I am little obsessed with my neighbor. And his girlfriend.
Not in a weird way.
That's not true - this is pretty strange.
My neighbor across the hall is a very charming, handsome European gentleman. I'm fairly certain that he is from Spain or some similar Mediterranean type location.
He is delightful.
He is very polite and helpful and quiet.
Do you know who is not quiet? (
I am not the answer to this question, you smart-aleck)
His girlfriend.
His girlfriend is not quiet or charming or helpful. (
I don't actually know if she isn't helpful or not) She has an annoying laugh and a rolling backpack and I do not like her at all.
I'm sorry but she is simply not good enough for him. She's not pretty enough, not smart enough, not charming enough (
I also don't really know if this is true or not either)
I realize that it's clear that I am not living the most interesting life given my most recent obsession (
listening for them in the hallway) and that this is unbelievably judgemental and not at all founded in any sort of reality (
except for her annoying laugh) but I just think that he should be with someone more chic or something.
But as my dear Tony said:
"Respect the delicate ecology of your delusions."
—
Tony Kushner (
Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches)
Hell.
That's right. H-E-DOUBLE-HOCKEY-STICKS.
hell.
I'm talking about Business and Professional Communication at the University of Tennessee.
Now, in all honesty, I have zero problem with speaking in front of people. (This is why I did not take Public Speaking as I think that I should be able to test out of it).
However, the one thing I don't really like to do is speak about myself (which is interesting, now that I think about this here blog thing). I don't mind having a conversation with someone and we get to know eachother. What I don't like is having to come up with 3-4 things that symbolize who I am as human, bring in objects associated with those things and then tell a room full of strangers, most of them between the ages of 18-21, about what makes me, me in under 2 minutes. I've said it before and I will say it again - It's a damn good thing that I talk when I'm nervous. This tendency has helped me out quite a bit in the past.
But here is the thing . . . I'm super insecure about having left a pretty promising career in arts education to go back to school and do something completely new at the age of 27.
I know, 27 is not old. But I'll let you in on a little secret . . . IT FEELS DAMN OLD WHEN I'M IN A ROOM FULL OF PEOPLE WHO WERE IN THE THIRD GRADE WHEN 9/11 HAPPENED.
Sorry. I don't mean to yell.
It's not that bad actually, most people assume that I'm 21-ish, give or take. (I won't pretend that that doesn't make me happy) And I see people on campus and in some classes who are very clearly much older than I am and I am so impressed with them.
Because I know how hard it is. I know how insecure you feel.
I don't regret the path my life has taken for an instant - not a single moment of it. (Except maybe I wish that I had dropped physics my senior year of high school). What gets to me is the nasty voice inside my head that is telling me what a looser I am for not having gone straight on to a normal college and gotten a normal degree (who are we kidding, theatre degrees aren't normal). At the same time I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would not be the person I am today if I had followed the normal path.
Here is the thing that I realized today.
This is what made that seventy five minute class a living hell.
Every person who got up to speak today, to share these pieces of themselves with a room full of virtual strangers felt the exact same thing. Everyone was miserable and almost apologetic for the things that are important to them.
I don't ever want to watch that happen again - my heart was literally aching when I left that room. This was a room with twenty five beautiful, creative, focused, driven people. And every single one of them got up and laid themselves bare. But this today, this was torture. No one should be ashamed of the fact that they love their families, or soccor, or hiking, or anything. It's just not right.
I'm so proud of all of us - it's really hard!
I will happily do anything infront of an audience when it's not really me but a character.
I'm sure that none of them will ever read this, but the following quote is for them, the students of Communication Studies 240, Spring Semester 2010, TR 11:10
"We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot. "
Eleanor Roosevelt
"A women who doesn't wear perfume has no future."
So true, Coco.
So true.
But more to the point, I have a certain obsession with the way people smell.
(
Not that way, you sicko.)
Here's the deal. I hate the way many people smell bad. I don't think that it's hard to
not really have a discernible odor.
Shower. Wear deodorant. Clean yourself.
It's fairly simple.
This really becomes a problem for me when I have to ride the bus. The bus is bad enough in and of itself, but when coupled with sweaty, smelly people ...
I just can't handle it.
I'm not saying that I always smell like a summer rose, but good gracious I try!
I really, really do.
People of the World - please do your part. Bath your bodies. And if you are feeling particularly generous, maybe dab on some perfume or sweet smelling lotion. It will make the people around you happier.
Special Note - perfume and lotion does not take away odor that is already present. If you don't smell clean before applying cologne you are just adding to the problem.
When I was a little girl I was obsessed with weddings.
I would play with my dolls and inevitably, Barbie would marry Ken, She-Ra would marry Bow, Jem would marry Rio.
You get the drift.
My mother made me a bridal veil out of a white plastic head-band with flowers on top and a magenta chiffon-esq veil.
Beautiful.
I would wear this veil on a regular basis. I loved all things weddings.
Nowadays, not only do I have no desire to get married anytime soon, but the very thought of it makes me kinda ill.
If I do get married, I also have every intention of eloping or some such thing.
Maybe a Walk-Ins-Welcome Chapel in the Smokey Mountains . . .
The problem with all of this thinking is that I am also very much aware of being in my late 20's and I know that time is a tickin' . . .
I don't really want to be an old maid
I don't know.
What I do know is that I'm not going to figure it out anytime soon. And not only that, but whatever I think about the subject now is probably going to be radically different when/if I'm faced with making a choice about it.
That's cool.
Love however - love I will always believe in. I love the love.
It is the best.
"Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within."
James A. Baldwin
"It is not enough to understand, or to see clearly. The future will be shaped in the arena of human activity, by those willing to commit their minds and their bodies to the task. "
Robert Kennedy
I have a crush on Bobby Kennedy.
There, I have admitted it.
It's a feeling that has been growing over time and today I am ready to admit it.
It's more than he was so handsome and was fighting the good fight. I mean, that is enough to get my heart pumping, but it's more than that.
(He also, clearly had a great sense of humor: "People say I am ruthless. I am not ruthless. And if I find the man who is calling me ruthless, I shall destroy him." And you know what a sucker I am for that.)
I think about him and the speeches he gave and how brave he was to stand up for what he believed was right. He could have changed the face of this nation. I think about him and just have to wonder what our country would be like if he hadn't been killed.
As far as I can tell, the only person who has gotten the younger voters stirred up in a similar way since then was Obama during the election. "Yes we can." I cried during that speech - I was so inspired and proud of us all.
I was proud of my contemporaries who voted for McCain. Because they voted. They were compelled to make their voices heard.
But now that we are well past the campaign trail all we are left with are the talking heads on television. The older generation arguing with each other over things that are going to affect us more than them.
Were did everyone go? What happened to the power of our generation?
We cared. We argued. We voted.
And then we went away.
We cannot stand by anymore and let our parents and their contemporaries decide our fate as Americans.
This is our time. We have to take action.
Quite frankly at this point, I almost don't care what your action is. I care that you are active. I care that you are working towards something. That you are taking ownership not only of your own life but of your country.
I'm just as guilty of this complacency as anyone else and I promise to take part.
It's not enough that we get excited and voice our opinions every four years. That doesn't work.
Yes. WE. Can.
Obama never said "Yes I can." He said WE. And I have to believe that he included everyone into that WE, not just his supporters.
I'm going to end this with another great quote from my guy, Bobby:
"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation."
Robert Kennedy
"Anthropology was the science that gave her the platform from which she surveyed, scolded and beamed at the world."
Jane Howard
It's very true.
I'm not sure who Ms. Jane is speaking of, but it just as well could have been me.
I love this world and the people in it.
On it.
In it.
Either way. I love the little intricacies of our every day lives that make us the same whether we grew up in California or Calcutta.
The loves, the lies, the every day moments that touch our hearts. And I love that we cling so desperately to our differences, trying to set our selves apart from one another. To be the "other." And in anthropology really all we are doing is observing this "other." Trying to figure out the equation of all of the millions upon billions of atoms and molecules that make up the human heart and soul.
All the while valiantly striving to not judge and to remain culturally objective.
I think that this in particular draws me in because I try to do that every day in my own "regular" life. I know that I don't always succeed. I know that I don't often succeed. But I am trying and I have to believe that that counts for something.
I've jokingly said many times in the last five or so months that I am doing an ethnography of the South by living in Knoxville. And I know that I myself am clinging desperately to my own "otherness" claiming that California is responsible for the features of my heart and mind. As if California is an entity itself.
This is a little problem that I have - I tend to anthropomorphize things that maybe I shouldn't.
Regardless, I think that maybe I have set myself up as a scientific observer here, maintaining a respectful distance from the community I'm observing rather than digging in and making myself at home.
I knew that this wasn't going to be easy, but I think that I'll be okay.
This life I'm leading is exactly what I wanted; to jump of the path that I had paved for myself and to traipse up and down the mountainside as I pleased.
I just watched that movie What the Bleep Do We Know, and it really got me thinking about alternate versions of reality that we could be living at any given moment. There have been countless times since I have made the move to Knoxville where I have had to pause because of deja-vu or even more to the point, an intense knowledge that I had dreamed these moments.
Not that I believe that I have powers of pre-cognition because I know that I do not.
But rather a sense of knowing that I am making correct choices.
I am choosing my own adventure for the first time in my life.
Following the direction of my soul.
I'm glad I finally listened.
"I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship." Louisa May Alcott
Yeah, okay. Right now it feels like my ship might capsize. I'm sure it will not.
Because I am a strong person.
Just ask my mother.
Because even if my ship were to capsize, naturally I would be able to turn it over and scoop all of the water out myself.
Because that is what strong people do.
They don't let their ships capsize.
Or they swim for land and make a friend out of a volleyball like Tom Hanks (
I don't think he was in a shipwreck in that movie).
Today I would rather float along with the wreckage. However, that makes me think about that movie with the two divers stuck out in the water. No good.
I guess the only answer is to stop the ship from capsizing or whatever else might happen in a storm.
Gross.
I am strong.
I am resilient.
Tomorrow I am going to apply for a job at a restaurant (
something that I vowed never to do again, but due to the storm . . . a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do . . . savvy?), work at my job at the Museum for an unbelievably long shift (
2 horas), and then do something else.
I don't know what.
I would take a walk along the greenway by my house, it really is lovely. But all I can think of is how if I do that by myself I will be asking to be murdered.
You know the drill, young woman lives alone, recently moved to the big city, walking along a quiet, wooded path.
What?
You think I watch too much television? Too many police dramas?
Guess we will never find out what would have happened since I am going to take the easy way out and not go for that walk.
Phew.
That was a close one.
No worries, folks. I will perservere.
Through the storm and everything.
Perhaps I will work on my Spanish.
Hola! ¿Cómo estás?
¿Te gustaría ir a dar un paseo?
