.

Chicago’s a city with big green parks and flower gardens, roaring with elevated trains and car exhaust–all of it stretching alongside the lake.

I really am a Chicago girl; I still feel like a stranger in New York.