And though I feel like something of an outsider in Winston-Salem, I have to say that North Carolina has been good to us. [...] The housing prices are quite reasonable; we have a nice place to live, with a big yard. Because of our limited social life, we get a lot of writing done.
You asked if my writing would be different if I lived in Nebraska. You know, I think it might — I wonder if a feeling of longing for a place is necessary to imagine it completely.
amy knox brown from bookslut 05 015 2008
springtime can kill you 04 021 2008
lately i have felt that my heart is very full, pretty confused, locked too tight where it is. dumb? i don’t know. overwhelming, for sure. i just have so many feelings.
feelings that i must blog about.
whatever, well, bottom line, there was an earthquake in southern illinois this past week, the aftershocks of which were felt from indianapolis to st louis to chicago and everywhere in between, and i’m bummed i missed it, i am bummed i’m missing legitimate springtime that i’m used to, i’m bummed that i’m missing every stupid event like my sister’s cat having kittens, my brother’s new puppy, flunk day at knox, being around enthusiastic baseball fans, et cetera ad nauseum. i am a profoundly boring person and, most importantly, just endlessly childish. these are facts. the amounts and balance of boringness and selfishness in my brain are criminally underestimated and super fucked up, respectively.
REGARDLESS.
i do feel much too connected to here to just leave or even consider leaving without a second thought — i think the small fact that i never actually remember that i am in north carolina or trying to do something so different from anything i was doing nine months ago says a lot about how ultimately comfortable i am in my surroundings. i don’t want to leave, i don’t want to fail, i don’t want to be upset all the time. i’d rather have things fixed than abandoned, but the prospect of repairing my psyche and rocky relationship with library school at the same time seems like such a colossal undertaking at this point. i know i can do it, though, because sometimes i just honestly doubt if i could ever feel any more heartbroken than i am this spring.
north carolina smells really good in the springtime, though — i drove out to durham the back way yesterday night, avoiding 15-501 in the rain with my car window down, simultaneously admiring the wisteria and checking for wayward deer. i got very emotional on that drive, thinking about jolie holland and a lot of other things that would be pretty dumb of me to talk at length about in a public forum. but all i can say about that, i guess, is that because i have intense warm weather sense memories, i end up being totally leveled by crap i haven’t cared about for years, feeling like my well-being has been punched in the gut and face 100,000 times.
anyway, even though it was awfully nice to rewatch my favorite episodes of gilmore girls while succumbing to crippling waves of depression, it was also good to get out of my house. and i had a pretty rad dinner with pretty rad dudes on top of it. pitchers of sangria never hurt anything, either, and neither does finding out that you (me) are by far not the only one in town who had to take out such a killer amount of student loans for grad school. i actually almost fell out of my chair in relief when i heard about that. that probably makes me a bigger jerk than i really am. which is a pretty big jerk.
while i realize that having a blog thing on the internet is a crazy self-aggrandizing venture to begin with, i still feel really stupid talking about myself this much and keep swearing to not do it next time. well, it’s next time, and here i am! in full force. maybe next time.
people like that are the only people here 04 07 2008
well, okay, i don’t really want to talk that much about basketball, except to say that of course the jayhawks earned their win. last night felt really bizarre to me, the whole thing, like i was in some drug-induced haze thing the entire time, watching carolina get so thoroughly and immediately trounced in the first half. not that carolina basketball isn’t susceptible to losing badly, of course every team is — i’d just never seen anything like that, much less in a final four game. anyway, they did rally hard, i cried a lot about it, retained some dignity in the end.
yesterday was a weird day in general, though, i suppose: i went about my normal businesses and some dude with a knife and my cigarettes in his hand mildly expressed he thought i was an officer of the law.
now i’ll talk about that picture. there’s a chicken that sometimes hangs out in our yard, just chilling out usually, when he/she/it is not making terrible noises directly outside my window very early in the morning. the situation does really remind me of this thing from my childhood, though no one seems to ever know what i’m talking about when i make reference to “that one thing from sesame street.” also, sometimes when i go out to my car, the chicken is just sitting there in that tree, staring at me like a creep. fowl stalker. it’s awesome.
JUST KIDDING.
(it is not awesome)
(it is a little bit majestic, though)
i just was hit hard with a wave of very intense yearning for summer. i’m not looking forward to almost fainting in the heat, but i am looking forward to so, so many other things about it, like: no school, working, hanging hard, getting real freckled again, reading beautiful books (i used to keep a list of things i wanted to read, but i seriously think i plowed my way through it last fall when i didn’t have a computer and had lots of time), going to the beach — which i have never done before, or, like, seen the ocean for real –my 23rd birthday on friday the 13th of june, drinking soco & sweet tea on as many porches as possible. going places! i get defeated sometimes, unbearably upset and nervous, but the reality is that i have a whole lot to look forward to yet. there is nothing in the world to be so sad about.
what the hell kind of time is it? 04 02 2008
here’s the neverending story of my life: really, really dirty hair.
tonight was a beautiful night. i would give up a lot of vital life-things before i would ever give up drinking beers outside, especially after an evening class that was a little bit infuriating. yes, okay, it is a given that librarians are taken for granted and that a lot of people have no idea what they actually do (see: “you have to have a graduate degree to do that?” and just imagine my dreamy-dream response, which probably involves really cool things like “dumb jerk” and “ridiculous choad”) but i cannot fathom how clueless some people are and continue to be.
not really talking about one person, you know, but i suppose who i am referring to could best be generalized as: everybody. my frustrations are vague/valid/both.
and being in an english class reminds me of the totally crazy shit that would come up in pretty much every literature or writing class i took in college:
- intentional fallacy
- the male gaze
- “creepy”
- spooling/unspooling
- sign/signified
- liminality
- mirror theory
- the sublime
- PLACE
horseshit.
i really think the best thing i learned from all that was how to do research, and well, look where i am right now. writing a passionately vulgar blog entry about it.
way back when in the now before now 03 031 2008
i’m having a lot of trouble with my blogging loyalty, a thing that i think about a lot. it’s probably pretty apparent to anyone who knows me that i am really, really into livejournal, and my heart contains the most unique unconquerable love for that site, but because it is so easy to have private space there — it’s just going to stay my private space.
so there is this, which is something that i made last summer when i was hanging out in galesburg after graduating from college. i lived with cats and took pictures of them. i wanted to have a photoblog, or whatever, before i kind of realized that the effort i put into flickr pretty much made it a photoblog in its own right. now it is gonna be my grown-up blog.
blog blog blog.
it’s been really rainy here lately, which is really good and not only some of my favorite weather, but also does something to quell the exxxtreme drought going on here in the american south. however, weather like this does nothing for my motivation to, like, get out of my bed for a significant amount of time, hang out outside, wear any kind of clothing i’d be comfortable with a normal person seeing me in, et cetera. it also provides me with unwarranted time to think about my life and wallow in some really rad feelings.
in short:
a recent trip to the midwest completely destroyed me. when i was there, i was thrilled out of my damn mind, really thought i was going to die, and cried like a child. then, and especially since, i just felt very, very young. what the hell am i trying to do to myself?
of course i’m not saying that it’s never a good idea for people to go to graduate school right out of college, or even that a person who is two months into their twenty-second year is not totally capable of shifting their whole life a thousand miles east, dedicating their life to a career, starting all over, broke and alone — just that i don’t think i was ready for it. honestly, i still don’t know if i’ve (for realsies) come to terms with the magnitude of it. the adventure was fucking beautiful but now the reality is driving me nuts: at this rate, i’m going to have a professional master’s degree before i turn twenty-four years old. combine that with the fact that i still feel, oh, around fifteen years old in my brain most of the time, and i just feel like i’m in trouble. i’ve never once, not ever, questioned my desire to Be A Librarian; i’ve questioned the methods, sure, and learned a lot on the way, but it’s a really big thing to learn that it’s okay to take detours and not have everything fall perfectly into place all the time. for someone who lives her life all loosey-goosey anyway, it’s sure taken me a really, really long time to figure that last part out for myself.
so i don’t know what’s going to happen. maybe i’ll move back to the midwest, maybe i’ll stay here and tough it out. i hate giving up, but what i hate more than that is being upset all the time. north carolina is such a beautiful place and i’ve met incredible people here that i love with everything in my bones, and if i leave i will miss it. especially the basketball.
in the meantime, i’m trying a little bit to cultivate a midwestern accent. i never really thought i had one, but lately i’ve been hearing it in my vowels and getting really excited. it’s a main source of joy in my life.
