Sad but true:

To get myself back into exercising, I had to buy some new athletic gear.
Ohh, consumerism, brought to you by Nike.com's sale section.

I signed up for an African dance class this summer, and am thoroughly terrified. It was a gutsy thing to do, for someone who has no psychological 'gut' but whose physical gut has increased in size about ten pounds this year. As I await the beginning of my doom, my only consolation is to buy a pair of workout pants that won't make me look like such an elephant's-ass amidst a large crowd of dance majors.
I am the least coordinated person on the face of the planet. Have I mentioned this?

Wow.

No teaching for three more months. I can hardly believe it. Packing up my classroom was honestly surreal; I actually felt sad as I locked the door. It's been a rocky first year, for sure--especially with the budget problems and endless talks of staff cuts and expenses--but the ultimate verdict is that I actually love my job, especially now that I'm not working 90 hours a week.
Yay for teaching. I think.

In other news, Little Jesus, my iPod of 5+ years (which revived itself heroically after an accidental water-bottle drowning that left its interior absolutely full of H20) finally died in its sleep on June 9th. The morning of this discovery was, of course, tragic, because iPods (especially old-school, clunky ones that only a mother could love) are literally ever-present, there on every roadtrip and apartment-unpacking and A.M. arise-weary-soldier. I briefly considered burying mine in the backyard, before remembering that the battery chemicals would probably render the land completely barren for a 10-mile radius. Perhaps not, then.
I also felt this sense of loss for my 1987 Chevy Celebrity, Betty Spaghetti, when she got brutally crunched by another driver on a rural highway. Betty had no ceiling interior; her passenger-side door didn't open, her windshield wipers didn't work, her heating system belched out insect carcasses, and her cracked muffler ensured that you could hear her coming from fifteen miles away. Old and crusty? Yes, she was, bless her little alternator. But Betty was also full of character that no newer car can surpass.

I like things that show a bit of history, I guess.
I'll miss the black-and-white, pixellated GameBoyish appeal of Little Jesus, despite the fact that I've already ordered a Third Coming (the prospect of a tuneless commmute was just too much to bear).
That's all I can say.

I am now on Goodreads. Brace yourself.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Great Gatsby is basically a literary cocktail party teeming with overgrown, overprivileged, and ultimately disenfranchised boys and girls who are uncertain of how to define themselves in a climate in which social and economic expectations and roles are constantly evolving. I think what I like the most about this story is how each and every character (minus, perhaps, the narrator) is absolutely abhorrent on some level. F. Scott Fitzgerald's characters are truly fascinating: they're glamorous yet uncultured, hardened yet vulnerable, seemingly simple yet deceivingly complex, spoiled and pampered yet discontent. In short, they're wonderfully, repulsively American, straight to the core. You'll love, hate, and most likely recognize at least a few aspects of yourself within them.



Short of a few choice excerpts, I didn't find this story particularly extraordinary in terms of content. The themes of social disenfranchisement and the delicacy of the American Dream are kind of old news after growing up with early 90s MTV (bahaha)--though I'm sure that during its time, The Great Gatsby probably felt fresh and unspoiled. To me, the true redeeming quality of this story was in the nuance of Fitzgerald's descriptions of mundane scenes and settings. Chiggity check:



"The lawn started at the beachand ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens--finally when it reached the house, drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run."



"He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening fora moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struckc upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower, and the incarnation was complete."



"So engrossed was she that she had no consciousness of being observed, and one emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a slowly developing picture."



"There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went, like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars."



The book is certainly worth a read for its lyricism at the very least.


View all my reviews.

Summery things.

I wonder if any other Corvallians/Philomathoneans else would get into the idea of building homemade pushcarts and having a crazy hilltop pushcart derby in mid-July-ish. I know a neighborhood where we could race them and work up a crowd. Everybody from kindergarteners to the local geezers and geezerettes could watch from their front porches whilst sipping lemonade. I could put up fliers at various pizza establishments around town.
Ooh, and we could all have fluorescent flags attached to our creations. Maybe we'd wear some flight goggles, too.

Yes?


(All of this without consideration that I've never built anything mechanical in my entire life, of course.)

(I'm serious, though.)

The real problem with having parents who have always lived in an artificial world is that they can't give you genuine advice about anything.

I guess I'll figure all of this out myself. Or not.

Aw, here it goes.

Well, well, well.
If there's anything I hope I'll take to heart from this entire relational episode that is now ending, it's the following:
A) A lady can't pretend it's enough to stay with a fellow just because his musical and film tastes are (in her opinion) impeccable and align with her own. Particularly if there's little other chemistry in the workings after five years.
B) If a gal has already broken off a relationship once, in a 3-week stint that causes her to lose 10 pounds and paint prolifically, she probably shouldn't ever go back.
C) A worried soul perhaps shouldn't watch any films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or High Fidelity when struggling with her relationships, because of the seductive quality of thinking of her own relationships as being flawed-yet-romantically-fixable in those exact same ways. The reality is probably that they're always just buggered up, and not really fixable at all. At least that's been my experience.
D) If, ever again in the course of a dating relationship, the "Are we really brother and sister instead of a couple?" conversation ever raises its ugly head, both parties should flee in terror.

(Let that be a lesson to you, young lady.)

The weirdest part about my new impending single-ness (singularity?) is that it's been so long in coming that I am not particularly sad about it anymore. Instead, I am afraid, because I've been in this happy/sad little warp-zone for about five years now (ages 19-24, effectively). I'll unabashedly admit that I'm completely terrified of moving out on my own, of living a life without a support zone, of rebuilding everything from scratch--and particularly, I'm terrified by the prospect that I might never meet anyone that will work well with me. I'm difficult, see, and I work in this incredibly demanding job that does not facilitate me to find anyone appropriate ever again. Teaching high school is a bad place to be if you're single, because it envelops your entire life, not just your 9-5.

So dang. I'm doomed, kind of.

I apologize for all of the listing in this post. It's my way of making things manageable and looking at the entire ginormous and monstrous picture in small, digestable, bite-sized pieces. That said, here my little manageable list of what I'm going to do in order to rescue myself from misery and/or becoming 24-going-on-65-and-single:

1) I am moving back to Corvallis by myself, to live in an apartment alone. (Will I hesitate to move in with the person I am dating EVER AGAIN? Yes.)
2) I am re-starting karate multiple times a week and working hard toward my brown belt certification. (This is the biggest motivation for the northward migration back to Corvallis.)
3) I'm finishing my Masters degree this summer and taking some classes that interest me: an upper division comic-drawing class at the UO; a literature class about border identities; a first year Spanish or ceramics class once or twice a week at the Benton Center.
4) I am re-establishing some of the connections that I've lost over the past 5 years.
5) I am painting with tremendous fervor.
6) I might join a paranormal society. (Yes, a paranormal society. Hush, all you naysayers.)
7) I will learn how to dance. In public. Without feeling like a damn fool.
8) I will go to concerts, whether I have someone to go with or not.
9) I might (might) really do the DJing thing that I've been intending to try, on the OSU radio station. If there's anything I know for sure, especially right now, it's music.

If you'd like to join me in any of the above, please do.

A gnome on the porch

A couple of weeks ago my impulse-purchasing habit sank to a new low: I bought (yes, forgive me) a plastic garden gnome. It took a while to pick him out of the crowd, because there were so many delightfully kitschy designs available on the shelf: A cantankerous-looking gnome, grimacing whilst dumping a rustic-looking wheelbarrow; another, rather drugged-looking little fellow standing under a mushroom, gazing skyward with eyes that were ever-so-slightly crossed. Finally, after spending about ten minutes oscillating between gnomes in the gardening section (and wondering if anyone was watching this process in utter revulsion and/or pity), I chose a winner--a small, red-capped gnome who is evidently trying to appear innocent as he wields a blunt-edged hatchet. With my gnome under arm, I headed to the check-out.

While waiting in the queue, a middle-aged lady, placing her own, more classy garden decocrations on the check-out belt, wordlessly cast my gnome a curious sidelong glance.
"I had to choose the one that was brandishing weaponry," I explained.
She nodded silently.
"I think he's compensating for something."
The lady and the elderly female check-out clerk cracked up.


My garden consists mostly of weeds and a few pots of gangly lavender and rosemary, but my little armed sentinel seems very serious about guarding it from oncoming intruders. Ain't nobody gonna fuck with my chives now.