i can't feel you anymore

a time for family gatherings

note: above perspective not shared by all, but rather, well, lone.

masking the gap

"The rich and the poor no longer live in two nations, at least not socially. Economic divisions may be more pronounced than ever, but we support the same football teams, watch the same television programmes, go to the same movies. Mass culture is for everyone, not just the masses." Lulled by the celebritariat

Somewhat ironically, in the same publication a rather ignorant article (though worth reading for the data despite the author's neglect to analyze its implications to their fullest) promotes the benefits of meritocracy (via the growth of online gaming networks) and how industry can instantaneous collect this data to better gear their products to the consumer (who is so generously referred to by the "father of virtual economics" as the "hairless monkey"):

"From Castronova’s perspective, the fundamentally measurable and manipulable nature of electronic media means that the time for setting theories and ideals above practical observations is now largely gone. It is no longer possible to pretend that you can change what people are like or, indeed, what they like. It’s all about using what you know."

This comment is never directly addressed. Giving itself over so blatantly to the mass of mediocrity's demands, the online gaming industry only further imitates existing industries' thirst for exploitation of interests, but with the innovative advantage of immediate adaptation of the product, which as a byproduct inhibits any chance of adaptation or growth of the consumer. Why should one question one's ridiculous demands for base gratification when they are so readily catered? This mentality spreads far beyond the virtual world.

Instead the author praises the rediscovered sense of community found in playing online checkers on Facebook, never questioning why people feel the need to play such games online, denying themselves the intimacy of immediate conversation and sometimes drawing these games out ridiculously over the course of days depending on how often they sign in to their accounts. The virtual world of gaming and social networking might be becoming more "real" but only to the extent that it is increasingly modeling our consumer-driven capitalistic world, sweatshops and all. They bring profit to the few who excel at exploiting the masses' impulses and increased complacency to the many who are thought of as no more than the compiled statistics of their purchases, which they proudly list on their Facebook pages.

"Behind this micro-transaction model is the secret of these games companies’ success: data—and data of a kind that no other online business can match. The biggest online games companies now record more than 1bn data points every day, measuring everything from whether blue or red objects generate more sales to whether a certain phrasing improves the rate at which users click on a particular purchase. They can also see, for instance, exactly when the majority of players give up, and then release several subtle variations on that precise point to different segments of their audience, recording what works best and following it up with targeted email questionnaires. And games companies have only begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible. As Nicholas Lovell, an industry analyst, consultant and founder of the blog Gamesbrief, put it to me, “I can’t think of a single media company that couldn’t learn from the world of social and online games”—whether this is about the power of community, of precisely calibrated rewards, or of simply creating a virtual location so appealing that people will make it a part of their online lives."

Belittled into these statistics, every opinion is given equal weight and little thought is given to one's credentials or authority on a subject. Instead the perkiest voice gets the spotlight, so long as it is willing to promote the egalitarianism of the dollar. We are all equal now, and the comfort of knowing that our spokespeople are just as everyday as we are and that we are just as fashionable as they are, allows us to rest quietly, purchasing more and thinking less.

Cheers to a peachy future.

Rhinoceros

LOGICIAN: [to the OLD GENTLEMAN] Here is an example of a syllogism. The cat has four paws. Isidore and Fricot both have four paws. Therefore Isidore and Fricot are cats.

OLD GENTLEMAN: [to the LOGICIAN] My dog has got four paws.

LOGICIAN: [to the OLD GENTLEMAN] Then it's a cat.

BERENGER: [to JEAN] I've barely got the strength to go on living. Maybe I don't even want to.

OLD GENTLEMAN: [to the LOGICIAN, after deep reflection] So then logically speaking, my dog must be a cat?

LOGICIAN: [to the OLD GENTLEMAN] Logically, yes. But the contrary is also true.

BERENGER: [to JEAN] Solitude seems to oppress me. And so does the company of other people.

JEAN: [to BERENGER] You contradict yourself. What oppresses you - solitude, or the company of others? You consider yourself a thinker, yet you're devoid of logic.

OLD GENTLEMAN: [to the LOGICIAN] Logic is a very beautiful thing.

LOGICIAN: [to the OLD GENTLEMAN] As long as it is not abused.

BERENGER: [to JEAN] Life is an abnormal business.

JEAN: On the contrary. Nothing could be more natural, and the proof is that people go on living.

BESENGER: There are more dead people than living. And their numbers are increasing. The living are getting rarer.

* * *

Within scattered dying cells (as if to pass this knowledge on to the newer ones before they expire) an urge to remark upon the various posted quotes rumbles, nearly mistakable for indigestion. Yet all my mental reflections wisp about obtusely with every effort for transcription feeling forced and unfruitful. (Even so little as a single-lined e-mail feels forged.) I expressed this lamentation and the advice I received was to keep reading, keeping observing, keep taking in all this stimulus as feed - don't focus on the output as that is the natural outcome of all this intake. So I think of these posts (with your patience) as me periodically dropping my underpants to see if anything comes out. With the right mix of nutrients, perhaps something solid, healthy, can be produced.

flowers

"It is the same universe from which he was excluded, as far away and inaccessible as the other, and it discloses totality because of its remoteness. This absences of connection with external reality is transfigured and becomes the sign of the demiurge's independence of his creation. He works at arm's length, he stands clear of the object he is sculpting. In the realm of the imaginary, absolute impotence changes sign and becomes omnipotence. " Sartre on Genet

the distance prolonged

10.27.09 | a snapshot



11.4.09 | a mood

"thick in consistency, cold and dry in temperament"

11.5.09 | an excerpt

...why can't I let moments pass, ebb and flow according to their transitory nature? Again, I find within myself a desire to cling, even after the moment has peaked and begun its ever diminishing descent, still I try to preserve through delirium an image no longer consistent with its reality. Can it be fixed, or more critically, should it be fixed? I flail frantically, trying to assert control over my environment instead of allowing events to flow naturally. If I am inherently solitary why do I so desperately yearn for intimacy through connection with another individual - is this desire not contradictory? Maybe I still have the instinctual inclination to interact with my surrounding, to exist physically, palpably, but experiencing this transfer through some single, targeted entity is all that I can handle, the limit of my character. This is probably in part falsified and the aversion is really controlled by some inherent fear, or rather that the desire for more is so faint that it conversely feels the other way 'round whereby any inclination I have for more is only a manifestation of a social pressure, a desire to emulate the behavior of others who appear similar but are not the same.

[By chance today...

the video origin of accompanied stills.]

I am attempting to experience all of life through a single human channel, but why through the medium of another and not experience life raw on my own? Always this need for a filter, as if I am by nature too susceptible to be so naked with life. How can I build up the necessary callouses when always wearing gloves? This experience with life is not provoked by an inclination to interact with a vast world but is only used vainly to further dissect my own behavior, to manifest some sort of outpouring that would give my being a sense of sincerity, a genuineness that would make it appear more tangible, less tender. Such guile. I am becoming too vague, getting lost within my own skewed tendencies, protectively obscuring by words, not clarified...

the animations of Yuriy Norshteyn

Hedgehog in the Fog (1975)





Tale of Tales (1979)
Part 1 of 4

Translations of verses can be found
on the corresponding Wikipedia page.

"If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you're an idiot." Umberto Eco

"...the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended..."

8/27:

Released... a six month probation on a deferred sentence.

9/8 - 11/11 (?):

भारत गणराज्य

The location was chosen somewhat arbitrarily. Shock treatment. I plan to write a great deal, but I am unsure how accessible internet will be. Some text and images may find their way here.

in arms... the trial run

"Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home. But again, I think I knew, at the very bottom of my heart, exactly what I was doing..." James Baldwin

try, try again

"When you stop to examine the way in which words are formed and uttered, our sentences are hard put to it to survive the disaster of their slobbery origins. The mechanical effort of conversation is nastier and more complicated than defecation. That corolla of bloated flesh, the mouth, which screws itself up to whistle, which sucks in breath, contorts itself, discharges all manner of viscous sounds across a fetid barrier of decaying teeth - how revolting! Yes that is what we are adjured to sublimate into an ideal. It's not easy. Since we are nothing but packages of tepid, half-rotted viscera, we shall always have trouble with sentiment." Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Of weeks past

and those to come.

Currently.

An equilibrium to regain. Writing to resume gradually.

she with nothing, bares all

i've locked myself in the bathroom. i sit here on the floor somewhere between tears, ready to break, ready to let go. i don't know where to go. i don't trust anyone. i want intimacy but deem everyone and everything inadequate. i am inadequate. i project my shortcomings onto the world. i want the world to go away, but it cannot. i still cannot pacify the urge to end my life. it seems the only way. i am alone. i can't stand being alone. i want them to go away. i can't stand their constant presence. everything aggitates me - all ends the same. i want to rest. i need to rest. i can hear her outside the door - the pages flipping. i can hear the other one through the wall - the television regurgitating. the hostility across the hall lingers in my mind. the outburst so slight but the preceeding build-up required little instigation. i need space, air, but i am still here.

i never call anyone. i never IM anyone. i haven't returned or written an e-mail in months. i lock myself away, embarrassed, only socializing with those who haven't seen through the facade. she called me hypocritical and condescending. i can't satisfy the expectations. i can't help but want to finalize our separation. i can't make myself understood. is it worth the frustration? should i have to justify myself to her? to them? i have enough. i have enough to disappear on. what holds me still here? my creative efforts are frustrated, impotent, not enough to survive upon. i am prepared to give up the crippling securities that bound me to this repetition, but i've yet to decide upon any direction. i will carry on without.

* * *

i don't want to delude myself into thinking he could be my out. am i stalled or am i learning? he is a messenger, not a means. but can i trust him enough, let go enough to be so candid? my clumsy journey, i don't ask enough.

i have nothing; i am prepared

“I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another
or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid
to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake,
and perhaps as long as eternity too.”

Vinni Puh and more views

I grew up as a latchkey kid, where my mother expected me to come home immediately after school and (as a hermit herself) didn't like me leaving the house in general. Left predominantly on my own, I became a cartoon junkie, and even today if I have to spend time "socializing" with family in front of a television, I'd rather be watching cartoons with the kids than whatever sitcom, melodrama, or sports game the adults select.

Of course the below aren't the cartoons I grew up on, as they're all in Russian, but they are new-to-me discoveries I was recently shown. With very few exceptions, most popular cartoons today are horrid, trying to be way too trendy and relying excessively on pop culture references to lure in so-called adult audiences ($). They have such an enormous lack imagination in both narrative and style and very few people seem to be the least bit concerned, if they even notice the loss - just look at the animation of Junior and Karlson (the second one below) to see what kids are missing today with the advent of CGI and computer programmers taking the role of animation artists.

Vinni Puh Part 1 of 2
Eeyore is even more wondrously morose in Russian!




Junior and Karlson Part 1 of 2
a Swedish children's book series but a Russian cartoon




There Once Was a Dog

distracted

"They are lonely; the spirit of their writing and conversation is lonely; they repel influences; they shun general society; they incline to shut themselves in their chamber in the house, to live in the country rather than in the town, and to find their tasks and amusements in solitude. Society, to be sure, does not like this very well; it saith, Whoso goes to walk alone, accuses the whole world; he declareth all to be unfit to be his companions; it is very uncivil, nay, insulting; Society will retaliate. Meantime, this retirement does not proceed from any whim on the part of these separators; but if any one will take pains to talk with them, he will find that this part is chosen both from temperament and from principle; with some unwillingness, too, and as a choice of the less of two evils; for these persons are not by nature melancholy, sour, and unsocial, — they are not stockish or brute, — but joyous; susceptible, affectionate; they have even more than others a great wish to be loved." Emerson

A sort of friend of mine remarked how good it was that I prioritized a boy this past Sunday over my studies, as if to say that this is progress, that this is me returning to life via triviality. But alas, I cannot amalgamate the two: I know not how to seek in everyday life that which is most important to me. No, this opportunity reeks of self-destruction, yet only in reflection. Why hesitate? My moods are no less volatile, only subdued in their restored secrecy.

I cannot make myself known.

[Incoherence will continue until I can restore my habit. Soon.]

slice

"I wanted only to try to live in accord with
the promptings which came from my true self.
Why was that so very difficult?"

the charlatan buried or i remember now

One year Sunday.Omnipresent urge; volition wained.Perhaps I blew my chance.Monday, not enough.Two hour flood/no result.Returns.A new self, constraints!, but a new old self, a release.Hummus.The urge subsides.I remember.Ten years ago.

Lucidity will return with next entry. Stop.



Doodling.


Scratching.

some neat lithographs of Ulysses from the James Joyce Museum in Sandycove

(click images for detail)

a pictoral itinerary (or excuses for lack of output / visibility)

present - 2/10:

in seclusion, a burgeoning, in haste, not enough. panic.

2/11 - 2/20:

abroad. don't get caught, don't panic. everything is fine.

2/23:

"and what makes you think you're worthy of escape?"

2/24 - 2/27:

cog work continued

2/28 - 3/1:

passes purchased!

March:

a return to the sick room for further observation.
output resumes.

perhaps something grand

Blog(s) is/are on hiatus temporarily: a small and distant light flickers in the darkness and draws me near. I will return in about a month, though sooner if I am wrong.

And to your right...

you'll notice I added another gadget. Since I'm not actually concocting my own recipes from scratch and my apartment is too under-lit for decent food photography (yes, I blame the light and not my junk skillz (no, that's not a typo, I'm just feeling that dork at the moment)), I've decided to just create a list of links to whatever recipes I do try, accompanied by my own succinct commentary, instead of devoting entire blog entries to them.

a lot can be done when one is avoiding doing what needs to be done.

I scapegoat my loneliness as an inability to find people of similar disposition, but in actuality it is solely the product of a hindrance in communication on my part, an inability to find a satisfactory or effective means of self-expression, which has no relevance to the existence or non-existence of others.

My thoughts drift today to my grandfather's life. A month or so before I was born he suffered a severe stroke, which completely paralyzed half his body and reduced his effective vocabulary to less than a hundred words (many of them curses). It took him nearly a year to relearn how to walk just enough to move from the TV den to the bathroom, a process which took most people just ten seconds but for him could take up to ten minutes. Any retelling of my birth is always associated with the story of how my father took me to his father, who was still in the hospital, hoping that the sight of a new grandchild would bring him joy, only to have my grandfather burst into tears refusing to pick me up for fear of dropping me. Once, as teenagers, my sister asked if it bothered me that my age was always associated with our grandfather's stroke. Prior to that I had never really noticed that every birthday I celebrated with my father's family was always accompanied by a sigh as someone would inevitably mention aloud that he/she couldn't believe that it had been X amount of years since Grampie got sick, and everyone would fall into a hush, drifting away into his/her own thoughts.

My grandfather spent the entirety of his waking hours in front of the television, usually cursing at the Cubs game after game. The few times they reached the playoffs I would always silently root for them, indifferent to my distaste for baseball, because I knew it would bring a moment of happiness for my grandfather's otherwise frustrated life. (And of course, never once did they win.) In fact my grandfather spent much of his post-stroke life in a hostile state, bored, immobilized, and unable to communicate. There were few things he needed, and he could generally point or mutter a single syllable to my grandmother and she would dutifully drop whatever she was doing to fetch him another beer, a new ice cube for his cranberry juice, or the TV guide. Whenever she or anyone else could not interpret what he was asking for, he would get frustrated, unable to remember the appropriate word, and start cursing as the person listed off thing after thing, guessing at what he was trying to say. Sometimes the person would get it right and he'd smile, but much of the time he'd give up, turning his gaze back to the television.

My interaction with him as a child was minimal but never awkward. The only memory I have of him laughing whole-heartedly was when we were watching Tom & Jerry cartoons together. My grandmother would host Christmas Eve every year, always making my grandfather come out and sit with the family as we opened presents before dinner. Unable to follow the various conflicting conversations, he would look across the room towards me and my sister playing, and with his good hand make the gesture of a gun and shoot us both as we'd drop to the floor, staging our melodramatic death scenes; however, we would always recover quickly, gang up on him, pressing our imaginary triggers, and he would slump his head slightly over with eyes closed, limply sticking out his tongue as we both giggled away.

For sixteen years my grandmother acted more as nurse than wife to him, washing him, dressing him, and cutting up his food for him, until she too suffered the same stroke, on the same side of the body. I can't imagine how that was for my grandfather, to see her suddenly paralyzed, unable to help her, unable to call 9-1-1. He screamed and stomped until the downstairs neighbors used the spare key to see what the commotion was over. My grandmother died a week later in the hospital.

For almost two years the family tried to divvy up the task of care-taking. My father and his sister, both divorced and overworked, lived in distant suburbs, making it an arduous ordeal to come visit or help out, though not for lack of trying. My sister helped out as best she could but was also attending college in the city and dealing with her toughest year in nursing school. I, only recently having obtained my driver's license and still considered the baby of the family, was willing to do more but was generally dismissed as too young and told that focusing on school was more important. Somewhat luckily, my lone cousin, unemployed and directionless, moved into the apartment, playing Xbox at all hours to my grandfather's playful annoyance, but otherwise providing the unfeigned needed support.

Usually my sister and I would go together to spend time with him and help out, but generally after a few hours he'd look at us and say, "go". We'd intermittently battle with him with pouts, smiles, and shrugs as our weapons but he would keep trying to shoo us away. I'm the only person in the family who never knew my grandfather prior to his stroke. Like his three brothers, he followed in his father's footsteps and became a Chicago policeman. He worked as an undercover narc during the '60s and '70s, and my father remembers him as a very quiet, proud, and dauntingly serious man. Being incapacitated and having his granddaughters spend their Saturday night watching over him was often too much of a humiliation for him to bear. I remember one time, when my sister was too busy studying for a major test, I went over there by myself to make him dinner and watch the ballgame, excited to be helping out on my own. I walked in with a smile and he looked at me confused. When I told him my plans to stay he got upset, shaking his head and telling me to leave. I battled with him until he finally made a gun gesture with his hand and pointed it to his temple, saying "shoot me". I immediately turned around to walked out of the room and went into the kitchen, crying silently. I made dinner for us, went back in and stayed with him for as long he would let me.

My grandfather lived another eight years, being moved into a number of assisted living homes closer in distance to his two children all the while maintaining a horrible temper, which erupted into many staff phone calls to his children, nearly getting him kicked out a few times. Slowly his health deteriorated into further unthinkable states. He died two weeks before my twenty-fourth birthday.

I didn't mean to drag this out into forlorn details, which probably was unnecessary and I'll most likely lament my doing so later (as I've never held any of this open for conversation), but with everything going on with my family right now, I can't help but drift away in such reflections. I have a lot of apprehensions about marriage, family, growing old gracefully, etc. that consistently get me labeled as a pessimistic, commitment-phobe. If a conversation about having children ever came up with a serious boyfriend, I would always say no, with the excuse that I knew I couldn't handle taking care of a child by myself (as my mother for the most part did). Whenever the possibility of marriage comes up (however whimsically), I immediately think to myself, would I be willing to care for this suitor for sixteen years if he were to take ill? Threats of such extreme sacrifice linger in my head whenever considering potential long-term decisions involving others that I do not take them light-heartedly. I have so many ambitions that I want to accomplish as an individual, and my own self-doubts already occupy so much of my struggle, that I do my best not to take on further responsibilities without feeling willing to commit myself to them completely. This isn't fear, my friends, this is knowing what I want.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::random eavesdrop:

DANSE RUSSE

If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,--
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
again the yellow drawn shades,--

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

- William Carlos Williams

recurrences and gaps

It's snowing outside. I have a window seat, and my cafe is wondrously empty. I have consumed the best oatmeal (fluff-tastic!) with dried cranberries and I don't plan on leaving until well after dark, to spend the day in the solitude (amid people - my urban addiction) of my own thoughts and putting those thoughts to paper (or screen rather - my technology addiction). I spent yesterday evening with friends and there was a sense of insincerity, a boredom, penetrating the entire evening, as if we all felt we needed to be there, as if we were avoiding an emptiness of which we did not want to speak of, but that emptiness was all the more obviated by the awkwardness of each other's company. I felt it in each of us but I am unsure if they all felt it within themselves.


The End of Solitude (my oatmeal morning read):

"Under those circumstances, the Internet arrived as an incalculable blessing. We should never forget that. It has allowed isolated people to communicate with one another and marginalized people to find one another. The busy parent can stay in touch with far-flung friends. The gay teenager no longer has to feel like a freak. But as the Internet's dimensionality has grown, it has quickly become too much of a good thing. Ten years ago we were writing e-mail messages on desktop computers and transmitting them over dial-up connections. Now we are sending text messages on our cellphones, posting pictures on our Facebook pages, and following complete strangers on Twitter. A constant stream of mediated contact, virtual, notional, or simulated, keeps us wired in to the electronic hive — though contact, or at least two-way contact, seems increasingly beside the point. The goal now, it seems, is simply to become known, to turn oneself into a sort of miniature celebrity. How many friends do I have on Facebook? How many people are reading my blog? How many Google hits does my name generate? Visibility secures our self-esteem, becoming a substitute, twice removed, for genuine connection. Not long ago, it was easy to feel lonely. Now, it is impossible to be alone.

"As a result, we are losing both sides of the Romantic dialectic. What does friendship mean when you have 532 'friends'? How does it enhance my sense of closeness when my Facebook News Feed tells me that Sally Smith (whom I haven't seen since high school, and wasn't all that friendly with even then) 'is making coffee and staring off into space'? My students told me they have little time for intimacy. And of course, they have no time at all for solitude."

"Boredom is not a necessary consequence of having nothing to do, it is only the negative experience of that state. Television, by obviating the need to learn how to make use of one's lack of occupation, precludes one from ever discovering how to enjoy it. In fact, it renders that condition fearsome, its prospect intolerable. You are terrified of being bored — so you turn on the television."

I rarely ever feel bored when alone; whenever panic does strike it is only in the sense that I am wasting my time frivolously. Is this pole any better of an affliction? Is its cause not of the same source? I can't breathe without a heavy dose of solitude but I don't think that condemns me to be alone; the distinction is crucial.

This could be an interesting read.

There is a class at Wash. U. this semester on Joyce's Ulysses and I am surrounded by five or so people reading it at different tables. For some reason I find this to be a comforting addition to the ambiance here. The pair at the table adjacent to me breaks their individual work so that the man (who has already read the novel) can ask his friend (who's reading the novel) that if she ever figures out who the man in the macintosh coat is that she has to tell him, as he's been dying to figure that one out. This somehow shifts to a conversation on the works Henry James.

I keep to myself, enjoying the momentary drift of eavesdropping, but hoping that the conversation doesn't last too long so I can get back to my own work.

And I see this man's name all the time yet never get around to reading anything by or about him to a great enough extent that I actually retain it.

I recently (and finally!) bought a collection of Emerson essays. I sleep with it but I've yet to crack it open. I'm waiting until my feet dangle upon the edge, as they inevitably tend to do, looking downward upon a desperate end. Only then will I open it up and feel my center of gravity shift gently backwards, and I will fall away from harm to marvel upon a warm blue sky.

intimacy

Again, I'm having apprehensions about the direction I want to take this blog (as if the minimal amount of posts, mostly consisting of me quoting other texts, didn't already give that away). Something happened over winter break, which I have not discussed with anyone (not even with those involved since it occurred), and although I am finally settling back into everyday living, I can only assume that it is only a matter of time before this looming cloud strikes another storm. In the meantime, I have begun devoting a significant part of my free time to a certain task, which I have no interest in discussing due to my own superstitions (though this effort could prove suddenly futile within a matter of weeks). So as much as I use writing as a means of making sense of what's going on in my life, I am hesitant about doing so here for fear of my own tendency of repetitious exhibitionism. I generally enjoy open discussion and the imposed self-censorship in these two respects has rendered me a bit blank as to what exactly I can and should discuss here.

Earlier today I wrote an e-mail to a friend. We try to write each other daily, but sometimes can go weeks where one's too busy at work to write back. Since his last e-mail somewhat finished the subject we had been discussing back and forth, I started another tangent conversation. I'm posting an excerpt containing this portion purely because I haven't written anything even mildly thoughtful here in what seems to be months. I had wanted to touch upon this topic in depth for some time now, but just haven't felt in the mood to do so. Even now, I find myself too exhausted and instead cheat by tossing in text that was used for something else and only scratches upon the surface-level questions of a topic I would like to explore further. Perhaps a few more e-mails with my friend will yield conclusions less obvious.

Something I've been mulling over recently… what types of roles do your friends play in your life / what do you expect out of someone to consider them a friend (versus just as an acquaintance or co-worker/collaborator, etc.)? Perhaps I'm trying to be too rigid in my definitions instead of just accepting my relationships with people as they come and go. Or perhaps I'm becoming too demanding of people that aren't meeting my tacit expectations (which is such a stereotypical female fault that I can't help but cringe whenever I do catch myself acting so). I'm not sure what in particular instigated this sentiment, but I find myself incredibly disappointed lately in my relationships with other people. Everybody seems so busy within their own lives (myself included of course) that they hardly ever seem to have time to connect with one another. I meet up with my one girl friend maybe about once a month nowadays and we spend so much of our conversations just playing catch up on tedious enumerations of what's been going on in our lives since we last met up that genuine discourse (and thereby connection) never actually occurs. My least favorite question: what's new? It drives me nuts to be asked this by friends and I'm not completely sure why. Perhaps because underlining that question is just how disconnected we've become - that conversation no longer flows out naturally but has to be forced out through a vague request. And why does there have to be anything new? It irritates me so much that I've started purposely withholding information from her as if to say (again, tacitly), what right do you have to know what's going on in my life if you choose not to make yourself a part of it? But then, how much of an effort have I made to maintain our friendship since she moved in with her boyfriend? I'll stereotype some more and admit that I've consistently avoided befriending girls that seek marriage and children as key components to their future happiness because I've noticed how much everything (and everyone) else becomes a far lower priority, i.e. used to fill in the down time or to break up the routine. (More accurately though, I have a tendency of avoiding interaction with females in general for reasons that go beyond the present topic.) I see a number of my friendships disintegrating in a similar fashion: lunch dates, dinner dates, tag voicemails, all initiated upon the temporal excuse that it's been so long since we've caught up! (Ergh, did I use "temporal" correctly? I'm too lazy to decide myself.) I've never been one to have acquaintances (part of my excessive all or nothing, perfectionist nature), but as we all get older and more involved within our little, separated worlds that's what our interactions are resolving into. Even the new people I've met in recent months, and within the past couple of years, seem to desire nothing more than going out to dinner or going to a concert or anything so long as we're doing something, where conversation about our thoughts or our emotions are reserved for the down time after we've already exhausted talking about how our week was. Are relationships (of the bf/gf variety) the only form of intimacy (of the emotional variety) adults desire to achieve? Again, I'm probably misdirecting my frustration, accusing human interaction itself instead of my own inability to bring up such topics at random if they truly are what I want to talk about, but such topics can't really be brought up at random without sounding awkward or forced, no? If we still lived in the same city and didn't interact so primarily through e-mail, would our friendship have dissolved similarly? Would your being now married have actually had affect (effect?) on our friendship in that case as well? (As I don't think it has changed anything here.) Maybe I just need to convert all my in-person friendships into asynchronous text-based interactions as the solution. ;-)

This is another quote, related in my own thoughts though maybe not so readily with what's given here, that I meant to elaborate upon but didn't trust myself to do so level-headed, but perhaps it speaks for itself: "To help a friend in need is easy, but to give him your time is not always opportune." (This is taken from Chaplin's autobiography actually.)

It feels kind of like this:



Maybe I've hesitated on these subjects because I suspect my own thoughts to be so considerably skewed. Maybe that is why I instead look for insights from others.

checking in

I've nearly got my new laptop all loaded. I even swapped out hard drives and finally managed to get my new "superior" wireless router configured and secured. However, in one of my psychotic fits I did manage to leave all my dead laptop's data at my mom's house, but hopefully it will be shipped to me soon. (I miss my web bookmarks!) I'm still trying to play catch-up, so it's gonna be awhile before blogging resumes to its original/new capacities. Until then, one last cooking blog since I seem to be occupying much of my time lately cooking and recipe hunting.

Chickpea Broccoli Casserole:

Not exactly the most visually appetizing dish. Although simplistic in flavors it's great comfort food. The recipe is from, again, VEGAN WITH A VENGEANCE; it's super easy to make and the mashed chickpeas work as a good protein source for making casseroles.

Blueberry Coffeecake:

This is probably my favorites recipe out of VEGAN WITH A VENGEANCE so far. I slyly left it in the break room at work when I came in in the morning and the vultures devoured it with impressive speed. Even the co-workers who knew I made it, and therefore were suspicious of its ingredients, enjoyed it without complaint, well, except for the one who is allergic to walnuts (an ingredient I neglected to mention when he asked what was in it), but I'm sure the slight lisp he developed for the remainder of the day was totally worth it! Next time I'll add more blueberries and cinnamon. It wasn't quite as sweet as I would have liked it to have been but that may be due to the fact that I was slightly short of the required amount of maple syrup listed.

Brazilian Stew:

This is sooooooooooo good. And I don't think it's just because it's passed 3pm and I haven't eaten yet today. (I'm writing this as I wait for my second bowl's worth to cool down enough to eat.) The recipe is from Show Me Vegan, a cooking (and St. Louis) resource I'm very much enjoying recently. Who knew coconut milk and beer could be so good together?! For that matter, who knew beer could be good. Cilantro is one of my favorite herbs; I especially enjoy it in Vietnamese cooking but most of the best dishes at the local Vietnamese restaurants that pack in the herb are not vegetarian friendly. My mind is already fluttering with ingredients I can add and subtract to make even better variants.

the cooking fiend

At least being without a computer for the next two weeks gives me more time to focus on my goal of improving my very limited cooking skills. I have a few cookbooks and a sundry stack of printed recipes that I will be working from. So to begin, I finally cracked the binding and spilled all sorts of ingredients upon my copy of Vegan with a Vengeance. I saw this book referenced repeatedly when I was searching through vegetarian blogs for recipes, so I figured it should be a pretty good place to start. Below are my first three tries. (Since the recipes are under copyright and I followed them to a tee, I won't post them, but the book's easy enough to find.)

Lemon Gem Cupcakes:

I brought these to the annual holiday party at work, which I usually ditch but I had to make up time for the week. The initial batch of lemon frosting tasted like frosted urine, so I had to make another batch sans lemon juice. The real test was what my carnivorous co-workers thought of my vegan dessert: two mentioned an odd aftertaste, which I didn't notice when I tried them. I can only guess that either the soy or rice milk are the culprit, since both can taste a bit odd if one is not already used to them. Otherwise, there was surprisingly little complaint.

Moroccan Tagine with Spring Vegetables:

Yes, this is me trying to plate my food in a pleasing manner so it doesn't look like a heap of underexposed slop. Well, it still kind of does, but this is far more presentable than the plate I actually ate from. As for the entrée itself, apprehensively I took all the seeds and white interior out of the serrano chile, which ended up rendering it useless. Next time I'll add more heat to it, but otherwise it made for a set of yummy lunches to bring to work this week... the more lemon the better!

Corn Chowder:

I just made this one tonight. This time I used the two jalapeños as suggested and it came out WAY too spicy. I'm still not sure how I'm going to try and neutralize them out, but otherwise the soup tastes pretty good. Yeah, I probably shouldn't have squeezed the lime before adding it as garnish (kind of looks like a green millipede crawling into a grave of yellowy-orange goo... mmm!).