unmainstreamed lameness

imagine8peace @ 2009-12-15T14:20:00

2009-12-15T19:20:02Z

Ah another day where there's this unbearable beauty and pain of being that sounds so awful but ah all I want to do is write and write comics and draw comics and read and read novels and read comic books and tell stories with people over tea and talk and engage with people and I want to help something and I think all this race theory is making me sad and also nothing is anything

imagine8peace @ 2009-12-13T23:01:00

2009-12-14T04:01:30Z

I just wrote an essay about THAAANNNGGGsszzzzzz and I wrote an essay about OTHERTHINGNGNSZZ before that and now I'm gonna go write another ESSAYYYYY wooohoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Don't Mind Me It's One of those Moods

2009-11-29T09:35:32Z

I was thinking about all the reading we do in "Constructions of Whiteness" about passing. Passing is when you pass in society as something different than what you are. Usually in the class we talk about racial passing - black to white, white to black, etc. But there is besides racial passing also gender passing, class passing, etc. It's tied to transvestitism. Lots of times this is important because the passing individual blurs the boundaries between gender, race, class, etc, and reveals the absurdity of such boundaries (that is, reveals that they are social constructs only) as well as undermines the power of the gaze (that is, creates a situation in which classification can no longer be achieved through observation.)

I thought of one time when I was giving a tour, and other times as well, when I'm pretty sure I "passed" as Jewish, albeit slightly unintentionally. Often I "pass" as an East Coaster. When I'm with Robbie or Jordan and we're introducing ourselves sometimes I "pass" as a cousin or sister. And I was thinking about it and I thought, this "passing" thing - we all engage in it. Maybe not as obviously, but really, we're all sort of passing as whatever we feel like suits us best in society, and although passing doesn't carry the same risks for most of us, or reveal itself in the most extreme, still even by defining ourselves we engage in a kind of passing, a self-labeling, an adherence to those social constructs of race, gender, class, etc. It's only an issue when the person passing defines herself in a way that is contrary to society's definition. Then we call it "passing." But if all these constructs are absurd anyway, isn't any definitive process - any act of framing - also an act of passing? I don't know. I don't know what I'm saying. It's late at night. It's 4:34 on the East Coast. Which is not where I'm from, but where I'd like to be from.

Adopt me.

imagine8peace @ 2009-11-29T03:57:00

2009-11-29T08:57:40Z

I'm in another weird MOOD and I can't figure out WHY

School Spirit

2009-11-22T22:04:45Z

Ok i know I do this all the time.

But I love my school. I'm proud of my school.

Cool that I can make things for a place like Tufts.

That's cool and I get it.

2009-11-19T19:19:04Z

You know, Proust died writing his book because he was sick but he wanted to keep writing and he did it even though people told him not to because it was so joyful to him.

imagine8peace @ 2009-11-16T22:28:00

2009-11-17T03:28:45Z

I'm super on edge today and I don't know why, but the good news is we had scheduling today, and also I emailed some people about houses and I at least think I know who I'm living with next year. So that's good. Here's what next year looks like:

It's schedule time. Here is my schedule.

MONDAY

1:30 pm - 2:45 pm
Seminar in English: Becoming a Critic
Joe Litvak
ENG
(How and why does one become a critic? What is the relation between criticism and more explicitly autobiographical writing? What happens when literary critics write about subjects other than literature? We will take up these and other questions as we read unconventionally "personal" works by critics and theorists such as Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, Roland Barthes, D.A. Miller, Jane Gallop, Patricia Williams, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Jacques Derrida.)
Omigosh you guys I am so exctied for this one Omigosh.

4:30 pm - 5:45 pm
Topics in Literature and Culture: American Modernism
Ichi Takayoshi
ENG
(This course surveys works of American authors and artists responding to the technological, economic, and social conditions of modernity. By radically renovating traditional literary forms, many key writers of the time searched for a matching representation for the novelties and complexities of modernity — most notably, total war, urbanization, the arrival of new immigrants, the crisis of public trust in the objectivity of news media, cinema, the jazz age, Fordism, the discovery of the anthropological notion of “culture,” and the popularization of Freudianism. Our main object is to understand the origins, purposes, and effects of the wild spirit of experimentalism that suffused their works. For representative poetry, we will consider the works of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Langston Hughes and others; for drama, the plays of Elmer Rice and Eugene O'Neill; for narratives, the novels and short stories of Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Toomer and Cather.)
Eliot! Fitzgerald! Their friends! Say no more.

TUESDAY

9:30 am - 10:20 am
Plants and Humanity
ENV
(Principles of botany accenting economic aspects and multicultural implications of plants, their medicinal products, crop potential, and biodiversity. Emphasis placed on global aspects of this dynamic science, with selected topics on acid rain, deforestation, biotechnology, and other applications. Also covered are medicinal, poisonous, and psychoactive species, as well as nutritional sources from seaweeds and mushrooms to mangos and durians. Three lectures. Spring.)
Science crediiiit.

12:00 pm - 1:15 pm
African Americans in US History Since 1865
HIST
((Cross-listed as American Studies 96.) The history of African Americans from the end of the Civil War to the present. Special attention is devoted to African-American social, political, and economic life during Reconstruction; late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century protest efforts; the civil rights movement and concurrent manifestations of black nationalism and self-determination.)
American Studies major needs a history. I've been studying race. This seems relevant.

WEDNESDAY

9:30 am - 10:20 am
Plants and Humanity

1:30 pm - 2:45 pm
Seminar in English: Becoming a Critic

4:30 pm - 7:15 pm
(Un)Making American Identities
Christina Sharpe & Jean Wu
(In this interdisciplinary, team-taught course we will examine, in depth, some of the means by which "Americans” are made and unmade. We will begin by mapping the legal/juridical and social constructions of raced identities in the U.S. alongside the histories and lived experiences of people of African and Asian descent. We will explore, for example, the ways that these groups have been aligned with and pitted against each other as they are positioned within those spaces (institutional, national, familial, etc.) that shape, confer, demand, and withhold access. We will read non-fiction, theoretical texts, short stories, and novels and we will view film and other visual texts in our exploration of institutional and other forces and counter forces that go into (un)making "American” identities. Topics may include: Reading Race/Reading Rodney King and Sa-I-Gu, Affirmative Action, racial violence & hate crimes, coalition building, National/International and Transnational and transracial adoption patterns.)
An English seminar AND a required American Studies foundations course. Also: Christina Sharpe! Jean Wu! Awesome, awesome, awesome.

THURSDAY

9:30 am - 10:20 am
Plants and Humanity

12:00 pm - 1:15 pm
African Americans in US History Since 1865

FRIDAY

9:30 am - 10:20 am
Plants and Humanity

imagine8peace @ 2009-11-14T01:47:00

2009-11-14T06:47:48Z

I have a really great life.

Career Choice

2009-11-11T06:58:56Z

I want to do something really, really, really worthwhile.

Poem for Nietzsche

2009-11-10T02:06:44Z

I need another book of matches.
I used this one up, watching
the flame flame.
I used this one, watching
the burn burn, the end end.

Now I have no proof save memory,
and three things
the bitter smell, the bitter silence
the beautiful curls of smoke.

imagine8peace @ 2009-11-09T20:42:00

2009-11-10T01:42:25Z

Chase and Madeline Go Shopping in Brookline

2009-11-08T05:16:16Z

Purchases of the Day, in order of purchase:

(1) Ride on the T
(1) One-inch high metal knight figurine
(1) Starbucks signature hot chocolate
(1/2) Starbucks pumpkin bread slice
(2) Pairs of tights, one black and one brown
(1) Copy of The Best American Nonrequired Reading, edited by Dave Eggers with an introduction by Sufjan Stevens
(1) Tall black coffee
(1) Vegetarian thali platter with complementary water
(3) iTunes songs, Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen," sung by Louis Armstrong, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," sung by Mavis Staples, and an instrumental version of "Loch Lomand."

Today was great.

imagine8peace @ 2009-11-04T22:45:00

2009-11-05T03:50:08Z

I should probably start marking blue existential crises on my calendar like most girls mark their menstrual cycles. I think it's about that regular, although they happen more often.

I seem to get one every one-and-a-half to two weeks on average. It's no big deal, and they're most definitely necessary because sometimes they make me kind of creative, but it still feels really weird every time I get all moody and contemplative and anxious and slightly on-edge. Also I get all think-y. More than normal?

I think also that this is tied to coffee, meetings with Lee Edelman, and not wanting to do schoolwork.

Stuff

2009-11-03T23:51:24Z

I have an advising date with Lee tomorrow!

Also, I found out that Tufts will pay me for getting an internship with WBUR this summer if they feel like I'm worth it. It's called a 25 Grant or something.

Check it OUUUTTT

I also might do an "Winternship" this January. The application deadline is tomorrow. More on this if anything comes out of it. Cross your fingers for me.

I've got a lot of stuff to do, but it's all fun stuff.

imagine8peace @ 2009-11-01T15:13:00

2009-11-01T20:26:00Z

A word or two about Lisa Coleman, before I forget.

My American Studies professor this semester is awesome, and let me tell you why she is awesome.

I, as a general rule, admire men. As long as I can remember, I've identified and strove to be like great men in my field or other fields - it's not been conscious, that's just how it is. My favorite writers: men. Comic book artists, activists, critics, professors, painters, fictional characters. Male. Either my tastes are with their work, or I've not been exposed to enough women. There are notable exceptions, but I think I can count them on one hand. And even so... when we're talking about people who really move me, who incite me... I dunno. With the exception of Maya Angelou. Also my mom, my Grandmas, Aunt Scotty, Helen, April, and Shawn Chen.

I'm finally reading women who are strong and intellectual and exactly like the men we read. We read Fuss the other day, and she was such a good writer. A week ago I read some McClintock and she was great. Their papers are solid and academic and unflowery. I love it. And I'm finally being taught by women who are the same way.

Anyway Lisa Coleman is someone who I want to be like. And that's a big deal, because she's not a guy.

imagine8peace @ 2009-10-27T15:31:00

2009-10-27T19:36:51Z

Last night I accidentally stayed up until three writing, sketching, and inking a seven-page comic as a reply to Lee Edelman's really long theoretical complimentary email about my comics. So all day I've been half-trying to write my french essay but I keep being too sleepy and really, really attention deficit. I am like, attention overdrafted. I have negative attention at this point.

So I pumped "Women of the World: Celtic II" out of Stephen and curled up on the bed to try to take a nap while not actually falling asleep. I was pretty successful but I think it actually made me more tired. It might help if I turned on some lights in here, but I kind of like the gray.

In a little less than an hour I have class. Then an hour after that I have two radio meetings in a row. I'm tired.

But being sleepy in a cozy poorly lit room in fall, with Celtic music playing on iTunes, and another long comic I can be proud of completed, and a quarter of a French essay written... that's not a bad life, anyway.

My Big Fat Greek Funeral

2009-10-25T03:57:04Z

I am too tired to use grammar so here is an impression of the funeral, which happened today. Everything is very surreal being back here and tomorrow I get on a plane at 7:30 in the morning and go back to Boston how strange how strange.

My family and friends are all very close. There is a lot of close. Everyone was crying I wasn’t crying very hard but the worst part was when they talked about Gus and when frankie was sobbing and then they showed pictures and i was crying there was a picture of papous holding me when i was a very little baby and then avery cried much more than i, and bob our neighbor who is my favorite neighbor and a very good man went up to the casket and cried and walked away very fast with a red face, and avery didnt want to go up to the casket but i went because dad needed company i think then we went to the graveyard in procession and put papous where he would be buried, then we all went to our house. and then I was surrounded by good solid old world people and it was full of the man who lived the American dream and olive accents and men with large noses and middle aged men talking like they were in high school, and food and food and stories and lots of back rubbing and embracing and kisses on checks and foreheads and there were three red carnations one for gus and one for arsenius and one for grammie to press to her chest with the golden greek orthodox cross the father gave her. And the father was old and had a cane and a sore ankle, and we sang like they do in temple and the grave was placed alongside all the other other greek names, and next to gus, and aunt Scotty and I held hands very tightly and she said “you would have liked him. He was a special one you would have liked your uncle gus very much” and I said that’s what people say to me and then I started shaking a little before that there was the big portrait of papous that usually hangs in grammies house in ojai but now it was on an easel next to lots of flowers, and when my dad got up to speak he was eloquent and composed and wonderful, and I loved him so much and he is the best dad in the world, and then uncle phil came up and broke down, and started crying, and then we all went up and hugged and said goodbye and comforted each other, and later there was lots of eating and laughing and drinking wine and greek beer and ouzo, and tzetsiki and hummus and grape leaves and bread and beans and I was very tired and avery and I spent the whole day cleaning and serving and I drank coffee and served it and talked to cousins and second counsins and greek great uncles and my great aunt freida who was kind and very greek and very motherly, and I talked about school and boston with the middle aged men and women who had come for dad and mom, and I talked with Wilfred and Giesla, who were our neighbors for a long time, who are from Germany, and they are so good and so old world and the whole place was full of eastern Europe and hardy, good, kind men and smart, strong, helpful women and the mingling of voices and generations and I think Orson would have been proud.

Things that have happened and will happen

2009-10-23T02:42:40Z

I trained Dan Grayson for the radio today. I was a huge dork and kept apologizing for everything and saying I'm stupid like I do when I'm desperate for someone to like me. I don't know why I do that. Anyway next week I'm still training him and hopefully I'll be less lame.

The leaves and the sky are breathtaking and sometimes I just want to sit and sit and stare and consume and consume and consume.

My grandfather, Orson Gregory (Arsenious Petros Gligorievitch) died two days ago. I feel like I lost a story. I stopped telling people because I didn't really like how people act after you tell them something like that. Not that it's the people's fault, I just feel uncomfortable getting the pity. I don't want to go back and see my dad all messed up. I don't like it when my parents are sad.

Lee Edelman read my comics and he wrote me back a long, complimentary email, which he sent me at twelve in the morning. I still have to write him back. I cannot describe the ecstasy of receiving this email. When I got the email I got short of breath and I couldn't even talk to Sigourney and tell her what happened, and when I did it was in this squeal-y squeaky little voice and then I started screaming a little and I was shaking I was so happy.

Today my blog got 177 views, which is the most views it's ever gotten. Fame is a dangerous and addictive drug and I keep wanting stronger, quicker hits. Daniel Grayson is an enabler. When I get the podcast on iTunes next week, he's going to give it to the Alumni department, and they might send it to all the alumni. He says maybe 500 people will hear my voice every week. More people to like me.

Also today, Sigourney got quarantined and moved to a dorm in South because of "flu-like symptoms."

I got this really awesome sweater at the Garment District and I wore it today. Yesterday I wore the other awesome sweater I got from the Garment District. I wore it to lunch with Lee Coffin, our Dean of Admissions. We ate Boloco burritos and talked about admissions with some other tour guides.

I am tired and very burnt out and it's been too much this week, maybe.

We watched Sesame Street in Cartoonists in American Society today.

Next week I'm going to go to the graduate conference to look at research papers and it's going to be really wonderful, I hope. I want to get some ideas for my summer scholars project. I also want to see Lee and thank him in person for being so kind.

Tomorrow I'm going to California on a plane, to go to the funeral.

Before that, I'm celebrating a birthday.

There was a great story on The Moth Radio Hour today.

I love my family and I love my Admissions job. I am tired and mopey and I love radio and I love sleep.

What's Up

2009-10-20T03:17:21Z

SO HERE'S WHAT'S UP

I'm learning a lot of things, and I'm doing a lot of things, and I have a lot of things I want to get done

but I'm enjoying the process, I'm enjoying the ecstasy of action

and the joy of learning new things

and the joy of making

the joys of "eating and being eaten"

of consuming other's talents and letting one's talents be consumed, used, appreciated, sharpened, changed, improved

and I am PAINFULLY in love with people and goals and ideas.

imagine8peace @ 2009-10-11T13:57:00

2009-10-11T18:04:18Z

Soguyshere's the plan.

This summer, I either do this

and find another job somewhere that will pay me so that I can live in a house with some people

OR

I do Tufts Summer Scholars, which is what I REALLY want to do, and get paid to stay at Tufts and learn about interesting things.

Because, come on. How cool would that be. (Answer: really cool.)

imagine8peace @ 2009-10-07T11:03:00

2009-10-07T15:15:53Z

Today I took a break from work and read some of this

"Issue 13 is a Very Special Issue. We might say that a lot, and we mean it every time, but this time we really really mean it. This issue is all comics. It is edited by Chris Ware (author of Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth), and features so many artists to know and love: R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Daniel Clowes, Lynda Barry, Los Bros Hernandez, Adrian Tomine, Julie Doucet, and on and on. The issue also includes essays from Michael Chabon, Ira Glass, John Updike, Chip Kidd, and others. Hardcover, clothbound, with an enormous dust jacket that does much more than guard against dust. This one makes our throats go tight."

... and it is SO GOOD ohmigoodness.

Also, yesterday I read some Nietszche, and liked it very much. I don't know if I liked all his ideas, per se, but I liked reading him. He's fun to read. I don't really know what to think about Nietszche, because everyone's always telling me that he's a huge jerk, but I think he's been grossly misinterpreted, and mostly I dig his existentialism. I dunno. I decided I liked him mostly, because his ideas are useful for thinking about what I've been thinking about lately, which is a lot of things.

SPEAKING of thinking about things, I was brave and wrote Lee an email about some ideas I've been thinking about. It basically ran something like "Hey Professor Edelman, I've been thinking a lot about some theories and things and I need someone to chat with and bounce ideas off of and also you still have my comic book." He wrote me back and we're going to talk next week after he gets back from LA. So that's neat.

In other news, my podcast will be up soon, I hope. Yesterday Dan Grayson came to say hi to me on the President's Lawn as he was walking down the hill to take a bus to the airport (he's traveling in Maryland now talking to kids about college essays). We talked about French class, and podcasts, and communism. He pointed out that in college, we're all basically bourgeoise, because all we do is eat, sleep, and think. I said at least we think. He said yeah, sometimes. Then I said I also draw comics.

Then at nine I went to the station and we talked about the upcoming "Harry and the Potters" show that WMFO is putting on in Hotung, and I bought myself to a "Chocolate Corduroy" latte at Brown & Brew and drank it during the meeting. It was amazing. Also I love radio.

So life is good. Suprise, suprise.

Notes In Class and Out of Class

2009-10-05T03:03:09Z

So right now I'm writing notes for a podcast about my "Modern Mind" professor. So far here are my efforts:

I like to think of Jay Cantor as an aquired taste. Well, not so much aquired as one that certain people are predisposed to. I am one of those people. Whenever jay cantor says anything I get this huge dopey grin on my face.

"You will get an A on your essay if your essay eduates, amuses, or terrifies me”

"I don't want you to take the things we learn as absolute truth, but to try to use them… view things in your life through the lens of Marx, or Freud, or Nitzsche. It's just useful."

"Alright you can go. We’ll continue killing God on Wednesday."

"Brecht’s work… I don’t know how to describe it, except that it’s … it’s like rye bread and horseradish. Delicious. I can’t equate his writing with anyone else’s except –“ he hesitates, he squirms when he talks, wrapping one leg around the other, contorting a paperclip in his fingers. I feel bad for the paperclip but it’s hilarious the way he’s twisting and turning it, anyway. “This is going to sound weird,” he says, laughing to himself, and I think how his laugh is at once sheepish and self-satisfied, and then I think that doesn’t make any sense, but it does, it totally does, because his laugh makes him really irritating and really loveable at the same time. Mostly loveable, for me. “This is going to sound weird, but the only other people who write like Brecht… are Bob Dylan… and Jesus.” The laugh again. “Yes.” Someone asks why. He considers, with four false starts. “They all have this peasant-like immediacy, but they think grossly. It’s biting.” I write that down in the margin next to the notes defining “ideology.” I write: “Ideology produces the world that we see… and then argues that the appearances it produces are natural.” Then next to that I write “that’s terrifying.”

“There’s a quote by a great poet, Charles – well,” he pauses. “I don’t know if he’s great, really. A good poet. Yeah. He wasn’t great.” He laughs. He keeps talking about Marx; we never hear the quote. But I write down that we know someone named Charles was good poet, not a great one.

Another time he entered the room and went directly (or, okay, as directly as someone like Jay Cantor can go) up to a rolling blackboard on the far side of the room. Someone from a previous class had scribbled something on it. He looked perplexedly at the board for a while, then picked up the eraser and made a noncommittal motion of erasing the board, without actually erasing anything, like a test run, and then walked back to the podium. I have no idea what he was doing. But the dopey grin would not go away, to the point where I felt I was being too conspicuous.

His hair sticks out in two gray tufts on the side of his head and he wears roundish wire glasses and slightly oversized jacket, and he has kind of a lisp, and has a hard time projecting because of a health thing. The microphone's on the podium, but he doesn't like the microphone, because that would mean he had to stand behind a podium, so he doesn't use it even though he specifically requested a room with a microphone. Instead stays close to the desks, mostly. Sometimes he sits down on the stage area for no reason.

“I think that’s entirely true and entirely false at the same time.”

“Is anyone cold? Is the room too cold?” a couple people say yes. “Oh. Well, I have to keep it this way, because of a medical condition. So next time you probably want to bring a coat.”

“It’s just a howl… a howl of pain. A laugh you choke on.”

"Where is the nearest cup of coffee?"

When he isn't talking directly about Brecht, or Marx, or Luther or any of the other important primary source people we learn about, he's relating things to them. Jay Cantor's favorite relatable topics are television ("House," "The Big Bang Theory," and "How I Met Your Mother" are all favorites within this category), baseball (specifically the Red Sox), Great Neck New York (and the many adventures young Jay Cantor had growing up there), and Coca Cola.

I think in five of the six lectures we've had with him he has been aided by a bottle of Coca Cola.

“My handwriting’s terrible, but what I would write on the board is ‘From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.’” He didn’t write anything on the board, but he kept referencing the blank black space anyway, pointing to the imaginary sentence he would have written, if his handwriting wasn't terrible.

The subject is always Tufts.

2009-10-01T13:59:52Z

I'M SO HAPPY

Here is what I like

Professors
Theory
Radio
Comics
Friends
Music
Literature
Fall
Drinking lots of coffee

Here is what I get to do EVERY DAY

(see above)

Also today I get to wear a sweatervest.

Music Production!

2009-09-27T04:57:27Z

I wrote a song!

You can listen to it here.

It is inspired by my American Studies class. We had to read "Notes on the State of Virginia." It's not the best song I've ever written, but hey, it's been awhile, and I like writing about America anyway.

Jefferson

Regard these notes on the state of Virginia
As nothing more than a mans attempt
To justify the state of his soul

Regard the blush on my skin
Is it not more beautiful than him?
Regard our flowing locks of hair
Are they not finer and more beautiful than theirs?

And obsessively I will employ the details under science’s guise
I am driven crazy thinking up these lies
And I hope, as I’m penning these ridiculous allabies
That this false data so amassed will cancel out their cries

I wrote, our songs are prettier than theirs
But how alone is that enough to parcel out their souls in shares
I am freer than the son whose weight she bears
I am freer than my sons whose weight she bears

Chorus

And was it me, who wrote that men are equal under God
And was it me, now, cause those words seem rather odd
When I die there’ll be processions as I’m laid under the sod
They will build me marble monuments a sturdy white façade

Chorus

And I hear their spirituals in the lamplight
And it’s well past midnight I can hear the rattling of Indian bones
I hear the cries of the whip and to the skies
I hear nothing at all, I am deaf to their tones

Maybe Hamilton was right the other day when he said that men were evil
Maybe Franklin was right the other day when he said that men are fools
Maybe Adams, God damn Adams, maybe Adams was right was well
When he said Tom, I’ll see you in hell
Tom, I’ll see you in hell

Chorus x 2

School!

2009-09-23T16:11:32Z

Here's something pretty for all of you:

I watched it for a class.