Rai

01:03 am: Back on Track...?


This song makes my heart leap. It strikes me as very Mexican. I want to wrap my arms around it and hold it close to me and take in all of the beautiful and invigorating images that float to mind as I listen.

I'm taking a short break from essay writing at the moment. It feels like procrastination, and it is, but I do feel like I am in the process of re-evaluating and reinstating my academic focus. I have been slipping really seriously recently and I hate hate hate feeling the pressure of the work that I know I should be doing, but am not. Even as I try to pretend away my scholastic shackles they persist in restraining every part of me, reminding me that at this point of my life, I am a student. It is my primary and most abiding purpose, and it is my excuse for and my objective in being here in this place that I have grown to love. School really can feel like manacles--I fight eagerly to be free but the more that I try to disentangle myself the more I end up hurting from the attempt.

But things are getting better. Today my life changed, a little bit, when Andres asked me to go on an errand with him and I told him no. He asked again, and again, and again, and I repeated my answer: no. This may seem like something mundane but really it is everything. I am getting to the point where his persistent "ándale, ven conmigo" cannot simply melt away my life and all its other considerations. I am learning to balance him with my own self. That gives me a vague glimmer of hope in a sustainable togetherness beyond this semester; one that, in full honesty, I have not felt even an inkling of before. After we parted ways, I spent the afternoon doing homework and making a time management plan to catch up on all of the readings I have neglected in the past weeks.

Just in general, I'm tired of feeling the cold and the exhaustion and the futility. I am tired of feeling like such a shit pile and a fuckup. I'm tired of living from day to day, from one absolutely mandatory assignment to another, between Andres's kisses and cup after cup of coffee. I can't do it. I can see the semester precipitating in this overwhelming tide and I don't want to be washed away. My lack of consistent preparation means that the next few weeks will be pure agony, but I'm starting to feel like I'm ready to face them and reassert my own agency in the craziness that is my life.

All I really want sometimes is to go home to Boston and curl up under a huge pile of blankets and dissolve all the responsibility and commitment and frustration into a long and satisfying sleep. And I will. But first I have to earn it. I guess that means I should go back to my essay, heh.

11:43 pm: LOL
This is pointless, but the dork in me thought it merited mentioning:

On T9 programs, apparently "selection" and "rejection" have the same sequence.

It's like a modern technology oxymoron, or something. :P Irony? I'm not sure what it is.

03:17 am: Two shards...linguistically speaking.
Díí béegashi shibéegashi át'é.

This cow is my cow.

Nadie me calma como tú.

No one calms me like you do.

12:26 am: Arghghgh
So today when I tried to log into my WebAunth account (the sign in to the U of A online network that leads to student link functionalities, webmail, online course materials, etc etc), it told me that my password had been in use for 360 days, and thus I had to change it for security reasons. Okay...so I changed it. And all day since then I'd been having problems with logging in--it took several tries even though I was making pretty damn sure that I was typing the new password correctly several times. I think my keyboard has been sticky recently, but it's more than just that, because after so many failed attempts, I was being careful to make sure the keys were actually registering.

So finally, it came to a point where I was just trying multiple times hoping one time would finally get me in, and it was like "lol, your account has been locked from too many wrong attempts in sequence. You can now unlock your account by following the links..."

And it turns out that one of the things that I need to unlock my account is my student pin, a random number that I literally forgot entirely because I haven't used it *since my orientation* and I had no idea that it would continue to be relevant beyond that point. I'm sure that I emailed it to myself once for safekeeping, but it's not on my hotmail, meaning that I was probably storing it on my university webmail, which I *cannot access because my account is locked*. It is looking like my only option will be to call the registrar's office tomorrow and try to find out my pin/other options to unlock my account.

What the fuck? Why, U of A, would you be such a fucking pile of crap that you'd lock an account *permanently* just for getting a password wrong like 5 times? That is such crap. Granted I'm exhausted and have plenty of work to do that I can't all access right now...and that is not helping my bitchiness levels...but there is a part of me objectively astounded by this. I guess it's my own damn fault for not remembering my pin, but seriously...it's not a piece of information I have barely ever used ever. It seems unreasonable to me that it would be used to unlock WebAunth, but not really for anything else? ls;dfjsldfkj idk.

And I guess the fact that my brain is bubbling with unhappy expressions such as "arghghgh no mames" and "qué rechingada" means that I have perhaps maybe been spending a little bit too much time with Andres.

Ahahaheh. -_- Please, please let tomorrow be a better day.

02:56 am: hey.
Progress is a VALUE-LADEN idea.

...I'd say more, but I have class in 5 hours and it's been a really long day.

02:45 am: Meepz
...to the West is a desert land where
I'itoi, the Elder Brother,
looked out and then said to the people,
"In this place you will live
as long as you remember
all around you is sacred."

Though it seems to be empty and dry
the desert is always filled with life.
Those tall cactuses that lift their arms
up into the sky are ancient people
who promised to always look over those
chosen to live in this sandy place..."
-Tohono O'odam (Papago) myth, as interpreted by Joseph Bruchac in Between Earth and Sky

----

I just printed out all my materials for my study abroad application. I feel a little overwhelmed by it all, but at this point I think I can do it. I talked to my advisor today, and he told me a bunch of unpleasant plans that were his and not mine. But at this point I won't argue--not yet. I need him to sign my packet. I'm not sure if I'm going to do an honors thesis. I want to study water resources. I want to continue learning Spanish. I might want to intern with a sustainability group. *I want to go to Guatemala in the spring.* If those are incompatible with scrambling to find a thesis advisor and starting to feverishly research, I'm not sure it's worth it to graduate from the honors college.

But at the same time, shit, since when do I know what I want?

These past few weeks have been a blur of studying in the library until sunrise, dodging uncomfortable social situations, and performing various soul-searching quests. There were, as feared, unwanted advances that I not-so-gracefully evaded. Mostly I just feel that my brain is not quite in the right place, but it could be. I'm going to keep trying.

All of my classes are pretty fantastic, though. Even Navajo, which is painful and frustrating in its implementation, inspires me in ways that I can't even really explain. I love and despise its opacity. It channels a frame of mind and perspective on life that is so unique, or at least so different from mine. I kind of want to soak it up through my skin and understand it deeply--but at the same time I'm certain that I never truly will. In a way, that is the beauty of it.

Last Thursday I dragged Ray down to El Hoyo, we and explored the old part of Tucson nestled behind the city center that was built back when the Santa Cruz river ran free and deep and mexicanos had their own public gardens and bathhouses. Before the water disappeared.

( There were pretty things )

The neighborhood was awash with historical character that was muted by its desolation. We encountered nobody in the streets, which was probably a good thing in retrospect, but it cast a spectre of loneliness on the whole place. Strangely, on our way back to campus Ray and I got stuck in a monsoon squall and ended up being approached with a crazy old man who shared our shelter and revealed to us that he was a Navajo, and nearly fell over backwards when I said Ya'át'ééh to him.

Basically, the past couple of weeks have been some of the strangest in memory.

And I should probably go to bed now.

02:42 am: It's all possible
Tonight when I was walking back to my dorm from the library, the moonlight was milky and lambent and it was difficult to distinguish sky from clouds from glow from darkness. The reflections were profound yet gentle and in some ways they made it seem brighter than it was, and the sky was alight as if it were almost the beginnings of dawn.

At 2AM, on the deserted open mall, I spun around and took in the entire sky and pretended it was dawn and that I was the only person in the world who was able to see it.

It was pretty incredible. I'm in a much better mood now.

I've also just started to do a load of laundry (yay for no machine competition..) but I'm starting to doubt the wisdom behind the timing, even if I have no clean clothes left even for tomorrow.

"When you look back at your life, you discover, or you invent, points in time that seem to be tightly knotted nodes of possibility. out of the seemingly endless options that present themselves in a given situation, you choose one in particular, and your life and the lives of those around you start moving relentlessly toward a particular outcome."
-Walter Satterthwait

My Mexican history professor quoted that in one of his textbooks and I can't seem to get it out of my head. I think I'm currently experiencing one of the life-nodes. With each passing day I am less and less sure how things are going to turn out, but I'm just kind of going with it for now. And chronic sleep deprivation notwithstanding, I am sort of looking forward to tomorrow. :o

10:57 pm: Bwa school
My life is so weird. Approximately 3 hours ago I was banging my head against several different textbooks in the library. And then, 2 and a half hours ago, I was at IHOP with a couple of dudes. How Andrés managed to convince me to leave my studying and get pancakes, I'm not really sure.

But I'm kind of glad he did. Also, I might have officially found a native speaker of Spanish I might be able to practice with and not turn into an utter stuttering mess? ^^;;;

In other news I decided to stay in Navajo...class on Friday was an improvement on the rest of the week--still not totally what I wanted, but better enough to merit risking it. And I've read forward in my textbook a bit and it just looks so cool. DD: Damn you, Diné, for being so cool! Diné bizaad shił nizhoní. Diné bizaad = Navajo language, shił = not really sure, something to do with "to me" or "for me", nizhoní = beautiful.
Or something like that.

My eye keeps ticcing like crazy and it's starting to bug me. Usually I have a tic that pops up for a few hours every few weeks, but this past week it's been basically nonstop and it's beginning to become a distraction.

Also, awesomely, apparently about half of the girls wing on my floor has come down with swine flu. I myself feel not so great either--my throat kind of stings and I feel weak. But I'm comforting myself with the fact that I've felt this way all day and it doesn't feel like life-destroying influenza yet. Yet. *flails*

Hmm apparently Canyon is closing, so I might have to schlep back to the library, since apparently Yavapai turned their study room into offices. Brilliance...

05:39 pm: Shit.
I just dropped chorus, without having gone to a single meet.

( The rest is kind of irrelevant to anyone but me, but I have to write it anyway. )

01:31 am: Whisper Away
So I'm leaving in a couple of hours.

From one horizon to another...roughly speaking.

This evening, taking a break from packing, I got bubble tea for one last time with Elisabeth, Rebecca, and Wen. And then Wen and I meandered home through the darkness, having one of our lovely conversations that tend to touch everything in life from friendship to cute animals to staggering worries and joyful elation.

It's odd, because I feel so much better now. It's not like I was really freaking out this morning, because I wasn't, but I was just feeling really nervous and jittery and also put out at myself because I felt like I had no reason to feel that way: I'm not going in blind this time. I know the city, I know the ropes. I have some peeps. But still I can't help like I'm not quite ready yet, like whatever is ahead is just intimidating enough to make me feel nervous, which is all the more distressing for the fact that it doesn't feel nearly as justified as it did a year ago.

But all that (for the moment, at least) has been overtaken by calm. That in itself makes no sense, because seeing friends and saying goodbye should be *more* upsetting, being starkly presented with what I can't take with me...but all my anxiety has been whispered away. I know that there can be smiles, regardless of what happens next fall *people will still be smiling somewhere*, swapping stories and drinking bubble tea and perhaps saying goodbye.

Now I just have to somehow make my suitcase light enough.

12:25 am: Falls away
Two more days...yikes o.o

Tomorrow is my last day of work, a full day, from early until long after dark, and I wish I could dream it away, lounging out in front of a fan as the humidity drips gently down the walls.

...And eating snickerdoodles. I made snickerdoodles today, vegan ones using egg substitute so I can bring them in tomorrow and share them with my boss who hasn't eaten animal products in over 15 years. :3 They are yummy, and I am pleased with them.

As much as I wish I had a little more time, I adore this feeling, that time is precious, and that it has slowed to crawling as I listen to every word and voice that will soon be so distant, notice every detail lest I ever start to forget.

My family is really great, I realize. The screen door would make such a racket as they breezed in and out--not just my parents and my brother, but my uncles, the neighbors, my parents' friends. In and out and smiles and snippets of conversations and suggestions and reminders. It's such a perfect summer day.

And this is a pretty song:

01:04 am: Aaaaa! Hope!!
I can't believe the American Clean Energy Security Act passed. I cannot believe it! The times have truly changed. The past has been defined by helplessness, brooding over global warming and the failed Kyoto Protocol but for the first time I feel like, maybe there are ACTUAL steps in the right direction, made by the people with the power to actually limit greenhouse emissions and subsidize green technology. It passed without being watered down further. Yesss. Legislators' opinions are actually changing.

This has merited breaking my epic LJ hiatus. Hai guys...I'm so happy right now~ :D

Also, yes, I realize I've fallen off the face of the earth. I promise I'll make an update soon, but I feel like the lack of my incessant rambling has probably given your flists a needed break, too.

11:11 pm: Life.
It feels very different from how it has before.

I don't know how to describe it, other than that I've been really diving into work, and seeing people, and music. I'm teaching myself how to play the piano.

That's mostly it.

Everything feels like a daze.

But I'm overwhelmingly content, and I think it's because everything has this sort of ephemeral quality.

I also have whole grain, gluten free rice crispy treats that me and Stephanie just made.

Nom nom. Work tomorrow. Yay. :)

10:15 am: Ahhh home. :)
Oh beautiful, verdant, dreary Boston, has it really been 9 months since I've seen you last?

It's funny how quickly and easily it all becomes familiar again. Though as of today Massachusetts license plates still make me do a double take. Like huaat are you doing here? o_o; ...o rite.

Aaaand my trip was kind of grueling, but went well overall. Mostly it was my fault cause I stayed up the ENTIRE night previously cleaning and getting everything else out of my apartment, and then the night before the trip consisted of hanging out with Sarah and her dad at a creepy old-people Country bar, and then...chilling at the airport for several hours trying to force myself to stay awake. So...any long flight after two sleepless nights was bound to be a little grueling, since I find airplane + sleep to be impossible.

But then my dad and brother met me right at the airport, as did Justin and Steph who brought me a TARO BUBBLE TEA. :| I could tell it came from Teriyaki House, too. Justin was a sneaky sneak and figured out which my flight was cause I texted him from my layover in NYC. And I died a little inside from their awesome. My sleep-deprived brain nearly couldn't comprehend ^_^; Kya I love my friends.

Today, by contrast, has been pretty chill. I just woke up, apparently the first in my family to do so, even though you'd think my jet lag would work oppositely. However, as foretold, my brother and I have switched rooms, and my brother's old bed = soooo uncomfortable that it took the massive sleep deprivation I had to be able to sleep on it in the first place. Definitely wasn't gonna stick around in it.

And it's really rainy and overcast, but this doesn't bother me for some reason, perhaps cause it's familiar, or perhaps because it's unfamiliar. I'm not really sure. :P

And my dad just got up, so I'm gonna go hang out with him now. Eheheee yay for being home <3

01:23 am: Packing up
Maria generously agreed to keep my bike for the summer, and today I relinquished it to her. I feel strangely grounded without it...I think I have really grown to take for granted the versatility of that vehicle.

My apartment is slowly but surely starting to feel...less like my apartment, and more like an empty room. I just have a couple more things to clean, and a bunch of stuff to get rid of (hopefully to people who will take it and not to the trash)...and then, yeah.

Bedtime naoz. Meeting Ray for lunch at 1 tomorrow, and then starting my final work shift of the semester at 3.

weeee....

06:05 pm: Weee.
So my exams are all over...yeah, already o.O; I really messed up hardcore on Spanish because I didn't think to memorize whether or not geographical entities (specific coastlines, seas, peninsulas, etc) are given capital letters, a single concept that seemed to have disproportionate importance on the exam. And after some investigation, it seems that I guessed wrong. Oh well. Energy went well, though I had been meaning to thank my professor for everything after turning in the final and my brain was so fried from 3 straight hours of exams that I completely forgot. whoops.

So now I just have my presentation for my border colloquium on Monday (which should be a cinch if I don't sleep through it by accident). And I also work tomorrow, Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Then the semester is all over. Dude, I have so much stuff to clean.

I am really enjoying today, though. It's like a bazillion degrees out and I went on a nice long bike ride...am currently oozing into a puddle of my own sweat. 8D I was also gratified to realize that today was payday, so in celebration I went and got coffee at The Raging Sage for what will probably be the final time this semester. And it was so good.

I think that cleaning can commence............sometime that isn't right now >>;

Oh, hiatus is over, inasmuch as I ever really went on one. ^^; Good luck on finals, Arizonans <3 And, really, anyone else who doesn't go to NEU and is therefore in exam session right now :P

04:30 pm: :)
It's 105 degrees out, I have two exams to study for, and for some reason I couldn't be more cheerful.

I think it's cause I actually caught up on sleep for once. :D And as soon as my phone finishes charging I'mma drag my books out out out into the heat and get lunch/dinner and [more] coffee, and study til my brain dissolves. If it doesn't melt in transit, that is.

01:19 am: A word of caution
Okay, this isn't a post I wanted to make, but I feel like I kind of have to now. It concerns swine flu and basic respect.

I know that the whole swine flu panic can seem a little ridiculous, especially considering almost no one has died in the US from the virus (I think two people? I haven't been keeping up with it)...and only a handful have actually been diagnosed. I know it can seem like a whole lot of fuss is being made over nothing. Maybe, to some extent, that is true.
However, I can't even count the amount of times recently I have heard someone say "dude the normal flu virus kills like 30,000 people a year and swine flu has killed like 100 and everyone is freaking out, what gives? it's so stupid."
But what they do not understand is that those 30,000 people per year are almost entirely the elderly and the very young. Swine flu is killing young, healthy people, who never, ever expected their lives to be cut short by *Influenza*. There is a very big difference. It's not like this virus is being monitored carefully for no reason whatsoever.

Which brings me to the respect part. I can understand making fun of something that seems overblown. I can understand making fun of disease and pandemic as a coping mechanism, in an attempt to make light and bury tacit worries and anxiety. I mean, I get it. But I think that the recent trend has gone WAY too far. It is ridiculous how much it has turned into the next internet fad. It was slightly off-putting to me at first, but now I really feel like some lines have been crossed. I'm seeing swine flu LJ icons. I got invited to become a *fan* of swine flu on Facebook.

I mean, are you kidding me? Just because you don't know and perhaps never will know anyone who has died of swine flu doesn't give you the right to treat the issue in such a thoughtless manner. It doesn't give you the right to turn it into a joke. How would you feel if your mother died of swine flu? Or your friend? How would you feel if someone asked you to become a fan of breast cancer on facebook, or a fan of HIV-AIDS? If the 50ish Mexicans who have died of swine flu were instead victims in a terrorist attack, would people make a fan category for it? Would you add yourself as a fan? Even if the numbers of victims seem low, each is a *person*. Someone died. I am increasingly offended by how people seem to just completely forget that, or ignore it entirely. It's not okay to mass-mock other forms of dying (at least, ones in which negligence and foolishness played no part), I don't see why it's suddenly alright to pretend that this disease (or, really, any disease that kills people) isn't serious, when clearly, at least in Mexico, this hasn't been a petty issue.

So I guess, if you're one of those people who really gets a kick out of the whole thing...I can't really tell you to stop. But please, at least, don't make callous jokes in front of me. Don't invite me to become a fan of swine flu. I really, really do not like it.

11:50 pm: From the Tucson Citizen:
My Tucson: Go green, UA, and let the grass die
MELISSA LAMBERTON
Published: 05.05.2009

Campus is a little quieter nowadays. Fountains and water features that normally bubble and splash in corners have been shut down.
Flowers are another victim of budget cuts, wilting in their beds with no prospect of replacement. And the long stretch of grass in front of Old Main, already trampled brown, won't get its annual reseeding.
I'm rejoicing in the change. Water conservation may turn out to be a rare silver lining in the economic storm clouds.
Even as departments disappear and class sizes swell, we have an opportunity to take at least one good thing from this economic crisis.
Fountains hold an odd place in the psychology of Westerners. Just take a look at the marvel of engineering and denial that pumps water into Las Vegas' spouts and geysers. Water features glamorize government buildings in Phoenix and create inviting entryways into new developments on the north side of Tucson.
If you grew up in a rainy place, it might be hard to understand how fountains symbolize wealth and power. Out here, where water is scarce, only the wealthy can afford such extravagant waste.
Flowered landscaping on campus, supposedly, is a good recruitment tool. No fewer than 13 fountains blithely promise prospective students that living way out West isn't really much different from living anywhere else.
Sure, the summer weather is scorching, but you can hardly tell from those glossy brochures. That we live in one of America's driest and most fragile ecosystems is literally washed away.
At the same time, the University of Arizona promotes itself as a top school for water research. The messages are conflicting. We've got programs and professors that far outshine anything you find on the East Coast. So why should we look like an East Coast campus?
Locals and tourists alike know the delicate beauty of a western sky lighting a saguaro's thorns. And the burst of green after a monsoon is all the more precious because it happens so infrequently.
Instead of proudly displaying Arizona's plant life, the university corrals most of its cactuses into a single "cactus garden," mixing natives with exotic oddities.
In reality, we humans are the oddity. Unlike cactus, we've yet to learn how to live with scarcity.
Why not let yucca and agave flourish in those too-expensive flower plots? Or, if greenness is required, let agriculture students fill those corners with native beans and squash, which reward the gift of water with food as well as blossoms.
Our talented art department, I'm sure, can design features to replace fountains that are equally beautiful and much less wasteful. And students from our excellent water harvesting class can reshape the grounds to capture the occasional rains, which provide more than enough water to keep a barrel cactus fat and blooming.
The university doesn't just gain a small savings in water use. It also promotes its image as a school that celebrates Arizona's unique landscape and actively seeks to protect it.
Sustainability is often derided as a hobby for the elite. But the truth is, we all become conservationists when our wallets get thin. If it's not OK to throw away money and water during bad times, then why do we celebrate waste when the economy is booming?
When the recession is over, we can choose to march forward with nothing but bad memories. Or we can take with us the ability to make thoughtful choices about the future - ones that will preserve both money and the environment for the next generation of Tucsonans.
It's time to recognize that we live in a dry place, and that it's beautiful.


(:

08:14 pm: Sittin' in the Railway Station Got a Ticket for my Destination...
( So I has some goals for the summer )

I am thinking I am taking a hiatus from LJ kind of maybe. Not a complete one, but it's just that...when I peruse my friendspage, and read about all the exploits of my friends back home, it creates a very clear countdown in my mind. It fuels my impatience. And it's okay to be excited I think; it's natural to want to be home and see everyone. But the insatiable fretting is really starting to get to me; like it feels like half of all conversations I have nowadays is "omg I can't wait to be home I'll see you soon!"

It's distracting. It's taking my focus away from my real life. I really need to focus on enjoying my last couple of weeks here and making the most of them. This year has been a real turning point for me I think, in terms of confidence, perspective, independence...experience. I'm doing myself a disservice for wanting it to be over before it's over!

Plus, I don't know what it is recently, but I have felt somehow incapable of posting comments even on entries where I have something meaningful to contribute. My mind has just been elsewhere. I'm hoping to ease off a bit and return refreshed.

See you all in a bit :]