living, will

death has been on my mind a lot lately. well, more than usual. ever since i was a kid, i've lived in fear of death, lived in fear of that great expanse of unknown beyond my last breath, in fear of my parents' death, haunted by the sudden passing of friends and family gone too soon. who was it that said life is just the act of dying? or "the day we are born we begin to die"? i hate to think of my life as a shadow negative of this inevitability, but there can be no denying it. i think learning to live is in many ways learning how to die.

this has become more pressing lately. when my Uncle Tony passed away ... spring of 2009, my entire foundation was rocked. it was one of my first years truly living away from home - out of college, working my first real-life, "grown-up" job as a teacher in a public middle school in south central - and i got the news in the middle of a school day, maybe it was even a wednesday. this was the thing i'd always feared, my entire life: leaving home and being away and alone and having to truly assume adulthood when i'd only previously been playing the part. acting like an "adult" in front of a room of insane and belligerent special ed 6th graders, while your entire understanding of reality and space/time is being torn asunder around you is truly an initiation into "adulthood" by means of trial by fire. i have never wanted to punch an eleven-year-old special needs child so much in my entire life.

that first experience of death, trying to understand the definitiveness, the finalness, the never-again-ness, changed me. it ripped the fabric of logic and reason, made my persistent daily wants and needs and desires seem cruel, selfish, terrible. i disgusted myself, felt disgusted at other people, at my/our insistence on living. my hunger pangs, my exhaustion, my cravings for warmth or kindness or whatever were just constant reminders of my own body's persistent fight to stay alive, to feed itself, to rest, to recover. all this pained and aggravated me, since it was also a reminder that these were things my uncle once did, and now won't.

the day after i heard the news, i remember, i emerged from my dark room, where i'd spent the majority of the day [which makes me think the news might have occurred closer to a weekend, or that i was still doing this - violently weeping - several days after the fact] on my bed in a fetal position, my body pinched in on itself in a full-body sob, weeping uncontrollably and relentlessly, and walked outside to get some fresh air (again, the body's urge to do what it needs to survive; in this case, getting some air and sunlight and resuming an upright, healthy posture). the sight of seagulls flying above the palm trees overhead, the sun shining in an almost cloudless sky, the onslaught of terrifying LA rush-hour traffic - all seemed to be terrible, disrespectful, indignant external reminders that life goes on; this day is, in all other respects, just like any other.

---

i have been reading Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, a birthday gift from my brother this past year. i don't remember how i came to hear about this book, but one day at work i was reading about different psychological phenomena, and "magical thinking" was mentioned, and the book's premise interested me, and since i've spent some part of the last year reading "award-winning" books, i asked for it for christmas. it has been... an informative book. well-researched and well-written, definitely, and interesting, although i hesitate to say "pleasurable," since of all the effects it has had on me, it's probably inspired an even deeper and more paranoid ideation with death, the "act" of dying, and living.

one of the ideas from Didion's book that's really stuck is the idea that the dying person can foretell their death, even in cases accidental or sudden. "Only the dying man can tell how much time he has left." this is, in some ways, a comfort, especially to those who have lost a loved one in tragic accidents, to know that perhaps they knew their time was coming. but, in my case, it's been a terrible fear-enhancer. suddenly, things my parents or friends do, like tell me they love me in an exceptional way, or giving me an important document, seem like portents of doom. and i know that's a terrible thing, like, the prime example of letting fear of death control your life and thoughts. i know it is the mark of a coward to live in constant fear of death, but, here i am. and what to do?

naturally, the thing to do is to prepare. this constant, unebbing thought that "we all know when our time has come" has, of course, come to make me think that perhaps i am about to die. (and even as i write this, i wonder to myself, will typing it make it even more true? will uttering this aloud make it come true, or stave it off?) does the fact that i persist on this notion indicate that i am nearing death, that this book and this idea, given to me so recently, is relevant for a reason, that reason being that something terrible is about to happen? i can't help wondering these things, even though i know it makes me crazy.

last month, my partner Ben lost his younger brother Andrew in a terrible accident. he had been living abroad for nearly 2 years, travelling and teaching in China and Taiwan. he was on a ten-day bike journey around the island of Taiwan, during his 2-week Chinese New Year holiday, when he was struck by an old man driving a van. Andrew died. (typing that still hurts, because it hasn't yet felt real. typing that feels like betrayal, like i've given up hope Andrew can still come back, like i've turned my back on him because i've accepted this reality, even though my mind and heart (and Andrew) live now in a reality separate from what that sentence means). in the days and weeks following, friends and family who knew Andrew have been grappling to understand what happened. friends received Christmas cards from him just days after the accident. i looked back on our exchanges, scrutinized emails, trying to examine them for clues that Andrew, in some way, knew. Andrew and i spoke via email just days before it happened, and i talked to him about visiting Taiwan in the summer, with Ben, and he replied that he was so excited for us to come, he couldn't wait to show us around. the day before the accident, i wanted to post something on his Facebook, commenting on one of his pictures, saying something about how he looked so much like his dad. i didn't, i hesitated and then decided not to, because i wasn't sure how he'd respond or take the comment. i wonder now, if i'd posted it, if he would have paused in the morning to read and respond, and would have thus been a minute or two behind on the road when the van swerved off and hit him where he was, without the comment.

Andrew kept a bucket list, or as he called it, a "to-do list." he didn't want to be an old man looking back at his life with regret. did he know? even if his to-live list wasn't a premonition, he understood that life is precious and fragile and not to be wasted - a profoundly inspiring wisdom borne from an acknowledgment of death; Andrew knew how to live. this is what i want for myself and for my fear of death, a greater appreciation and predilection for living.

Andrew's bucket list was a physical list he checked off and added to. i love that, i love that there are documents that speak to his life and his goals. now that we've lost Andrew (where did you go?) these documents - to-do-lists, journals, emails, blog posts, Facebook - are what we have left, what we can return to. this is my document.*

these days, we are all susceptible to getting lost in the daily grind, on focusing on ends rather than means, and thinking about a distant future rather than enjoying the present. i think living in the constant shadow of death can mean reclaiming life, and i intend to do that.


*i wrote previously about maintaining an e-life thru internet documents here, on my very first blog.

RIP, Steve Jobs

here in Silicon Valley, the news of Steve Jobs's passing hit us all like an earthquake. ripples and jolts of shock and dismay. the news of his death coming only a few weeks after the shock of his resignation as CEO, due to his ailing health.

i know very little of what Steve Jobs was like as a man, but i know he changed our world and the way we lived in it with the power of his ideas. there are traces of his influence all around us, whether we like it or not, and his presence in so many aspects of our modern world make it impossible to not feel impacted by the fact that even such a brilliant and valuable man did not receive the care he needed to overcome cancer. with all that Jobs and his team were able to do and accomplish with him at the helm, it's viciously cruel that he would die so young (only 56) from cancer. whether you're a Mac or PC, it's terribly sad.

just think: as the news is breaking, thousands upon thousands of internet users are taking to their smart phones, their iPads, their Macs (and all the derivative devices thereof), and tweeting, video conferencing, posting to facebook, blogging, etc. all of those actions were touched, influenced, and forever changed by this man and his ideas.

RIP, Steve. and thanks for everything.

Steve Jobs, "How to live before you die."

the executioner's song

as you'd know if you've been visiting the blog lately, i've been reading Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song. it's a great read, albeit disturbing. it is such a visceral book, leaves me with a knot in my stomach most of the time and i've even called ben crying on the phone after reading chapters of it.

the book is a strange accompaniment to the recent execution of Troy Davis by the state of Georgia. while reading Mailer's book, you get to know Gary Gilmore and his victims, and you really get to hate him and all of his meanness and violence, and you cringe at all his dirty-mouthed arrogance and disrespect for life. but, you know that he's going to be executed. you have that expectation going into it: that the whole thing ends in justice. that SOB got what he deserved. and though you feel sick about it and kind of hate yourself for having these feelings, you just can't reconcile that with the fact that Gilmore was a vile individual, and a danger to everyone around him. so in this case, where the facts of Gilmore's crime are all laid out by Mailer for your omniscient reading experience, you feel satisfied knowing that justice was inevitable, and perhaps more importantly, deserved.

not so when history is being made by the minute. when i found out the Supreme Court denied Troy Davis clemency, despite the recanting of witnesses in his case, and the pleas of thousands of people, and went ahead and executed him anyway, just a few moments ago, i felt a really sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. just this crushing overwhelming sadness. hearing about how he refused his last meal, because he didn't think it was going to be his last, i dunno, for some reason, that thought really got to me. like, my mother always calls me to make sure i've eaten my dinner, every night she always makes sure i'm staying fed, and i always do the same thing to ben now. and Troy Davis, he had hope until the last minute in justice or mercy or pity or something, and then he goes to his death in a cold concrete prison, hungry. that thought, of a man going suddenly to his death, without all his worldly ends taken care of, made me really, really sad. we were all watching and hopeful of little minutes that would build into hours, into days, of delay and finally a stay of execution or a commuted sentence. and then, suddenly, they just went and executed him anyway. one minute he was alive, with family and with a past and with mortal fear coursing through him, the will to keep up a legal battle that has lasted years, and hunger pangs in his stomach and then the next minute, he's gone.

i'm scared. i'm scared of a justice system that will execute people without even a moment's pause. i'm scared of a justice system that is so dysfunctional that sometimes witnesses are talked into giving incriminating testimonies, that sometimes allows potential murderers to play the system and pin their evil deeds on others. i'm scared of a justice system that satisfies itself with murdering potentially innocent citizens instead of seeking out the truth. and i'm scared to live in a world in which such a tragic farce is permitted to exist.

in moments like these, i really hope there is some Plan to all of this chaos, this madness and despair. i hope there is justice at the end of all of it, even when it doesn't seem that way. whatever higher powers that be, please have mercy on us all.

‎"The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

life imitates art

“But maybe all art is about just trying to live on for a bit. I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.”

– Banksy

i feel lost. like in the last few months my spirit has cleaved in two, the rotten depressed and dark parts remaining here while the other bits floated away, too light and airy and dreamy to be bound to these desolate remains. "O... these fragments I have shored against my ruins." sometimes i feel like i can see the other half of me off in a distance, or i feel like i am that distant self looking back at the miserable remains and pitying her. it becomes hard to recognize myself in a mirror. how do i get those lost parts of me back?

as a kid i would lie awake in bed at night, imagining death and the unrelenting continuance of time without being able to participate in it, of lives without my presence. of being forgotten. i didn't want fame, but i didn't want to get lost in time and forgotten. i think this is the fear that underlies the pursuit of fame – a desire to never die.

the other night i lay in bed, sobbing because i could feel that sense of dying, could feel my loosening grip on my dreams, ambitions and aspirations from when i was a kid. i used to want to be something unusual, to be earth-shattering. i wanted to be destined for extraordinary things. and i felt, as i examined my life, considered the turn of recent events, and the availability of options before me, that my life had become rather extra ordinary. and as i thought of an image of myself as a child and the image of myself now, i began to cry. i never thought it would come to this, to being another unhappy adult stuck in a monotonous lifestyle with dreary rituals and nothing beautiful to celebrate. is this what happens? we grow old and comfortable and stuck in daily procedures and stop imagining different possibilities? i'm 25 and yet i feel old, weary, life-deprived, sick of the limited options (watch a movie, take a walk, read a book, work / be a mother, teacher, accountant, secretary). i don't want to be just another anything.

when i was young i wanted to be a writer, a dancer, a storybook illustrator. i wanted to be a wild animal. i wanted to make everlasting art.

and now all i make is dollar bills.

goodbye to an old friend

BBC News - Redwall author Brian Jacques dies aged 71

this is devastating. i spent a good part of my childhood reading the Redwall books, and i credit them with not only developing my literacy, but fostering in me an appreciation for nature and animals and good, hearty stories. my first ever email address (that i continued to use until probably the junior year of college) was named after my favorite character, Pikkle, a spritely mannered hare with a voracious appetite in the Salamandastron book (probably my favorite of the series).

when Twilight first started generating buzz and i got wind of its content, i lamented the lack of attention paid to writers such as Jacques and the heartiness of his story-telling. and i wondered why we could no longer live in a society where complex stories about virtuous characters undergoing harrowing journeys and epic battles to protect their home/ unravel ancient mysteries/ discover their identities/ defeat sinister adversaries all while singing songs and writing poems and eating decadent woodsy feasts could be appreciated.

i felt a twinge of sadness, something akin to guilt, when i stopped reading the books every year they came out (the last one i made any effort with was Marlfox). i felt horrible, like i had outgrown them or something, and i felt bad for losing interest in those characters and their stories. the way you feel bad about losing touch with your best friends from elementary school or high school.

anyway, this is doubly weird because not too long ago i was checking Wikipedia and reading his page and wondering if he was still writing books, found myself worrying about his age and hoping he'd live a long life and that one day i'd be able to write him a letter and thank him for writing. i guess this will have to do.

RIP, Mr. Jacques. and thank you for your stories. i hope my kids will one day enjoy reading your books as much as i did.

on the nature of grief

something about mourning feels compensatory, which only adds to my feelings of grief – i wish i didn't have to make up for anything now that it's too late, but that's always what it comes to. that's, what i think, bereavement is supposed to feel like. like you didn't do all you could. always making up for something.

this is the distinct difference i experience between deaths of "celebrities" and deaths of "ordinary people." celebrities had their whole lives to be celebrated, they had the advantage of fame. when they die, it's published on the front page, given a retrospective at the Oscars, and every person in every corner of the world shrugs their shoulders, moves on. maybe it was someone's favorite childhood actor, but you still have the videos on tape and could buy the anniversary addition dvd if you wanted it. there's footage there, there's documentation, there's always remnants of the lingering past.

ordinary people, no matter how extraordinary and wonderful they are, pass unnoticed. photographs here and there, maybe some traces of video. some footage may have been lost. but there is no video of his life, no documentary we can all watch to remember, to bring him back to life. only fragmented memories, and regrets. no matter how handsome of a man my uncle Tony was, not everyone had the pleasure of knowing him. many people will no longer get the opportunity.

this is the marked difference, and what makes grieving so exhausting and consuming: the feeling of missed opportunity. while with celebrities the state of fame exhausts their human potential and makes it so easily accessible and oversaturated, the real people in our lives are still mysteries, rare opportunities, special occasions. they are people with unique mannerisms, a one-of-a-kind laugh, a smile that could light up the room. they have all the qualities of famous people (charisma, charming good looks, philanthropy, amiability, talents), but their humanity was evident before your eyes, and you are compelled to wonder why it is that they are not famous, but feel so lucky and blessed to be part of such a magnificent secret. and because their lives aren't broadcast ad nauseum, you can never get enough. every moment with them feels like such a gift, and you always want more, always worry about the moment all that will be taken away, missed opportunities making up the bulk of the gap.

i'm now in my 4th day of mourning, and though the crying fits have decreased, the grief has not subsided. when my mind is let to wander, it keeps going back to all the times i saw him, and even more, it lingers on the times i could have seen him, but didn't. pondering the finiteness of life and how if i had only been more aware of life as a space between to brackets – [ ] – would i have spent the intervening time so far away?

when Kurt Vonnegut died, i felt sad. but mostly it was a regret that i could no longer meet him and tell him i loved his books and beg him to autograph one. when my uncle Tony died, i was thrown into what felt like a maelstrom of depression, regretting every summer spent so far away, regretting these months i've been living so close, but just far enough that i didn't visit more regularly. regretting not going to San Francisco when i had the chance to visit him, take him out to dinner, watch him eat and talk and pour his tea, give him a hug and tell him how much i love him and how much i think about him.

this regret is the most painful kind. and so, the nature of my grief.

like a father to me

"you know Uncle Tony loved you, right stef? he loved you so much, and he was so proud of you."

i knew. i started sobbing. i knew, no one had to remind me. i never doubted for a minute that he loved me. i doubted if he knew just how much i loved him.

i loved the way he reminded me so much of my father, how the first time i met him, i knew they had to be brothers, they had the same face almost, but my uncle Tony had a friendlier smile. my dad doesn't smile much, he looks stern until he laughs, and then you know he's happy. my uncle Tony had a warm, honest smile. he didn't have to laugh before i knew i liked him. his smile was enough. quiet and calm happiness exuded from him, and i loved to be around that kind of presence. going to san francisco never meant going to Fisherman's Wharf, or the golden gate bridge. to me, it was always having one dinner with my uncle Tony, sitting near him, studying his every move with almost an obsessive curiosity, fascinated by this little man, a smaller version of my father. i wanted to sit next to him and pour him tea, watch him eat meat off bones, watch him talk to my dad and see them mirror each other's actions, both taking off their glasses to dab at the tears in the corners of their eyes from laughing too hard at the other's joke.

it was always such a pleasure to sit between the two of them and understand, through chemistry and some kind of beautiful, tangible magic, the meaning of family. between the two of them, i could fill in the gaps between the present and the past, imagine a childhood they shared, boyhood fraternity that spanned decades, continents, and many obstacles in between, and understand what my parents meant when they told me and my brother growing up that siblings are the most important people in your life.

when we say our goodbyes at the end of a trip to San Francsico, everyone goes around and gives thanks, love, good health wishes, and hugs to everyone else in the circle. the SF branch of our family lines up and me and my brother would go around the circle and embrace everyone. i always wanted to hug Uncle Tony first. it was important to me to show him in some way how grateful i was for him in my life, but lacking the adequate Mandarin to express my feelings, i had to opt for symbolism instead. even English words are hard to find for the wealth of sentiments and gratitude i have for him and what he meant to me and my father and what i could see as his wealth of presence in our entire family.

and now, especially, i am at a loss for words.

it's difficult learning grief for the first time. it is a complex emotion that you experience in layers. shock at first, almost a stupid ignorance of impending tragedy. when i first heard the news i didn't give it a second thought. it was like someone had just told me the time. i immediately thought "things are going to be fine. he's going to get better and we'll all be back to normal." and then details become apparent, gradually. one phrase leads to others, verb tenses change, suddenly i'm forced into speaking the language of death, phrases such as "the body", "the funeral," "brain dead." "was."

i can't comprehend how such a unique person can just suddenly disappear. will i never see that smile again, except in pictures and memories? will i never get to hug him goodbye again, squeezing his sweater vest with my forearm, watch him laughing with my dad (and will my dad ever laugh like that again?) feeling so selfish and stupid, all these days living so close by but without a visit, without a phone call? suddenly the phrase "visiting family in SF" makes me feel despondent, rather than hopeful and excited. i imagine a house empty of his presence and suddenly it's not a home with family (i can't see my dad there). i think about times when i was so close to where he was, and the last phone call, and how i didn't get to say everything i wanted to say, and how i'd always held it in my heart to tell him that i was thankful for him, that i wanted to make sure i eventually got the words right, but never knew a better way to say it than the first hug goodbye.

and now, just powerlessness. again, words don't feel right for such emotions. it just doesn't seem fair that life should go on as usual, when i feel my world is falling apart.

my uncle passed away last night. some kind of accident, he was sent to the hospital yesterday morning because his brain was hemorrhaging. he became comatose in the evening and they pulled the plug this morning. i just heard from my uncle Danny. my dad doesn't know, he's heading to San Francisco now, but there will be no body there. it breaks my heart to think about my dad in that moment.

it's hard to understand that such a beautiful life can just suddenly disappear like that. i still can't believe it. on the phone with my cousin last night, the word "funeral" felt so strange and cruel in my mouth. to say "passed away" is strange, i imagine him still in the hospital, imagine a way for him to come back. i feel selfish, when i first got the call from my cousin i didn't even think about going up to SF. i thought things would be fine. things happen so quickly, i feel so terrible and powerless.

mourning is strange, difficult. words are hard to find. eating seems selfish, checking my email or getting on the internet seems trivial. i can't fathom how all of life can just go on with such terrible tragedy. i want everything to stop and honor the gravity of the moment, you know? but it's thursday, and there are classes, children laughing, traffic continues to stop and go. it is so strange, to feel so alone in one's sadness and grief.

bold [sic] hate - ha ha

shield yr eyes!

(or keep em peeled! this shit changes real-time, bitches. so you can witness my minute-by-minute struggles with this jackass mother fucker. and warn me of broken links cuz this shit is wired to hit the fan...)

i have been up since 7 am working on this stupid piece of shit for my grad class, the last two hours spent trying to figure out how to format the fucking tables in the rubric section so it's not all bold.

fucking google docs.

nothing like a webquest to make you hate google, the internet, and life.

also: no food, no company, no time. low sleep, dirty hair, and my muscles wanna go for a ruuuuuuunn nn n n na nun.

there was so much else i could have done but instead this. and more.

still one unit plan, one lesson plan, and a fieldwork journal to write.

and i'm wondering about the state of nature and (hu)man. if the birds, cows, monkeys, and fleas all want to kill us, and the pigs now too, i think it's proof my hero was right:

"Your planet's immune system is trying to get rid of you."

fly high, fly straight. into the sun?
-stef

proposition: blogging as life preserver

i've had a lot of conversations lately in which my motives for blogging were called into question. and though i find it hard, usually, to think so metacognitively about the reasons for my writing, i realized today that it's a tree in the forest kinda thing.

if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound?

i remembered this post i wrote in the beginning of my foray into blogging, and how i was thinking about death and the ability of the internet to preserve experience and writing.

this digital age is a mausoleum, which is a word i love, because it sounds like what it means: "death museum." we produce so many artifacts of our lives, but at the same time these artifacts exist mostly in the ether. we write emails, dozens a day, these all go into mailboxes, each of us with mailboxes thousands of emails full. there's a permanence but also an invisibility to this kind of production. while it exists and accumulates, it so easily disappears. someone dies, their email address and inbox goes with them. all those MB's of virtual space and productivity and creation lost, irrecoverable. and here, i hesitate again, because this virtual medium has the capacity to recover and revive, just as easily as it can be erased.

i want to remember things clearly, i don't want things to fade!

the wonderful thing about this is that digital technologies are allowing us to preserve little mummies of ourselves all over the interwebs (which sounds kind of gross, but admit it, you're fascinated!) snapshots of life and moments. and the complexities and details of our lives will read, in retrospect, so much clearer than any other materials of the past or present. just as the clarity with which we see things has improved with the emergence of digital imaging and hi-res photography, our understanding of the past will be significantly clearer because of the details we are writing now. we are constantly writing and re-writing our own autobiographies, from the moment we self-publish.

and isn't that such a beautiful thing?

-stephan!e

(written sunday, 3.22.09, 9pm PST)

save your day

"do what you must,
you need to be brave to save your day."

===

the end of summer came suddenly. here in LA, all the restaurants and pubs were lamenting the death of summer, trying to sell off the last of their summer wine collections and closing the patio seating. i spent the weekend walking thru thrift stores looking for a sweater that would remind me of the sweaters i have back home.

i watch the days pass thru my window in the apartment, watch the sunlight change angles on the tree leaves, wait for leaves to fall, wait for night to get cold, wait for december so i can fly home and lie down in the snow and grass and drink hot chocolate in the kitchen of my house and feel warm again.

this video captures the kind of sepia hues and nostalgic tones i meant when i wrote this post.

there are no words to describe how i'm feeling lately, only images. and i feel a little lost because i do not know how to produce them myself, only share them.

-stef

the civil war

dream - friday morning, 8/8/08

i was outside, i think a group of us were talking about something, implementing a plan of action as a group, we were talking around a tree, i think we were in an arid place. we were talking when all of a sudden we hear a whirring sound, and someone holds up a hand and goes 'was that a bullet?' she shoes us her hand and it's got a small puncture wound on it. moments later, it happens again. we realize we're under gunfire. there's some war happening around us.

we go inside this really old wood cabin behind us. there are slits of sunlight shining thru the pieces of wood and thru the bullet holes. we lie on the floor so as not to get hit. we realize that they're coming soon, and that we should be ready. but rather than fight back, we develop a plan for when they get here. we are going to go out bravely, singing "Swing Lo, Sweet Chariot" (for some reason we thought we were in the civil war - maybe it was the log cabin?) we practice singing it and then we lie on our backs. these are ppl i've never met before but we're singing and preparing to die in such solidarity.

i'm lying there on the dirt floor (and i remember this part being weird, because i think i was watching myself/ experiencing everything from a third person perspective, like, i could SEE myself) and i can hear the whirr of bullets outside and my heart is racing and i am swelling up with anger and pride that this is the way i am going to die. and then i realize, my family is outside. they are in the house, the house i live in in lexington, and the bad guys are going to go into my house, and they are going to shoot my parents and my brother, and all of a sudden i am scared, and i want to run to be with them, and suddenly my death seems meaningless, seems cowardly, seems unfair. i want to be with them in my final moments, want to scream civil rights songs in the face of our oppressors, and want to be scared and defiant and brave one last time with my family around me, rather than these strangers.

i imagine the last time i hugged my dad, which, in my waking life was last night, and i remember it feeling strange since it'd been so long, but very comforting and relieving to know he was finally near enough that i could say "bye Dad" and wrap an arm around his neck, and in my dream that sense was a very urgent need. in my dream i suddenly feel the urgency of death and a paralysis, as i'm stuck to the floor of this cabin, singing slave songs, waiting for death to come. i remember thinking how symbolic every last moment becomes when you realize your actions are limited to a few brief moments, and i wondered if this was really how i wanted my last actions as a living human to be.

soon i would lose control of my nervous system, my ability to move limbs, to navigate the equilibrium, to practice volition and act with deliberation and intent. i felt guilty that i wasn't with my mother, ailing as she was, and that i didn't give my father a longer hug when i was near enough to do it.

---

i wake myself up from the dream with a slight scream, my heart racing from tossing around in my sleep.

reader rescue

all the things now missing from my life. but you can help me! read on...

in light of the recent death of my external harddrive (R.I.P. Jannik the swedish harddrive, 2007-08), i have been doing everything i can to try to fill in the now gaping holes in my life.

the most pressing thing, since i am such a huge audiophile, has been trying to recover my music library. i think my music taste exploded dramatically in the past year and a half, and i accumulated hundreds upon hundreds of albums, many rarities, which i am sorely sorry i didn't back up more regularly.

the last 24 hours have been a struggle to retrace my steps, racking my brain for lists of favorite artists and albums, trying to remember a faint and distant tune and trying to locate its context. it's like trying to recreate a complex recipe from the few scraps of leftovers you have from the night before. all i have are memories...

i grabbed lunch with my ma and bro today and when they flitted off to doctors' appointments, i wandered around the UK campus, where i was grossly ogled by a campus police officer as i walked by a drug bust (weird), and then i made my way to the independent bookstores. i only meant to go for a walk, but my sadness and desperation were too much and my will power was destroyed. i succumbed to some retail therapy and blew 50 bucks at CD Central in an attempt to fill in the gaps and now i'm ten albums closer to happy again (hey, i have no regrets. the albums were used. AND it's a local record store. i'm a sucker for supporting local independent businesses, especially if it means i can pop some Grizzly Bear into the cd player as soon as i get home.) alas, soon there will be holes in my pocketbook... (i need a job! i think after i'm done sorting thru my old clothes i'll make little bags and purses out of them. that sounds like a fun project. not necessarily lucrative, but i need to do something with my hands!)

oh, anyway, the real purpose for my post today is that i have a request to make of you, dear readers. my friends, with all my music now gone and possibly irrecoverable, the blog is, once again, my only way to retrace certain memories and their audio accompaniment. just looking thru the posts labeled "MP3" on the blog here, i can already identify several songs i would LOVE to have in my possession again. i'm assuming some of you took advantage of the downloads i put up for a time and now have them at your listening convenience? lucky you...

see, the beauty of this blog is that it often gives. and now, you, dear, precious, esteemed, good-looking reader, have the opportunity to give back. you have the power of edification in your hands! you can help reunite me with some of my favorite songs. you could make me so intensely happy, the waves of good vibes i will be sending you across the internet and geographic space alone will be enough to justify your trouble.

here's what i want: if any of you have mp3s of the following songs, please leave a comment below and we'll be in touch. (links are to blog posts in which i originally shared them with you)
"At the Hop" by Devendra Banhart
"Are Birthdays Happy?" by Jens Lekman
"Tonight, Tonight" by the Smashing Pumpkins
"The Idea of You" by the Neo-Futurists
the avocado couch podcast i did on covers
"Little Brother" by Grizzly Bear

thanks in advance. and have some preliminary good energy waves:
"Disarm" [mp3] by the Smashing Pumpkins

x's+ o's
-stefanie

she lives!

(that's me with the "proof" of my finished senior project! alt. title reads: "Idiots and Jackasses: How American Public Education Fails to Meet Its Democratic Ideals." you like?)

hello everyone!

yes, this is stephanie, returning to you from the edge of death and emotional/psychological/existential despair, to say that

1) I AM DONE!
i finished the project after much duress, at noon on Monday, April 14th, 2008. i had to haul a lot of ass to get there, and it was certainly not the easiest thing i've ever done (i slept 10 minutes on Sunday night, 2 hours on Saturday, 3 hours on Friday, ate maybe 4 meals in that expanse of time), nor the easiest to understand (i wrote 25 pages in one night!), nor the most believable (i wrote 25 pages! in one night! with only 10 minutes of sleep!). but i did it! I AM SET TO GRADUATE! (*fist pump and hip thrust!* *yeah!* let's have a party now, pls?)

2) there's still so much to do...
i am presenting my thesis at the undergraduate research forum in 4 hours, and i have nothing in the way of visual aids or even mental preparation. i hope to just show up and be able to garble something remotely intelligible.
the "dress rehearsal" for my big thesis defense in May is coming up on Thursday, which is also a little too early for my taste. i don't think i can whip up a powerpoint and a formal presentation in one night, especially since i still haven't slept more than 5 hours since i finished.
(my body is def taking a toll from all this. on Monday, when i wrapped up writing, my face looked like i'd been chainsmoking 2 packs a day since i was 14. i was so haggard, i couldn't believe i was still alive. and sadly, i still haven't gotten a chance to completely rest up, i've been editing and formatting the project, and working on SFS stuff again, and bouncing around meetings. i can't wait until next week, when i will hopefully be able to sleep and eat to my heart's content and maybe even read a good book again!)
AND, there's still another chapter i want to write, because it just doesn't feel done yet, but i don't know if i have the patience/time/energy/will-power to do it. i'm telling you, i have a disease! i need to just put it aside, let it wait for the dissertation!

3) THANK YOU!
thru all of the trials and tribulations, this blog has really been a huge source of relief for me. it's been a place to informally write what i'm thinking, and a nice opportunity to step away from the project, remember that i can write, i just need to be less editorial about it and let it flow.

and, to know that there are ppl who read it, who enjoy it (don't you?) and who care, well, it really puts the sunshine in my (as of late) dark and dismal existence. (i can't tell you how glad it made me, as sick as this sounds, to know that ppl were worried and wondering if i had died. i'm so glad you care that i live! shucks, yo... thanks!)

and, i wanted to thank the blog itself, as odd as that sounds, because it literally saved me. when i lost all the data on my computer (all my writing from college, all my photos), i didn't know how the fuck i was going to finish my thesis. there were diagrams, little nuggets that i'd written in little .rtf files, little things that i couldn't possibly think to recover. some were screen shots of websites long lost and forgotten. some were passing thoughts that i couldn't reconstruct or re-place.

but then i remembered that i had posted most, if not all, of these things on the blog! and sure enough, there they all were, neatly labeled and organized, even showing me which dates i'd created them, so i could make accurate notations in my citations list! hahaha, what a beautiful thing!

anyway, i should really get back to work. i'm running around to meetings and presentations and interviews all day, and then i'm teaching class until 10 pm (which i really need to prepare for), and then i gotta find time to put a powerpoint together for tomorrow... oh geez, it's looking like another all-nighter week...

when everything is said and done, i hope there will be copious imbibing and heavy snuggling.

until then, yours in life and virtual death,
stephanie

THE FUCK?!!!

48 hours before senior project is due: i'm sitting at my desk, listening to music and working on my paper. i have 10 documents open at once, maybe 3 applications. i'm pressing F9, which on a mac, lets you zoom out and look at everything at once, so you can find your bearings.

i zoomed out and it wouldn't zoom back.

i heard gears spinning, the clicking of some hardwear trying to find its place, a fan doing its best to keep the system from overheating.

3 hours later and my harddrive would be pronounced dead on arrival. when the guy at the apple store plugged it in to try some diagnostic tests, he said he couldn't even detect a harddrive on there.

now i have a useless piece of empty computer, which will cost close to $2K to recover the data from. and i don't know if my external harddrive got fried in the process too. i'm just hoping i made it away from this with just a small piece of my music collection still intact on that external...

i feel like the Universe's bitch right now. what did i do???!! i keep wondering why my karma is so for shit these days. maybe i hit a squirrel with my car and didn't know, in which case i'd like to formally issue my apology: i'm very sorry, it was nuthin personal, i actually love squirrels very much, if i could, i'd adopt the dead squirrel's family and let them live in my home.

just pleeeeaaaase, stop it with the bad karma!

less than 24 hours to go, and i am in some deep shit.

-stephanie

this year

I AM GOING TO MAKE IT THRU THIS YEAR

IF IT KILLS ME.

[mp3] "This Year" by The Mountain Goats.

ONE WEEK LEFT.

it's do or die!

(pls not die...)

-stephanie

something to be thankful for...

NOT BEING ME!


as the whole world (except for the descendants of the Native Americans, for whom Thanksgiving - is probably one big F*** YOU in the face of their heritage and culture) enjoys the break to be with their families and friends, i am freaking the hell out about all manner of things future and looming.

I AM LOSING MY MIND. if hair were the physical extension of the mind, it's coming out in handfuls. i swear i am hallucinating, i don't feel alive most of the time, and even occasionally believe i am dead. (surely being the living dead counts...?) i've been having out-of-body experiences while riding my bike, when i had several close calls with cars that would certainly have killed me if dumb luck didn't intervene. example: i am riding my bike to the rec for my usual workout. i stop in the driveway of the arts center and look both ways for cars. seeing nothing, i prepare to cross the street. for some reason, i decide to hesitate for the briefest of moments, just as a white car comes zooming out from behind a row of parked cars. i feel the wake of its passing, the wind sweeping across my face. i can imagine its impact, as i ride into its negative space, imagining myself rolling out in front of it just as it was gaining speed, my neck breaking upon impact, my body broken as it's airborne to land in a lifeless thud on the pavement. i imagine blood and spit coming out of my mouth and eyes even while i ride my bike up to the rec and park it.

another time in the last week, i was almost side-swiped by a car on my way home from class, and as it passed by me, i imagined leaving my body behind in the spot where the impact would have occurred, and i imagined my self, the one still riding the bike, to be a ghost, or my imagination, disembodied, floating on in spite of death. (for about half an hour i wondered if perhaps i really was dead, and my existence was the result of brain flickers, a parallel existence that suddenly came awake to fill the void left by my bodied life...)

i'm losing what little self-assurance i had to begin with: i came home for the break to find out i got horrible GRE scores. even the analytical writing section, which i had hoped would be fine, turned out to be less than mediocre. there's no way i'm getting into grad school like this... and what's worse, i actually think grad school may be a better fit for me than Teach for America. how can i teach kids in poverty-stricken communities when i've never even lived in the real world myself? i'm still just a kid myself. and i'm not qualified to teach anything...

and they won't want me anyway, not given my recent failures in life in general and school in particular. even though senior project seems to be under way, it's just one thing in a slew of other things that are oppressing my life and freedoms. what's worse, this confluence of things has me paralyzed with fear, stunned with the inertia of having to begin against such weight, such sheer volume of things...

all this fear, this utter paralysis, of course gets me no where. and worse, it has me doing stupid things, such as sending this utterly pathetic email to my professor:


(the IAP referenced above is a project i was supposed to have already completed by now, but which i have yet to start, b/c it seems completely irrelevant and worse, time-consuming!)

all i want is to bind books and write things that make me (and others) happy. instead i feel half-alive but mostly dead...

blah blah blah enjoy your thanks giving
-stefan!e

i don't understand life sometimes...

i come home yesterday to check my email. i see an unread message titled "On Joey." i open it up and this is what i find:

From: William J. Gracie, Jr.
Dean, School of Interdisciplinary Studies/Western College Program
To: The Western Community

I deeply regret having to write with very sad news: Joey Eger, a junior Western major, was struck and killed by a train in Oxford early this morning. Joey¹s death was confirmed in mid-afternoon today...

that's where i stop. what day is it? what time? how long have i been away? what steps did i take? what was the last conversation i had, the last glance exchanged, the last thought, the last sensation on my face? when was the last time? when? where? what? why? why? always, still, continually: why?...

i watch as a plug is pulled, memories suddenly - rapidly - draining away. and a ghost is formed...

death confuses me. but life is no more certain. it doesn't seem fair to have such trivial thoughts when there is so much pointless loss occurring around us. be it accidents, or pointless wars, or suicides or illness, i don't understand...

it seems such a delicate thing. so much precious energy moving in such fragile bones and gentle flesh. suddenly limp, disappeared, evaporated.

where do we go?
-stephanie


to the sparkle-eyed boy who lived above me, who i'll never forget meeting because his room emitted a bright blue glow, because he was blasting Backstreet Boys' "As Long as You Love Me" on his stereo system the first time we met, and because he had one of the kindest hearts around. let us remember Joey Eger, and his life. and let us not cry or be sad, but laugh and celebrate the energy and good humor he once graced us with.

unfortunately (or fortunately) this is my only picture of Joey. that's him on the left, making a face that never fails to make me laugh out loud. that's Joey for you, always putting a smile on your face.

rest in peace, friend.