The Latest Transition

It's been hard to find a place in my new domicile in which I feel comfortable writing. Today I cleaned and moved some furniture, and I feel more at home now. But writing requires inward inspection. To turn my eyes inward requires an effort when my outer world is so stimulating. There's a whole kitchen to use, and food to be made out of necessity, not just luxury. There are so many living room chairs to sit in and find the comfortable spot. There are so many modes and tones of lighting to try in each room. It takes time and dedication to know and love a place. As I move into this one, I'm slowly settling in. It'll probably take 11 more months before I feel at home.

I hasten to add that I feel comfortable here on the whole, and am glad to be here. But it's different living with three other people in the same house than having an apartment, as thin as the walls were, as intruded-upon as I was. In this house, it is possible to...

• run out of milk (I was always throwing away 1/3 of the smallest milk containers.)
• stay up talking without having to turn off floor alarms (In a dormitory for high schoolers, you need floor alarms.)
• light candles (Again, it was a dormitory, and an old one, that couldn't be subjected to fire code.)
• wake up at 6 am, and see humans moving (High schoolers don't wake up that early.)
• come home, and find a party is already going on (At the dorm, if there was a party where I lived, it meant someone had broken into my apartment.)
• experience a breeze (In the dorm, I had all West-facing windows, and none too breezy.)
• find no room in the freezer (I generally kept ice trays with water evaporating in them.)
• walk to the front door without passing through your job (And that is beautiful, my friends.)

Self Love: Let This Be My Death Knell

[written in March 2014]

Sometimes I re-read my blog posts (way oftener than you'd think) to re-acquaint myself with myself, because I forget who I am so easily. Sometimes I address my wider readership (i.e. hey, Mom...), but more often I am writing to an imaginary person who has never met me, but wants to get to know me: someone who is doing research.

Said imaginary person is delving into the depths of these writings, looking for nuances and stuff, to get to know me. And it occurs to me today that that person is me. I am the one for whom I write, not for a long-distant, blog-reading, unknown-to-me, in-reality-creepy lover.

A worse fact of my narcissism is that I was at dinner a few nights ago, with five students laughing together as someone read their horoscopes in Chinese. In the interest of conversation, I asked them to read mine and translate it. "The lion looks like he loves everyone. But the lion loves himself."

In my heart, "Lord? You wouldn't speak through a horoscope, would you?" But it's true: I love myself, no matter what I say. Even writing this is vanity. I am in love and hate with myself. Jesus said that we have to find a way of loving others as much as we love ourselves. He knows that I love myself, that my own comfort and care is at the top of my priority list unless repeatedly otherwise stated.

Just Your Typical Fairy Tale...

I came across this thought in a student's research paper on Marilyn Monroe:

It started out as a typical fairy tale story of one young girl dropping out of high school to be with an older man with hopes that they would live happily ever after. That was not the case.

I plan to submit the idea to Disney. If that fails, Dreamworks. If that fails, I'll go straight to Michael Bay, and maybe he can combine it with some robots and other forms of banal failure.