July 14, 2005
Unposted Crap : Part One
A thingy, which I suppose can be called a stream of consciousness rant in which I will not use the backspace. Except maybe to correct simple errors, but never to change the layout of what I'm doing or to revise a sentence I have just written.
Lately I have been strongly wondering about the direction of my life. I'm obviously not the best of students, as my GPA would show. That is to say, I'm not particularly good at getting good grades. Now I'm not going to talk about whether grades truly represent learning or not, but as it is, under this current institution and its rules, I'm not doing so well in school. I can pass my classes, I definitely have classes I love, but altogether I wonder whether I'm fit to be doing what I'm currently doing.
What else might I do? I dunno, I'd like to do something more..., fun maybe. Writing has always been interesting to me, though I don't know that I have the ability to actually write well. Maybe more what I should sa yis that I don't know that I have the ability to write something that is interesting to audiences. The closest I suppose I've ever come to actually trying such a thing is in one of my blogs. Those sadly enough, never really got too much writing and so as I sit, two of them are simply wasting away in idle-ness. I'd considered possibly writing for the paper, for an online news source, but the question is, what in the hell would I write about?
I don't think I'm a particular expert in any one thing, and furthermore I don't know that I really have an interesting new viewpoint to add to the world. And supposing I had either, why in the hell would anyone want to read what I write? Obviously there are people in this world who have made quite a living through their writing. Odly enough the first names that come to mind, in order, are: the columnists of the Aggie Newspaper, Tim Rogers, and Haruki Murakami. What this means? Absolutely nothing, though it does give some insight into.., something. I'll have to get back to that one.
I decided to skip Japanese and Kung fu today. Japanese was going to be taught by a substitute, which meant we were probably only going to work on skits, which I'm not allowed to participate in by the teacher. I decided to skip KUng fu because classes are a bitch and I have 3 midterms coming up along with lots of homework due tomorrow. Instead of doing either, I planned on going to the library, and finishing all my homework. Lo and behold however, my homework is of course complicated as shit, in particular my 110a homework is a bitch. In an unexpected yet pleasant surprise, Mark ended up dropping by the library and we worked invidually on homework for a while (being that he was working on Greek and I was working on analog circuits), but ultimately after struggling a bit with all my assignments, I gave up and we ended up heading over to the MU and grabbing a burrito.
With Mark I've always talked about bizarre subjects. Conversations between me and him start off with whatever comes to mind, and drift freely between past and present, dreams and reality, straight speech and allusions. In particular we came to the joint conclusion that Karen Tam, the political comic writer for the Aggie, and Ian Watson, some conservative column writer for the Aggie, are both very, very crappy. I'm sure at least one of them is a cool person, but Karen's comics are not really very good at being political comics, and Ian's column is exactly what we don't need in a political column; narrow-minded viewpoints sticking purely to partisan viewpoints on partisan issues with some ranting about being a conservative in a liberal campus and town. I don't know exactly where this particular sentence was going either, but I suppose I'll end it with saying that even given that this is a college paper, their ability at whatever they are currently doing is far below the standard, even for a college paper. Best of luck to both of them, hopefully they get better, or find something new to do.
Anyhoo, I also realized today why I say so many words funny. I grew up in a Chinese-speaking household, that is to say, we did not speak much English, and my parents aren't exactly English literary geniuses. I also grew up reading many books, so though I have a fairly large vocabulary, and a good command of the English language, many words are simply glyphs in my head. I pronounce them however I felt they should have been pronounced when I first saw them, and to this day I still do the same. That last sentence grammatically sucked, but you get the point. so.., when I say preferable, I say prefer-uh-bull. As opposed to the supposedly correct, PRE-fur-uh-bull. He then asked me how I pronounce the adjective that is used to say that two objects are so similar that you would say tha tthey could be compared. I actually had to think about that before I understood what he meant, and then I said, "compare-uh-bull". I then corrected myself to say, "comp-uh-ruh-bull", but then after that, I figured I should instead give him the finger. In all light-heartedness of course. As much of a grammar nazi as I typically am, I've decided I'm going to mispronounce words the way that I do and continue to do so regardless of what others say. If Bush can say "nuke-you-lar", then I can say "tur-ahd".
Finally, I finished reading Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami today. As with almost all of his books, this one did not have the most cheerful of endings. It was an overall great read, and definitely of his style. What Murakami does for me is that he is able to put entirely human people into situations together, and then he watches what happens to them as they are dealt tragedies and dilemmas. (On that thought, is the plural of dilemma, dilemmas? I saw a sign today that said, "something something, TSUNAMIS", and that bothered me. OBVIOUSLY, the plural of tsunami should be simply tsunami, and similarly the plural of samurai should be samurai.) Murakami then, after watching them finally recover from whatever they have done, deals them one final tragedy that is unrecoverable, and watches as people adapt as best they can and generally try to cope with the loss of one of their number, for whatever reason.
His characters are simply typical people faced with tragic situations; situations that are quite realizable in the real world, and thus an overall story that moves me so much more than many things I might read. Norwegian Wood in particular deals with an offbeat guy who has to deal with the suicide of one his best friends just before he goes off to college. His best friend leaves behind a girlfriend, who is also a very good friend of the protagonist, though she goes sorta crazy and the book follows through how he goes through college with the situation at hand. Boring synopsis, but ultimately a very bizarre story, with a truly more non-typical last chapter or so.
That reminds me, I talked with Mark about dreams today. I have two notable recurring themes in my dreams; dreams in which I am unable to move, and dreams in which I have no pants. Related? I don't know. The former kind of dream generally involves me being in a house which is reminiscent of my first apartment in Auburn. There is a long hallway, and I am in a bathroom which opens into that hallway. Sometimes there are other people in the house, though I don't believe they are ever in the same room as me. I am sitting in the bathroom, stnading sometimes, sometimes leaning against a wall, and there is somethign coming down the hallway. Blackness is sorta around the thing, and in general the hall is black, so I really don't know what's coming at me. I do know however that I am wanting to get away from it, and so I try to leave the room only to find myself entirely unable to move. My body is entirely filled with lethargy, my muscles don't respond, as if I were too tired to actually move. In particular, one dream had me holding on as hard as I could to a towel rack to keep myself from falling over, to attempt to leave the bathroom, but in the end I fell to the floor, helpless and alone. Mark wonders that maybe this dream might be symbolizing my fear of feeling unable to accomplish anything in the real world. I really don't know what it means, and I don't intend to dwell overly much on that for whatever reason.
Apparently Mark has never gotten naked dreams, and yet I find myself having these god damn no pants dreams all the time. In one particular dream I recall, I was in the library sitting in a nice comfy chair, and all of a sudden I realize I have no pants. The entirety of the dream pretty much consisted of me esarching for pants, all the while attempting to remain cool about the fact I don't have pants so other's don't notice. Actually, I think I'm slinking around trying to hide so others don't notice, but same difference. Eventually I find pants (in the library?), and I'm about to pull them on, when someone comes upt to talk to me. And so, I try to discreetly put on pants, but I really can't for whatever reason. I'm trying to hide the fact I have no pants on, and yet the person talking to me is totally oblivious to this fact. I don't really recall what happens after that, but the dream itself is enough I think. Mark remarked after this story that my dreams seem to deal particularly with subjective reality. He talked about it a bit, but I think my mind wandered and so I missed what he said.
All in all, I guess I've just about written myself out. When I began typing this, it started out haltingly, and then as I emptied my thoughts onto the page, it came out as fast as I could type. I did have to stop myself several times from deleting lines to either remove them or to rephrase them, though I do believe almost all of this has only been subconsciously edited before it even occured to my brain to type. Who will read this, I don't know. As of this point I have no clue what I am going to do with this written text file. It has not even been saved yet, so maybe it will simply be deleted once I close without saving. This reminds me a friend who told me about her friend who would write entire letters addressed to herself or other people, and then rip them up and throw them in the trash. The act itself was more than enough for her, and thus after writing, she had no use for the product. I'm too sentimental for that I think, so I'll probably hold onto this and forget about it as soon as my head hits the pillow.
