Stagnation

Every day I tell myself that I ought to write something—whether here or on a scrap of paper somewhere. Why can't I?

Perhaps I am gradually losing my ability to think and feel. I have become somehow stunted, emotionally and cognitively.

I need a clever method of personal renewal. I need an idea. I need something to do.

Love and Poetry

To celebrate Erik's recent facebook engagement to a singer named Sara, we co-wrote a love poem for him to post on her facebook wall. Here it is in all its glory:

My little love, my darling Sara
Your voice it soothes like aloe vera
You'll make your mark upon our era
Much like Schumann, comma, Clara

My life was bleak and I was dour
Until I met my lovely flower
We will be wed — I await the hour
(I promise first to take a shower)

With this post I make a toast:
It is you I love the most

Same Old, Same Old

I hate it. I hate that I am obsessed. I hate that I check the same facebook profile over and over again, even though I know it won't have changed. I hate that I compulsively google a name so common that I'm sure to find nothing interesting at all. I hate that I sit here late at night every night, trying to come up with some goddamn excuse to send an email but finding none--because what would anyone so far away have to talk about with me? How could I possibly send a casual and inconspicuous email to someone I no longer ever see?

I hate that I am pathetic and dependent. I hate that I am a cliche. I hate that everyone else feels like this all the time. I hate that I am whining on my goddamn blog about something so petty.

I hate that I am a coward. I hate that I am stuck here. I hate that there's nothing I can do. I hate that I spend my life indulging in a whole lot of wishful thinking.

I hate that this entry is not witty, clever, or interesting, but lame and really boring. I hate that, in the wee hours of the morning, I am lame and really boring.

A Subway Love Story

Brought to you by the Toronto Transit Commission and long, boring commutes thereon.

Once upon a time, a lonely Yonge-Sheppard by the name of Lawrence was walking home when he caught a glimpse of the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She was riding along in a carriage, haughtily looking out on the world like a Queen, when suddenly she glanced down at him. They were from two Dufferin worlds, but nonetheless it was love at first sight. In that one glance, they penetrated each others' souls, and they knew they had to be together.

They began to see each other. Her name was Jane, he discovered, and she lived in a grand old manor out past the Old Mill. He was in love. He sent her one long red Rosedale-y.

Lawrence wanted to marry her, but her Warden disapproved of such a Union. He thought Lawrence was not nearly Osgoode a match as she could make--he'd never even been to College! The Warden forbade her ever to see him again.

So Lawrence sent Jane a letter via her conniving maid, Christie, who tucked the piece of Pape-r into Jane's basket of clean laundry and thus smuggled it into her room. The letter said, "I cannot live without you. Meet me at midnight in the Greenwood."

There Lawrence waited at midnight, barely able to contain his excitement. And finally she arrived. "Oh Lawrence," she gasped, "I love you so!"

When he heard those words and saw her Chester heave with emotion, he felt his Coxwell, and all he wanted to do was pull down his Duponts, pull up her skirt, and plunge into her Spadina. But he was a gentleman. Instead he bent down to kiss her lightly.

Just then, the Warden jumped out from behind a tree. "Dirty rogue," he shouted, "I will Keele you!" He was armed with a lance.

"Put your Lansdowne, sir, and talk with me man-to-man," said Lawrence fiercely. "For Jane and I are in love, and we wish to be married. We will not take no for an answer."

The Warden took the Broadview of things and suddenly saw that he was being foolish. He relented, and the two were wed the very next day. They celebrated with great fanfare and several flagons of Runnymede. They lived happily ever after.

The moral of this story is: Don't ever forget to bring a book when you have an hour-long subway ride.

Leave-taking

I spent most of the last several days saying goodbye. I'm going to be gone from Cambridge for a long time--a year, maybe. By the time I get back, everything will have changed. People will have left, will have forgotten me, will have moved on with their lives. The fragile friendships I have nurtured so carefully, the delicate green tendrils just peeking through my lonely dead-wood social life, will have been stomped out by time's cruel stiletto heels. Crush porn will cheer and vie for the movie rights.

All last week in my head I played out the tearfully perfect farewells, but they never turned out right. Each time I was nervous and thus obnoxious, nonchalant. I didn't tell people how much they mean to me. I probably never will. I'm not very good at that.

Evening Activities

I was going to reward myself with a beer tonight, a nice cold one at the bar next door, but instead I think I won't. I have done nothing worthy of reward, and I would rather sit here on my bed (looking out onto my mess of a room) and enumerate my faults. I will milk the poison out of my brain as if I were a snake; I will save it, treasure it, store it in a vial on my shelf. One day, when there is enough of it, I will spread it over my skin and watch it burn through and feel the tingly sting of eroding flesh. I will rot from the outside in and relish every second of it.

Crash!

My semester is a train wreck. It derailed, went off a cliff, flipped over a few times and landed with a loud crunching noise. Smell the air: burnt metal, burnt flesh.

In a couple of days, when finals period is officially over, they'll fish my mangled body out of the carnage, and someone will say, "But where are: two final papers, four problem sets?" I will groan and whimper, and bleed out on their shoes.

Dear Mr. Stomach,

This is a notice advising you that we find your conduct on 16 January 2007 unacceptable. According to our records, at 1:43 AM on said date you received a morsel of food from Mr. Esophagus which, according to company policy, you were required to process and forward to the Department of Intestinal Affairs. Instead, according to a complaint filed at the Gag Reflex Centre, you stated your intention to stop accepting future food packages from Mr. Esophagus, and tried to pass him back the morsel you had just received.

Here at AMZB we foster an environment of cooperation and hard work amongst our diverse team of employees that allows us to efficiently and carefully execute our very important operations. Since each task we assign is vital to the overall success of the firm, even a momentary lapse from one of our employees can be catastrophic. We therefore expect from our employees an exemplary work ethic and a meticulous care for the duties we entrust to them.

This notice serves as an official warning. Should your inappropriate behaviour continue, we shall be forced to take further action in the form of a suspension of pay or even a dismissal from our company.

If you feel that your actions have been misrepresented in this letter, please contact Ms. Brain, our Personnel Manager, and we will be pleased to review your case.

Sincerely,

The Committee for Digestive Integrity

Lonely

Back from an emotional holiday to my glib Cambridge existence. I'm not sure which is worse--feeling too much or feeling too little.

Tonight I was walking in the Square when I caught some lady staring at me. It was because I had been talking to myself--and quite exuberantly too. I think she was somewhat afraid; I was the "crazy" you cross the street to avoid.

I wasn't actually talking to myself but to a group of imaginary rapt listeners. I was explaining to them all the things I wish I could say to the people around me. Talking to people here feels slick and slippery, and you finish unsatisfied; but in conversation with my fantasy audience I can get to the root of things. We hash out ideas, laugh and cry together, really understand each other. It's less fun, though, when you can connect only to imaginary people.

I'm lonely as hell. My family is far away, and I have almost no close friends at Harvard. I miss the fuzzy warmth, the connectedness, the flow of energy you get from being around people you're close to. I spend a lot of time thinking about all the great people I see but don't know. I'm jealous of them and of their beautiful glittery lives that don't intersect with mine. I wish I were the sort of person they'd want to bother to get to know.

My grandmother's funeral will be occurring in Victoria, B.C., in just over 14 hours. I want to feel some sort of commensurate intensity, but I am cold and unsated. Everything seems unreal. I could feel if only I had people to feel with, but I am all alone.

Flakiness

I am a flake. I cancel out of things at the last minute. When I can't bring myself to make excuses, sometimes I just don't show up.

On some days I have no commitments. I quit HRO so that I would have Tuesdays entirely free. When I get to the end of Monday--if I don't flake out of Monday--I heave a sigh of relief. A whole 36 hours before I have to face the world again.

Today I flaked out of all my classes. I flaked out of an appointment with my adviser. I flaked out of lunch and breakfast. I will probably flake out of dinner too. I would rather starve than venture out of my cocoon.

None of this was a good idea, and (being after all not a complete idiot) I would never choose to do it. I never consciously decided, "Today I am not going to show up for x, y, and z." I flaked out of making that decision too. Instead I told myself, "I will go in just one minute."

It seems like you always need that one extra minute. One extra minute to brace yourself. One extra minute to pull yourself together. One extra minute to hide from the world before it inevitably finds you. One extra minute not to think, not to feel, not to move. One extra minute to curl into a ball and pretend you don't exist.

Every few days, I can muster myself and replace "in just one minute" with "now." Every "now" is a personal triumph, but they don't come very often. My personal record is two "now" days in a row, but more often it lasts only through an afternoon. After that, and for the next few days, I have run out of energy/motivation/will/strength/hope/desire/emotion.

I know I need to do something about this: my life is falling apart, and I need to act now to assess the damage and now to salvage what's left. But I'm not very good at now. Instead I say, "Tomorrow will be better." I know damn well it won't.

Some way to live.

Radio Interview

Let us interrupt our regular programming for a special announcement:

Harvard's radio station, WHRB, interviewed me for a show they're doing on Sunday; apparently my reputation as a minor Harvard celebrity continues to make me interesting even now. I definitely had a fun time doing it--somebody actually encouraged me to yabber on--and all of you should listen in. I don't know how much of my interview they'll use in their show, or whether I'll come off sounding stupid, but have a listen and let me know.

The show into which my interview will allegedly be incorporated will air on Sunday at 12:30 PM. If you're in Boston, you can tune in at 95.3 FM. If you're not, you can listen online at whrb.org.

If afterwards you have anything to say on the topic, feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I'm curious about other people's ideas and I very much like feedback.

Trampled and Gored

Imagine this: you're a toreador and things are getting bad. The bull butts its head into you, and with a slash of its horns you're down.

It rushes past you, its hooves crushing your legs, breaking your kneecaps. You can barely move. You sit up, boosting yourself up with your arms, trying to ignore the pain in your legs. You know you have to get out of the way. Your hands dig into the sod as you try to drag your dead weight backwards, away, anywhere else. But you know it's useless: you have nowhere to go, no safety, no shelter.

The bull is back now. It's not running anymore; it just wants to see its handiwork. Its nostrils loom over you as it blows hot snotty air over your face. Then, with a cruel swing of its head, it gets you in the gut. Its horn sinks into your vulnerable softness, your belly, your unprotected underside. You can feel it piercing into your stomach, gashing through your guts, getting you in your centre where it hurts you the most.

It ambles away now and does no more damage. You half wish it would crush your skull like it did your legs, but the universe doesn't want you to get off so easy. The crowd above is jeering and cheering as you bleed out, your intestines spilling over the ground; but you will yourself to be conscious, not to faint, to feel the searing pain that manifests your reeling shame. You look out at the world and you smile in glorious defeat.

My Brain Is Weird

Every time I sit down in Music Building Room 2 (where on Monday nights Music 180 is held) I feel like the world is going to end. I don't know what it is about the room that creeps me out so much. There is a lot of noise, to be sure: a rattling double door, a roaring radiator. The sounds of Mozart Society seep in from upstairs, while Professor Levin's resonant voice booms. Papers rustle, people fidget.

And my brain vanishes. I can't feel me anymore--only this sort of hollowness, absorbency. It is as if I were not a person but a sponge for sound. And everthing suddenly seems louder--ominously loud, Judgment-Day loud, earth-tears-asunder-to-reveal-bleak-depths-of-nothingness loud. I wouldn't be surprised one day if a shadowy figure appeared to take vengeance upon us.

And then I'll snap back to reality, and it'll all be okay. I've done this three weeks in a row now, and it's quite strange. I seriously think I dissociate for a few minutes. Sketchy?

Mission Statement

I have taken the plunge. I have started a blog.

I was a blogger for over four years, but a few months ago I gave it up. Most of what I wrote was tedious, inane, inconsequential; eventually I realised that I bored even myself. But this time it will be different. I have started anew--a new blog, a clean slate, and no lingering reminders of my high school idiocy. Here only my college idiocy will be on display.

I begin this blog with no noble pretensions. I will not capture the spirit of the times with salient prose, nor will I write about the important issues facing the world today. I have little to say about campus news and the world around me. With shameless self-absorption, I will write about myself. I am the only topic on which I claim any expertise.

I will not regale you with stories from my life. I have very little interest in retelling the events of the day; I was there when they happened and find it tiresome to catch you up. Nor will I provide about myself more than incidental background information. I assume that you all know who I am and what I am doing with my life. If you don't, you can ask.

Instead I will record my thoughts. To me the thrill of blogging comes when I struggle to pin my wriggling thoughts in place and separate them neatly into paragraphs. Writing is a form of taxidermy: the process is ugly and possibly malodorous, but in the end you are left with still ideas frozen mid-leap-of-thought, lifelike yet crystalline. This is why I have begun again to blog.

I will always welcome feedback. Please make liberal use of the comment function.