Oy.

This morning I turned in my grades. This afternoon, I had my save the date cards printed. This evening I'm packing up my apartment.

Soooo much transition.

Procrastination

This is fun. Also, that illustration pretty much sums up my diet these days. Yes, it's working great.

Four bad things.

Four reasons that Boston is going down the toilet:

1. Cafe Paradiso in Harvard Square? Closed since last summer.
2. Cafe Graffiti in the North End? Also closed.
3. Filene's ACTUAL Basement? Yep. Closed.
4. Harvard in ALLSTON?

Here is a rather good response to my rant of yesterday.

Ungeduld...

On the subject of dissatisfaction... I'm feeling really antsy for no good reason. Of course, I have papers to write and to grade, exams to prepare and all that, but I'm not feeling stressed about them. I am naturally feeling procrastinatory, but what I really want is to have some totally random, totally surreal, totally weird experience, like I often do when in Europe. Last trip, it was the squatter bar. In my Cologne year, it was so many things... Amsterdam and stumbling around the red light district with Dan, Aachen and the Feuerzangenbowle, that one night I was out with Dan and Crispy and we ended up in some swanky bar doing really sweet shots, (my birthday that year was the underbelly-bad-version of this phenomenon). In Hamburg it was also a lot of nights... any choice of Kiez nights, stumbling to the Fischmarkt at dawn or going to the Golden Pudel the first time, or that night with the white wine and the boys from RLH or, even, translating Red Hot Chili Peppers at 3 in the morning with a totally un-surreal Spießer-boy.

I read about things like Ruby Town and the bizarre-o things that happen there (thanks, Paul, to whom I link quite often) and I wonder why everything here seem to have to be done under the auspices of a university or everything needs to be already established as Important or be, at the very least, easily digestible to be shown as art. I'm no huge art buff, but I do really appreciate the kind of mild discomfort encouraged in the art world I've glimpsed in Germany. The cool thing about it is that you can go and have these surreal experiences without much effort at finding your own surreality. Here even the supposed bastions of the avant-garde aren't even avant-garde any more.

To do something here that gives the same surreal feeling, the same kind of out-of-body feeling, you have to go a little more out of your way, a little more into territories that seem less safe. Maybe I feel this way about Germany because of its unavoidable foreignness. No matter how well I know the place, it's still going to be foreign, barring exceptional circumstances like moving there and staying forever. But even then. But what I mean is that no matter how normal the things I do there would seem in Boston, say, they seem odd because of the inherent foreignness of being there. I mean, I could maybe seek out some underground bar in Chinatown and have that same feeling, but I'm not at all sure it would be safe.

I wonder if it is just this city that is staid and rubber-stamped and whether I'm getting more boring and old because of it.

Or maybe I just need to write my papers and stop whining. Or just go get trashed somewhere weird tonight.

I sometimes (often) miss the "fragmented life in regard to US and Europe" and the kinds of late night emails it inspires. It may be time to run away again soon.

All Growed Up

Well, it's finally official. I've quit my job and am leaving dorm life behind me, almost certainly for good. (Let's just say wild horses couldn't drag me back to the dorms.)

I'm beginning to plan my move, thinking about new furniture, planning a miniature herb garden (in pots) - like these high-tech ones or these slightly lower-tech ones. I'm having Martha Stewart fantasies of beautifully arrayed dinners seasoned with my own produce (aeroponically grown salad greens and seven varieties of basil, oh my!)

I'm also beginning to worry about not being able to afford things like electricity, but that was inevitable.

Many many updates to come.

It feels like life is finally getting started after a few years of treading water.

• Tonight I've spent a couple hours putting together my lists for General exams - the last step I have to take before my Dissertation. It feels like a monumental thing compared with the puny papers I still have to write. I have my teaching assignment for next year and am daily feeling more confident and in control, professionally, than I ever have.
• Also, last weekend I signed a lease on a lovely little apartment in a lovely little neighborhood.
• Most importantly, though, the ball is really rolling for my lovely young man to finally come to the U.S. and make me an honest woman. We're doing the final bits of paperwork and beginning to plan the big day(s).
  
• I'm slowly getting a plan for financial stability and responsibility together. It's far off and optimistic, but not outside the realm of possibility.
  

Resolutions?

This is supposed to be the Year of Financial Responsibility, but I'm finding poverty to be in direct conflict with that particular goal. When does this get better?

Oh wow....

It's all coming together! Today our visa petition was approved and other developments in life are so very exciting. What a good day to be alive!

Eating? Disorder?

Whenever I feel like starving myself I look at 1 cup of oatmeal with brown sugar.doc

This is a fascinating essay written by a model who occasionally writes on Jezebel (anonymously) about how screwy the modeling/high fashion world is from the inside. In this episode, she talks about how going to Paris Fashion Week inspires her to a new level of disordered eating (which, luckily, she doesn't seem to have really succumbed to). "1 cup of oatmeal with brown sugar.doc" is a document analyzing her favorite recipes for calorie content, documenting the details of various regimens and diets she tried, and recording bizarre calorie-burning tips, such as "Drinking COLD water burns extra cals bc your body must use energy to bring the water up to body temp."

This all sounds like standard starving-model crap, but then you realize she sounds totally reasonable and relatively well adjusted. I mean, living with these impossible, unattainable, and frankly unattractive (angular, bony, shriveled) ideals paraded constantly, who doesn't head for the cold tap to down some cold water to kill appetite and burn a couple calories while you're at it? And add ice.

For the record, I have a relatively healthy body image - I don't have what you'd refer to as body dysmorphia and I'm pretty realistic about the difficulties of reconciling wanting to wear a size 8 (or 6, or 4) with being six feet tall and REALLY liking butter. But all the same, it's hard to not want to be skinny and wear Prada or Naeem Khan or whoever else...

Graffiti aus Berlin

While in Berlin, I took a lot of photos of graffiti that I found amusing or impressive. Here's an example of the former, seen on Oranienstr. in Kreuzberg. (This is arguably my favorite street in the world.)

I assume this sort of graffiti is done with a stencil, but I always wonder if they're made by hand or mass produced. Is there some magical shop where you can buy snarky graffiti stencils? Or do you have to order them online?

Now, I'm not a vandalism kind of girl, but I do find myself sort of itching to come up with a brilliant idea, and to take to the street with my home-made stencil, a can of spray paint, and no fear whatsoever. But maybe I'm just feeling a touch rebellious.

Also, why don't you see this often in the States?

A list of relevant links:

Stencil tutorial
Gallery of stencil graffiti
The Hipster/Yuppie version
Ostensibly the original

Here we go again...

Toying again with the idea of jettisoning LiveJournal. May as well give this a try for a while. For now, here's an amusing link:

Werbung gegen die Realität

They've taken photos of instant food packaging and photos of the final prepared product to point out just exactly how much food advertising polishes the images they put on their packaging. Quite terrifying, but somehow amusing at the same time.

Reenactment

I. Will. Use. This.

Back to a daily grind, a routine, responsibilities, and, hopefully, writing. It's time.

Back soon. V. V. Soon.

I saw Hamburg tonight. Like a ghost, like an ex, she popped up when I least expected her. I saw Hamburg and it left me weak in the knees.

"Are you sure?"
"Is he really worth it?"
"Use protection!"
"It's really not all it's cracked up to be."
"Just lose it already."
"Honey, you're going to need a lot of lube."

A girl can only listen to just so much unsolicited and inapplicable sex advice before she wants to scream.

I used to be a junkie. I was all strung out on your love.

I went running blind and crazy from day to day, chasing a mirage, an illusion of yourlove. I went running and screaming stop-stop-stop-let-me-love-you-let-you-love-me but you never heard.

But then I stopped, as you skidded around a corner out of view. My mind was pounding, my heart was pounding, my pulse was poundingpounding --for you. When the dust I had kicked up settled around my feet I saw the spin I was in and stopped, but the world kept going spinningspinning.

Your face allaround everywhere. Your name pounding in my brain.

I was all strung out on your love. I was a junkie.

The highs were dizzying, blindrush of smiles and laughs and arms slung casually about each other.

But then there was the runningscreamingrunning Stop.

I was a junkie. I was all strung out on your love.

But now I'm leaving all that behind. Leaving all the runningscreaming spinningblindrush smiles and skidding to a stop.

Skidding as your mirage skips a frame and falls out of focus.

I was a junkie. I was all strung out on your love.

And I hear Look I'm standing naked before you, don't you want more than my sex Tori singing and I think, yeah. Sometimes I would just settle for the sex.

I was a junkie. I am allstrungout on your ... your love.

For Shakespeare, as I met him in London

Oh, marble eyes of greatness past, stare on-
in chilly hall of monuments, and stone
and cold, and rigid statues here, stare on.
Your poet's eyes, in life your spirit's throne-
In death unblinking, shiny, stony, still.
Whose eyes in dimness here have your eyes met?
My own young eyes met yours and, strong of will
your face perused, your poems praised, my debt,
my artist's homage paid. I bowed my head;
You, yours, did not- but on you gaze and all
and nothing see. How bold, with life still wed,
my eyes do yours dare meet. I heed art's call
and Write- a path to you to clear,
Your verse to praise, Your grace to hear.

Sonnet II

Tick-tock the clock keeps marching on, her pace
does race, her hands spin round, her face so still -
the face of Lady Time reflects. "Oh, chase
me not, sweet Lady Time" cry I, in chill,
so frightened tone. She heeds me not but, light,
runs on. Through silver ghostly leaves and groves
of shining phantom pines. Her dress of white
trails threads of mem'ry, cloaking thoughts of loves
long lost and scenes of passions yet to find.
I flee, and run and leap, near fly. Escape
escapes me; I am lost, while Time her kind
of magic strews. My past is past, her cape
of gauzy mem'ry closed and days
to come fly fleetly on their way.

A sonnet for the last day of the next-to-last month

Does Absence aching hearts then fonder make,
which in their pain no fonder-making need?
How callous slith'ring Absence as a snake
disguised, or spider-like her web does seed
with bait- a tender gaze or touch of hand-
then springs her trap. She rips the pair apart
whose fate she as a game does play. They land
divided, seas apart- heart torn from heart.
One wanders, wails in pain new-found. Her love
lies quiet, stunned, unsure- then finds the strength
to wait, and to his love his love to prove.
If Absence in her plot succeed, what length
must travel love, her home to find?
O, Absence wins her game unkind.