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when it rains... Friday July 30
it must be because sachi's in town. she leaves today, but i have literally six different websites to do something for this weekend, ranging from an entire design to an estimate for a new site.
it really doesn't help that i have to work three nights this weekend.
looks like someone won't be getting any sleep.
sooooo nuts Wednesday July 28
i'm like a little girl, i'm so happy (cue SNL reference, if you didn't already get it).
the reason i'm stoked, as i said in the previous post, is that all i've been doing is speaking japanese. but not just, "hi, how are you" so on so forth boring drivel, but actually talking about things. for example, i was explaining to sachi how i couldn't stand that don guy from two summers ago because all the mug wanted to do was pick up girls; i couldn't respect that as a reason for studying abroad.
and i even successfully explained my subsequent visits to both london and spain.
all in all, it's been a pretty successful day. damn, i'm tired, though, mentally. the rapid-fire pronounciation is starting to come to me faster, though, even after a day and a half. imagine what a year could do. thinking about that, that's why i'm happy.
yasumi Monday July 26
my friend sachi from japan just got into new york today. she just got into, er, the united states today. she's never been here before.
she's studying english. together we're a powerful combination in...eihongo (a joke that might only be funny to like, two of the readers of this blog, and isn't worth explaining to the rest. sorry).
anyway, i'm stoked, because i quickly took the upper hand and started using japanese to put her at ease. which then led to japanese-only communication (minus the occasional eihongo). so now i get all the free practice. score. and i can already feel myself trying to express more difficult thoughts in the language.
a missed pathway Sunday July 25
about five years ago, there was a trend in pop-modern rock music that produced happy, fun, poppy-yet-not-too-much songs such as jimmie's chicken shack's do right and citizen king's [r.i.p.] better days. then those bastards linkin park came on the scene and stole the thunder of these happy, fun bands and started screaming and singing like they were all angry, despite that they're all white boys from the suburbs.
it's too bad music didn't go the way of that good music. yet, the badness of linkin park led to the "the" bands of 2003, which i believed to be a step in the right direction.
yet, todd and i closed the store to "abbey road" on friday. no one comes close to touching the beatles' genius. maybe they might be giants.
maybe.
oh yeah, and i forget to add len's steal my sunshine to that list of fun music from 1999.
living in new york Friday July 23
i have a tendency in life to obsess over work. it depends what it is, sometimes it can be a good thing; sometimes not. in the case of the planet, i established credibility as a engineer, on-air talent, and producer quickly by working constantly, learning everything, and never saying no to more.
this personality streak can be useful when i am working on something amazing or awesome, as seen last december with danielle's light box project. it's too bad that she never did take me out to dinner for that. word is is that's just what she's like, and i don't need to be playing on nilay's territory anyway.
this summer, though, i quickly figured out that obsessing over work was not going to provide me with the time to do some things that i wanted to do. yet, we cancers are a loyal bunch, and since the store is an endeavor of my brother michael -- i worked very hard for it. i've done many things for free, and i am occasionally rewarded with a free meal in flushing or something like that.
the money's not the issue, though. true, i've been able to earn a lot via modus vivendi, but i also feel slightly deceived. michael didn't mean to do this, because he didn't know what kind of work i'd be doing, either -- he just knew that he was leaving, and that his share of the labor had to go somewhere. paying bills, payroll, etc., these were to be my duties, but somewhere in between, i became a regular employee as well. i think it was to pay rent.
so as the summer for me is drawing to a close, i can see that i may have possibly had just as interesting and/or lucrative summer in champaign-urbana. of course, life is an experience-based game, and there have been some experiences that i've had here to warrant coming out here -- meeting some people nothing like me, escaping from the urbana bubble, and living truly on my own.
liberal media Thursday July 22
i just read an excerpt from the beginning of "what liberal media?". i'll say this much: liberal media, conservative media, whoever, whatever.
in general, conservatives tend to be more fiery and angry in their rhetoric than liberals. liberals, with noteable exceptions, tend to prefer scholarly approaches. which in turn are attacked by the more hands-on conservatives. who wants to read a book when the answer is right in front of you?
and so the whole thing starts over again.
makes me kinda dizzy.
i don't necessarily want a utopian world where liberals rule; i want a society where everyone thinks for themself. unfortunately, consumption requires people to be lazy, and people who are lazy rely on others to get information for them. besides, we can't do anything that would affect consumption, can we? our happiness (read: financial success) relies on it.
a guy in modus vivendi said to me the other day, though: "money doesn't make you happy, but being poor certainly doesn't help either."
graduation Tuesday July 20
the las office e-mailed me back yesterday informing me that my fall schedule effectively completes all of my university and college graduation requirements. i have to make one more phone call about the departmental requirements, but i believe that i can safely say that my graduation is only 12 credit hours away.
it's going to be a fun semester; both leslie and i have no class on fridays. i'm sure we'll be going to the loo together.
i just need to find a place to live first. anyone want to cheapen their rent by letting me couch surf? my goal otherwise is to find some cheap sublet from a last-minute person who's studying abroad or something.
impromptu boston! Monday July 19
i've always wanted to go to boston. nate's living there, and so i am taking the next two days off to go up there and really see new england for the first time.
expect pictures upon my return, or maybe sooner.
ennui Sunday July 18
a conversation online with a friend tonight. backstory: she's dating [person x], but wants to get out, and now has interest in [person y], who is studying abroad in paris as of january. [person y] has suggested to my friend that she also go abroad.
her: even if i went to spain, he'd be 12 hrs away in paris
her: though i wouldn't go just for him
me: of course not
her: so mabye i wno't [sic] go
me: that's a recipe for disaster
her: because it'd be pretty sad
her: i can't deal with long distance
her: i didn't see [person x] for a month and totally lost interest
her: i won't see him in 6 weeks
me: i don't know if it is that you can't deal with long distance
me: it's that you can't deal with long distance with [person x]
me: he doesn't mean enough to you for where you are in your life
me: to make it permissible to maintain interest despite the distance
her: yeah, there's just.. nothing in common
her: we don't have enough to talk about.
me: even if you did have enough to talk about
me: let's say it was [person x] studying in france in january
me: would it be worth it?
me: or would it be more worthwhile for you to move on and meet other people
her: or i feel like he doesn't make enough of an effort. it's like he talks a lot to get the girl. then he just relaxes when he gets her
her: you know one of the worst feelings
her: is having someone say "i love you"
her: and having to say it back without meaning it
her: he said it too early on
her: i think it like jinxed everything
me: then why didn't you call him out on it
her: i don't think he meant it
her: i don't know
her: i think people get infatuation and love confused
her: infatuation is transient; love is marring
me: can i quote that?
unity Friday July 16
oh. my. god. homestar runner and they might be giants. together at last.
i've seen better days
life isn't that bad these days. with my new furniture arrangement, actually, i'm quite pleased. but then there are the 'mondays' in life, and today, when i say 'monday', i really mean 'thursday'.
tonight i was verbally accosted by a drunk friend, informed that there is a gentlemen in forest hills who has repeated said he wants to kick my ass, and ate the worst excuse for cheese fries i've ever seen. not to mention i spent all the money i had in my wallet, and twenty more from the atm.
tomorrow, it's only a day away.
and as for the ass-kicking part, well, a lot of people are all talk. i didn't do anything wrong, so it's his problem, not mine. i'm just being vigilant.
the girl in the subway Wednesday July 14
tonight i descended the stairs of the roosevelt avenue station on my way to the store. not scheduled to work, i went to meet todd in order to bring him back to my place. we both have to work in the morning, and there's no reason for him to go all the way home to inwood when i live twenty minutes away.
there was a very, very attractive woman with her hand on the railing of the stairwell, but since she was standing on the platform, this was unusual, and thus drew my attention. that is, besides the fact that she was, uhm, yeah. no matter, though, and i entered the R train. i was one of the last people to enter the train, and there were very few open seats. the closest open seat, though, was next to the girl. so i sat down.
most people in the train, as todd astutely pointed out, are so focused on thought or music or whatever that they don't even notice where they are sitting. i, however, had a half-second-not-even hesitation when choosing a seat. i saw another seat nearby, but then decided that it wouldn't be creepy to occupy a seat in a train. c'mon, it's anyone's seat. why would you think that would come across creepy to a girl that probably didn't even notice your existence, mark?
so i sat down, and shortly after the train started to leave the station, she got up and moved to the other seat i had looked at.
what am i, a creep? i was almost offended -- no, no, i was offended. i don't smell bad, is there something so wrong about sharing a bench with a guy who's listening to music and reading a book? women need to get over themselves sometimes. i bet she has the personality of a chia pet. one that doesn't grow in evenly.
yeah.
taking steps Tuesday July 13
i'm taking some steps to improve the quality of my life.
first, i usually will be walking down the street, and something will occur to me. who knows what it is, but it's usually something i want to remember, or something i want to blog about, or something i have to do. and then i forget about it because i have a short attention span and am easily diverted.
to combat this, i've purchased a five pack of little pocket notepads, and i intend on carrying one with me always to write down ideas, to-dos, foreign language words i learn, and maps for people who need them.
second, i have started learning chinese from the people at work. of course i'm still studying japanese, but i feel that getting a head start is always a good idea: i am a self-study person, and i will be enrolled in conversational chinese in the fall at the university. might as well be 'that kid' that everyone hates in class.
i feel the need to come up with a "third". lists usually come in threes, and at the beginning of this post, i made it sound as if there were a varitable multitude of things i have been doing. nix that, it's really only two that i can think of at the moment.
later-in-the-day update: i have rearranged my room furniture in a far more aesthetically pleasing fashion. i might actually want to hang out in my room now. word. ok, back to the original post.
maybe if i had written all of them down on my notepad i'd remember right now.
honk honk honk Sunday July 11
i will go back to champaign-urbana for my last semester, i decided yesterday. there are many explanations, most notably the gradient of the "value of staying here" and the "effort required to stay here" curve. it's rather steep.
or maybe it's the car alarm that's going off outside. and has been for 20 minutes. it's the kind of thing that would make one angry or upset, which is something new yorkers are wont to do. i like living here, and i may live here again, but i will admit that certainly this is not my preferred style. everyone here tells me how laid back i am for this city.
and i'm starting to believe it. i'll see you in urbana on august 11th.
they say it's your birthday... Wednesday July 7
tomorrow (thursday) is my twenty-second birthday. it's been two years now since i've changed the course of my weblogging. twenty-two still feels mighty young. i've had a lot of people tell me, in new york, "eh, you're young yet."
i've gotten this a few times: usually when i talk about women, either my past relationships or what i'm searching for for the future. other times i've heard this include my discussion of what i want to do with my life, and so on. generally, the older ones tell you this in a faux nostalgia for when they were your age.
of course, at age 30, i will say of 22, "i was so young then...", much in the way that 16 feels young to me now. yet, was i not a complete person at 16? did i not have a fully-functioning brain capable of emotion, rationality, and personality? likes and dislikes? and since when do all present characteristics have to be viewed in terms of the past? let me explain a little. i believe, and i have believed for a long time, that people are shaped by the experiences that they have had. through their experiences they learn a modus operandi.
some experiences are rather general, and thus can be identified as the phenomenon we call 'culture', and these help shape our generally-accepted practices referred to as 'values'. tough concepts, because they're all socially-based. for those of you who have read the short story 'the lottery', you know where i'm coming from here: from an outside perspective, other cultures and values seem ridiculous -- but from the inside it is the outside that seems ridiculous.
that said, i have my set of experiences and i'm sticking to them. that's what makes me me, and that's what makes my life, well, mine. i'm glad that i made that clear to aya today.
the best birthday present ever is coming tomorrow: nathan and i will reunite forces in the mid-evening; he's coming down from boston. i haven't seen the mug since january 4th, and i am so excited that he's going to be living with me for a spell.
family Saturday July 3
listening: postal service - give up
reading: brave new world, why americans and japanese misunderstand each other.
feeling: nostalgic
i am sitting at my grandmother's dining room table. she's eighty-seven, and goes to bed well before midnight. she arises at half five, and i'll be lucky to be out of bed by nine. however, it's fine with me; we spent the entire afternoon together. i gave her the up-to-date on my life, and she listened: her life doesn't change so much anymore, so i did a lot of talking. it's been a couple of years since i've come out here, though, and the time that i did i was with michael and nathan. we also didn't stay overnight.
i've been coming to this house on 22nd street since the time i was born. my father grew up here, and my grandmother did as well. my great-grandfather built it in 1916. after i moved to illinois in 1985, we would take yearly trips here. i was far too young to really have a solid conversation with my grandma, but i still developed an early affinity for good cooking, familial love, and vacations, and i came to associate all of those things with this house.
a couple of years ago i spoke with my dad about what was going to become of this house when grandma passed on. i apologize in advance, dad, for talking about the imminent death of your mother, but i could just as easily be talking about the imminent death of me or even my offspring: i still have yet to see death fail in killing someone. moribund aside. the point is, grandma will not move before she dies, and it will leave the question to the rest of the family: what do we do with this house, this house that has been in the family for over eighty-five years?
i think at the time that i was talking about it with dad, i indignantly declared that if no one else was going to make the sacrifice, that i would do so and move to altoona just to avoid selling it. i honestly don't think that applies; in reality, there is no foreseeable future for me in the middle of pennsylvania. david, my cousin, joking told grandma that he wished he could just pick the whole house up and move it to westchester. i concur, it would be wonderful if it could be moved-- but what is a house? is the significance of this edifice bound solely to the ornate, irreplaceable woodworkings on the window frames and room thresholds? the tapestries behind which every detail about the construction of the house was written on the wall by my great-grandfather? (side note: grandma knows where it is, too, but i didn't ask her. she'll never remove the wallpaper to show it, i can guarantee.) is it the rotary-dial phone, older than my dad, that still rings in the kitchen when you call the also-older-than-my-dad phone number?
the phone here used to be for the greenhouse, which extended far onto the back of the property. a storm collapsed part of the greenhouse in the fifties, and our family got out of that business. the land was cleared, and remained a large acreage of lawn until the 1990s, when grandma and the late aunt anne decided to sell it for development. a surgeon lives on the lot now, he's a decent fellow. the utility company killed some of the 100-year-old trees when it dug up a gas line a couple years back, so the front yard is more barren than i remember it. but the house still stands, yellow, double-bricked with green trim, two-car garage with an apartment above it, and a screened-in porch.
this is the result of the work of charles eifler, and now i, his great-grandson, sit at the dining room table of the very same home. the thought of selling this house makes me unhappy; it would feel that a part of my childhood and a piece of my entire paternal family's history is being sold. why is family history so important, anyway?
i indicated at the top of this post that i'm reading brave new world. i actually just finished it last night, but the content is still fresh in my mind. for those not familiar, it is a fictional account of a world that exists approximately 550 years from now, and by that point, humans have, for the sake of stability, eradicated love, religion, history, natural childbirth, passion, anger, and violence. humans are grown and trained in such a way that the lower castes are happy in their lower positions, and the upper children become the natural inheritors of the state.
this isn't a 1984-esque prophetic novel of central oppression of thought. rather, it is an account a human utopia: everyone is happy all of the time. one of the book's protagonists is the savage, a man who came to the civilization from a "savage reservation", or essentially, our current societial value structure plus certain mythical qualities. the reservation society also lacks certain technological capabilities even present today. fair, however, since the book was initially penned in 1932: it was a little too soon to predict the switching transistor. the foreword, written by the author years later, indicates that nuclear fission was well predictable at the time of the publishing, but he chose to omit it because it had political overtones he didn't wish to cover.
everyone in the civilization has been trained to view natural childbirth as a "dirty" thing, and humans have sex merely for fun. to avoid pecking-order instinctive issues, everyone is conditioned to believe that "everyone belongs to everyone else", and people are promiscious not because they are irresponsible -- but because they are trained to believe that that is necessary for social stability and unity. but, since sex for reproduction had to go, so did families: families would lead to different experiences, and these experiences would generate more instability since everyone was not socially homogenous. the concept of family is considered a mythical division of the past created by an unstable society.
compare this to a more traditional viewpoint on family. confucianism puts the family at the center, and thus in east asian philosophies the concept of family lineage and continuation are important. also popular in the west, we've heard the tired cliche of the young children who don't want to continue their family's business: they'd rather pursue something else. even though we can't necessarily quantify the "value" of family in a society at any given time, i believe it is fair to say that the role of the extended family in mainstream american culture has died down. certain nationalities have stronger familial ties historically, but the general trend of second- and third-generation americans is to simply pare down the important familial unit to that of the conjugal unit: one's parents. and even at that, we are individuals. our parents raised us, but once we are self-sustaining, they are sources of advice and wisdom, not puppeteers pulling our strings.
also, i'm not making this political by saying that the global economy, under capitalist pretenses, is driving towards increasingly individual societies, and thus increasing consumption. i don't believe that there is some evil capitalist plot behind this change; i believe it is a natural change, and i am merely attempting to observe what it is that is occurring around me as it is occurring: difficult without a reference point. what i am saying is that my favorite quote from souseki is yet again ringing in my head:
"loneliness is the price we pay for this modern life, so full of freedom, independence, and our own egotistical selves."
mind the negative connotation of "egotistical" in present-day english -- simply, i suggest that our world is evolving to a state (state as in "condition", not as in "geopolitical") where focus is shifted on the individual rather than the family. i am not ascribing value to this tendancy; i am not saying that it is the way it should be or it is the way it should not be, as even if i believed it to be ill-natured, i would have little efficacy in stopping it. merely, i conjecture that as this change is occurring, we call the resulting condition "loneliness" because it is a step towards solitude and away from what we are currently conditioned to expect. yet, we're endorsing it -- otherwise it wouldn't be happening.
i will keep my conscience clear by knowing that while i may never live in this house that my great-grandfather worked to build, i will know that i am doing my personal best to be a good person in this world, and that is the best i can offer to my ancestry -- and it is the best i can ask from my sucessors. certainly, as a statistical probability, at least one of my indirect offspring may be a murderer, a rapist, a thief, or something criminal: but can i really say that i have anything to do with that?
by method of that example i also wish to indicate that family isn't always drawn on bloodlines, and it has its own extensions and limitations. in my own family, i wouldn't consider my maternal grandparents much of a family at all, yet i consider ken and sharon to be parents. family offers something beyond heredity -- it is more an ideological construct built upon a hereditary base that offers psychological, financial, and/or moral support to its members. thus, while grandma and i may be a mile apart on views of politics, or what we do in our free time, we are two members of a team; a team that we have both accepted and chosen to be a part of. active participation is really the point i'm making here: the reason a family succeeds as a social unit is that everyone puts in work for the good of the whole -- and from that model it's no surprise that socialism was based largely on a rhetoric of family.
the basement door of this place has always creeped me out. it's just over there in the corner, hanging out. and it's one of those old doorknobs too, the ones that you expect to turn slooooowly when you're not looking, and then stop when you look up.
eep. i'm afraid to look up from the keyboard. it's a good thing i don't do hallucigenic drugs.
