Ugh. I Need a Vacation.

I'm probably not going to get to write anything for a while, seeing as finals are beginning next week. Therefore, I'm going to be a little busy, with students trying to study and myself trying to study. I don't know how I am going to juggle it all, but I suppose I'll manage. See you in two weeks, by the 15th I'll be out of this mess and onto trying to wind down and relax.

Cats Like Chicken Liver.

I'm back at it at school . . . yay. Even though I forwent the holiday . . . I ended up eating oatmeal with a side of chicken liver (yeah, I know, its a weird combination) while lounging on the sofa . . . I did enjoy the break that came with it. I stayed up late and woke up early without feeling the repercussions that I would have been allowed if classes were in session. However, there is s half-sort-of downfall: I am now feeling the aftermath of those choices . . . I mean its 1 o'clock and I can't keep my eyes open. Its not natural. I think I'll take a nap.

Smog: How I Remembered That I Really Hated The LAX And Really Loved Those Fluffy White Pillows.

I got back from LA at 10:00 last night. There were a whole bunch of delays at the airport and I had this crazy layover in Denver. I don't know what cause the delays, but I am supposing that it was this thick smoggy, foggy, cloud layer that was laying low over the city. Once the plane went up through it, it looked like gray snow from above, laying peacefully on the ground below with the little peaks of mountainous ridges pushing through. It was kind of beautiful . . . at least until I remember that it wasn't fog but smog.

The airport was just as I remembered it: crazy, dirty, crazy. I was almost glad to get out of their and then onto the plane. Or at least I was until I found out the the plane was packed. Then I took back all of my wishes. Ugh, now I am just sleepy. That two hour time difference took its toll on me. I met up with some other colleagues from the region that I had congregated with in the past, and they were going on and on about going to this place and that place. I finally just had to say "Hey, I've gotta go. Your midnight is my 2 am and I can't handle that right now." Good thing they didn't put up a fight or I would've had to pull out my mean-tired-side.

And, oh, the HOTEL . . . better known as the Kingdom in the Clouds. I have never slept in a bed like that in all of my life. As a po' girl, I sleep in the wagon if I'm on an over night trip . . . the seats fold down . . . or if I really have to I'll go to one of those mold-on-the-walls-bugs-in-the-showers kind of cheap cheap motels. This was not a "cheap cheap motel." This was one those revolving-gold-door-bellhop-in-the-foyer-feather-pillow kind of hotels. The bed was so cushy. I just wanted to wrap myself up in those fluffy white sheets and die (in the good sense).

Hmm . . . I guess I should say something about the lectures and whatnot, but there wasn't anything of interest.

Thanks for 200 Years of Repression

I can't sleep. I was just thinking about how once I get back from LA that I will get to have a break from classes, thanksgiving break. I have resolved that I do not support thanksgiving day. I came to this conclusion a long time ago and have since stopped celebrating the holiday. Here is the reason:

Seeing the basis that the entire holiday was founded, people usually ask me why I am so unpatriotic towards the idea of the genial helping of the natives towards those poor starving Anglos. After long thought I decided that the entire basis of the holiday was and is a sham. As a native person myself (I'm registered through tribe and everything . . . and my native blood is actually the reason Mr. Gates gave me a scholarship,) I feel that it seems a little contradictory for me to support the Anglo in his bountiful celebration provided by the harvest of my people when during the next 200 years, Mr. Anglo would make it his priority to crush out and kill all remnants of my culture. The way I am interpreting it . . . natives gave their harvest as a gift to share (as the story goes) and apparently the Anglos were picky and didn't like it, or maybe they found a hair in their food, so they reaped savage slaughter upon all natives in the coming future (this is the part of the story they don't tell you . . . the curtain just falls as the meal is served and we all assume it worked out fine.) So the question is why would any reasonable person think that I would want to support that?

Why would anyone support the restrictions of a person's rights until the reforms of the 1970's and beyond? Maybe I am just taking the entire issue out of hand, but ever since I was eight and was forced to be subjected in a school play to the stereotypical generalizations that have been and were made about my culture, it just infuriates me a little bit that people always conveniently forget that their thankful nation was built on greed and plundering at the expense of the native peoples. I suppose that is why all those people with Anglo-dominant views towards immigration puzzle me. I just want to say: hey, if you're trying to keep the roots of founding America . . . you might as well go back to Europe as well. However, that's an entirely new issue, in which I have not the time or effort to discuss.

Mr. Gates and the LAX.

I think today is a good time for my yearly thanking of Mr. Gates. Most people think I'm rash for thanking him, seeing as he is a giant corporate mogul, but I have to say that I owe everything in my life to Mr. Gates . . . well maybe not everything, but a lot of most of it. He paid for the entirety of my education, and is still paying for it (thankfully). Therefore I think that for just one day a year, I should thank him for the hundreds of thousands he has devoted towards myself, because I can frankly say that without him I would never have went to college (I couldn't afford it by any means) and would now be stuck at some dead job pushing numbers for some other corporate person that cares even less about my existence.

Oh, and on further note. I'm leaving for LA on Thursday to go to that conference, I hope it is enjoyable (cough, HA) or is at least as enjoyable as Chicago was. I have to say that I am not a big fan of LA, though. Its a boring city to me, no character, no charm, more equivalent to the heart of evil takeover (yeah, I watched that documentary on how LA was born out of the deception towards farmers and the damming of a river that led to the destruction of subsequent miles of farmland . . . it very informative). However, I've actually never been there . . . with exception to the hours I've spent in LAX, on the shuttle to a hotel, and in a hotel. So, I suppose that is what makes it kind of boring. Eh, its all the same isn't it?

What Can I Say . . . Oatmeal?

You know you've sunk low, when for dinner, all there is, is oatmeal . . . and even worse is when you actually start craving it like I did. Ugh. I'm a hopeless case . . . I kind of don't even feel bad saying that I enjoyed it, in all its mushy bliss.

Being a Fruit-Enthusiast.

Now I know, I am very . . . particular . . . about my fruits. I just love them so, which is something that every now and then gets some sort of off hand comment meaning to hit me in the low end by calling me "weird." Being a fruit lover does not make me weird . . . it makes me . . . neurotic. I spent three hours at the market today trying to decide what to get. I was craving a perfect pomegranate but the ones they had were a little too mushy for my taste. The bananas were over-ripe . . . and the kiwi . . . they didn't even merit words. I had to settle for some grapes.

Ah! How I love a good grape! They must be some semblance of a heaven on earth. I went with a bag of red Concords. I also picked up some blueberries. I had some on the ride home . . . delicious. I was planning on smashing some up with a bit of pomegranate (but you see how that worked out) to make quite a fruitful (HA) smoothie, seeing how that's the new fruit trend these days. Yesterday it was strawberry-banana (yeck!) and today all I'm am seeing on the the shelves of fruit juices is something with a blend of blueberry-pomegranate.

I don't know what the deal is. I can't believe I am actually rambling about fruit. I've lost it. Oh yeah, I put in some good pictures. They make my mouth water.

"Death of the Moth" by Woolf.

Moths that fly by day are not properly to be called moths; they do not excite that pleasant sense of dark autumn nights and ivy–blossom which the commonest yellow–underwing asleep in the shadow of the curtain never fails to rouse in us. They are hybrid creatures, neither gay like butterflies nor sombre like their own species. Nevertheless the present specimen, with his narrow hay–coloured wings, fringed with a tassel of the same colour, seemed to be content with life. It was a pleasant morning, mid–September, mild, benignant, yet with a keener breath than that of the summer months. The plough was already scoring the field opposite the window, and where the share had been, the earth was pressed flat and gleamed with moisture. Such vigour came rolling in from the fields and the down beyond that it was difficult to keep the eyes strictly turned upon the book. The rooks too were keeping one of their annual festivities; soaring round the tree tops until it looked as if a vast net with thousands of black knots in it had been cast up into the air; which, after a few moments sank slowly down upon the trees until every twig seemed to have a knot at the end of it. Then, suddenly, the net would be thrown into the air again in a wider circle this time, with the utmost clamour and vociferation, as though to be thrown into the air and settle slowly down upon the tree tops were a tremendously exciting experience.

The same energy which inspired the rooks, the ploughmen, the horses, and even, it seemed, the lean bare–backed downs, sent the moth fluttering from side to side of his square of the window–pane. One could not help watching him. One was, indeed, conscious of a queer feeling of pity for him. The possibilities of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that to have only a moth’s part in life, and a day moth’s at that, appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meagre opportunities to the full, pathetic. He flew vigorously to one corner of his compartment, and, after waiting there a second, flew across to the other. What remained for him but to fly to a third corner and then to a fourth? That was all he could do, in spite of the size of the downs, the width of the sky, the far–off smoke of houses, and the romantic voice, now and then, of a steamer out at sea. What he could do he did. Watching him, it seemed as if a fibre, very thin but pure, of the enormous energy of the world had been thrust into his frail and diminutive body. As often as he crossed the pane, I could fancy that a thread of vital light became visible. He was little or nothing but life.

Yet, because he was so small, and so simple a form of the energy that was rolling in at the open window and driving its way through so many narrow and intricate corridors in my own brain and in those of other human beings, there was something marvellous as well as pathetic about him. It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zig–zagging to show us the true nature of life. Thus displayed one could not get over the strangeness of it. One is apt to forget all about life, seeing it humped and bossed and garnished and cumbered so that it has to move with the greatest circumspection and dignity. Again, the thought of all that life might have been had he been born in any other shape caused one to view his simple activities with a kind of pity.

After a time, tired by his dancing apparently, he settled on the window ledge in the sun, and, the queer spectacle being at an end, I forgot about him. Then, looking up, my eye was caught by him. He was trying to resume his dancing, but seemed either so stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of the window–pane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed. Being intent on other matters I watched these futile attempts for a time without thinking, unconsciously waiting for him to resume his flight, as one waits for a machine, that has stopped momentarily, to start again without considering the reason of its failure. After perhaps a seventh attempt he slipped from the wooden ledge and fell, fluttering his wings, on to his back on the window sill. The helplessness of his attitude roused me. It flashed upon me that he was in difficulties; he could no longer raise himself; his legs struggled vainly. But, as I stretched out a pencil, meaning to help him to right himself, it came over me that the failure and awkwardness were the approach of death. I laid the pencil down again.

The legs agitated themselves once more. I looked as if for the enemy against which he struggled. I looked out of doors. What had happened there? Presumably it was midday, and work in the fields had stopped. Stillness and quiet had replaced the previous animation. The birds had taken themselves off to feed in the brooks. The horses stood still. Yet the power was there all the same, massed outside indifferent, impersonal, not attending to anything in particular. Somehow it was opposed to the little hay–coloured moth. It was useless to try to do anything. One could only watch the extraordinary efforts made by those tiny legs against an oncoming doom which could, had it chosen, have submerged an entire city, not merely a city, but masses of human beings; nothing, I knew, had any chance against death. Nevertheless after a pause of exhaustion the legs fluttered again. It was superb this last protest, and so frantic that he succeeded at last in righting himself. One’s sympathies, of course, were all on the side of life. Also, when there was nobody to care or to know, this gigantic effort on the part of an insignificant little moth, against a power of such magnitude, to retain what no one else valued or desired to keep, moved one strangely. Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted the pencil again, useless though I knew it to be. But even as I did so, the unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves. The body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over. The insignificant little creature now knew death. As I looked at the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph of so great a force over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder. Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange. The moth having righted himself now lay most decently and uncomplainingly composed. O yes, he seemed to say, death is stronger than I am.

I thought that I would post this since I really liked it. Virginia Woolf inspires me in some . . . unknown way. I think it has something to do with her ability to use words in a way that I could never imagine to use them. They flow through with her voice in such an indescribable way.

SEE.

So yeah. Things haven't gotten any better . . . actually worse since the end of the semester is approaching and now everything is turning into crunch and cram time. To kind of lessen this strain on myself . . . (otherwise make myself think the strain is less) . . . I provided a nice pretty picture with this post. See, isn't it nice? It is a bit of work done by William S. Burroughs (yeah, I know, the writer . . . turned artist . . . artist in the later years of his life) . . . . . . (He used to take shotguns and shoot paint cans onto canvases . . . and then scribble a little bit on top.)

. . . I am knitting a hat to stay focused.

Hiya. I have been in a hole lately. I don't know why. Its just like everything was on the top of the world and then, BAM, the big crunch happens and everything wiped out. I think I have pinpointed the cause. A certain someone admitted certain "emotions" and well . . . that created a muddle. . . seeing how it makes me obligated to return said "emotions." The problem: I gave up on "emotions" a long time ago, too much of a hassle, so I became aemotional towards everyone ( . . . get the tricksy wordplay? its not a typo . . . ) I told said person about this and he thinks I'm lying, I believe the phrase was "jeez, if you're going to lie to me at least make-up a believable story . . . what do you take me for, a stupid?" It kind of sucks.

On a good note, however, I get to go to a conference in Los Angeles in two weeks. Exciting.