lost in the fog
all this week i have passed in waves through the states of competent center of attention and despondent self-berating wreck. usually no one gets a look at the latter part. not even my counselor, this week. i told her about making it home in softball and about hammering out my insane schedule and about going tomorrow to d.c. travel. i hate to pack. i told her i went shopping with my mom and i went to the batting cage with my dad. i had caught up with david and i went to the lgbtq coalition welcome and i was going, indeed to the reception.
what i didn't say, and what i should have said, and what i forgot to say, is that i still feel like part of me is invisible. and not only do i get nervous but it's nearly impossible to control, and when it doesn't turn out like saturday, which was great and i should have gone out to lunch, it goes like tonight, where i bolt from the room like the house in eternal sunshine because it's after eight and everyone i've talked to is leaving, and i can't talk yet to that girl with brown eyes. colossally lame. it's a contingency i didn't actually think through.
but the guy at the quiznos was charming on purpose and the sales ladies at some department store chatted with my parents and gave kind opinions. i try to check myself when the deprecation starts; having other moments, like these, helps. and i forgot what i was going tonight. i should have been going for me. i don't know what i went for instead.
skool has started. everything is academic! also, there's been good blog life and the question of self-identification and ethos in blog comments, which i find quite interesting. there are more questions, but for later because they're in my written notes and it's late.
dr. crowley's class is holy crap amazing. i nearly cried today, and katie and kurtis both asked me if it's because it was so beautiful, but no. the class had just linked belief up with identity. really we were wondering how anyone is ever persuaded, if beliefs are so densely enmeshed. somebody or somebodies pointed out the articulation with identity and somebody else asked what was so threatening after all about changing your mind? does identity really depend on excluding an other as much as including you?
my eyes welled up and i was overwhelmed by the memory of my dad speaking viciously to me about the stereotype paper on which i had worked so hard and so sincerely, in which i had invested much of my identity and found, as it was submitted, evaluated, and applauded, that my identity was in fact changed by this piece of rhetorical analysis (or ideological criticism), which i had given to both my parents upon request and which was not read by them until before this moment, which i recall. my dad spit venom about stupid liberal tolerance, and why isn't what he thinks tolerated? so what?
it had nothing to do with my paper. it not only missed the looming liberal mark but it struck me instead and on more than an argumentative level--clearly, here i sat replaying this awful moment and wanting to tell my class that i didn't know why it was so threatening but that i had become in that moment the other to my dad's identity and it was not only scary and hurtful but it still was. and that's why i couldn't tell them. i'm on the verge of tears even now.
but i'm taking fun home again while i travel, so everyone hope and pray i don't get into trouble and also that i survive this with pride and not the confused vertiginous shift that characterizes me those time when i don't get to think enough first.
what i didn't say, and what i should have said, and what i forgot to say, is that i still feel like part of me is invisible. and not only do i get nervous but it's nearly impossible to control, and when it doesn't turn out like saturday, which was great and i should have gone out to lunch, it goes like tonight, where i bolt from the room like the house in eternal sunshine because it's after eight and everyone i've talked to is leaving, and i can't talk yet to that girl with brown eyes. colossally lame. it's a contingency i didn't actually think through.
but the guy at the quiznos was charming on purpose and the sales ladies at some department store chatted with my parents and gave kind opinions. i try to check myself when the deprecation starts; having other moments, like these, helps. and i forgot what i was going tonight. i should have been going for me. i don't know what i went for instead.
skool has started. everything is academic! also, there's been good blog life and the question of self-identification and ethos in blog comments, which i find quite interesting. there are more questions, but for later because they're in my written notes and it's late.
dr. crowley's class is holy crap amazing. i nearly cried today, and katie and kurtis both asked me if it's because it was so beautiful, but no. the class had just linked belief up with identity. really we were wondering how anyone is ever persuaded, if beliefs are so densely enmeshed. somebody or somebodies pointed out the articulation with identity and somebody else asked what was so threatening after all about changing your mind? does identity really depend on excluding an other as much as including you?
my eyes welled up and i was overwhelmed by the memory of my dad speaking viciously to me about the stereotype paper on which i had worked so hard and so sincerely, in which i had invested much of my identity and found, as it was submitted, evaluated, and applauded, that my identity was in fact changed by this piece of rhetorical analysis (or ideological criticism), which i had given to both my parents upon request and which was not read by them until before this moment, which i recall. my dad spit venom about stupid liberal tolerance, and why isn't what he thinks tolerated? so what?
it had nothing to do with my paper. it not only missed the looming liberal mark but it struck me instead and on more than an argumentative level--clearly, here i sat replaying this awful moment and wanting to tell my class that i didn't know why it was so threatening but that i had become in that moment the other to my dad's identity and it was not only scary and hurtful but it still was. and that's why i couldn't tell them. i'm on the verge of tears even now.
but i'm taking fun home again while i travel, so everyone hope and pray i don't get into trouble and also that i survive this with pride and not the confused vertiginous shift that characterizes me those time when i don't get to think enough first.