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muskatGrummi2000
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Name: Joanna
Birthday: 7/1/1985
Interests: People. Bad Pop Psychology, Egoistic Pursuit of Spiritual Enlightenment and PseudoSelfAwareness, meaningless manipulation of prefixes and suffixes. Political discourse just for the sake of it, Chaim Potok Books.
Message: message me
AIM:  muskatgumi2000
Member Since:
4/2/2004
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| Thanksgiving was awesome----- I didn't even want to come back to
school, I missed the fam, I missed being around them, and it wasnt an
unhealthy neurotic missing. It was a thorougly healthy, good missing.
But so is school.
I mean, really, besides the emotional rollercoaster element, things are
beautiful. Coast from one happy light-covered christmas tree to
another, drink excessive amounts of coffee, meet with bubbly professor
after bubbly professor, and get that Ivory Tower High. There is that
whole Trying To Figure Out What To Do With My Life thing, but it's all
in good fun, and brooding can be tantamount to bonding. I'm just trying
to take it all in. The meditation society may slowly be getting up off
its feet, and katy is awesome with her pillow and her zen-ness.
Sometimes i just wake up with that feeling of academic panic, and
medidation is just the ticket. Before I know it i'll manifest a pair of
yellow needle-nosed pliers to appear on the cement outside prospect.
How mystical will that day be. And this weekend is even
debate---something I havent done all semester becuase the election took
over. The election...yeah, that was a bit taxing. Everything hinges on
it still, but it seems more and more past. Today jeb magruder, this guy
in the nixon administration----the director of "CREEP" ---the committee
to reelect the president 72---how ....well....creepy is that---was here
speaking to my superfun class, cuz he graduated from here, and he's
totally vindicated himself. he went to jail for like seven months and
then went to princeton divinity school. now he's a
(kerry-supporting) evangelical minister.
it's funny, because, his life is one of those that i look at and say
"now there's someone who's overcome adversity." what do i have to show
for myself...a cushy high school education in the starbucks capital of
the universe, a cushy college education in a giant unpoppable bubble,
and a few annoying minor health crises. i dont think a work of
genius ever came out of strep throat.
I guess you need Deep Throat for that.
(okay....sorry....that was bad.)
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| Still holdin' on, though papers continue to no end.
Watched nice psychy moviething last night, from the 80's had the whole
mcdonald's thing going on...and am almost getting sick of the political
thing....every person is like....oh, i havent gotten a chance to talk
about the debates time to talk to you about them! not that i don't
relish it, i do....i dont konw, i'm ready for the election to happen,
like, soon. I need it to happen now. I'm sick of moving and moving and
spinning my wheels and not feeling anything happening. Kerry's
performance was remarkable---too bad it doesn't seem to be changing any
minds. I guess Bush is proud of his inability to speak English and as
long as he's frank about it, he doesn't have to be frank about other
things...
Good time spent in the basement of thompson, the prayer rooms down
there are so so nice and peaceful, i might even consider going to study
down there. of course, there's also prospect basement, with its nifty
lounge-feeling. Right now i just feel like baking cookies---why
do i always feel like baking cookies? I'm getting kind of good at it,
having done it a few times---they come out better and cakier every
time.
Fall is crispy and nice, and just smelling the post-rain air puts me in
good spirits. I hope i don't wake up on election day to find out the
world has crashed around me. I feel like i'm about to go on a first
date in seventeen days that i've been planning for since two summers
ago, and the echo chamber about me and my stupid date has gotten to the
point where i've forgotten that at somepoint the echo will cease and
all that will be left is the shining result, my date, John Kerry or
George W Bush, the next presdient of the U-nited fucking states of
america.
oh there i went about politics again. i guess i'ts my fault, not other
people's. what am i going to talk about after the election? aspirations
for Progressive Thinktank stardom? waffling about study abroad options?
Hardly. I've enjoyed this rendezvous with outside causes, there's
something that feels beatifully selfless about it, even if there's some
gratification involved..
When this is all over and done with, I'm going to need a cause.
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*pretty long and circumlocutory...read at your own risk :) *
how long have i been here....since september fourth, and today is the 18th, so that would make it about two weeks. feels like way longer. somehow everything is just kind of well, established. not that i havent been running around like a wild banshee trying to orient myself, but it does feel like home. my space in prospect is friendly and cozy, though sam and katy are across the quad...their room is quite remarkable. the wood finish and the ceiling and the stone bust is really something. i would be spending ample time there regardless, but the aesthetic experience makes it all the more worth it.
this weekend was our debate tournament, so it was judge judge judge, and i saw a really awful quarterfinal round---it was quite nasty, though amusing in sort of a sick way...reminds me how full of themselves the folks in the esteemed American Parliamentary Debate Association really are, god bless 'em. as a judge sitting there not banging on the desk in amused approval i couldnt help but feel like The Other somewhat, but my Otherness has been significantly mitigated by sundry circumstances, thank God---when i wake up in the morning life does seem worth living. And today it smelled like fall after about thirty hours straight of rain, so somehow there was this sunshine/beginning element happening. Speaking of which the jewish days of awe are upon us, in case anyone is interested, which means REPENT. The other night at Rosh hashana services the visiting rabbi started talking about all the stuff they used to teach us in hebrew school (albeit a vastly abbreviated version) about how in the ten days between rosh hashana and yom kippur, you're supposed to go up to all the poeple you've hurt and apologize to them. at some point i realized how hard that actually was when thought of in the concrete sense of the word. it would take eons, first of all, and secondly, i----and most normal egoistic, lazy, generally neurotic human beings just dont have the wherewithal to do it. i'd have to stop my outside activities for a few days, stop going to class, forget about how much John Kerry matters, and marshal the emotional capital to address some really difficult people with really difficult issues. I'd probably spend a lot of cell phone minutes and get my fair share of microexercize (my latest favorite of professor von hippel's social psychisms) walking all over campus and apologizing for transgressions large and small.
It's so much easier to pretend to be on a moral high ground for some more collective cause----like Mr. Kerry for example. But he's a whole 'nother project .. . speaking of which, this woman from Code Pink (women for peace) came to campus and talked about how aznar being pushed out of office was great for freedom and how angry she is at john kerry and how she assumed we were all with her in her cause...and suddenly I had this familiar revulsion, and I wondered whether she was going to make some oblique reference to "israeli terrorism." One of these days I'm going to figure out that conflict enough to be able to stand my ground against someone who knows shit about it---and defend israel in some reasonable fashion. Is this all starting to sound opinionated? that doesnt seem right at all. i guess it's a polarized time and my ridiculous self-conscoius rationality has given way to some bitterness. But really i'm not bitter---i've just been reading too much center-left propoganda and my might be starting to take on some kind of political shape short of the place i woke up one morning and found myself standing five feet from dick gephardt. But at the end of the day I'll know I picked my opinion first, and then justified it. one of these days i'll learn to shrug that off and pretend to be decisive.
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| so wisdom teeth. let's talk general anesthetic. this might be a little graphic so if you don't like graphic, don't read on.
muskatgumi2000: they put you in the chair, they pump you up with laughing gas and before you know it you have no control over your own consciousness
Yes, that was me. And it wasn't just the classic pain. It was, well, waking up in the middle of the procedure, seeing the doctor handing the nurse the needle as he finished with it...feeling the something pumping throuhg my veins, dripping down my arms. It was a NIGHTMARE. I'm really not one for hyperbole. This was not only not fun---there was sometthing seriously wrong with the whole thing. Looking up, asking a question and feeling disembodied, thinking that this thing they've put on my finger to monitor me has got to come off it's so uncomfortable---and okay, maybe it should ahve stayed on---but the pointi s, i could no longer communicate it. i could think, but i couldnt pass signals to the parts of my body that are supposed to make me tell the nurse that i'm uncomfortable, or fucked up. And I remember being spoken to like a baby as they tied my hands down to the chair becuase, presumably, I was flailing around. Yes, I woke up during the procedure, and sometimes that happens. I don't remember the pain itself being that pronounced after the procedure, but somehow I was still inconsolably bawling like a baby. Must ahve had something to do with the whole psychological aspect. There are few things in this world that I regard as mine. Pardon the pseudophilosophical bullshit, but i feel it applies here. There are so few things I own but one thing i have come to rely upon is my own judgement of my own, well, consciousness. not even sanity or accuracy---but my own--at the very least, my own assessment, no matter how false, of my own subjective experience. As in, my subjective experience can never be WRONG about my subjective experience. I am here, I may not know how i got here or why or any of that, but at least i finally thought I had a handle on reality. I guess not. They let me out of the chair told me to run along, gave me some codeine and praised me for being such a "good patient." All I could think of was---and please pardon this bitterness and hopefully i'm not invoking this in vain---but Mrs. Black, may she rest in peace, died of someone's anesthesia errors a few years back. It sends chills through me that that could have been me. This was supposed to be a routine procedure. It was. except for the waking up part, and them pumping more (GA) into me, and me feeling it, and oh god, please make the images stop. I reminded myself of a mental patient. I felt like john nash undergoing electroshock treatment or something. And now, oh, more drugs. Codeine. Thrilling. Most of the time i get freaked out about medical things its like, no big deal. Getting your blood drawn, eh, whatever, thinking stupid little medical problems are a big deal. but here is one case where reality turned out much worse than i expected.
i'm going to conclude this gripe session, but wow, am i freaked out.
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| If you've made it this far, you've probably already seen my new favorite thingamajig.
"You don't look at [hope] as a feeling state, you look at it as an ethical obligation. You look at it as a thing that you generate in yourself by recognizing taht despair is a luxury. Not for everyone. Some people are really burdened by life, either because of chemicals in their brains or terrible personal circumstances or social circumstances that make despair inescapable. But most people in this country aren't. And since most of us aren't, we have an ethical obligation to look for hope and find it. It isn't easy, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. In fact, if it were easy, it would be less valuable. It's like the Jewish search for God. One of the Talmudic ideas for why it's so hard is that you create its valeu by the difficulty of the search. We all do it. That's what our struggle is. We wouldn't get out of bed otherwise."
Tony Kushner
I found it (the interview with tony) in the utne reader, excerpted from the Hip Jewish magazine Heeb. aren't i a heeb lately. Speaking of heebs, the judaica shops in manhattan are....jewy.
Somehow everything these days is more outward-turning. Yet....not. But it is. Even the inwardturning is outward turning. Look at this tree. Look at it for a really long time. If you think about yourself and where you fit in and who you are and what you are and blah blah blah too much it begins to seem like you're a piece of paper folding in on itself in the macro world, and before you know it you're such a small little folded clump of nothing that, well, you matter even less than you did before.
and yet somehow that's supposed to give us hope. who knows where the hell that metaphor was supposed to go, but point is, and here comes Tony Kushner again...
"I would recommend that they work for the Democratic party. . .. The question is, if you believe nthe absolute moral necessity of resisting something that you see as profoundly evil and you're not just playing a game, then what is our best bet for making an alteration?" | | |
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