Reading About Things That I Have (Never) Thought

My french lit class this semester has been in sharp contrast to my summer reading. Over the summer, I read adventure stories. On the Road, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Bonfire of the Vanities... adventures. And novels about heroin: Trainspotting, Junkie, a little bit of Requiem for a Dream before the library demanded it back. I've taken drugs, I've gone on adventures, but the pleasure in reading about other people's experiences with these things lay in the differences of their approach. I do not recall any point in On the Road when I thought "of course! I would have done the same thing!" or a part of EKAAT where I would have felt the same way as Tom Wolfe without his deep involvement in the local zeitgeist. Bonfire of the Vanities was even more difficult, but that's to be expected since the master status of all of the characters is ass-hat.
And the books about drugs... they were like fairy tails. People who felt so very much and so very little at the same time. People who looked for absolute simplicity because the smallest twist was a knot in their stomach. A lifestyle that rejected all of the pressures I felt. Foreign in the extreme.
And now this french literature: Le Pere Goriot by Balzac, Madame Bovary by Flaubert, Du Cote de Chez Swann by Proust, and now La Nausee by Sartre. It's so close to me. I've lived and thought it all before. Maybe not in so many words, but sometimes in many more words. In pictures and hours of meditation and so many places and feelings. Before our first discussion on Le Pere Goriot I laughed with my friends that they thought all of the characters were silly and unrelate-able. My problem was that I identified with them too much to see the story. Proust, I was reading at 10 pages an hour. If I was lucky, I was absorbed in his ruminations. If I slipped though, I read the book as poetry, looking for rhymes and rhythms and getting lost in the SOUNDS so thoroughly connected that when the syllable came along that concluded the phrase my heart leaped with gratification. There it was, what I had been waiting for, handed to me. And now Sartre. He writes about adventure... And about loneliness, about how the perfect memories of places you've been a thousand times and are totally familiar fade to nothing. How when you tell a story it's like you remove yourself and all of the honesty from the situation...
There's so much.
And I'm so tired. The physics problem sets have been deadly, of late. Hardly sleeping. Mostly reading.
Don't even get me started on the political sociology we've been studying.
David Griffiths gave a lecture about the Higgs Mechanism today. Barely understood any of it, loved all of it.
I spin fans so much that even before I start each day my arms are sore. At the end of Looking For Love But Not So Sure by Pretty Lights I spin as fast as I can in the horizontal plane above my head and under my arms, sometimes the fans follow each other and sometimes they stay on one side of my body and alternate up-down-up-falldrop.
I'm consumed.

Le Passé et les histoires

Comment juger la valeur de la vie? Dans la scène du bar avec le docteur et M. Achille, le narrateur semble pouvoir juger leurs valeurs de leurs apparences et leurs actions. Mais pour lui même, il regard toujours a son passe demi-perdu. Il pourrait raconter ses histoires, pour gagner le rang social du docteur, mais il trouve que ce serait malhonnête et en plus il en a mare de raconter ses histoires. C’est comme si son passe ne lui appartient pas, et cela le fait ne plus exister.

Alors sa visite imminente avec Anny fait tout cela moins clair. Son passe lui cherche, et lui revient, d’une manière. La lettre était écrite de Bouville même, alors elle était plus proche qu’il ne pourrait jamais croire. Le symbolisme d’Anny comme le tout de son passe est peut être trop, mais sa manière de l’oublier est aussi semblable aux histoires. Il a oublier les détails, en gardant ce qu’il pouvait, jusqu'à il y avait que sa sourire, puis cela aussi est parti. Alors il pourrait facilement raconter son « long corps » mais il ne le tient pas. Il l’a oublié, mais il le garde d’une façon aussi. Puis, peut être tout reviendra, ou deviendra plus présent.

Pre-Game Halloween/Too Good To Be True

Halloween is on a Wednesday this year. That means that there's no one weekend that it is closest to. Instead, there are two weekends that it is closest to. So, this weekend there was a cool party, and next weekend there'll be a great party. Love it.
Chittick started the evening early. The day before we had driven out to a pumpkin patch and bought some gourds. I had mostly ridden around on the hay ride. It was meditative. I needed some meditative after the week I'd had. Papers and problem sets and no sleep... It was harsh.
Anyways, at around 6 our common room was full of food. I had just walked back from a very pleasant 3 hours with a new comic series: DMZ. It's pretty solid in terms of art and writing, and makes me think about social responsibility which is always a good thing to ruminate on. Endless digressions. Endless garlic, too, that night. We ate a huge meal, followed by 3 pies (pecan, pumpkin, and apple) and washed it all down with fresh apple cider. There's nothing like a solid meal to start out a good time.
We costumed as well. Em wore a child's ice-skating uniform, the skirt of which she removed to make a cape. She was Princess Super-Villain. Edith had a lot of trouble deciding, but finally went as a prairie vampire, which I thought was awesome. Eric wore my stringy blue shirt and I painted tribal tattoos on one arm. He was a member of Weapons of Mass Distraction. Hilarious.
I was Delirium from Sandman. Dorky as fuck, but a great reason to buy a fishnet body suit. I wore an oversized suit-jacket and pinned all kinds of ribbons into my hair. Edith has the perfect gold-swirly vest, and I borrowed that.
But that's not the interesting part. We were bored waiting for the fun to start, so we drove to a coffee shop. Everyone there was looking at a computer or reading. We were a little out of place.
Em loves lavender, so I convinced her to get a lavender steamer and I got a lavender cremosa. They were both exquisite. It's strange, how the flavor of lavender changes so much when its hot, cold, creamy, smoked, smelled, etc. They're all special and different.
Our band of merry misfits headed out to wander the industrial wasteland/pleasant neighborhoods of SE Portland. It's quite a juxtaposition.
No one knew where they were except for me. "Where are we going?" they would ask. "OMSI" I would respond. "No we're not," they would say. But I just kept leading the way, and eventually we trudged through the drizzle and made it to OMSI and walked down the pier to hang out by the submarine. None of them had been before, and standing on the water in the middle of a big city is transcendental. I think everyone got a lot out of it.
On the way back, they were all convinced that we were lost. I promised them again and again that navigation is not that hard and calm the fuck down. On the way we found a wreath on the sidewalk and put it on a house. Everyone was still convinced that we were lost. In the end, we were a little fucked because the sidewalk we needed to walk down for the last 50 yards was closed, and our other option was to walk through a tunnel in a bike lane next to a highway.
We took the long way around.
Driving back, Ellie drove us a little bit out of the way to show us the school where she worked. On the way, we drove past a group of Reed anarchopunks, one of whom is devastatingly beautiful. I had a dream wherein the only action was me trying to find words to describe his smile. While asleep. My subconscious felt the need to work overtime just to figure out what is so goshdarn magnetic about it.
And it would not be quite so pathetic if I had not also had 5 other dreams about him. Ehem. Anyways. It looked like they were going to the Red Light party.
Back at campus, Em and I went to Harvest Ball where I ate my first candy corn of the season. That stuff is catastrophically delicious. Then we visited the SU dance, and skipped around until Edith found us to go to the Red Light. I told them I'd seen him walking there.
This is where it gets too good to be true.
Less than 5 minutes after arriving, we run into eachother. All he says is "I want to kiss you."
...
It was really nice too. I'm not sure how much kiss-description is too much (probably any) but... okay, there was this perfect little hesitation before our lips touched.
Corrine interrupted it because she wanted to make out too. It's really alright that she did though, because otherwise I would never have stopped. After they walked away, I shouted "YES" at least 3 times, and basically collapsed against a wall in ecstasy. You think I'm exaggerating. The rest of the party was mostly me dancing and dreaming about what had happened.
At 3 am I was done. Em and I went to sit on the swings for a bit first, and talked about becoming who we wanted to be. Then we went home, and I slept till noon.
The next day I mostly just daydreamed.

La Fragilité Dans La Nausée

Il me semble que la vie du narrateur est définie par les fragilités. C’est comme s’il y avait une bloque dans chaque arche qui s’enlève, puis tout se casse. Il traverse le monde, puis en un instant il n’en veut plus, et il n’est plus l’homme qu’il était. Il entend les paroles de la chanson, et la nausée s’en va. Les possibilités de tout changer sont présents aussi : « Il faudrait si peu de chose pour que le disque s’arrête » (41) Même si cette fragilité semble effrayant, je crois que le narrateur veut que les choses soient si simples. Il faut qu’ils aient une cause, ce ne peut pas être un procès. C’est comme ça qu’il peut simplifier la souffrance de Lucie par donner le blâme au boulevard. Si la souffrance vient du boulevard, ce diminue la puissance humaine, et la responsabilité humain aussi.

Writing A French Paper...

Is kind of a bitch. I should have done this over break.
On the other hand, I learned a great new idiom through my efforts: crossing the Rubicon. It means to take an irreversible step that reveals your intentions.
Cool, right?
Everyone has probably heard of this except for me.

25i-NBOMe Trip Report

Update: My school's health and counseling center sent out an email about how some people have died from 25i. Erowid will tell you the same thing. So, be aware that there are risks when you engage in risky behavior. This email was sent in the aftermath of someone taking probably 3+ tabs and running around naked punching windows and going to the emergency room. Anyways, be safe.

At around 11 am a little bit of card-stock and paper towel sat on my tongue. The taste was a special kind of bitter. My tongue numbed gradually, and I sat around waiting for the 25i to kick in.
The girl I was tripping with was feeling sick, so she went to lay down for a while. After having the papers in my mouth for about 40 minutes, my body started anticipating the trip. My legs felt weird temperature differentials, and mild tingling traveled around the surface of my skin.
About an hour after taking it, we went outside together. She felt sick enough that she decided to throw up. We're pretty sure that it was mild food poisoning and unrelated to the drugs. In the bathroom, we had our first visuals. The perpendicular white lines from the grout between tiles rose up to knee level and moved, shook, brightened into a mesh of light. Then, it turned into horizontal rain, still just drops of light, falling towards me and past me, still at about knee level. Em came out of the stall and also had some kind of visual associated with the lines. Right before we left, the horizontal rain suddenly started falling up, which was really disorienting and intense.
Em's come up was very abrupt. Almost as soon as we left the bathroom the grass was breathing for her, and she could "build new spaces" in the air. After sitting outside for a while, the grass started breathing a little bit for me, and I saw some geometric patterns in the conglomerate concrete. She saw "rivers" in the concrete, and saw shadows in the grass even though it was overcast and there weren't any shadows.  She also felt very cold, while I felt especially warm and shed most of my insulating clothes. Apart from the small visuals, I had an overwhelming desire to eat a spider that was crawling on my hand. So I did. I thought it would make me understand it better. I don't think it did. For the rest of the day, spiders were confiscated from me.
We moved locales, to sit under trees. We began in a bunch of orange leaves, lying around and talking with our friends. Her trip was pretty much in full swing. I still didn't see much unless I relaxed into it. I had trouble finding that mental state while stimulated by people around me. Finally, a bit more than a full hour after taking the first dose, I took another tab and ate the rest of the paper towel that it had been wrapped in. So, at this point I had 2 full doses, plus whatever had leaked off of what Em had taken.
After having the second dose in my mouth for a while, everything started shifting. I was sitting in the leaves and bees were flying all around me. The bees ended up with tracks behind them, dark shadows that followed them. It made it look like 5 bees were a swarm, and it was really beautiful. My hands  also had the shadows, as did other quick-moving objects. I found a leaf that was scarred all over. The scars began a time loop, making the leaf shrivel and shrivel but never fully die, and never really be reborn. The scars were just always getting deeper and longer. The lines on my hands did the same, as I held the leaf.
Our friends who weren't tripping left, and things got deeper. Eventually I swallowed the second dose, and we moved out of the leafy area. Standing in the middle of the lawn in front of ODB, I noticed that my perception of space was very changed. I couldn't tell how far away things were, or what size they were in relation to thing things around them. I couldn't tell whether they were in the same plane as other things, and sometimes trees or buildings or even people would seem nearer or further away. I didn't realize how different everything looked until Em showed me her "sobriety box." She'd been taking pictures of things with her iPhone, and I had teased her that they wouldn't look the same later on. She hadn't explained, but she was actually using it as a control for how she was seeing the world. Looking through the iPhone, everything looked like it's mundane normal self. Then I could see how fucked my perceptions of size and shape really were. It worked for both of us, which is interesting. At this point it seemed that the intensity of our trips were about equal. I saw the field of grass on a time loop just like the leaf, except instead of dying it was blooming. Flowers were growing. When I told Em, she saw it too. In the sky, I saw strange patterns in different iridescent outlines. The patterns closest to that style in the real world are the giant pictographs in the desert that can only be seen from an airplane. They were mostly random geometry, but sometimes I thought I saw Kokopelli in them. The trees looked like they were made of ornate Chinese dragons. They definitely wiggled. There wasn't any definition in the leaves anymore, and branches looked like whole creatures.
Hugh called to tell me that he had my car keys. The phrase had no value to me. I couldn't see the path of 'he has my keys and wants to give them to me.' At that point Em took the phone, thinking she could figure out what to say. She ended up just telling him that we were tripping. This was a symptom of future communication problems.
We stayed in the field for a while, and at this point the intensity of my trip surpassed Em's. At certain points I saw the world melt away and all I could see were the geometric patterns, even with my eyes fully opened. I tried to stay grounded, but I wonder what would have come of letting go.
Old people were going to a concert on campus, so we decided to stop scaring them by retreating to the canyon. We were going to pretend to be normal. I could not pretend to be normal without having a purpose, because without a purpose our choices made no sense in a rational world. And our purpose could not be to run away from the people, because then we would have failed our deeper purpose: not to scare them. Em couldn't figure out why I was having so much trouble. As we approached the blue bridge, I realized how distorted things really were.
The bridge is at least 50 feet long. It looked no more than 10 feet long. I had no more depth perception. Everything was made of purple, orange and green. Sight, smell, taste, and even some sound were all connected in a way. We called the flavor of the situation "dragon" early on, to simplify things. But in my head I called it Braze. Dragons are brazy though, so it works out. The canyon looked more tropical than usual. Leaves were larger in proportion to branches, and there was none of the pleasant northwestern decay that usually defines forested areas. Bark became shiny and pointed, fractal and growing. Spaces opened up.
At one point Em said that she saw the leaves on the water glowing. That made them turn into points of light on a glass surface, and suddenly the shapes started overwhelming everything else and my vision detached even further from reality. It passed, and I was back.
We were in Chittick for part of it as well. It looked like moss was growing out of the ceiling Growing out of the ceiling in weird paisley shapes. The cieling is made of fibres glued together and painted white, and they have no rhyme or reason to their patterns put on 25-i they looked ordered and teardropped and swirly. That was one of the last things to fade, about 12 hours into the trip.
I took a whippet, because I wanted to know what they hype was about. It didn't do much. But after asking to borrow a cracker, people got very excited.

~The rest of this post was written much later.~

Their excitement began a darker part of the trip. It made very clear that they were in a different realm than I was. I could not understand why they felt the way they did. They offered us all kinds of stimulus, one kid said "hey, let's take shrooms right now!" It was uncomfortable for me. I didn't want to be around sober people. But Em did.
The visuals faded, but didn't go away completely. I laid on the grass outside, while Eric spun poi, and Adam hula hooped, and Sean played guitar. Em stood over me nervously. Her visuals were gone. People kept asking her if she was done tripping. She had started to say yes, mostly yes, oh no, there's a little bit again... But she was gone. She looked afraid of me. We felt so far away from each other now that I was still tripping hard and she was not.
It started to rain and people moved inside. I didn't move. I laid in the grass and got wet. My friends were worried but all I wanted was to lay in the grass. Everyone went inside and I could finally start crying.
Even as I was crying, about nothing in particular but mostly about not understanding other people and feeling so far from them, I had a lovely little moment. I started laughing through my tears, because it was raining, and I was sitting in the grass in the Pacific Northwest while a boy played guitar and I hugged my knees and my dark hair got wet. It was so silly, so out-of-a-stupid-movie, so exactly what you'd expect... It got to me. I laughed and cried.
My worries became more acute. A friend who had taken 2 tabs of 25i the day before found me and was very worried. He took me inside. "Does anyone have a blanket?" he asked. "Don't get me a blanket, I don't need a blanket" I said. "it's not for you, it's for me" he said.
That hurt so badly. Here was irrevocable proof that I was so far removed from him that I could not understand his intentions even when they seemed so clear. He seemed fine, he shouldn't need a blanket. I looked wet, cold, sad, and helpless. Of course someone would try to get me a blanket. But no, I was wrong.
The idiot lied to me when I was in no state to deal with things that weren't true. In all fairness, he did it out of goodwill, but it still hurts to think about how awful I felt.
When he had the blanket, he gave it to me. I realized that he had lied and I was so angry. Then I sat in a corner and watched the wool of his jacket grow into strange patterns. I watched the hair on my legs grow into the same patterns, grow and then shrink.
While inside, where people were talking, I ran into a serious problem. Irony and sarcasm were totally inexplicable to me. Someone would say one thing, and mean another, and everyone else would understand and I would not. It was torture. I could see feelings, but then the words would contradict them.
But gradually I accepted that there were things I didn't understand, but I remembered what it was like to understand and I decided that I could rebuild it all.
My friend had told me to try spinning while tripping. I took the fans out to the front lawn, where I felt like no one would see me and I could ride out whatever was happening.
I talked to myself, and spun fans. I learned my favorite move that day, tripping at the end of the dusk. I had felt like the move was possible for weeks, but my arms kept tangling. It just worked itself out though. I can't wait to spin while tripping again.
The silhouette of my fans against the orange night sky stuck with me. I still associate that image with my trip as strongly as all of the other shit. We coined the trip "Stereotrypical" because of all of the paiseley and purple and orange and jungle-feelings. But that part was me alone working with myself. Laughing after all of that crying, and putting things back together again. Telling myself to be patient with myself. Getting my legs back again.
When I went back to Chittick, wet and tired again, Em was back. She had gone to the Hotcake House. She looked like she'd seen a ghost. Apparently her trip had not been over either. At the restaurant with some of our dormies, she'd also felt very in touch with people's feelings, but she saw them expressing other feelings than what she saw. She felt suppressed anger and resentment. Paranoia is certainly part of this, but I honestly believe that the feelings that we saw that confused our interpretation of things were there. I think they were real.
Anyways, we holed up with my best friend and talked about it more. I was still seeing the patterns, I saw them until I went to sleep. My face didn't look normal until the next morning, but my friend said that the morning after his face had turned into a goblin, so I considered myself lucky.
I left out a few things, like confusion with hierarchies and seeing some people looking older, or younger. But that's the jist of things.
Would try again, would recommend. Then again, I get off on shit like putting myself back together again.

Les Rimes

Comme j'ai trop de midterms pour fair la lecture aujourd'hui, je vais fair un petit blog sur les rimes dont j'ai parle l'autre fois. J'ai copie le suivant de Project Gutenberg, et je vais montrer quelques parties ou je vois les rimes.

Enfin, en continuant à suivre du dedans au dehors les états
simultanément juxtaposés dans ma conscience, et avant d'arriver
jusqu'à l'horizon réel qui les enveloppait, je trouve des plaisirs
d'un autre genre, celui d'être bien assis, de sentir la bonne odeur de
l'air, de ne pas être dérangé par une visite; et, quand une heure
sonnait au clocher de Saint-Hilaire, de voir tomber morceau par
morceau ce qui de l'après-midi était déjà consommé, jusqu'à ce que
j'entendisse le dernier coup qui me permettait de faire le total et
après lequel, le long silence qui le suivait, semblait faire
commencer, dans le ciel bleu, toute la partie qui m'était encore
concédée (les ait, er, e sons sont plus dificiles comes ils sont "ubicuitous" mais si je cherchait un rythm aussi, cela aidera, je crois.) pour lire jusqu'au bon dîner qu'apprêtait Françoise et qui me
réconforterait des fatigues prises, pendant la lecture du livre, à la
suite de son héros. Et à chaque heure il me semblait que c'était
quelques instants seulement auparavant que la précédente avait sonné;
la plus récente (cela je ne sais pas si c'est un partie des trois avants)venait s'inscrire tout près de l'autre dans le ciel et
je ne pouvais croire que soixante minutes eussent tenu dans ce petit
arc bleu qui était compris entre leurs deux marques d'or. Quelquefois
même cette heure prématurée sonnait deux coups de plus que la
dernière (je crois que prematuree est lie avec derniere a cause du rythm. Mais c'est plus un instinct que de vrais raison.); il y en avait donc une que je n'avais pas entendue, quelque
chose qui avait eu lieu n'avait pas eu lieu pour moi; l'intérêt de la
lecture, magique comme un profond sommeil, avait donné le change à mes
oreilles hallucinées (cette schema de rime est tres populaire en rap francais, ou bien ce que j'ecoute.) et effacé (je trouve qu'il a des fois un sort de "echo" avec quelques uns. Une rime tres uni, puis quelque chose hors du rythm mais lie au rime.) la cloche d'or sur la surface azurée (ici il me semble que le rime revient en force. Avec efface, c'est un peu hors du place.) du
silence. Beaux après-midi du dimanche sous le marronnier du jardin de
Combray, soigneusement vidés par moi des incidents médiocres de mon
existence personnelle que j'y avais remplacés par une vie d'aventures
et d'aspirations étranges au sein d'un pays arrosé d'eaux vives, vous
m'évoquez encore cette vie quand je pense à vous et vous la contenez
en effet pour l'avoir peu à peu contournée et enclose--tandis que je
progressais dans ma lecture et que tombait la chaleur du jour (Ici des rimes separee par des autres rimes)--dans le
cristal successif, lentement changeant et traversé de feuillages, de
vos heures silencieuses, sonores, odorantes et limpides.

Voila, un peu de cette theorie. 

Lire Ce Qu'on Est

L’écriture de Bergotte fait que le narrateur essaye de faire « table rase » (141) de toute sa propre philosophie. C Il parle de petites instances de similarité comme des validations de tout son être. Alors, pourquoi ce désire de s’effacer avec l’écriture ? Enfin, il se trouve avec l’écriture. Ce n’est pas une question de se créer ou de se démolir. Comme avec la madeleine, tout y est déjà. Le narrateur dit a propos d’une circonstance comparable a sa vie que le « langage de l’écrivain rendait encore plus ironique mais qui était la même. » Alors, c’est plutôt une amplification qu’un établissement.

Alors, quand il apprend que Bergotte est un ami à Swann, sa première question est « Est-ce que vous pourriez me dire quel est l’acteur qu’il préfère ? » C’est la même question qu’il pose pour juger tout le monde. Cela montre une séparation entre l’écrivain et l’écriture qui n’est pas fait explicite avant.

L’effort de connaitre et vivre avec  seulement les opinions de l’écrivain est  d‘un coté, anathème. C’est plutôt qu’il veut que ce soient venu de lui, comme les souvenirs.

Aussi, je me sens un peu come théoriser conspirative à l’ instant, mais je trouve que les grands passages longues et compliques ont une rythme sinon une rime. J’ai écouté un peu de rap français avant de lire, et je trouve des similarités. Peut-être que je suis folle.

Le Jeu Japonais

La métaphore de jeu japonais s’est seulement pour symboliser le souvenir inattendu.  C’est clair que les images qui sortent du jeu sont du même sort qui sort de la mémoire. Mais, pour sortir ses souvenirs, il faut tremper des feuilles de tilleul dans l’eau, de la même manière que les feuilles des papiers dans le jeu. Cette similarité physique ne se mélange pas facilement avec l’acte de gouter la madeleine, comme gouter n’est pas externe du tout. Mais, à la page 95, le narrateur devient fasciné par l’acte de faire du thé pour sa tante. Là, il admire que « le dessèchement des tiges les avait incurvées en un capricieux treillage dans les entrelacs duquel s’ouvraient les fleurs pales… » et il pourrait presque parler du jeu japonais. La différence est que la première fois était une surprise. Le narrateur est toujours en attendant quelque chose : attendant le baiser de sa mère, d’aller à Combray,  ou attendre le gout de la madeleine au thé.  La métaphore du jeu japonais montre le souvenir comme quelque chose attendu, et c’est ça qu’il devient.

Sitting In a Bathroom, Covered In Graffiti

I'm supposed to write an Op-Ed for The Quest about why we need graffiti at Reed, in response to the administration's daily erasure of bathroom art.
I had so many things to say when I first started, but now... and let me make this clear: it's not the well that has run dry, it's that someone, specifically everyone who kept making art on the walls, has muddied the water. So what can I write?
Can I say that we need to express ourselves? Do we need to write "I thought I would be happy here" for everyone to see? Did we need to hear "you will be" did we need to hear "you are" did we need to hear "I thought so too?" Did that heal us?
Colors, spread by hands; handprints, spread by colors. They must have been tall, or jumped, or climbed, because the hand prints are on the walls and ceilings and tiles and doors. If the graffiti-ist didn't get at the very least a little bit of catharsis out of that fucking mess then I don't know how they could ever get it.
Someone said "It's really intense" someone said "I like yours better, not that it matters" someone said "it's kind of frightening." And before I saw it I wondered if writing "murder" on the walls was disrespectful to someone who might be triggered by the word. But then, I wouldn't be triggered by "suicide" but I would be triggered by bright blue tarps, or any disembodied body parts with blue anywhere near them. So, that's probably silly.
The bathroom is messier than it was. Less aesthetically pleasing. Someone called it "solipsistic," so I googled the word. I decided I didn't have a problem with that. And look: a conversation. A conversation between A, B, C, D. A: one frustrated with censorship, B: one frustrated with self-importance and idle struggles, C: silly little voyeuristic reactionary, D: the internet, and by extension our language and culture. That's progress, at least for me. I grew from that, me being C.
I'm rhyming, you can tell this is fucking with me.
Because people keep writing about the need to have more sex, this stuff is clearly representative of our student body. But it's not. The audience certainly is, everybody poops as we learned early on. So how does it balance out, that everyone sees what a few people overwhelmed by their feelings need to tell the world? And interesting, isn't it, that most of the comments to the extreme dissatisfaction are moderate. They're calming. Someone's flexing their Helper role. Few people say "fuck, yeah, me too, everything sucks for me too." They say "I thought that too, and now I think otherwise and I think you'll be like me someday."
From writing that last paragraph, I have come to two conclusions. 1: Solidarity is a huge part of it. And a part of the solidarity comes from the fact that it is being erased every night. Maybe I like this better, having it gone and forcing it to keep growing. Then again, it grew when there was no impetus, and maybe everything meant a little more back then. 2: The fact that I can generalize, and invent conversation and potential reactions means that we are connecting beyond absorbing other people's sentiments. The connection is affecting my thoughts, and my ideas about our student body. This is serious. I've seen graffiti that says "don't come here" and that hurts us. "I'm sad" doesn't hurt us because we know that it's a part of us. "Don't come here" hurts us because it takes away from the potential us.
But I cannot censor graffiti as harmful. I can respond to it. I could write "If I had not come here, I would not be the person that I am and that would be a tragedy." And the only true balance is an oscillation between good and bad. And constant erasure does that for us. So where does that put the idea, and the cause?


Well, I'll keep trying to narrow down how I feel. I also love the ambiguity of the title I didn't even really think about. It's so true.

L'Habitude

Pour commencer Du Coté de chez Swann, Proust écrit d’un temps passé, mais inexact. Il parle des baisers de sa mère, des promenades de sa grand-mère, des nuits d’angoisse, et des visites de Swann sans un épisode en particulier. Ce sont des généralisations avec les quelles on pourrait amalgamer pour comprend sa vie habituelle par les motifs qui le crée. Alors, quand un épisode distinct arrive et se mère vient dormir dans sa chambre, le style de raconter change pour exprimer la signifiance de l’exception.

Mais les habitudes ne sont pas seulement des utiles pour introduire sa mode de vie. L’idee de l’habitude est aussi important, et suit l’histoire. Le narrateur imagine que « Peut-être l'immobilité des choses autour de nous leur est-elle imposée par notre certitude que ce sont elles et non pas d'autres, par l'immobilité de notre pensée en face d'elles. » (48) En ce manière, il décrit le perception comme une sorte d’habitude. Cette habitude nous donne la capacité de comprendre tout vite et nous fait confortable avec cette réalité comprise. Ce comfort est explique a la page 51, avec mes italiques pour emphase : « L’habitude ! aménageuse habile mais bien lente et qui commence par laisser souffrir notre esprit pendent des semaines dance une installation provisoire ; mais que malgré tout il est bien heureux de trouver car sans l’habitude et réduit a ses seuls moyens il serait impuissant a nous rendre un logis habitable. » Sa vie est seulement tolérable pendent que ses habitudes sont achevés. Le peur de sa mère de lui habituer à la faire venir quand il est triste est sage, come il a tant de désire pour les habitudes. Son père, qui l’encourage d’y aller, ne comprend pas. C’est logique, comme « …Mon père qui trouvait ses rites absurdes, » (56) et voila ne voyait comment l’habitude était attirant pour son fils.

Finalement, le phrase si aime par le grand-père est aussi une sort d’habitude corrompt : « Souvent, mais peu à la fois ! »  (58) comme disait le père de Swann avant le grand-père du narrateur. En plaçant cette phrase qui s’adhère si facilement au milieu de toutes les difficiles phrases à la Proust, c’est une garante que ce soit rappelle. Alors, c’est logique que ce doive être applique. Sa mère lui embrasse souvent, mais ce n’est jamais assez.

Et j’aurais écrit plus mais si je le fais vous n’aurais pas le temps de le lire.

Peut-être l'immobilité des choses autour de nous leur est-elle imposée par notre certitude que ce sont elles et non pas d'autres, par l'immobilité de notre pensée en face d'elles.

Reading Proust for my french class. Finally, after being intrigued by the idea of La Recherche, by the Wikipedia page, by the attempt to mix reflection with invention... now I'm reading Du cote de chez Swann. It's drawing me in uncontrollably, and the tiny margins frustrate me more than rereading the same passage a zillion times ever could. I'll need to expand my pen arsenal. Color coding. Sticky notes. I'll throw everything I have at this text and I will see it. Not with my eyes, of course, but with my soul. Because darkness is only real once your soul sees it.
I'm clearly only 5 pages in.
Heaven.
Love, Julia

Amanda Palmer and The Grand Theft Pumpkin

Three Girls. One Concert.One Pumpkin. One night.

Edith had spent some of Thursday night (RKSK initiation 2k12) in a U-Haul with over 100 naked bodies in it, so I was concerned that the heat and sweat in the Wonder Ballroom would bring on flashbacks. We all felt like we were about to faint anyways.The lights were disorienting on the sheer film that followed Amanda Palmer's body over the crowd as she sang "Bottom Feeder" above our heads.
The best part was that they played "Astronaut" off Who Killed Amanda Palmer and it made so much sense all of the sudden. I was half delirious from this cold that I can't kick and the sleep that I didn't get, but somehow the energy of the show transcended the dehydration and exhaustion and all the little stresses and the world broke down into Art, Intensity, Gimmick, and Show. Sort of out of my mind but being pushed back into it constantly. I'm not sure how to describe it. As I said, delirious.
We raced back to the car, making crazed noises and relishing the September air. Cool wind slipped up and down the wedding dress that I had cut into a shirt, quickly drying the sweat that covered it uniformly. We were energized as much by our escape from the human powered sauna as the fantastic show we had all shared.
Back in the car, my driving took a look at the adjective "exemplary," spun it's pencil around erased it vigorously. We were winding through streets taking wide turns, looking for a place that was open at 2 in the morning to sell us liquid, any liquid, while drumming the steering wheel to the beat of "The Killing Type." A Safeway? More like a Saviorway! We worried that it was closed. We saw movement, plus there were still pumpkins outside, it can't be closed. We tore into the largely deserted parking lot and scampered out of the car. As we approached the doors I said "If it's closed, I'm going to steal a pumpkin."
It was closed.
We turned around and I knelt to grasp a prickly green stem. "Run guys."
Into the car, the pumpkin joined Amy in the back seat, seatbelts on (safety first), and out of the parking lot, back onto Hawthorne Blvd, ready to continue the quest for whistle-wetters with our new companion pumpkin.
The next driveway was a knock-off 7-11 type of thing. Destiny.
We entered through the automatic doors, our faces contorted with desperate need and nefarious victory. It's hard to describe what those people saw. Three girls, one with brown hair crimped into a mess, another with a dirty blond bowl cut, and a third small Asian wearing a bright green wig tumble in from a car covered in patches and spray painted flames. Respectively, they are wearing the top half of a wedding dress and a skirt made of scraps of velvet tied together, a white lace shirt and velvet skirt pinned into amorphousness, and a teensy shiny gold dress with a huge belt, held up by a few purple ribbons laced across her chest. The first had an arm of paint in green and yellow swirls with black bars across them, the second had primary colors all over her left eye, her chest and her stomach in patterns that almost looked like birds. Finally, Edith's arms were fruits, veggies, trees, and roses. Mushrooms grew in a two dimensional orange and black patch on her shin. Maybe they saw us as wholes, but I saw us as a compilation of little things. Neither party, not the real and or the imagined, understood.
But we made an impression. As we bought quantities of juice, a pair who were buying beer inquired as to our appearance/behavior and invited us back to their party. We followed their truck and chugged the spoils of our monetary exchange with the cashier, who had also been invited.
The party was bizarre. We tried to gift them our pumpkin but they ignored us. Then Dutch showed up, an acro person I recognized from fair. The world is small. We colored on the pumpkin a little bit, and then we were bored enough to leave, back to Reed house parties.
Hotboxxx or Gun Club, Hotboxxx or Gun Club... HOTBOXXX. So we went to that house, which was going to be more talking and less shitshow. But apparently 2:30 am is after the parties are over in lames-ville Mc-Reedland. Just kidding! 4 people on a couch is also a party, often a better party.
Still we talked and admired everyone's clothing and listened to people complain about their sex lives. I stayed to cuddle with Zosha while Amy and Edith went back to Reed to eat truffle infused eggs.
We finally let the house go to sleep at 3 in the morning. Walking back to my car I realized I forgot my pumpkin, so I ran back up a steep flight of stairs to retrieve it. Crossing the street again, I was struck by the poetry of the straight double yellow lines, so I took my orange prize above my head and threw it straight down the center, expecting a splat.
Instead of exploding on the asphalt, the pumpkin rolled for almost a block. "What are you doing Julia?" "Chasing my pumpkin!"
Back at Chittick, I insist that we sacrifice it in the canyon. First Edith and Amy get a taste for chucking it, because it was strangely rewarding to watch it make contact with concrete and roll off without a hint of injury. Then we marched halfway across the Blue Bridge, illuminated in its typical creepy cyan glow under a full moon. We yelled and trilled our tongues, building to a climax when I let the pumpkin fall into the black water 30 feet below us.
Then we went to sleep.