Just Show Up

I went to temple the other day (I like temple, its peaceful there, especially with little kids running around or even with little kids crying). Anyway, the first Saturday of every month there is a Abhisheka for Saraswati, the goddess of wisdom and knowledge, (she also is given credit for language and music, so obviously she is one of my favorites). I like to go to the ceremonies for her, because I love her. but I don't really understand what is going on, or what is being said, the chants and prayers are all in sanskrit. As I was sitting the other day with a hand ful of other devotees I had a moment when I wondered what I was doing. What good it was doing me or Saraswati for me to be there but not understand what was going on. I didn't come up with any answer better than "to show willing". That sometimes you have to give, even when you don't understand the gift you are giving or why the receiver wants/needs it. Sometimes its enough just to show up.

I was reminded of this again while reading the Jay Z biography for class. There is a section about obama and the inauguration. Anytime anyone talks about that campaign I get a little choked up. It was just so hopeful and felt so true and genuine, it felt like the way politics are supposed to be. Anyway, there is a photo in the book of the inauguration crowd stretching back for miles, packed in tight. It made me cry (of course) but it also reminded me of my time at temple. There is no way those people could see Obama, they were essentially watching it on television sets, outside, in the cold. But it was important that they be there, they weren't there for themselves, necessarily (although I'm sure there is something to be said for being able to say you were there), but to bear witness. To show willing, to show that it was important, that he was important, that they all believed in the cause enough to show up. Because sometimes thats the important part, just showing up.

Please Don't Take this Away From Me, But Help Me See It From A New Perspective

I miss my meteorology class. I miss my classmates, I miss my professors, I miss my TA, I miss the subject matter. I miss having people to talk to, people I looked forward to seeing, people who cared what I had to say. I miss hearing about, and caring about their lives. I miss the way I learned in that class. I miss the way I could learn something inside and out, I miss how concrete it was. I miss knowing facts. I miss the lack of opinion. I miss the way everything I learned was directly relevant to my life, no matter where in the word I was or will be. I miss talking about the weather. I miss the way I knew for sure what I was talking about, I miss feeling smart. and not smart like "I'm smarter than you are", but like "hey look, my brain must work because I didn't understand this before and now I do."

This class I'm in now is the exact opposite of my meteorology class. Where I thought I would love this class because its about something I find interesting (poetry and hip hop), I am hating it. Where I thought I would hate my meteorology class because it was about something I thought I wasn't interested in (hard science), I loved it. Where I forged unexpected connections with my classmates and professors in my meteorology class, I am left stranded and alone in this poetry class.

I thought this class would be an opportunity to learn more about myself and language and poetry and society and culture. But what I'm finding is that I'm not learning much of anything. It is confirming some of what I already thought, but not telling me why I was right or wrong. All in all its making me resentful. I resent the teacher for not having anything more interesting to show me, for not digging deeper, for not having a deeper overarching theme to the class. I don't think he's lazy, but somehow the topic seems played out already, and there are no signs of us digging any deeper into it. I resent my fellow classmates for not holding up their part of the discussion. I resent them for not looking deeper, for not being open to new ways to look at the same old thing. I resent them for not speaking up, not telling me what they think about it. I resent both their ignorance, and their arrogance, as both are holding me back from exploring the matter at hand.

I'm not trying to say I am a model student and that everyone should do as I do. But the way it stands now, I feel like I could be teaching myself everything I have learned so far. Somehow rather than having discussions in class, I feel like everyone is just trying to get their opinion heard, they just want to convince everyone else that the way they see it is the best way to see it. And my god that is boring, because at that point, its becomes less about what they are actually saying and the fact that THEY are the ones saying it. It becomes more about them than about the ideas they are trying to share, which means if you try to engage them in debate about it, they argue, rather than discuss. Rather than trying to explain, they try to tell. Everyone makes things so personal, but instead of bringing us closer together, it is driving us all apart, like magnetic fields, like everyone has to defend their individuality, like shifting your opinion would somehow make you weak.

The worst part about this class, is the way it makes me feel about myself when I'm there: "If these people aren't able to accept themselves, they probably won't be able to accept me, so I had better keep my mouth shut and my head down." Thats no way to learn.

So I guess the only thing to do is shift what I am trying to learn. Instead of trying to learn something new about the connection of hip hop and poetry I am going to try to learn how to navigate this minefield of egos and stay true to myself. I am going to learn how to sit in class for 4 hours every day for a few weeks. I am going to learn how to listen to and talk to people who are not that interested in what I have to say. I'm going to learn how to be in a very draining social situation and not get completely worn out by it. I'm going to learn to leave what I don't need behind, and take only what I do need.

What I Did Over My Summer Vacation

I hate it when blogs start with "its been a while, but here is why I haven't written..." so I'm not going to bother trying to catch you up on what has been happening in my life since I last got around to writing. That being said, how can I possibly tell you what is going on without telling you what has been going on? So here goes. School ended for the semester, and because I took an Incomplete in one of my classes finals were not nearly as grueling as midterms were. Maybe its because everything went so smoothly that I decided to sign up for a May-term class (at the U of M we have May-term instead of J-term, but its pretty much the same thing, a quick 3 week intense class). This has left me with a few weeks of summer vacation before I jump back into class tomorrow. In those few weeks I have done some stuff I wasn't planning on, and not done lots of the stuff I had planned on doing. Which, if you ask me, is the point of vacation.

I finished reading World War Z by Max Brooks. Its a book about the zombie apocalypse, but really its about the way different cultures around the planet dealt with the crisis. If you like zombies you might be disappointed by this book (the zombie information was seemingly accurate, but all in all they played a very small role), but if you like sociology you might be happily surprised, as I was. The book is written from the other side of the disaster. The human race has (narrowly) survived the invasion and after 10 years of getting their feet back on the ground a report is commissioned to sum it all up. The book is what had to be left out of the official report, as these interviews are focused much more on personal stories than on cold hard facts. Through all these stories you start to get a picture of how people survived, how people are equipped (or not) to survive without the structure of society we all have come to depend on (for better or for worse), which gives us a chance to look at how our society has formed us, our opinions of the world, and our opinions of ourselves. Do we think we have the skills we need to survive in the wild? Do we expect someone else to take care of it for us? Do we band together, or try to go it alone? Do we flee, or fight? Anyway, the point is: it was a surprisingly lovely book (lovely and zombie are not words I generally think to put in the same paragraph). It was thought provoking, and well written. I highly recommend it.

I did not start reading any of the books that are in my 'to read when school is out and I have time' pile. I haven't worked on the afghan for my aunt, which was supposed to be done almost a year ago. I haven't listened to all the tunes that I have been saving for 'when I'm out of school and have the brain space to actually take them in'. I haven't played through Portal and Portal 2, which was all I could think about for the last two weeks of school. (To be fair, I have played most of the way through Portal). I haven't cleaned the house (I did clean the bathroom, but the rest of the house is under construction, or full of furniture from the part that is under construction and where is the fun in cleaning that?)

But for all the things I haven't done, there are things I have done too. I have started listening to Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham. A nice surprise to find in my iTunes library. I have learned to sew and made a few skirts already with plans to make a million more. I have cooked myself some delicious chicken curry. I have started going to Temple. I have started doing yoga again. In short I have spent this week coming back to myself. I have started enjoying the space in my head again. Thats what vacation is for right?

The Illusion of Control

I register for fall classes tomorrow, and I cannot for the life of me bring myself to care about what I take. This seems counter productive since what classes I take will basically decide how my life will go for several long months. But heres the thing: no matter how much I look at class descriptions and coursework and all that, I am likely to be surprised in the fall. Take this semester for example, I thought for sure my meteorology class would be my least favorite thing in the world, I was thinking of it as my 'just get through this' class. It has turned out to be my favorite class, by far.

So I guess it seems silly for me to worry too much about what I take. The most important factors for me, are when the class is (if its a 10:00 am class I will probably fail it) and how many people are in the class (200 is too many). And even the number of people in the class can turn out to be completely unimportant, my meteorology class has nearly 100 people, which on paper looks like too many, but the way the class is taught makes it work for me. Ideally I would base my enrollment on my impressions of the professors, but that isn't an option, so its a crapshoot. and you shouldn't get attached to the outcome of a crapshoot.

Everything is ok! You have 2 weeks left.

I have two weeks left of school. Just two weeks, and so of course, i am spacing out, reading novels (that have nothing to do with school) playing video games, planning to play video games, knitting pretty things. Basically anything but school work. And its not that I don't have anything to do. I have plenty to do. But my mind is over it. My mind is already on vacation. My mind has packed up and gone home. And I have no inclination to call it back again.

I stumbled-upon a game on Friday, Its called jig-saw-doku and its basically sudoku with little tiles with little colored numbers on them. I think I like it partly because it eats up 10-15 minutes per game, which is just short enough that its easy to get sucked into the "just one more game" mindset, but long enough that even just one game can fully reset your mind from whatever you had been stuck on. I also like it though because when you ask for a hint it says "everything is ok! you have # tiles left" I just love being told that EVERYTHING IS OK! It is so reassuring. Never mind if you are stressed out, everything is ok. Most of the time that is all we need to hear right? That everything is going to be fine. Most of the time the people telling us this don't know if its going to be ok or not, but we believe them. We take them at their word.

I take this game at its word.

Everything is ok.

(I realize this is kind of a light post, everything else in my life just seems to big and heavy to fit in a blogpost right now.)

I'm supposed to be in class...sort of

I'm supposed to be in class. But I'm not. I'm worn the fuck out. For the last few weeks Edie has been nibbling away at my meals. She has been taking such small bites that it has been easy for me to ignore them. I have been able to rationalize it and pretend it isn't happening. But it is. And today, it caught up with me. If you give her an inch, she will take a mile, and I didn't have a mile to give.

I made it through my first class alright. And I made it through most of lab by the skin of my teeth. I had to walk down the street to get lunch and as I walked I felt myself leaning on my bones. Never a good sign.

You know how sometimes the universe comes to your aid when you need it? smoothing the way and making things easier for you? Well, sometimes it does this in an unexpected way. Sometimes it throws obstacles at you to get you to go the other way. Today felt like one of those days. I made it to the restaurant (barely) and it was packed with people. I have never seen it so busy. When I am at the end of the end of my rope all I want is to be alone, or as alone as possible; So being in a small room packed to capacity with the music blaring wasn't ideal. After ordering I was forced to stand around waiting for my food. I desperately needed to sit, but there wasn't a single open seat, so I stood until a seat opened up and when I finally sat down a big crowd of very big loud men came in. Not good. I was just trying to make it out without freaking out, and once I did I realized there was no way I was going to make it to class tonight. It was just out of the question. Thank you Universe for forcing me to take a night off.

I sat outside and ate a bit, I was that hungry that I couldn't make it the 4 blocks back to school without eating something. I'm now sitting in the STSS building (my home base at school) on the floor eating and writing this. According to the University I should be in class. But according to reality I should be exactly where I am. Taking care of myself.

Minnesota: my abusive boyfriend

I love the sky in minnesota in the spring. In fact, there isn't much I don't love about minnesota in the spring. My relationship with this great state is a bit like a relationship with an abusive boyfriend. For 5 or 6 months out of the year I get beat up, worn down, dragged out, pushed to my limits with the snow, the ice, the wind and the darkness. And just when I am ready to leave for good, it changes. I am in heaven for 3 or 4 months with the most beautiful green you have ever seen on the ground and in the trees, the beauty of the rivers and lakes and all the lovely wildlife that live in them, and of course the skies. And I think, well, this isn't so bad, in fact this was totally worth all that other shit. and before I know it we slide into late summer where things are alright, better than winter, but not as nice as spring. The heat starts to get oppressive and the green starts to fade a bit, and I know its just a matter of time until I am back to freezing again.

In the winter I think of the scorching heat and humidity of the summer months, and during the summer I think of the freezing winters. But in spring, this is when I am able to be most present and actually enjoy myself in this crazy dance I do with my home state every year.

(ps. Yes, I'm writing about the weather because the rest of my life is shifting around a bit and its too scary to look too closely at it just now. But also, the weather in Minnesota is pretty cool.)