Les Jours Fantastiques.
I feel an insane need to update, and not just because the contents of a double affogato and a croissant are coursing throughmy food-starved bloodstream. I'm sitting at the LGBT Resource Center on campus, as they have free computers to use, and my computer, horror of all horrors, is in for repair for a damaged monitor backlight.
It's been a truly surreal experience being without the constant reassurance of a laptop. The continued connection to the internet at lesat lets me pretend to have some sense of control over my life, some sort of maintenance over theconfusion, or at the very least the ability that I can research, correct, waste time, or manipulate my existence in a basic way. As always, little things like missing computers draw attention to the falseness of me controlling my little world and the ephemeral, sand-castle nature of the little bubble that i live in. Despite my shields, protection, and profound illusions of control, the world is far more unstable and far less constructed than I have ever hoped to imagine.
The Resource Center is in a strange state of nervous tension and beautiful calm. THe midafternoon sun casts lazy shadows in neat rows and lines, and I sit on a solitary couch while students debate the inclusion or exclusion of transgender-identified students in the LGBT community. Windchimes are singing softly in the background, and soft breezes rustle through the leaves of potted plants stationary in the large space. I am always a visitor in this space, as an ally and a friend, yet it has almost become like a rest station, a place where varied genders, communities, identities, and personal expressions meet and discussion and argue and debate and coalesce.
I am enjoying this afternoon.
I'm enjoying the afternoon, yet I am keenly aware of the roller coaster nature of my own emotional state; how my heart beats faster for the most insipid of distractions, while the suffering poor or the oppressed or the truly heinous politica developments cast nary a moment of my attention.
I am confused this afternoon.
In the middle of a seminar on European history--particualrly focusing on my research topic of British colonialism and imperial identity, if you were interested in any way, shape, or form--my mind left and ran a thousand miles away. I was on the BART in San Francisco, watching tunnelled walls and dim underground stations blur in the whirling colors of a train trip; I was on top of Cape Town's Table Mountain, shivering in the unnaturally cold breezes in the September spring air; I was sitting on Melissa Rhoades' couch, sorrounded by friends, where laughter and cookies and dramatic gestures flowed into one amorphous and invigorating experience.
Where am I?
I'm a brown kid, a graduate student of colour, a hopeful historian, and a preciocious young adult eager to figure out what the hell he's supposed to be doing. Yet I'm unnerved by some of the things I've done in the past, haunted by occasional fears of inadequacy, and dazzled by the twin capacities I seem to possess in loving God and others and saying the ABSOLUTE wrong thing at any moment.
My mind is bouncing between Mexican Days Without Immigrants, Residue from Days of Silence, sleeping on cold ground in protest of Ugandan War Children, upbraiding students on their ignornace of White Privilege, and throwing back one too many vodkas on a Friday evening.
I have a class that I will sit in and take notes in fifteen minutes, listening to to the sonorous tones of my African history professor wash over his words, building blocks that he uses to construct the endless and wizened masonry of the African colonial experience before the eyes of thirty over privileged bourgeois university students (including the brown TA named Tyrone).
I am tired this afternoon.
I am tired this afternoon, and even though I am am filled with energy artificially produced by the caffeine in my drink and the sugar in my croissant, I know that my soul is bolstered only by the often disputed fact that I am loved by God. I am going to keep letting these words hit the screen while I stare out the window, thinking of a thousand lifetimes, dreamscapes and visions, and continuing to hope I know by next week what the hell my life will look like.
C'est le temps pour ma classe d'histoire d'Afrique. Au revoir.
It's been a truly surreal experience being without the constant reassurance of a laptop. The continued connection to the internet at lesat lets me pretend to have some sense of control over my life, some sort of maintenance over theconfusion, or at the very least the ability that I can research, correct, waste time, or manipulate my existence in a basic way. As always, little things like missing computers draw attention to the falseness of me controlling my little world and the ephemeral, sand-castle nature of the little bubble that i live in. Despite my shields, protection, and profound illusions of control, the world is far more unstable and far less constructed than I have ever hoped to imagine.
The Resource Center is in a strange state of nervous tension and beautiful calm. THe midafternoon sun casts lazy shadows in neat rows and lines, and I sit on a solitary couch while students debate the inclusion or exclusion of transgender-identified students in the LGBT community. Windchimes are singing softly in the background, and soft breezes rustle through the leaves of potted plants stationary in the large space. I am always a visitor in this space, as an ally and a friend, yet it has almost become like a rest station, a place where varied genders, communities, identities, and personal expressions meet and discussion and argue and debate and coalesce.
I am enjoying this afternoon.
I'm enjoying the afternoon, yet I am keenly aware of the roller coaster nature of my own emotional state; how my heart beats faster for the most insipid of distractions, while the suffering poor or the oppressed or the truly heinous politica developments cast nary a moment of my attention.
I am confused this afternoon.
In the middle of a seminar on European history--particualrly focusing on my research topic of British colonialism and imperial identity, if you were interested in any way, shape, or form--my mind left and ran a thousand miles away. I was on the BART in San Francisco, watching tunnelled walls and dim underground stations blur in the whirling colors of a train trip; I was on top of Cape Town's Table Mountain, shivering in the unnaturally cold breezes in the September spring air; I was sitting on Melissa Rhoades' couch, sorrounded by friends, where laughter and cookies and dramatic gestures flowed into one amorphous and invigorating experience.
Where am I?
I'm a brown kid, a graduate student of colour, a hopeful historian, and a preciocious young adult eager to figure out what the hell he's supposed to be doing. Yet I'm unnerved by some of the things I've done in the past, haunted by occasional fears of inadequacy, and dazzled by the twin capacities I seem to possess in loving God and others and saying the ABSOLUTE wrong thing at any moment.
My mind is bouncing between Mexican Days Without Immigrants, Residue from Days of Silence, sleeping on cold ground in protest of Ugandan War Children, upbraiding students on their ignornace of White Privilege, and throwing back one too many vodkas on a Friday evening.
I have a class that I will sit in and take notes in fifteen minutes, listening to to the sonorous tones of my African history professor wash over his words, building blocks that he uses to construct the endless and wizened masonry of the African colonial experience before the eyes of thirty over privileged bourgeois university students (including the brown TA named Tyrone).
I am tired this afternoon.
I am tired this afternoon, and even though I am am filled with energy artificially produced by the caffeine in my drink and the sugar in my croissant, I know that my soul is bolstered only by the often disputed fact that I am loved by God. I am going to keep letting these words hit the screen while I stare out the window, thinking of a thousand lifetimes, dreamscapes and visions, and continuing to hope I know by next week what the hell my life will look like.
C'est le temps pour ma classe d'histoire d'Afrique. Au revoir.