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I ate halvah tonight, but the crushing pain of existence was only partially ameliorated. Had an annoying conversation with the housemate which has now been classified as a boundary for me. Feel very annoyed about the HOA descision and mad at myself for getting the night wrong. Need reassurance that I’m on the right track. There’s a certain volitility to my outlook. Last night or the night before, had a long conversation with a some people about student mental health services. All the grad students are angsty. Jessica explained that people go to grad school when they don’t know what to do with their life and want to put off real life for a while. I felt a strong sense of belonging and that I was in the right place at the right time. If only I had inner stability and could keep these perspectives instead of sliding away from them.
I miss Ellen a lot

arg

The homeowners meeting was last night. damnit. they voted that the shack must come down.

Why? Because we couldn’t set a precident that people could do whatever they wanted with their backyards, now could we?

Ellen will prolly require assistance in tearing down the shack. If you want to help, I can put you in contact with her.

Quick call for comments

The hoa is meeting tonight. i’m emailing a letter to the president this afternoon

Dear Members of the HOA,

This letter concerns the temporary structure in the backyard of Unit N. As implied, this structure is intended to be temporary. Ellen Fullman is occupying my unit while I am away for graduate school. I will graduate in May 2005 and dismantle the structure when I return. Ms. Fullman is an internationally known composer and the inventor of the Long String Instrument. When I offered her use of my unit, she said it was too short for her instrument and we came upon the idea of extending the instrument into the backyard.

Ms. Fullman has performed around the United States and Europe. In 2001, in San Francisco, she premiered a 45 minute piece that she wrote for her instrument and the Kronos Quartet. She was recently featured in the cover story of MusicWorks magazine. I feel that her work is both important and incredible. Having use of the temporary structure enables her to continue this work while she stays in Berkeley.

We are willing to be flexible and to take any action that the HOA deems necessary, up to and including the immediate demolition of the structure. Should the HOA decide to allow the structure to stay up for the next 16 months, I am willing to assume all liability connected to the structure. I hope that given the temporary nature of the structure and the value of Ms. Fullman’s work, the board decides to temporarily allow the structure to remain.

Thank you very much,
Celeste

I’m considering cutting the middle paragraph, because when we had our “open house” (which nobody came to), the flyer had a bio of Ellen on it. So should I remind them, or should I stop going on about it?

Moving Targets

Asking a 15 year old to write about “who am I” is silly, because by the time the teacher gets around to grading the paper, the kid will have changed entirely. People go through some periods of intense change. I was talking to my housemate last night about Saturn Returns and he, who is the same age as I am, told me about how lately, he’s been his moodiest since the age of 16. “something’s going on.” we concluded.
So, there are some things I know about myself: I’m queer. I like music and programming and I’m good at both. Aside from that, instead of trying to pin myself down as a moving target, it would be more useful to have a goal state. So instead of “who am i,” “who do I want to be?”
I would like to be the sort of person that my astrological sign says I should be. (what I love about California: it’s ok to treat astrology with seriousness. anywhere in the country. just say you’re form from california). I would like to have creative ideas and follow through with them. I would like to be smart. I would like to be kind and caring and thoughtful and mindful and mellow and grounded and calm and serene and an activist and ambitious and driven and relaxed.
some of these things conflict, but there’s contexts for everything. also, i would like to be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
I met a woman during break who makes a list of what she wants to achieve in a year and then on the other side of the paper, she writes what she’s willing to do to meet her goals. she carries the list with her and looks at it first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I’m not sure that I want to be that driven, though. But it does raise the question of how I reach my goal state of being both highly active and very calm. What would I put on the reverse side of my list?

I’m back east

I got home about 5 minutes after xena did. My goodness, I left my room a mess. I was extremely distressed when I left Middletown for my unexpected trip to California. But if I wasn’t depressed already, the room would have done. I’m launching an excavation to find the floor and to let in some natural light. but it’s also necessary for me to get my laptop on my airport network (yay) and otherwise goof around.

Who am I

When I was a sophmore in highschool, I was assigned to write a paper on the subject of “who am I.” This is what occurs in catholic highschool religion classes. I wrote a paper telling the teacher to bug off, it was none of his buisiness. When I was a junior in highschool, I was assigned to write a personal statement which would be useful for college apps. I started it with “‘I am gay.'” explaining that my previous year’s paper should have started with that sentence. When I was a senior, I borrowed the phrase from Socrates that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” In college, they quit making us write these papers.

Maybe that’s why I have so little sense of self now. I was talking with Amy, former housemate, on the phone today and she asked who I was without Christi. I have no idea. So I’m giving up on self-loathing, because I’m not even sure who I’m mad at. I used to rant about how individuality is over emphasised in Amerikan culture. I still think this is true. “Rugged individualism” is a myth put forth by people who want to renig on the govt’s role in the social contract. But maybe some individuation is a good thing.

I’ve had a very crappy couple of years. My mom died. My marriage broke up. I think that I can’t live for other people. Other people are unreliable. They die or leave. I have to live for myself (whoever that is). This is, of course, tempered by the idea of community. There’s a fine line here. I need to be self-reliant, and I need to be conscious of how my decisions affect other people.
My plan was to explain the aimlessness of my mid-twenties by explaining that I was “finding myself.” Unfortunately, I wasn’t looking hard enough. Jean says that by the time my Saturn Return is done (I’ve got one year left), I’ll be an entirely different person than I was before, so I’m guessing it means that it’s ok that my sense of self is somewhat confuddled.
My friends and neighbors that I’ve been talking to all tell me “hey you look good!” Like I’ve undergone some sort of change. And a positive one at that. I was thinking that I’ve finally met my goal of becomming mellow as fxck, but then someone told me that it was having short hair. Alas, still angsty. Not yet mellow.
Saw Autmn and Stephen and my dad tonight at a show at 21 Grand. It was groovy, especially the first tow acts I saw, most especially the second one. Beforehand, I played my new tunes for my dad. He heard the triad one and asked if I was going to see a shrink at school. I enjoy this reaction, actually. I want people who hear the piece to think of throwing themselves in front of trains. I want it to sound more melancholy. I want people who hear it to feel the crushing pain of existence bearing down on them from all sides. I want them to realize that in two short years they can lose the two people who are most important to them. That love doesn’t conquer all. It doesn’t conquer anything. Everything that they have faith and hope in will eventually crumble and come to naught and trying to stop it is like trying to stop the tide. I want listeners to taste their own mortality.
So far, I have not come upon exactly the right sound design to get these reactions.
when next I post, I’ll be back on the east coast.

what if you gave an open house and nobody came?

I think I will now go knock on my neighbor’s doors. We have the tie, but I feel uncomfortable not having a margin. And zero people have come over, even though a lot of guacamole was made.