Moving, again.

The nomadic serial blogger strikes again.

New adress: http://hauntologie.blogspot.com/

Cheers

Friday Poetry

Friday poetry blogging is something I’ve always wanted to do. The problem is, I never realise it’s Friday until the following Tuesday or Wednesday. But since I am sitting in Starbuck’s working on my thesis while the rest of the world is out relaxing or getting wasted, I am painfully aware that it is indeed Friday.

And so a poem — one of my favorites by Rainer Maria Rilke. (The last two stanzas are amazing.)

WOMAN IN LOVE

That is my window. Just now
I have so softly wakened.
I thought that I would float.
How far does my life reach,
and where does the night begin

I could think that everything
was still me all around;
transparent like a crystal’s
depths, darkened, mute.

I could keep even the stars
within me; so immense
my heart seems to me; so willingly
it let him go again.

whom I began perhaps to love, perhaps to hold.
Like something strange, undreamt-of,
my fate now gazes at me.

For what, then, am I stretched out
beneath this endlessness,
exuding fragrance like a meadow,
swayed this way and that,

calling out and frightened
that someone will hear the call,
and destined to disappear
inside some other life.

Translated by Edward Snow

Playing It Cool

I’m only writing because I have the nearly uncontrollable urge to call J.  It’s because I’m at Starbucks working on my thesis and we used to do work together here, and this is the first time I’ve been here since last spring, with him.  I want to get a mocha, his drink.  I want to tell him I miss him.  Now they’re playing the Donnie Darko soundtrack and it isn’t helping.  He loves that stupid movie.

We talked for an hour today.  He’d been trying to get a hold of me for a couple days but I was always in class or something.  I didn’t call back; I played it cool.  He told me he misses me.  I said it was good to hear him.  He didn’t say anything about his mistress.  I don’t know what to think.  I was almost ready to move on and forget everything.

But I’m not gonna do it.  I’m doing so good.  It’s like a diet: I’m doing so good and I’m not gonna fuck up.  I’m not gonna call or text or email.  I’m cool…. I’m playin’ it cool…

Deep Thoughts

You know what’s weird?

how some people look exactly the same, and by that I mean bear the same expression, in every single photo they are in.

Sweet.

I actually got a real interview with TFA!  I’m surprised but very happy and excited.  I know exactly how I’m going to do my 5 min. lesson, and it turns out that founder and president Wendy Kopp will be giving a lecture here next week, but more on that later.

In closing, a thought:

If love makes every man a poet,

love lost makes every poet prolific.

God Help Me, and, The Colts Are Going to the Super Bowl: Thank You, God, for Caring About Football When There’re Surely So Many Other More Pressing Matters

At a friend’s party this weekend I met a guy named John who graduated last year and now works somewhere in the city (“city,” ha ha!) It recently occurred to me that soon I will no longer be dating students. Well, you know, kid students. Strange. I had all I could do not to tell him all about the Gospel of his namesake. That’s the kind of night it was. And no, I’m not a Bible reader normally–I read it for a Religion class, with a capital “R.”

Then I had the kind of morning where you don’t remember having rearranged your furniture and then you pass out in the shower. That afternoon I considered becoming a “non-drinker” at the age of 21. I’m actually still considering this. Partly because of my horrific morning, but mostly because, unfortunately, I have seen what prolonged overindulgence can do to a person, and I don’t want that to happen to me. That will not help me live to see the year 3000 2100.

Plan C

Be a farmer.

I think I’d like that.  I like dirt.  I like getting up before sunrise.  I like solitude and nature.  Animals are okay, but I think I’ll just have cats and dogs.  And a horse or two or three. Maybe I’ll have a vineyard in California.

That’d be pretty sweet.

(I’m totally screwed.)

Plan B?

I’ve been contemplating what I will do if I do not get to work with TFA, which, seeing as my phone interview was less than stellar, is not unlikely. Barring any unforeseen extenuating circumstances, I sort of have a plan.

Move to either Portland, Oregon or Seattle, get a cheap flat, a job in food services and live.  Maybe write.  Hopefully spend some time volunteering, since I desperately feel the need to un-self-center myself (as college has so thoroughly self-centered me).

My problem is that I’m not great at anything.  I’m perfectly well-rounded.  A round little ball with nothing outstanding.  I’m not good at anything particular and I don’t care about anything particular.  I can do a little dance, play a little piano, a little flute, a little clarinet, write a little, run all right, play tennis okay, play various other sports, understand politics, understand history, understand philosophy…. but I’m not great at anything–and nothing really turns me on.

I can’t believe it’s come to this.  I mean, I always assumed I’d be good at something, or really care about something.  Anything: medicine, law, journalism, animals, cooking, writing, history, politics…. but no.

I don’t really see the point of the rest of my life.

Post-Interview Let Down

I just want to sleep for the rest of the day. I feel unqualified to leave my room.

And it wasn’t even a bad interview.

Doubts and Uncertainties With Respect to the Internet

I’m sitting here reading Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, which I coincidentally stumbled upon when looking alphabetically for the work of Adrienne Rich and which is also, coincidentally, required reading for Mysticism, which I was going to take, but instead opted to retake Calculus.

And it’s that thing where you read something you could have written, but was written nearly one hundred years before you were even born, and it’s like a hand reaching out to you from the past… but not from the grave, kind of, from the air or something.

[That isn't my metaphor, but I can't remember where I heard it.  Maybe in "Death and the Maiden" or maybe in Letters, which would be too ironic for words.]

Anyway, the point is, I’m reading about the importance of solitude and the inward journey and suffering and what not (it really is a great book) and I think, as I have often thought before, the Internet is keeping me from the spiritual benefits of solitude.  Case in point:  I could be laying on my bed thinking about this right now, but instead I blog about it!  And writing.com: why do I want people to rate my work?   To be told I’m all right, that I can do it, that I’m one of them.  Do I really need that?  More productively put, should I need that?

No.  The answer is no and I am going to delete my account momentarily as I have done in the past.  I won’t delete this blog because I know I’ll just start a new one.  I’ve figured that much out.  But I still wonder if I might be better off if I did delete it…