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tarigwaemirDeWolfe Apts., on the Feast of St. Peter Chrysologous
I've readjusted to practices sooner than I thought. This whole getting back into shape business is getting slightly less painful each time. Does this mean I really am becoming healthy? Of course I spent every night with my aunt in Korea walking about five miles around the artificial lake in Ilsan...but I should save that story for later.
Anyway, I came home from practice, showered, and decided that I was not so sore or tired that I had an excuse to be completely lethargic for the rest of the day. To explain: I've been spending most of my free time napping away the late afternoons and early evenings, or sitting in front of my laptop mindlessly refreshing my inbox and friends page. I know that sounds pathetic, and I'll freely admit that it is. Actually, I've been feeling kind of worried about myself. This behavior always accompanies a certain sort of depression that comes from utter loneliness, and unlike last summer, I have no one to blame for isolation other than myself. If you would permit the digression, when you spend too many hours alone with your own thoughts, there's often a kind of madness that possesses you if you're not sufficiently disciplined. It's odd because solitude, when practiced rigorously as one does in a silence retreat, can be soothing, but solitude without direction is a disease. (Can you tell I've been reading too much Mann?) I've started to feel crippled, handicapped, as if I was slowly losing the ability to speak to other people. I'm fine at the lab and at practice, but once I get home, it becomes intolerable. Hence, copious amounts of time spent online, chatting to friends. But that only worsens the problem.
All this time spent monitoring and analyzing my mental state (which in itself can get tiresome at times; can't I do anything spontaneously for once?) has forced me to take action because I don't like feeling miserable, and I've been dangerously close to it at times all throughout summer. What is it about Cambridge in the summertime that makes you feel intolerably lonely? I thought it was the lack of friends at first, but clearly that's not the problem this year. Is it that if you take away the hectic stress of school life away from me, I deteriorate into an island? Last summer I used to wander around and around the same old streets in Harvard Square to try to get a grip on myself. So today I pushed myself out the door and went walking again.
Seen: a motionless person painted in silver, wearing a Southern belle's gown and holding a lace parasol, colored in tin. What gives her away as a living human and not a metal statue is the faint trembling of the parasol's point, the near-imperceptible twitch of a finger as you walk past. There is a similar mime artist in the Times Square station back in New York, dressed up as a robot; there is something more fragile and desperate about this version though, as she stands in front of the outdoor café at Au Bon Pain, her silence drowned out by the staccato beats of the hip hop dancers across the street, the whine of the erhu even farther away. Beside her, the Falun Gong demonstrators milling around aggressively, pressing pamphlets on the passersby, propping up large posters crammed with bold text--they are here every week and have thus become invisible, a part of the landscape. Performers as usual in the pit outside the T stop, and in the small, bored audience, a girl wearing too much eyeliner dressed in pink and black striped stockings suppressing a yawn. A small crowd of tourists watching the spray paint artist creating his paintings; they are mostly dark silhouettes against oddly coloured night skies. The one I always notice is the black wolf howling to a luminescent lime-green moon. A homeless couple--there are many homeless people here--with their worldly belongings stacked in precarious piles on a shopping cart, a cardboard tag asking for money, and unusually enough, a mottled gray dog and a black-and-white cat curled up sleeping on top.
Went to the Coop and read more Norwegian Wood, which oddly enough made me laugh. It's not a humorous book but some moments are very, very funny. Also provoked an urge to write, which is probably why I'm inflicting this LJ entry on you all in the first place (normally I save up my observations of people for the rare occasions when I attempt original fiction, which always ends up sounding incredibly weird when I read it afterwards). The air conditioning proved too much for me after a while, so I gave in and bought it along with Strong Poison. (Finally, I get to meet Harriet Vane!) I like making impulse purchases when I can convince myself not to feel guilty about it.
I go to places with high concentrations of books to cheer up. When you're surrounded by that many books, most of which you've never read, you invariably get distracted from yourself: exactly what I needed. There's a sort of happy anxiety in wandering around, touching smooth glossy covers with hesitant fingers, thinking to yourself, "Oh, I want to read that one and that one and that one." It's almost Taoist; that moment before you open the book, you are overwhelmed by the possibility of what the book could be. Could this be the kind of book that possesses you and overwhelms you and leaves you feeling as if you've just drowned? Could this be the kind of book that sheds little jewels of information on all sorts of eclectic subjects and makes you want to read more? Could this be the kind of book that you read over and over again, from front to back and in between? Wandering through a bookstore always fills me somehow, and suddenly time is too precious to be wasted in sleeping or staring blankly off into space.
One of these days, I ought to write about the bookstores around here: the Coop in all its stately but ultimately commercialized glory, the Harvard Bookstore with its pretensions to being hip and indie, the Wordsworth with its oddly sanitized and modern appearance...come to think of it, there ought to be an LJ community devoted to describing bookstores.
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31_days begins the day after tomorrow, and it seems everyone on my friends list has been busy writing for it in advance. Since I am, as always, a procrastinator, and since there is nothing like deadlines to provide inspiration, I've been doing nothing at all to prepare. I haven't even seriously looked at the themes other than to say, "Ooh, nice!" I would like to justify this laziness by pretending that I want to practice improvisational writing, but deep down I know that what is more likely to happen is that I'll write nothing and just greedily read everyone else's brilliant fics. Oh well...I would like to imagine myself somehow managing to churn out at least a drabble every night, but I probably should be happy if I even get a quarter of them done. That being said, I've been idly wondering if I could pull off writing original fic for the themes and somehow make them continuous. Er, yes, somehow. Maybe writing different bits of a story, out of order, and then putting it all together at the end of the month. Hah! As if I could manage something like that. >_> (I haven't abandoned fanfiction for the moment either, but I've been deleting more than writing lately. >_> Another side effect of this lethargy.)
Yours &c.
Post-script: This line is priceless: "Without the national flag attached to it, the pole looked like a gigantic white bone thrusting up into the darkness of the night." ::chokes on water:: I have a feeling the sentence lost a little grace in the translation.
I've readjusted to practices sooner than I thought. This whole getting back into shape business is getting slightly less painful each time. Does this mean I really am becoming healthy? Of course I spent every night with my aunt in Korea walking about five miles around the artificial lake in Ilsan...but I should save that story for later.
Anyway, I came home from practice, showered, and decided that I was not so sore or tired that I had an excuse to be completely lethargic for the rest of the day. To explain: I've been spending most of my free time napping away the late afternoons and early evenings, or sitting in front of my laptop mindlessly refreshing my inbox and friends page. I know that sounds pathetic, and I'll freely admit that it is. Actually, I've been feeling kind of worried about myself. This behavior always accompanies a certain sort of depression that comes from utter loneliness, and unlike last summer, I have no one to blame for isolation other than myself. If you would permit the digression, when you spend too many hours alone with your own thoughts, there's often a kind of madness that possesses you if you're not sufficiently disciplined. It's odd because solitude, when practiced rigorously as one does in a silence retreat, can be soothing, but solitude without direction is a disease. (Can you tell I've been reading too much Mann?) I've started to feel crippled, handicapped, as if I was slowly losing the ability to speak to other people. I'm fine at the lab and at practice, but once I get home, it becomes intolerable. Hence, copious amounts of time spent online, chatting to friends. But that only worsens the problem.
All this time spent monitoring and analyzing my mental state (which in itself can get tiresome at times; can't I do anything spontaneously for once?) has forced me to take action because I don't like feeling miserable, and I've been dangerously close to it at times all throughout summer. What is it about Cambridge in the summertime that makes you feel intolerably lonely? I thought it was the lack of friends at first, but clearly that's not the problem this year. Is it that if you take away the hectic stress of school life away from me, I deteriorate into an island? Last summer I used to wander around and around the same old streets in Harvard Square to try to get a grip on myself. So today I pushed myself out the door and went walking again.
Seen: a motionless person painted in silver, wearing a Southern belle's gown and holding a lace parasol, colored in tin. What gives her away as a living human and not a metal statue is the faint trembling of the parasol's point, the near-imperceptible twitch of a finger as you walk past. There is a similar mime artist in the Times Square station back in New York, dressed up as a robot; there is something more fragile and desperate about this version though, as she stands in front of the outdoor café at Au Bon Pain, her silence drowned out by the staccato beats of the hip hop dancers across the street, the whine of the erhu even farther away. Beside her, the Falun Gong demonstrators milling around aggressively, pressing pamphlets on the passersby, propping up large posters crammed with bold text--they are here every week and have thus become invisible, a part of the landscape. Performers as usual in the pit outside the T stop, and in the small, bored audience, a girl wearing too much eyeliner dressed in pink and black striped stockings suppressing a yawn. A small crowd of tourists watching the spray paint artist creating his paintings; they are mostly dark silhouettes against oddly coloured night skies. The one I always notice is the black wolf howling to a luminescent lime-green moon. A homeless couple--there are many homeless people here--with their worldly belongings stacked in precarious piles on a shopping cart, a cardboard tag asking for money, and unusually enough, a mottled gray dog and a black-and-white cat curled up sleeping on top.
Went to the Coop and read more Norwegian Wood, which oddly enough made me laugh. It's not a humorous book but some moments are very, very funny. Also provoked an urge to write, which is probably why I'm inflicting this LJ entry on you all in the first place (normally I save up my observations of people for the rare occasions when I attempt original fiction, which always ends up sounding incredibly weird when I read it afterwards). The air conditioning proved too much for me after a while, so I gave in and bought it along with Strong Poison. (Finally, I get to meet Harriet Vane!) I like making impulse purchases when I can convince myself not to feel guilty about it.
I go to places with high concentrations of books to cheer up. When you're surrounded by that many books, most of which you've never read, you invariably get distracted from yourself: exactly what I needed. There's a sort of happy anxiety in wandering around, touching smooth glossy covers with hesitant fingers, thinking to yourself, "Oh, I want to read that one and that one and that one." It's almost Taoist; that moment before you open the book, you are overwhelmed by the possibility of what the book could be. Could this be the kind of book that possesses you and overwhelms you and leaves you feeling as if you've just drowned? Could this be the kind of book that sheds little jewels of information on all sorts of eclectic subjects and makes you want to read more? Could this be the kind of book that you read over and over again, from front to back and in between? Wandering through a bookstore always fills me somehow, and suddenly time is too precious to be wasted in sleeping or staring blankly off into space.
One of these days, I ought to write about the bookstores around here: the Coop in all its stately but ultimately commercialized glory, the Harvard Bookstore with its pretensions to being hip and indie, the Wordsworth with its oddly sanitized and modern appearance...come to think of it, there ought to be an LJ community devoted to describing bookstores.
31_days begins the day after tomorrow, and it seems everyone on my friends list has been busy writing for it in advance. Since I am, as always, a procrastinator, and since there is nothing like deadlines to provide inspiration, I've been doing nothing at all to prepare. I haven't even seriously looked at the themes other than to say, "Ooh, nice!" I would like to justify this laziness by pretending that I want to practice improvisational writing, but deep down I know that what is more likely to happen is that I'll write nothing and just greedily read everyone else's brilliant fics. Oh well...I would like to imagine myself somehow managing to churn out at least a drabble every night, but I probably should be happy if I even get a quarter of them done. That being said, I've been idly wondering if I could pull off writing original fic for the themes and somehow make them continuous. Er, yes, somehow. Maybe writing different bits of a story, out of order, and then putting it all together at the end of the month. Hah! As if I could manage something like that. >_> (I haven't abandoned fanfiction for the moment either, but I've been deleting more than writing lately. >_> Another side effect of this lethargy.)Yours &c.
Post-script: This line is priceless: "Without the national flag attached to it, the pole looked like a gigantic white bone thrusting up into the darkness of the night." ::chokes on water:: I have a feeling the sentence lost a little grace in the translation.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-31 02:51 am (UTC)but it will be better next summer! not the least because jenny will be around and she's more amusing than me
but, i have to add that your description of harvard square was very poetic. and the coop... i know exactly what you mean about the happy anxiety. although with me it's more like a sort of anxious despair... so many books, and yet i've committed myself to a life in which i will never have very much free time
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-31 03:24 am (UTC)Think of it this way: you'll have plenty of free time when you retire in comfort after a successful career. XD
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-31 02:20 pm (UTC)and *grin* i just realized now that you've adopted the LJ style that one of my high school friends made. *grin* this is one of the five winners of the style contest a while ago, yes? by taion? it's very elegant ^_^
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-31 02:50 pm (UTC)Haha, yes, I noticed that I'd seen the LJ name before (from comments in your LJ) when I voted in the style contest and thought it was kind of freaky but cool that he was a friend of yours. Anyway, it was my favorite of the styles, although I ended up editing bits and pieces of it. XD I was awfully excited when LJ finally added it to the list of available themes.
By the way, I tagged you for a meme. Just offering yet another means of procrastination...mwahahahaha. ^_~ (I wanted to ask you what your top five favorite inorganic compounds were...::is dork::)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-02 08:23 pm (UTC)To explain: I've been spending most of my free time napping away the late afternoons and early evenings, or sitting in front of my laptop mindlessly refreshing my inbox and friends page. I know that sounds pathetic, and I'll freely admit that it is.
Oh, I hear you. Right now I'm in London and since all of the churches are closed and I can't get over the not-being-in-Rome depression, I'm sitting in an internet cafe reading LJ for the first time in months just to pass the time. Granted, this is only for another hour or two - I'm just waiting until it's closer to midnight because I want to go hear Big Ben strike all the hours. But I can't motivate myself to go outside and write or do something, even go and see a movie.
there's often a kind of madness that possesses you if you're not sufficiently disciplined.
So true. In the spirit of being social, do you want to hang out sometime? I'm coming up to Boston the first week of September, if you're around.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-03 03:38 am (UTC)Oh, London. I dream of going to London. Heck, I dream of going to Europe in general. Although I can see why you'd miss Rome; even from your photos alone, there seems something so ancient and fascinating about the city.
I would love to hang out!--but the first week of September is the one time I won't be in Boston. Will you be in New York anytime around then though? (I'll be back in NY from Aug. 26th to Sept. 15th after which I come back to school.)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-03 12:49 pm (UTC)Hmm. There's a Latin dinner sometime in August in NYC that I might go to, but I don't know when it'll be. I'm sure we'll meet sometime this term, though, because lots of my friends from this summer are in Boston and I plan on coming up often to visit! ^^