everything leaves a mark...

It seems like every time I make a new mixtape I want to update this blog. Maybe I should start making more mixtapes. Maybe some of you disagree ;)

Big things are happening in life and while change is usually scary, I'm finding these things quite the opposite. I have gotten rid of my nice reliable car and I'm going to buy something cheap to get me from A to B. I have felt for a long time like I need to simplify my life but I just haven't gotten around to it until now.

I have no idea what I'm doing-- I have never bought a used car before, much less one for under $5K.. it could turn out to be a bad decision, but whatever. I'm going to give it a try. I may be buying a house soon. I'm not sure if that's the best idea for me right now, but we'll see on that too. There is something inviting about owning real estate and something entirely terrifying about it at the same time. If something goes wrong there is no landlord to call for a quick fix... you're the one responsible for fixing it. I'm not sure that I'm at the point in my life that I can afford to buy a water heater or replace central A/C... but I feel like I'm at the point in my life where I'm too old to be renting a box to live in for a ridiculous amount of money every month.

Anyway, all of that is boring.

I'm graduating in three months and 9 days. Graduating from college. Sadly, this won't mean a pay raise.. it wont' mean a different career.. it will just mean a piece of paper that I have paid roughly $25K for. Someday I'm sure it will come in handy but for right now it's a piece of paper and a sense of accomplishment for 9ish years of work to complete something substantial. I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up though. There are days when I am 100% sure that I want to teach HS English. Days when I read a good book, talk about literature with someone, explain Gatsby to my baby sister, I'm sure I want to teach in these moments... but there are days when I'm doing homework and realize I have no idea about writers of specific time periods, couldn't teach a grammar lesson without having kids laugh at me, and couldn't really care less about MLA style formatting when I think I'd be doing a disservice to students. I know that I want to write .. but I still have no idea what I want to write because I have yet to have time to write anything that hasn't been for a school deadline for quite some time. I know I'm marginally good at a lot of things.. but I don't yet know what I'm great at.

My friend Amanda is great at teaching. She has kids from prior classes that seek her out on Facebook and want to be friends with her. She goes to events of her students.. she goes to school dances, etc. These are things that I know would make me a horrible educator... I can't imagine students feeling the same way about me.

Now though, I'm not sure anyone really knows what it is they want to do until they fall into it. I'm not worried about it anymore. I'm not worried about ANYTHING anymore. Don't get me wrong, I'm anxious about not having a place to live set in stone.. and I'm anxious about not having a car at the moment.. and I'm anxious about getting everything ready school-wise before my vacation, but I know everything will work out just fine. Things will be just fine.

Let's face it.. they always are.

So what's there to worry about anyway?

What Life Is...

So in the midst of writing an essay about what life is according to Arnold Bennett in The "The Old Wives' Tale" I thought about what I think life is according to me.

I was at Starbucks tonight, organizing my essay and as I was leaving I took stock of what my life looks like at the moment. I have a steady job, good pay, a fantastic roommate, a nice apartment, a great car, a family who is more amazing than I could special order from a catalog, wonderful friends, and am really close to a college degree. I don't know how much better I could have it. Sure, there are things that I want that I don't have... sure, there is a crapload of debt coming along with my impending degree... sure, I don't have any great love story to add to my list... but that's okay. I'm twenty-six years old and I have a damn good life going for me. So I thought I'd put that in writing so I can remind myself of it when I'm having a bad day or two down the road.

I should start out by saying that one of the main characters, Sophia, really struck me when I was reading this novel. She fell head over heels in love with a man she barely knew, ran off to Paris with him and got married, quickly discovering that things weren't as they seemed. Instead of returning home when things didn't work out, she stayed in Paris on her own and made a life for herself out of business and no pleasure. Reading this book was life-changing for me specifically in the end of her relationship with her husband, Gerald Scales.

"Her eyes were the eyes of one who has lost her illusions too violently and too completely. Her gaze, coldly comprehending, implied familiarity with the abjectness of human nature. Gerald had begun and finished her education. He had not ruined her, as a bad professor may ruin a fine voice, because her moral force immeasurably exceeded his; he had unwittingly produced a masterpiece, but it was a tragic masterpiece"

and a little later on the same page:

"She had accepted Gerald as one accepts a climate. She saw again and again that he was irreclaimably a fool and a prodigy of irresponsibleness. She tolerated him, now with sweetness, now bitterly; accepting always his caprices, and not permitting herself to have wishes of her own. She was ready to pay the price of pride and of a moment's imbecility with a lifetime of self-repression. It was high, but it was the price" 361 - Arnold Bennet - The Old Wives' Tale

Reading this was a wake-up call of a familiar situation. And I realized afterwards that I don't want to be a Sophia Baines, consistently punishing myself for one moment of weakness or one mistake I have made. She lived out the rest of her life cold and calculating, focusing on nothing emotional and wrapping herself up in monotony and work. That's just not me.

Anyway, there's a lot more I could say on this subject, but I'm heading to sleep now. I'm still not finished with the essay on this book and it's breaking my brain into tiny little pieces because I'm only allowed two double spaced pages to write everything that I want (WITH QUOTES AND SOURCES!) and I'm struggling to pare it all down.

So, I may revisit this topic again... but for now, that is all.

Random Thoughts on Writers...

August 16, 2008
*copied from another journal as to not be lost forever

Warning:
If you do not like to read books.. this won't interest you in the least.. and even if you do like to read books, it still might fall flat.

So I should start by saying that I should never be left alone for long periods of time and allowed to think.. because it never turns out well. That being said...

I was sitting around thinking today about nothing in particular, well actually I was thinking about reading and about the some of the things that I wrote about yesterday..

Anyway, I decided that the following things are true:

*Louise Erdrich is my Fitzgerald of 2008.
- my reasoning behind this realization is that they both serve the same purpose to me.. they both encourage and discourage me to write simultaneously. I'm so intimidated by the way that they write that every time I pick up a pen (or sit down at the keyboard) I freeze. I guess it's the equiv. of 'performance anxiety' (take that in whatever context you will) but after reading anything by these two, I don't want to write anything down because I know it can't add up to the brilliance that seems to freely flow out of these two.

*Klosterman is my Laurie Notaro of 2008.
- If you've read both of them, this statement pretty much explains itself.. if not, suffice to say they have similar writing styles and that they both make me laugh out loud.. in public.. while reading a book... (wow. I'm fucking cool.)

So, I love different things about these different types of writers. With Fitzgerald and Erdrich I literally see the world differently while I'm reading their books. I can't think of a better way to illustrate this than to give an example of Erdrich's imagery.. to preface, she writes a lot of Native American lit. and this particular passage is in reference to the fact that in the Indian culture you aren't supposed to speak the names of the dead because they may come back if you do..

"Their names grew within us, swelled to the brink of our lips, forced our eyes open in the middle of the night. We were filled with the water of the drowned, cold and black, airless water that lapped against the seal of our tongues or leaked slowly from the corners of our eyes. Within us, like ice shards, their names bobbed and shifted. Then the slivers of ice began to collect and cover us. We became so heavy, weighted down with the lead gray frost, that we could not move. Our hands lay on the table like cloudy blocks. The blood within us grew thick." ~ Tracks

and also.. a little Fitzie for you too..

"He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced-or seemed to face- the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey." ~Gatsby

Now who WOULDN'T be intimidated to write after reading either of those things?! But that's the thing.. when I read Erdrich and Fitzgerald I think of little everyday things differently.. I pay attention to the crunching noises that the leaves make under my feet.. I think about the flavor of something I'm eating in a different way than I normally would.. it is almost as if my senses are heightened by reading these two.. (or any other fantastic author I suppose).. I'm going off on a tangent here..

Now Notaro and Klosterman make me think.. but in a very different way. They bring out my sarcasm and wit.. which are very good things.. just not as wonderful as the others..

I guess it may sound pompous (and naive too) that I think I could write a Klosterman or Notaro easily.. but it's the Gatsby I want to write.. the Tracks.. hell, even the Tender is the Night that I couldn't get past 3/4ths of the way through had some great imagery and symbolism to it..

I guess when I really stop and think about it, Fitzgerald and Erdrich are really just the tip of the literary iceberg for me in this conversation.. the James, Whitman, Dickinson, Salinger, T.S. Eliot, Camus, Hemingway, Atwood, CHOPIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, Faulkner, Charles Frazier, Steinbeck, Emerson, John Gardner, Dante.. I could go on and on and on and on and on.. but you get the idea.

I have no idea whatsoever what I started writing this entry about or what the point I was trying to get at in my head was.. but if I was ever questioning whether I should be working towards teaching English, I've just solidified the decision to myself--so at least there's that.