On my disillusionment with graduate school.

Things I have learned over my past two years in graduate school.

1. Many people in supposedly more "radical" academic circles (radical = haha) think of themselves as extra special and unique butterflies, but they are also very defensive about appearing as such, and will use little self-deprecating "asides" to off-set the utter pretentiousness of 90% of what comes out of their mouths and/or what they shit on their screens.
2. "Difference" is a theoretical buzzword rather than something actually appreciated in the very real goings-on of everyday life. This is a really interesting one. Because I can't count the amount of times I've witnessed 10 people in a graduate seminar lamenting the oppression of this or that marginalized group, who talk about Jean-Luc Nancy's "Experience of Freedom" or Derrida's democracy-to-come but then they will go out of their way to ostracize people who come from different theoretical, educational, or ideological backgrounds because they are not "smart enough." Oh, and they are usually too busy whining about shit and constructing delicate existential crises to actually engage in local politics of any kind.
3. Academics are only interested in hanging out with/discoursing with those who either a) affirm what they already think is a correct [ideological or theoretical] position or b) challenge them in such a way that only superficially (i.e. theoretically rather than practically) "performs" difference without actually challenging the existing intellectual paradigm within which everyone comfortably floats. In other words, they'll theorize about the oppression of the working class but will turn up their noses at the very thought of listening or engaging with the working class, and if they do have a working class friend or a meaningful discussion with a construction worker in a bar, they'll fetishize and romanticize that discussion/individual all starry-eyed like they just did something good for the world.

Of course not all academics/people are like this. I find this is mostly true of young-ish graduate students. I have been guilty of some of this behaviour myself, but am grateful to have a thoroughly unpretentious and down-to-earth and thoughtful partner and a small group of friends who keep me accountable.  But all I have to say is: Barf. Hopefully the next stage of my academic career is less depressing.

Thesis is finally done. In an attempt to ease back into blogging, I'm going to be doing posts like this every once and a while, where I can share things that have been occupying my imaginative and creative headspace. These are things that have inspired me in the last few days.

“Our work of love should be to reclaim masculinity and not allow it to be held hostage to patriarchal domination. There is a creative, life-sustaining, life-enhancing place for the masculine in a non-dominator culture. And those of us committed to ending patriarchy can touch the hearts of real men where they live, not by demanding that they give up manhood or maleness, but by asking that they allow its meaning to be transformed, that they become disloyal to patriarchal masculinity in order to find a place for the masculine that does not make it synonymous with domination or the will to do violence."

- Bell Hooks from The Will to Change (really digging this lady recently)

“So yes
I will gladly take on your ocean
just to swim beneath you
so I can kiss the bends of your knees
in appreciation for the work they do
keeping your head above water”

- Mike McGee

 Cocoa Island Hotel.

 Iain Macarthur.

 Ideal writing/living/creating/sexing spot.

 Kikyz1313

Dazed and Confused Oct.11 Photographed by Matt Stone.

Does Feminism Have a Glass Ceiling?
Interesting, problematic.
The Gender Trap pt. 2.
(Gotta love the CBC. Its become a kind of tradition for myself and my partner when we're driving. We're basically like old people.)
Zoe Smith being a badass lady fighter.
I care not for the Olympics but think this lady is awesome.
The Thinking Housewife tries to tarnish the legacy of Sally Ride with a surrealy homophobic eulogy.
David Futrelle's usual brand of cutting critique. I love this man.

Oh and my pinterest is here if you have any desire to check it out/follow.

Writing a 120 page thesis takes the wind out of me. And the brain power. But this whole sometimes-tedious experience has also given me something. Mainly, more confidence. A better awareness of what it means (and doesn't mean) to be that fearful something called "AN ACADEMIC." I will never be an academic as much as I will be someone who needs theory and poetry and literature to live. I'll spend my life writing if it means I can do what I love.
But I also love working out, and feeling the muscles in my legs ache after a session. And I love cooking, the saturation of smells, the satisfaction in completing something in less than an hour (there is joy in that, given the tedious hours I spend writing) and fueling my body. I love making things. It is such a cliche, too, the philosopher who retreats into wood-working. I have discovered a new joy in being embodied, in feeling my body move, and in being outside of my mind. And if I am, in fact, an "academic," I am also a myriad of other things.
I have entered one of those spaces, again, of peaceful isolation. Realizing who matters and learning how to be okay with letting those others - those others that don't - go. Of course its melancholic. Of course its nostalgic. But the intensity I used to have and cherish so much, the intensity that, only a year or two ago, I realized was mostly artificial and contrived, has ebbed away so that a different type of intensity remains. I don't want or need to prove myself anymore. Letting that fierce girl go means letting go of the people who loved that, but never me. In the meantime I have discovered new relationships that matter more.
Why not blog? Why blog now? I suppose I am winding down. I hate blogging, even though I subscribe to about 300. After being slapped on the wrist with a little bit of hate-mail I realized the implications of writing about personal things on the internet. Blogging feels very self-indulgent. Guilty as charged, I guess. My creative drive - along with the depression and anxiety that fueled all that "poetic angst" - has been siphoned off into other pursuits. I feel the weight of being in my mid-20s. Not that my awareness is tinged with a fear of getting older, or of "aging" in any sense. Its more or less a startling new awareness of just how fast time goes, how much living matters.
I know sincerity tinged with sentimentalism isn't "cool" or common, especially in the blog world. I'm not sorry about it, though.
xo

When it gets warm this country is so gorgeous. It makes dreary winters falls and springs worth the wait. I am planting tomatoes and cucumbers, tending to herbs, eating popsicles, making jewelry, painting pots, constructing things out of clay, cooking hummus and pesto and cucumber salads, lazing about on the front porch, watching men across the street painting walls, and doing just about everything but writing my thesis. Camping this weekend.

You were driving, like you always do, facing forward with that confident smirk on your face that insecure people take for arrogance. Your hair is curly and the sun hits it in a certain way so that you are illuminated in stretches, this side of your face in relative shadow, in the cool of my glance. I am half embarrassed about last night and half diffident; you turn me into a child, sometimes, and other times, a woman twice my age. I am moving away from one table and towards another. Everyone I have ever met is reflected on the bright side of your face, turned away from me.

Talking to is also touching.
With hands wandering over you.
- Paul Celan

My friend Robbie lent me two books. Platform, by Michel Houllebecq, and a collection of Paul Celan's poetry and letters. The juxtaposition of the two is infuriating and exciting - I love that Robbie gave me both at the same time. He has a certain double quality reflected in his tastes and recommendations. Platform is incredibly well-written in a kind of po-mo 'destruction of all things' kind of way. That said, it is a fluid and fascinating read, a novel punctuated with gorgeously sardonic and rather revealing quotes about the human condition. I am simultaneously infuriated by it and comforted. And then there is Celan; a thorough modernist writer committed to a classic vision of love - its agonies and its redeeming qualities. Sex in two ways, in two styles. I go back and forth between wanting sex to be casual, pornographic, instinctually, and sex as something lovely and warm, like a milky-hued painting or foggy, moist morning. Neither is the truth about sex; it hangs in the balance.

(I got some hate mail last week. Unfortunately I was drunk and it was immediately after a physical altercation broke out between two men (because of me). So being told to "fuck off and die" and that I "create problems in my life because I am bored" just reaffirmed the already-present negative feelings floating around in myself at the time. Fortunately, though, the boys I was drinking with laughed it off and reminded me that it's "just the internet." That said, I think that sending anonymous hate mail to people is one of the most cowardly things to do. It's rather embarrassing for the sender. So, whoever you are, fuck off. I have enough self-loathing to last me a while, I don't need assholes who don't know my situation to send me hateful comments.)

The heaviness, the lightness, in doing something stupid. Avoiding Kant for a week. Cold nights and toes. I am single again. I fucked up my life as I am prone to do when things get...I don't know. I got my own new place, it is a little bachelor with a tiny deck and no counter space. I spent 200 dollars at the Asian market today getting staples. I can't wait to cook, drink a glass of wine, listen to soft folk music and watch the [future] snow from my big windows. I am being irresponsible.

It is raining outside my big 10-foot windows and downtown is looking bleak and resigned; summer is over and frat boys will be screaming "Wooo" more often and, to quote my friend Noel, such cries will reach their fever pitch this weekend. Students here are nuts.
Today is a perfect day for research and writing and isolating myself from London's increasingly busy streets. This cold, milky light reminds me of sitting on the old scuffed hard-wood floors at my old Toronto place, chain-smoking and watching the X-Files, or listening to Mount Eerie, or kissing you, or fighting with you, or crying to myself while gripping a glass of whiskey, or just lying back on the floor and falling asleep in those strips of light. The high melancholic pitch of my nostalgia reaches its peak in late August. Based on my observation of the blogs and tumblr's I am subscribed to and read daily, this is a common ailment. August is so painful. September is better.
Maybe only because it produces a different kind of anxiety; that fresh "I'm back to making something with my life" anxiety produced by new responsibilities and tasks, new people to impress, new papers and grant applications to write. Everyone knows or thinks "this year will be different." I prefer anxiety produced by the future to anxiety produced by the past. The future, at least, always turns out better than I expect.
I am lecturing next Friday and pretty scared about it. Although I have gotten more confident in public speaking and I consistently get great comments afterwards, I still fear criticism and I don't particularly like being in the spotlight. Even just being 'back' in and around campus and the theory center over the past few days has made me feel increasingly anxious. Stupidly, I am intimidated of meeting the new cohort of kids. And I am intimidated of having to finish writing this lecture, of having to present it, of having to do the GRE's in October, on having to write 30 pages of my thesis by September 15th, despite not really knowing what the fuck I'm doing. That said, this blog post (specifically paragraphs 2-4) really encouraged me yesterday and put my academic anxieties in perspective: This Week in Writing and the Anxiety of Meaning by Levi Bryant at his blog Larval Subjects.
Anyways, I hope you are all doing well. xo

Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?
-Camus

So, people. I need some advice or kind words.
The last month or so has been nuts for me emotionally. August and September have always been really fucked up months. I start getting nostalgic and I get this urge to change my life entirely and basically run away to a new place, etc., that kind of cliche self-searching. I've started having dreams of people I miss, mostly old partners or friends, and the result of this is kind of devastating: imagine dreaming of an old lover and reliving the best times you had together, or the worst, and then wake up with either a manic desire to be with them again or a manic desire to "confront them" about obviously unresolved issues. Worst thing is, dreams can't be taken literally (can they?) so I know that more than likely these people are symbols of other issues; one in particular symbolizing my fear of rejection, inadequacy, etc. Instead of focusing on the feelings in the dreams, however, I focus on the person. And get fixated, and locked into a cycle of negative thoughts, wishing things were "different" or had gone differently. Etc. This occurs, sadly, despite my being in a relationship now and in what I consider to be a good situation; i.e. I can't "locate" anything wrong that would provoke such feelings. I don't know how to get out of the cycle. I keep telling myself "get over it." Seriously, why re-hash shit that happened a while ago? But just when I feel that depression subsiding I'll have another dream where, wow, this person is being so nice and loving and oh my if only ____. Sigh/barf. Talking to my boyfriend earlier, I realized that it is easier for me to cope with bad relationships because I don't have to be scared of some baseline falling out from under me - in bad relationships there is no baseline. And that kind of instability has always been easier for me to handle. At least it is predictable.
Seriously, I miss my psychiatrist. I miss someone impartial saying things like "everyone has a hard time letting go of the past sometimes" and "be in the present" and etc., etc. I guess my issue is - is my inability to let go of this person/these people/the past a symptom that I am unhappy now? Do I need to "clear up" things with this or that person, or should I let things be? And am I crazy or do other people experience similar things?
What I would like right now is a sun-drenched day on a secluded beach that ends with a big thunderstorm and a tent and quiet whispered candle-lit talks about philosophy and love and art.
I can't concentrate on anything, or fall asleep, as much as I want to do the latter.
I like that Camus quote because it encapsulates that feeling - when you're mired in existential angst, stuck in whatever past or future of fantasy, and you can either submit to it or say 'fuck it' and keep going with the daily grind. Indulge in small pleasures. Know that difficult things and feelings will pass and be replaced with new difficult but also joyful things and feelings.

goodnight xo

ps. for consistency's sake I'll give my obligatory apology for being sappy and probably much more boring than most of the other blogs you read. The self-loathing! Argh.

Kind of feel like this.

and this.

and even this.

When you read blogs, do you assume it is written for or about you? Do you feel the rush of a personal address, or look for that little sexy tidbit that may or may not refer to you? In my hubris, I do. That said, mostly only in the blogs of ex-friends and friends. I recognize the ridiculous vanity of this.
That said, when I have the urge to write a blog post it is usually more or less for someone. This one's for you.
Today was brutally, utterly bad. After at least 5 or 6 attempts to quit smoking cold turkey this year alone, and countless times before this year, I've finally caved and purchased several boxes of nicotine gum. So now when I feel overwhelmed or when I start something or when I finish something or when I'm bored I chew this disgusting gum (or rather, keep it nestled between my teeth and gums, as per directions). Sometimes I forget and chew it too fast for too long and my tongue goes numb, and I get bad hiccups, and I start slurring my words. I feel bad because I am obviously edgy.
It is rather horrifying to learn that the feeling of calm produced by a 'cigarette' is actually just a gross tingly chemical, a virtual thing that soaks into my brain. I feel foolish and dumb for relying on something I could hold.
When you remove one or another chemical or security blanket from your system it is like peeling back a scab because everything is a little different, a little off. And it is hard for me to determine what anxieties are inherently "mine" and which are symptoms of psychological withdrawal. I guess that is the dilemma of life, really, now isn't it. It is kind of great, though, to be able to pin point something outside of yourself as a cause of [insert neurosis].
I realize how bourgeois this is. No one gives a shit about me quitting smoking. I was thinking about writing this in the bright pink journal my step-mom gave me for Christmas, as yet unopened, but privacy is so DONE. But fucking blogging is so sickly and gross. Who do we blog for, and why?
Alongside my cigarette-lack-induced-anxiety (or whatever) emerges my social anxiety, again, something that has been pleasantly dulled over the last year. In Toronto I tried to isolate myself from groups. I used to think that groups are too much, and are too risky. As soon as you add a third person to the social dynamic there is room to gossip, room for dissenting opinions, room to be rejected in favour of the other. This, however, I have realized, is a bad strategy. I have, instead, tried to balance groups and singles, and never keep the singles too isolated. (this is what happens when someone with anxiety problems - everyone? - makes friends: it becomes a fucked-up system). I stopped dissecting social relationships just enough in grad school (of all places) to make friends. But with that comes that paranoia: i.e. how much am I 'in the group' or am I really just a lone wolf (do all intellectuals and artists and people think that?); who is who's favourite, and am I being too anti-social this week, this month, this evening? Am I dancing in a strange way? Can I just dance without thinking all these thoughts? Usually, but the last week or so has been marked by an upsurge in insecurity.
The rest of my summer, dwindling into its last days:
1. move 5 groups of friends into their new homes.
2. write my theory session talk on the city as embodied/other in China Mieville's The City and the City (Michel deCerteau, Lefebvre, D&G, blah).
3. avoid my chain-smoking, indulgent, nonsensical but brilliant supervisor until such a point that I can successfully turn down his non-stop cigarette and beer offerings
4. write the first 30 pages of my thesis project on the cybergothic
5. move into my new place, get the cat settled, avoid spending all my money on mid-century furniture, avoid domestic disputes that will unsettle our neighbours (we will be living above an amazing indian restaurant and a used bookstore - heaven, basically, yes). This is the first time I'll be living with a partner since...four years. And of course I pick a spitfire of a smart, amazing, but loud and opinionated man.
6. write, I think, 5 proposals for conferences
7. finish the four mixed media pieces I have started (they're almost done!)
8. calm the fuck down, in general.

I'm going to do my tarot reading now. sweet dreams. xo

images: lukasz wierzbowski, aela labbe, random tumblr, I'm sorry.