one month later

And hopefully this time I'll stick around. I've been busy with life in general: going out to bars and clubs and dance parties (and throwing a few myself), attending amazing performances (such as one last week exploring the relationships between food, personal identity, and power/politics), and getting myself into (and out of, thankfully!) some sticky situations with relationships (lesson of the summer: extreme attractiveness does not surmount personal issues/craziness. Really. It's not a fair tradeoff at all, and one should not be tempted by one's lust/poor decision making abilities/inability to draw boundaries slash say no to justify such a tradeoff. It's bad news, kids).

After a weeklong visit from my friend T and the accompanying flurry of events and meet-ups with other friends in the area, I'm now happy to say that I am settled in my apartment and ready to return to my hermit-y (and academically productive!) ways. On the list: get through my readings for one of my classes (and write summaries for each of the readings, yes I've decided to be ridiculously anal like that) and continue making time for my "just for fun/personal interests" books. I'm currently working my way through The Erotic Margin: Sexuality and Spatiality in Alteritist Discourse, which explores the ways in which space is transformed (socially produced and reproduced) into place through particular discourses, or more specifically, the ways in which the "East" or "Orient" is constructed through discourses of gender and sexuality. I'm only on the second chapter, but I find the book incredibly interesting and relatively not dense (all things considering) and would definitely recommend it to anyone with the time and/or interest.

In other news, I've been pretty productive (in an unproductive way) today, and so far, I've managed to:
1) Request to be added to the mailing lists of the postcolonial lit and gender/sexuality reading groups of my program

2) Ask for the syllabus of this amaaazing graduate anthropology course that explores agency, temporality, and sovereignty in relation to travel and migration (and which I can't audit because I have another class at the same time, TEARS)

3) Request an audit in another course which is supposed to be a critical examination of contemporary theories in cultural and social anthropology

4) Make a (required) appointment with my department chair during the first two weeks of classes (which start in early September, EEK!)

...

Ok, so maybe all of those things took about 30 minutes to accomplish (minus the researching of graduate anthropology courses, aka me poring over course descriptions and drooling like an extremely dorky kid in an extremely dorky candy store). And possibly came after about 3-4 hours of watching Olympics highlights/reruns online (what can I say, I like gymnastics and diving!)

Alright, no more procrastination from me. Off to the summary writing and reading!

strange connections

Came across an unexpected email in my inbox this morning from a person claiming to be an MA student in Pakistan with an interest in postcolonial literature. I have no idea how they got my personal email (or knew that I was into postcolonial lit), but I went with it and responded to their inquiries with a little novel about my particular academic interests (once you get me started babbling about that sort of thing, it's kind of hard to stop. Plus, what better way to spend my time when I'm bored at home than meeting a new friend?)

Has this sort of thing happened to anyone else before? I'm a huge fan of correspondences and a generally trusting person (I mean, they weren't selling me penis enhancements or overtly trying to get my bank account information!), but I don't want to be suckered into some scam that I'm not even aware of...I guess I do find it really strange that they knew my email and academic interests. To the best of my knowledge, I don't have any connections to anyone in Pakistan, nor do any of the profs that I've worked with on the undergraduate level.

The only thing is that my name and email are now on the website of my program. While I'd rather not reveal my specific school here, I will say that it's an Ivy, so maybe the person just decided to randomly email me based on an interest in my program? They did say they were interested in pursuing further graduate study in the US...But that still wouldn't explain how they know that I'm into postcolonial lit because that particular tidbit of information isn't available on the site. Furthermore, my intentions are to focus primarily on Asian American lit, so even if I did have a bio somewhere about my research interests, it wouldn't mention that...

Oh, the mysteries of the internet! I seem to be the queen of random communications (I've gotten quite a few messages out of the blue in my day), so perhaps I'll just chalk it up to my good fortune in this area. In any case, I'll keep you all updated (just as you should let me know if I'm being drawn into some scam!)

must.not.abandon.blog

Now that I'm home and relaxing, I've been really neglecting this blog (though to my defense, I guess it could be said that I've been neglecting all things academic). While I have definitely not been reading articles every day like I initially planned, I have been going through a good amount of poetry and reading bits and pieces of prose, particularly from Winesburg, Ohio, which is definitely one of my favorite books of all time.

I've also officially signed up for classes for this upcoming semester. My first courses in grad school will be:
-A required seminar for my cohort (which, incidentally, is all women!) which will examine the impact that debates in critical and cultural theory have made on the discipline of English literature

-A course on globalization and the early modern period in England, particularly focusing on the first moments of global contact and the ways in which modern global relations have influenced our understanding of the early modern world and vice versa

-A class on Modernism and Orientalism, with a particular emphasis on the work of American poets and the structure of American Orientalism

-(what I'm probably most excited for) A course on the construction and performance of blackness, with a particular section on queerness. Hurrah!

And because I'm probably the only person excited about these classes, I'll close this entry with my favorite poem right now (definitely something that everyone can enjoy):

Edward's Anecdote
-Donald Hall

Late one night she told me.
We'd come home from a party
where she drank more wine
than usual, from nervousness

I suppose. I was astonished,
which is typical,
and her lover of course
was my friend. My naivete

served their purposes: what
you don't know beats your head in.
After weeping for an hour or so
I tried screaming.

Then I quieted down;
then I broke her grandmother's
teapot against the pantry brickwork,
which helped a bit.

She kept apologizing
as she walked back and forth,
chainsmoking. I hated her,
and thought how beautiful

she looked as she paced,
which started me weeping again.
Old puzzlements began to solve
themselves: the errand

that took all afternoon;
the much-explained excursion
to stay with a college roommate
at a hunting lodge

without a telephone;
and of course the wrong numbers.
then my masochistic mind
printed kodacolors

of my friend and my wife
arranged in bed together.
When I looked out the window,
I saw the sky going

pale with dawn; soon the children
would wake: thinking of them
started me weeping again.
I felt exhausted, and

I wanted to sleep neither
with her nor without her,
which made me remember:
when i was a child we knew

a neighbor named Mr. Jaspers-
an ordinary
gray and agreeable
middle-aged businessman who

joked with the neighborhood
children when he met us on
the street, giving us pennies,
except for once a year

when he got insanely drunk
and the police took him.
One time he beat his year-old
daughter with a broomstick,

breaking a rib bone, and as
she screamed she kept crawling
back to her father: where else
should she look for comfort?

oy

So I've been meaning to do a lot of academic reading/summary-writing this break to prepare myself for grad school (and to my defense, I downloaded a bunch of really delicious articles that I can't wait to get started on!), but instead I find that I've been rereading my childhood classics. Last night's batch included: A Little Princess, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and Ballet Shoes. Tonight: Heidi. It's pretty sick, but I just get so damned happy when I read that stuff, even though now, with a more critical lens in place, I realize that there's quite a few problematic areas in these old favorites. Ah well, I guess I just have to contextualize and forgive.

Speaking of contextualizing and forgiving, I finally saw the Sex and the City movie this afternoon. While I very much enjoyed it (the tv show got me through a rough breakup my freshmen year, so I'll always have a soft spot for the girls), I was also horrified by quite a few moments (especially the incredibly size-ist moment near the end with Samantha ,who, lets not shit ourselves, is totally fine and fit even with her so-called "pooch"). And don't even get me started on Don't Mess with the Zohan, which some of my friends unfortunately dragged me to a couple of days ago. I think my problem is that college has completely sapped me of my sense of "humor" (if that's what you want to call it) and heightened my sensitivity/critical response to certain jokes. Ah well, I suppose it's worth giving up a few cheap laughs if I'm more aware/sensitive to the assumptions/plays of power that are going on beneath the surface of particular "humorous" stereotypes. (Wow, that last statement sounded horribly elitist/pretentious. Forgive me as I stroke my beard sagaciously.)

Moving on, my days have mainly been filled with trying to relax and de-stress. I have started calling up some old friends to hang out (which I generally find stressful because I only go home twice a year, and generally for short periods of time, so there's a lot of people to see). We'll see how it goes. It's strange, most of us graduated this year, and so many people that I remember from way back in the day are going to grad school, getting jobs...gasp, growing up! It feels so strange...I still feel like a kid sometimes, like I'm play-acting this whole maturity business when all I want to do is hide in my bed and read Puffin/Apple classics all day. On the upside, though, I have three more weeks at home (where my mother will always make me feel like a kid...hah!) and then I move to my one-bedroom apartment near the university and start living completely by myself for the first time in my life.

...It feels so strange to type that. To even think that. Cue the old Toys R Us theme (I don't wanna grow up!) and the angst. Boohoohoo. Life goes on.