My Words Trickle Down

You know, if I were a spy or some other kind of secret agent, and felt obliged to keep a suicide pill on me at all times, I would definitely NOT keep it in a hollow tooth. I mean, I know it is risky to have it on a necklace or whatever because what if your hands are tied up when you need to use it? A hollow tooth seems foolproof, until one day you're off duty, chilling out in your underwear eating corn nuts, and suddenly CRACK! and then a few seconds of agonizing pain, and then nothing.

Apologies if you've already read this rant/ramble. I put it up on my "real blog" ages ago, but apparently no one reads that one? Anyway, I've been pretty non-interactive on the internets recently. Wish I could say I've been doing stuff out in the Real World, but actually I've just been reading more physical books, as opposed to pixels. But I figured I should post something to let y'all know I'm still (sort of) around.

( Gender and Sexuality in Star Trek: TNG )

ETA: Salon article on the same theme: http://dir.salon.com/ent/feature/2001/06/30/gay_trek/print.html

I started to do a photo-meme from Camlina, but I decided it was taking too long, and I wasn't going to spend my one and only life trying to decide on my favourite food or figure out if I have a celebrity crush, just to show you all interesting photographic representations of them.

However, while hunting, I found this guy Holden Richards's flickr, with lots of really excellent b/w pictures of central North Carolina. Check it out:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/holdenrichards/4560468544/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/holdenrichards/4463958433/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/holdenrichards/3549241043/ (last is my favourite)

Anyway, updates: life goes on. Still waiting to hear about the postgrad, but it's looking unlikely for this year. Still trying to figure out what to do with the Rest of My Life -- or even the rest of this year, this summer, this month, this week. Tomorrow. I go to work and then I come home and I'm not really sure what happens in between anymore.

I've been meaning to write, though, about going to and from work. Part of my walk is through this little grassy plain that is sort of half golf course, half public green, all criss-crossed with paths and a bike trail. It's making me sort of re-evaluate my feelings about golf courses -- or at least it's putting some constraints on my previously unconditional hatred of them.

For the most part, of course, golf courses are horrific, elitist, environmentally-destructive affairs that flood their local landscapes and watercourses with fertilizer and their local economies with crappy, low-paying service jobs. This, however, is a truly public space. I mean, it's not a full golf course -- I don't really know how that works, but it is only short-shot holes on it, no long drives or anything like that -- but it is certainly a golf course of some form, and it's always covered in golfers now that the weather is warm. Furthermore, it is covered in all sorts of people playing golf. Sure, most of them are still old men and young jackasses, but in comparison to most golfers (and believe me, I have seen plenty), there is a stunning social diversity among the players -- women and children and punky teenagers and dreadlocked hippies. Really. And all of it interspersed with non-golfers frolicking and sunning themselves and running their dogs through the grass, with nobody telling them not to even though there are non-golfing public greens on either side of this one. I like it.

I woke up at 6 am today. I have no idea why -- I think I fell asleep around 1 -- but I'm awake now and I've been enjoying my unexpected extra hours of morning.

I guess my life is pretty good, generally speaking. I live in a cool flat with interesting people, I'm doing an internship about Genuinely Important Stuff, I have a job that is flexible and pretty fun, and I'm not working for anyone evil.* This is, upon reflection, pretty much exactly what I want to be doing with my life, at least for the time being. At least, given the paths I've taken so far; I am trying not to be wistful about the others. Besides, I think I'm finally recovered from getting spooked in April and falling into ennui after graduating, and am starting to ease myself back into activism. I'm not doing much (read: any) organising, but for now I'm happy enough just to be a body on the ground when needed.

Despite all this, I still often find myself tussling with an illogical, baffling melancholy. (So apologies, friends, if I am distant.) I'm worried about the onset of winter, and the ever-shorter days. At least I will be awake for all of it today, but I will spend most of that time indoors and out of the actual sunlight. I'm hoping that this winter will be easier than the others, but I have my doubts.

*There is a fantastic recurring sketch on the radio show 'That Mitchell and Webb Sound' in which various people are called in to have the usefulness of their jobs assessed by committee of little old ladies. The "workers" must explain what they do to the committee, which almost invariably finds them to be totally unnecessary and suggests that they go and open a little shop (with the exception of a plastic surgeon, who leaves with many apologies and the assurance that he will go and become a proper doctor now). Well, I do work in a little shop. It is quite nice!

Yesterday was one of those very frustrating days where absolutely every attempt to accomplish anything fails, flat-out. I completed a few half-errands, forgot a few more, and inadvertantly ruined a few things. So it goes. It came on top of a more generally irritating day, previously, and a whole summer of mounting consternation and disappointment. Not with anything in particular, but with a directionless and helpless, hopeless sort of ecumenical life-frustration. Or, self-frustration, as I of course am the subject of most of it, constantly disappointing myself with my self-defeating attitudes and habits.

Recently I've been feeling inexplicably agitated. It's almost physical, like an itch or irritation deep in my chest, behind the solar plexis, churning and twitching with no hope for relief. It could just be too much coffee, I suppose, but I am so tired all the time. And anyway, it feels more like I just ought to be doing something, anything, all the time, but I've no idea what I should do -- and I am so tired, all the time. And so I itch, and burn, and snap at people.

Last night, making dinner, this inner burning found an outward manifestation. Not wanting to take the responsibility for cooking, I made it my job to help out by doing the chopping and dicing. This was all well enough for the pineapples, apples, and kiwis, but when it came to chopping chillis for Daniel's Thai banana soup, it presented more of a problem. The spicy oils seeped into my already chafed and perforated fingertips and would not wash away. They clung on and burned, through prolonged and vigorous soapings, butterings, lotionings and icings. My hands were contaminated with fire, and I could not so much as lick a finger without pain. Wiping an eye was agony; I decided to do my best to simply not touch anything until time and sweat had worn the oils away.

When it comes down to it, that's really all you can do. I've been noticing the same with onions. Sometimes I'll chop as many as a dozen or so in a day, when I'm working, covering my fingers and palms in sticky, stinging fluid. The stickiness washes away easily enough, but the smell lingers on, seeping into the very fabric of the skin. In my mind, the onion juice is animated and bullyish, jostling its way over and in between the cells of the epidermis. Then it settles in and stays, forgotten, until I brush my fingers past my mouth or nose, and the odour blooms up, stark and pungeant. Smell, they say, is the sense closest to memory, and the whiff of red onions on my fingertips brings instant recall of the constant stress and drudgery that is the kitchen.

It isn't the onions themselves, of course. On my lover's hands, with his skin behind it, the scent of that same plant recalls a simple stir-fry, rice, and laughing dinner conversation. It isn't cause-and-effect; it's simply perception.

A recent article I read, about the inherent fallibility of memory, described how many people will fill in the gaps of their memories with little details, both physical and emotional, remarking that, contrary to popular belief, being full of gaps is the hallmark of an accurate memory. This is why many people remember their childhoods as being happier than they actually were. The article praised this nostalgia, asking, as though it were a rhetorical question, who wouldn't mind a bit of fiction for peace of mind?

Me, for one. The article did mention that the one group of people who typically don't display a tendency to form false memories are depressives. I find this weirdly reassuring, almost hopeful. Score one for the losing team. It's more than just a consolation prize, though, as it allows me to view depression in a whole new light. 'I have this disorder whereby I see and remember the world as it really is, and that makes me sad sometimes.' It is not so much a disease as a deep-seated teperament, and I've always been like this. A primary school teacher once asked me, with some exhasperation, if I'd rather be right or happy. Like the article, she meant it to be a rhetorical question, but to me the answer was obviously 'right'. I am imbued with a pervasive and abiding curiosity in everything, and I have a deep need to find out about the world around me, which of course requires accurate perception.

The more I study (and reject) analytic philosophy, the more I am certain that searching for objective truth is like chasing a rainbow, but still I can't quite give it up. And I wouldn't trade all the misery in the world for a pair of rose-coloured glasses.

Ira Glass once did a radio story describing how different being on the phone is to having a normal conversation, face-to-face. How it feels more distant, yet somehow more intimate. Perhaps it's because, though you miss out on the body language, you are, at the same time, not distracted by their body language either. You are attuned to the minute details of the other person's voice, the rasps and tremeloes. It's all there in the voice, anyway, every shred of emotion, and those long silences might even say more without the downcast eyes or fidgeting hands, only the tempo of breath from which to conclude.

Which I suppose is why listening to one end of someone else's phone conversation feels so voyeuristic. It's also why I hate talking on the phone in public, except for official business-type stuff. Or, really, having anyone listen in on me talking on the phone. We become so different. I am aware that my voice and my accent change when I'm on the phone, for instance, but I've no idea by how much. It probably depends who I'm talking to. A girl in my dorm at school used to go into a heavy Wisconsin (sorry, "Wiscaaahnsin") accent when she spoke to her family, though her speech was usually fairly Standard American.

So there's that. But then there's the other ear, the one in the headset. It always is a headset for me these days, or almost always. I hate talking on the phone unless I have to, but with some close friends and nearly all of my family across the Atlantic, I pretty much have to. Transatlantic phone calls being generally expensive, I use Skype. The trouble is, that means it's always me who has to call them. I think it's the very intimacy of phone conversation that makes their rejection so damning. To reach someone, only for them to have to put off the call 'til another time. Or to try to phone several people, and not manage to reach any of them. Or, worse, their fucking answering machines. I've always hated answering machines (and what good are they now, anyway, if people can't phone me back? Stevie Fucking Wonder songs?), and with the time difference I always seem to be phoning people at inconvenient times.

So, yeah, there's that other ear, listening more closely to that other person's voice than anytime else. What's going on there? What happens then? And why does it make me so uncomfortable?

This morning I was woken up at 7 am by the horrible, blaring, undulating siren of the fire alarm. I haven't been sleeping well lately, so anything that shakes me out of a sound sleep is bound to be unwelcome. Things that require me to actually bundle myself out of bed, into clothes, down the stairs and out onto the lawn to assemble in room-number-order with 150 other half-asleep, grumbling residents are almost unbearable. But I didn't have much choice, so I stumbled into my coat and shoes and found the fire escape. Found it full of people. The doors were locked shut, and we all had to turn around and wander, lemminglike, down the main corridor and out the front door of the building. Apparently one guy was trapped in his room. It was, if I remember correctly, the 32nd time this Academic year that the building had to be evacuated for a false fire alarm.

To be fair, this time, and presumably one of the times last semester, were actual drills. The rest were just the result of the faulty system. What gets me is that recently, several perfectly reasonable things have been banned on the grounds that they present 'fire hazards'. Things like papers affixed to doors, or noticeboards that aren't covered by a plastic door that can only be opened by means of a pair of finicky little allen-hole screws, meaning that posters are almost never current and nobody bothers to look at them, anyway. Rumour has it that the much-loved runner carpets in Old Wing are being removed because they 'present a fire hazard', too. And yet a fire alarm that goes off without cause so often that residents are almost immune to its warning of danger; an emergency fire phone that doesn't work at all, stranding handicapped residents and those on crutches; magnetic interior fire doors that slam shut whenever the alarm is activated, sometimes locking people in; exterior fire escape doors that can't be opened when the alarm goes off -- all these things are accepted as "snagging issues" that will be addressed in good time, meanwhile don't worry your pretty little heads about it, just carry on and do as we say.

All these "snagging issues" are the result of the Lumsden wing being refurbished to bring it up to code on electrical and fire regulations. (For instance, each bed is now surrounded on three sides by plates of dull grey, presumably flame-retardant plastic. It's like sleeping in a crib.) The biggest reason was electrical, as apparently the old wiring, put in in the 1960s, was unable to handle modern electrical demands from computers and the like. So the building has been completely re-wired to meet such demands. Last night the warden announced that using 'high-powered appliances, such as toasters' could short out the circuits on the floor kitchens, killing the fridges, so if we use them we should all check that the fridges are still working after we make our toast and inform the porters or residence managers if we've caused a short.

Of course, maybe if so many lights weren't on all the time, the wiring wouldn't be under so much strain. The dining room has large picture windows all along its three outside walls, and in the daytime is flooded with beautiful natural light. Thus, all last year, I and other concerned students (and even, occasionally, the dining staff) made a point of turning off the dining room lights during the day. This year, the lights have been replaced by SuperHighPower^TM fluorescent bulbs. It's probably less energy use, overall, since I think the old lights were incandescent, but the first time I tried to turn them off one sunny morning, I was told that they cost £5 every time they were switched on, so they had to be left on all the time. The stairwell lights have been replaced either with more incandescent bulbs or a more modest sort of compact fluorescent, and it similarly enjoys beautiful natural sunlight during the day, so almost every day in first semester, I would switch off the lights in the stairwell (that is, unless someone had already done so before me). On returning from Non-Denominational Winter Holiday, I found that all of the lightswitches had been replaced by plastic plates, except one at the bottom which had a hole for a key. The stairwell lights are now locked on, and stay that way 24/7.

It all makes so little sense it makes me want to scream. I feel so full of rage at it all, but it's all so big, so wide, so all-encompassing a madness that I don't know where to direct my energies. Generally I end up just getting overwhelmed and frustrated and withdrawing. Even the news is upsetting, always. I can't remember the last time I picked up a newspaper and didn't come away depressed. Yesterday The Guardian ran a column in its main commentary section deploring the fact that, especially for women, the Oscars is more about what you wore than what you made. In the same paper, in the lighter 'G2' section, was a multi-page, well-highlighted story about what various stars had worn at the Oscars. This morning it was another Heathrow airport story that set me off, a tale of baggage handling ("People forget the good stories. They forget how many times they've flown and got their bag. They remember the one time their bag didn't turn up.") and how the new terminal is supposed to magically fix everything. Even disregarding the (substantial) environmental arguments against it, I don't see how adding a terminal to Heathrow could make it anything but worse. I've said it before, but that airport's problem (apart from the way it's organised, the way it's managed, and all of that shit) is that it's too fucking big. It takes like an hour to connect, minimum. Actually, if they fixed all of their massive, glaring management and organisational problems, then maybe, maybe they'd be able to sort the logistics of a third runway and a fifth terminal. But as it is, I doubt it will do any more then drop them down to a lower circle of Hell.

Addendum: I was just kicked out of our new 'study space'. I knew it was going to happen, but still. One of the big perks of Uni Hall has always been out wonderful libraries. Two of them, one a bustling little reading room for Arts, the other a cool, quiet sanctuary for science. Since, like many students, I have trouble studying in my bedroom, I have made heavy use of these rooms, which not only provided me with a free alternative to buying several textbooks over the years, but also a quiet place to study any time of day or night. However, they are located in Old Wing, which is currently closed for refurbishment. So a few days ago I noticed, on our shiny new electronic notice screen (a ridiculous, inconvenient waste of electricity that we have in the foyer instead of a normal notice board for reasons that no one With Power can quite explain), that they have graciously offered us an alternative. The 'Conference Room', a little room beside the dining room that gets used for meetings about twice a year, is to be our library replacement (at least until the TV room is closed, at which point it might replace the TV room). The Senior Students said they had to really fight and weedle the residence managers to get it for us. It is open from 6 pm - 8:15 pm on weekdays, noon - 4:45 pm on weekends.

Stupid awakeness. It always seems to happen this way: I'll be out with friends, and get sooo sleeeeepy... then I come home, and the cold air and the walking take away the tiredness, and I get home and I'm SO AWAKE. Which tends to lead to silly things like drunken emails. Or LJ posts, apparently. Except I'm not drunk. But I'm not sober, either. Dave etc. had a "barbecue" on West Sands (I still refuse to waver from my Southeastern definition of barbecue, damn it--this was a cookout). 'Twas very fun.

Good and bad news in the Great Job Hunt ('07). The bad news is, I phoned the Aquarium today, chasing up my application, and they said they would phone me back in ten minutes. So I waited all afternoon, and they never called--which also meant that I was wasting time NOT chasing up other applications, since I was waiting for their call! BUT I did get a call back (finally) from a pub, and I now have an interview scheduled for tomorrow. Will try not to appear as nervous as I feel.

I think I should stop there. Lots of time alone leads to too much introspection, and there's been an entry teetering on the edge of my mind for a few days now, but it just seems a bit too personal to actually put online.

I left the house at 6 am Thursday morning. I got back to St Andrews at noon on Friday. 26 straight hours of travelling.

It actually wasn't as bad as it could've been. I had 11 hours between flights in Newark, so I managed to find a bus that would take me into Manhattan. But Manhattan itself was a bit disappointing. I tried to see the Museum of Modern Art, but it charged like $14 for admission. The Museum of Design and Architecture, across the street, advertised a main exhibit on "Subversive Knitting and Radical Lace" (or something to that effect), but they, too, had prohibitively high admission charges. So mostly I just wandered around. I was dissappointed, at first, at the lack of street musicians and such, but I realised later that it was probably because I was there so early in the morning. I did see some awesome breakdancer/acrobat/clownish-basketball-types before I left, though.

The upshot of all this is that in 26 hours, I slept about 4, most in fragments and none of them consecutive. I usually sleep okay on planes, but the movie they showed (The Pursuit of Happyness) was actually worth watching, and the woman sitting beside me was really annoying. Her voice and mannerisms forcibly reminded me of Bruce Willis' girlfriend in Pulp Fiction. When I got back I intended to pack up my room then go out in the evening. Perhaps because I was already so tired (but more likely because I spent so much time goofing around online), packing my room took until 2 am. But instead of going to sleep, I went to a bonfire. Didn't leave until 7:30 am, so I just went to breakfast in the morning. By the time I went to bed that evening, I hadn't slept for more than an hour or so at a time in 60 hours. No wonder I slept until 3:30 pm yesterday. But then I couldn't sleep last night, was up until 4 am, and slept until nearly 1 pm today. Which is not really helpful when trying to find a job.

Nor is the fact that I still have a shroud of lethargy around me. I feel like I'm underwater. Everything takes twice as long as it seems like it should. I need to snap out of this, and soon. I just realised this entry is really boring. My apologies to those of you who read it.

I've become some sort of zombie. Wandering around in a sort of daze, unable to connect or really concentrate on anything--even simple conversation. I apologise to anyone I've flaked out on, confused, or generally interacted with in the last few days. Today was the worst.

I don't know quite what the problem is. I've been stressed, sure--knitting constantly, which is always a sign with me--but everyone's stressed at this time of year. It doesn't help that I haven't been sleeping well. I've always had trouble getting to sleep, but this is different. I've been sleeping badly, lightly, not even dreaming, and waking up as tired as I went to bed. Norah gave me some rather ominous-looking herbal sleeping pills; hopefully they will help.