The Laursonian Institute

Picks up her new computer tomorrow – thank you, research grant!

September 16th, 2009 | Tags: twitter | Category: life | Comments Off

Alright, so I’ve got a huge crush on Sean Nelson.  I’ve been in this state of being all 8th-grade-y about it for weeks.  And I’m okay with that.  I know that it’s neither unhealthy nor permanent, so I’m sitting it out for the time being.  And really, there’s something sort of pleasant and amusing about having someone you don’t know and can’t know occupy your waking thoughts.  At other times, it’s extremely frustrating.  There’s something especially maddening about following a Twitter feed that seems impossibly intimate and also unreal.   Worst of all, this is pretty much the only worthwhile information out there.  When I was younger, I really could spend whole days digging up information about my then-crush Soundgarden (as a whole organism) and reading about them, looking at pictures, hunting down bootlegs, and the like.  When you’re 26, and it’s a fairly obscure band, the searches aren’t so fruitful, and the internet runs out of the informational opium that both stokes and tamps the fire.

Like the nerd I’ve always been, this is a data crush like all the rest.  Obsessing over Soundgarden was always less about seeing Chris Cornell shirtless than gathering an impossible amount of factoids.  Then, when you suspend your disbelief a hair, it’s almost – almost – like you know the band.  I once had a dream that Kim Thayil and Chris Cornell came over to my house and I fed them lemonade and we hung out in my back yard.  This is the very pinnacle of crush success – a dream that fulfills my every fantasy.  I don’t lust after physical encounters – I lust after people I respect enjoying my company and friendship.  It’s ego-masturbatory.  It’s the fantasy that I’m an interesting, worthwhile person.  It’s the fantasy of being completely comfortable in social situations, even those in which I should probably be more star-struck than cool.  And it’s the fantasy that I can be part of something I’ve completely lost, but still feels so elemental to my composition – Seattle rock music.

This morning, I had my lemonade-analogous dream about Sean Nelson.  The dream had lots of parts, but the meat of it was that I Sean and I were in the same class, oddly at UCLA.  Actually, it was Steve Luck’s, and he was teaching cognitive neuroscience, and I think several other Seattle rock figureheads were in the class as well.  Anyway, I tripped in front of Sean after class (admittedly a ruse to get his attention) and he helped me off the ground.  We ended up hitting it off, and walked to where ever we were going together.  We had lots of witty repartee, and I did a great job of not seeming like I wanted to hang out that much.  He tried to take me on a shortcut through campus somewhere that involved climbing up a big bridge/tunnel, and then back down the other side.  Unfortunately, the other side didn’t let us off at ground level, but spiraled further and further underground until we were in this big cavern and it was too steep to get back out the way we came.  This is where it gets a little Goonies-esque, as the cavern contained only a rickety old piano.  So Sean played a little piano (nothing in particular) and three doors opened up behind us.  This is as close as it gets to lusty – I pecked him on the cheek, realized it was really awkward, and apologized profusely.  We walked into the only one of the doors that had any light coming out, and ended up in a basement apartment full of sunshine, and no one home.  We opened another door (in the apartment) and found a bunch of old-timey vagabonds in something like a cave saloon.  Turns out there’s a whole underground city (presumably subterranean Los Angeles) of people who were trapped there forever.  We had to give up our cell phones and money as means of barter, but then decided we would try to walk out of the cave instead of settling there.  And then I woke up.

I’ve been sort of miserable about this all day.  It was such a perfect dream in that I behaved all calm, cool, and collected, and someone I really admire found me worthy of his company.  And that’s all there is to it.  I have to wake up and tell myself that I can do that with all the people actually in my life, and that there’s nothing particularly worth knowing about any of these famous people I sometimes settle on.  They’re just people too, and given that I’m rather picky about my friends, there’s no telling that I’d get along with any of these people.  But something about being human, about the nature of celebrity, about fame and notability and desirability, dictates that people you’d pay money to see are people you’d want to know.   And there just aren’t that many things in my life I really want, and really can’t and shouldn’t have.

I can’t think of any other time I crave the forbidden.  Not only will I never run into any of these people in normal circumstances, the amount of thought I’ve already put into it makes it taboo to even hope to try.  For these reasons, I can never say hello or get the autograph on anyone I really follow.  It’s the same reason I bought a Yuma, AZ hat (with a cartoon Wylie Coyote on it!) at a thrift store in Midway 10 years ago, that I’ve carried with me through several moves, and even brought to a number of concerts, but have never had the gall to ask Damien Jurado to sign it.  I’m sure Damien would be happy to sign it.   I’m just as sure it’s rather presumptuous to ask for any of his time.   And when it comes right down it it, I’ve done the one thing that is most likely to make it impossible to ever meet or run into any of the people I adore – I moved out of state 8 years ago.  I have not been a Washington resident in any capacity since I moved to England and my parents left the state – a full 4 years ago.  And I have no plans to move home; I’m in a PhD program and will be for the next 5 or 6 years.  And I’ll spend my time in California leading a completely happy, healthy, successful life.  And always feel a little bit like I’ve accidentally lost something that made me very happy – home.

September 10th, 2009 | Tags: crushes, dreams, home, music | Category: life | Comments Off

It’s been a while since I’ve written.  Just didn’t seem like daily blogging was the recipe for my summer.  But I did want to post a little recap of my Los Angeles vacation.  I wrote this on the train home.  Perhaps I’ll do another post of pictures from the road trip portion – I foolishly took none in LA except at the wedding!

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Amtrak.  Friday.  8:00 pm.  Somewhere between Salinas and San Jose.  Shaky writing, but done with a distinct feeling of relaxed self-satisfaction.

We should be in Davis in 4 hours or so, wrapping up our ludicrously successful vacation.  I can’t believe how much we’ve done.  Mom and Dad met us Davis last Saturday, and we drove to Tahoe to see Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and the Wiyos play.  It was a neat show – good to see Bob, and an excellent introduction to Willie.  mom was very pleased to be doing this for our anniversary / Lewis’ birthday.

Drove to Bishop the next day, and saw much beautiful scenery en route.  Bishop was extremely cute – a tiny town all alone in the high desert.  Next day we drove to San Diego via Mt. Whitney, which was quite a sight to see.  I was very impressed with the entire range there – starkly beautiful granite faces rising abruptly from the floor of the arid Owen’s Valley.  Also saw Mono Lake – beautiful but surprisingly alkaline, thus pungent and seemingly less-than-salubrious.  A lake best enjoyed photographically.

San Diego was nice per usual – saw grandparents & cousins, and had an above-average visit with Mom & Dad.  It’s good to have time to warm up to Mom; our visits lately have always been too short for me to overcome my testiness at being mothered.  This trip was just right.  Stayed something like three days and then caught the train up Friday to LA, where Lewis met me (he had gone up a day earlier for bachelor party fun).

First few days in LA were occupied primarily with wedding stuff.  Friday was the rehearsal and dinner.  It was a bit chaotic, as the pageantry of a conservative Jewish wedding is somewhat complicated.   Lewis and a bridesmaid, Meredith, were assigned the small balcony to decorate, which was serving as the retreat space required for the couple to have some minutes of quiet time between the ceremony and reception.  We spent the greater part of Saturday searching out materials (plates, food, a book of poetry) for their comfort.

That evening we had tickets to see Harvey Danger play at the Largo on their farewell tour.  The Largo seats only a few hundred people, but it’s a theater, so the set up was both intimate and somewhat awkward.  They have “a strict no talking policy”, and the whole timbre of the show was a little like the band playing a show in their own fantasy, and the audience looking in from outside.  They did not disappoint, however, and I spent a good portion of the show chuckling at Sean Nelson who was doing his best to be both amusing and acerbic.  The best part of the show was certainly the second half, in which they took requests only if properly prefaced by an “interesting question”.  The band’s working definition of “interesting” was quite strict, thus there was more mocking the audience than playing requests, and those questions which were answered rarely were done so with focus on veracity.  What made the night truly unforgettable was the after-show, in an as yet smaller theater.  We had great seats here, and the show took the form of a jam between friends – Sean did several songs accompanying himself on piano, and Shana Levy (ex Rilo Kiley) played.  The best sets were with Jon Bryon and an excellent pianist backing Sean, doing audience requests of classic rock songs – I remember “Maybe I’m Amazed” and the Monkee’s “Porpoise Song” specifically.  It was really wonderful, and left me feeling both touched and lucky.  Harvey Danger will be truly missed, but I can console myself with the knowledge that what I always loved most about Harvey was Sean, and I have no doubt he will remain in the public eye in some capacity.  (I also forgot to mention the hilarious introduction John Hodgman recorded for the band – a word-for-word copy of the introduction Bob Dylan is using on his tour!)

The following afternoon, we saw Gabe and Melanie get married.  The ceremony was beautiful, the weather fine, and the company superb.  All Lewis’ old roommates were present, and even happily attached to lovely girlfriends.  There was much bonding and dancing – we danced the horah for at least half an hour! This big group closed the night out – dancing till midnight and finally leaving out of pity for the exhausted bride and groom, and our own sore selves.  Both this night and the previous filled me with blissful, life-affirming thoughts and I felt more connected with life and love and the universe than I have in some time.

The remainder of our trip was occupied with seeing friends.  We met our old lab manager, Laura, on Melrose and shopped.  We moved in with Sepideh and Cyrus for a few nights, and spent very much quality time together.  Getting to know Sepi better first-hand was certainly one of the highlights of the trip.  She’s a truly kind and interesting person, and a very good friend to have.  We also managed a trip to Zankou Chicken + Amoeba to stock up on records.  Nearly the whole group of boys from the wedding was there, and it was really amusing to watch a group of music school kids all shopping together in the jazz section.  We had dinner with Sepi on Sawtell (tiny Japanese restaurant strip in West LA) and met Nick & Suzanne at Beard Papa to catch up.  Beard Papa has some seriously delicious cream puffs, and Nick Martin is one of the best conversationalists I’ve ever met.  We also managed to see Chris and Ashley for dinner.  He cooked us exciting Mexican fare – shrimp and cactus!

Finally, we finished up our week with Devin.  We went out to dim sum (in my old neighborhood!) at the Empress, and got coffee downtown.  Greg joined us for dinner at Father’s Office, which was delicious but somewhat snooty.  Greg & Dev were as always hilarious and I laughed a good deal all day.  Got to hear lots about Devin’s escapades as a somewhat newly outed gay man in West Hollywood, and Greg amused us with jokes on the same topic.  It’s lovely to have college friends still living in LA to remember good times with.

Life in LA was wonderful.  We saw campus – including the new cinema building, and even visited with our old advisor, Joyce!  Campus made me proud to be an alum, as did seeing all the neat things our fellow alumni are up to.  LA itself has changed remarkably little since we left.  We saw most all of our old haunts, and even ate at the Brite Spot twice!   I had to force myself not to pontificate on the wonders of LA and how much I love it’s streets, people, drivers, and scenery.  I saw with ease how we could come back some day for another extended portion of our lives – if we could ever get employment in the area.  LA is full of love and life in a way I never found in the Bay Area.  I am looking forward to coming home to Davis, but I do so knowing I left a piece of my heart in the streets of LA, and the smallest corner in Sean Nelson’s foppish breast pocket.

September 3rd, 2009 | Tags: concert, friends, happiness, la, travel, wedding | Category: life | Comments Off

I’m feeling so accomplished today!   Lewis and I finished the sprinkler project (except to fill the trenches back in), and I finished sewing my robe (which I’m wearing right now)!  In addition to that, we got a whole bunch of supplies at Ace, and I did a little patch work on our bed to make it less creaky.  Think we’re going to try and get a little donation fund going for Christmas this year to see if maybe we can’t collect enough money to help us buy a new mattress / box spring.   But for now, at least I’ve gotten the bed less rickety.  Also managed to make pizza for dinner (thanks to having frozen half a recipe’s worth of dough a while back).  And last but not least – Lewis and I sorta got a job today!  We stopped by campus to pick up Lewis’ TA paycheck, and ran in to Hawkins, who apparently had just been talking about us to the Dean and had us in mind for a project he wanted to get done.  Already some money from a “seed grant” he has secured, and all we need to do is figure out how to give his project some “web presence”.  In academic-talk, what that really means is setting up some portal page that at least had some text, some pictures, and a place to download relevant papers.  Shouldn’t be anything out of our league, and any money is welcome money!

August 5th, 2009 | Tags: crafts, garden, work | Category: home, life | Comments Off

I had a crew once.  You know, multiple people who all mutually enjoyed hanging out with each other.  Do you think you outgrow these?  Or did I just leave mine behind?  Can you find new ones?  And do I even want a new crew?  I’ve always been awkwardly self sufficient.

I’ve been getting some flack from people around here about being out of touch, not in contact enough.  I was doing dishes tonight and suddenly felt lonely.  And I called my sister, and felt better.  I realized this:  I very rarely get lonely enough to reach out.  I’m much more apt to keep myself busy and not lean on others because it feels like my troubles are my own troubles, which will go away in time, and no one else can fix.  There’s always one exception to this – there’s always one person and one person only I really want to help me.  It was Ban.  Then Steen.  Cerise.  Steen again!  Tiff.  Jess.  Armand.  Darin.   And now that I’m married, Lewis fills this spot permanently.  It’s not that my other friends were less loved or less appreciated or less needed, even.  Just that I seem to be only able to be really open with one person at a time.  And other than that, I’ve always been the one to receive calls from my friends who need someone to talk to – not the one who makes them.  I don’t want to be that person.  Which leaves me with what I’ve got – I miss having people close enough to me that I would call them just to say hi, and see what’s going on today.  I just don’t think there’s a way to forge these friendships without crisis.

I’ve only had three real crews – the Band, the YSIB set (of which I was more of a hanger-on), and my Russkiis.  The Band and the Russkiis both are formed out of tough times – friends from new schools, teenage years, learning to grow up together, to live life together.  I’m not in the market for someone to help me grow up – I have Lewis who is my partner in everything and is the only person I need or want to grow old with.  I suppose grad school is potentially one of those times we should all be super-bonding, but grad school is full of self-driven, independent, serious folks.  We only got where we are by not needing our hand being held.  It does not really breed people who need people.

Every day feels like I’m reading the preamble to the text of my life.  And that preamble tells me so much about myself, and so little that has any application to my life.  So I’m ready to admit I’ve always played as well alone as with others, and that most times playing alone is less stressful because you’ve got no one else to please. My friends will still always be bothered that I don’t call out of the blue.  I’m honest to goodness not ignoring anyone, I just have a very high threshold for a need for human contact.  I fully acknowledge this might perpetuate this lack of friend cohesion…

July 17th, 2009 | Tags: friendship, loneliness, socializing | Category: life | Comments Off

I want to be able to relax completely.  I always think that this necessitates my doing nothing so that I can stop and think through all the things I put aside while I’m busy.  It turns out, thinking stresses me out because I spiral into goodness-knows-where and the enormity of life engulfs my good intentions.

Today is one of those days, even though I have been doing a fair amount of work and I’m feeling sorta busy.  I wish I knew how to vanquish my pessimism.  I know, logically so, that my life is good, and that everything will turn out fine in both the short and long term of it.  I remain consumed with a feeling of inadequacy and inevitable failure.  Failure in both hind- and foresight.  Trapped in this irreconcilable middle, feeling as though I’ve screwed up my life so far, and I’m certainly not strong enough to change my own behavior, so I’ll screw up my future in the same way.  I vacillate between the two – the knowledge that I’m doing well by myself and that I’m exceeding the expectations of 20-somethings as a whole, but that in my specific circumstances I’m a poorly performing graduate student with no vision and no promise for the future.  Part of my inner self knows that I’m well suited, like my mother, for a variety of mundane tasks – secretary stuff, administrative stuff, organizational stuff – and that sometimes makes me feel like I’m an office worker trapped in grad school.  As though getting this PhD is proving something irrelevant to myself, and that I’ll take my doctoral title and go back to making photocopies for somebody I find illogical or incapable in a company whose business philosophy is retarded at best.  Yet that I have some sort of quixotic martyrical desires and, while frustrating, this work would be fulfilling.  Somehow trying to make my own career in a subject I think is fascinating seems irresponsible, and that what I really need to be doing is settling down, having a steady job, and starting a family.

My aggravation with this thought pattern seeps into every little nook.  I seethe at my perception of peoples’ expectations of me.  I shy away from opportunities to make good impressions.  I ignore the work I know I have to do, because doing it at all seems like such a futile endeavor when I feel as though I’m just pretending to be some kind of promising academic.  I’ll end up selling everyone’s hopes up the river when they all figure out that the university job I’ve applied for is undergraduate advisor for some archeology department in Montana.  The office aide at some company you’ve never heard of in Tacoma.  I don’t see how I get from where I am – weirdly, sitting my house in California – to where I’m supposed to be, that doesn’t involve me moving to Auburn and getting a bullshit job.   What I’m saying is this:  where the hell am I supposed to even be?  What am I trying to accomplish?

July 16th, 2009 | Tags: aggravation, introspection | Category: life | Comments Off

Yep, I said it.  We’re building a fence!  Or rather, a gate in an already extant fence.  By which I really mean that Lewis’ dad designed, framed, and hung said gate, and now all we’ve got left to do is put the facing back on it.  But it still feels very accomplished!  We only got half done this morning before Lewis had to go do TA stuff, but I think we’ll get it polished off tomorrow.  I’ll put some pictures up (though I know it’s only a silly gate)!   It’s going to be amazing to be able to walk through the fence on that side… we’ve only had one tiny gate that goes between the front and back yard, so you sorta had to walk through the garage or through the bedroom or living room until now!  So good.

I actually managed to get a little work done this afternoon too – read through a paper in preparation for thinking about a QP.  I don’t know why I’ve been dreading reading my own work lately, but I managed a few pages at least.  Got my gears moving, a little.  It would be nice to get past this mental block before I use up my whole summer… but if I don’t, it’s not a total disaster.  I’d rather I start Fall quarter refreshed, but better still refreshed and accomplished.   Anyway, some progress is better than no progress, and I got some progress made today.

Got lots of other bits and pieces done today.  I set up our finances for next year so I’ve got a fancy spreadsheet where I can keep track of things, which I’m excited to break in soon.   Oh, and I got a haircut scheduled for next week!  Yay!   I also hit up the Co-op, but I wasn’t really feeling that into cooking or planning this week, so it was a little meagre.  But I’ve got food plans for the next few days at least, and I at least got us filled back up on the essentials.  It would be good to get into the once-a-week swing of things again so we don’t have to buy so much at once.

Well, there’s my day in brief.   And on that note, I’m ready for a good night’s sleep!  I never sleep well when it stays hot all night (which it sure does on these 105+ days), but it finally stayed below 100 today, and there’s a nice breeze… it’s lovely!  I can already feel the impending comfortable snoozes! :)

June 29th, 2009 | Tags: chores, fence, shopping, work | Category: home, life | Comments Off

I’m having a day where I am simultaneously too big and too small for my own skin.  It’s impossible to explain the feeling of being too big for your own life, but it always reminds me of the Mayakovsky poem “A Cloud In Trousers”… one of the things I love best about Mayakovsky’s early work is the amazing clarity with which he can write about feeling disconnected from reality in an introspective, sometimes manic, cold, sad way.  That’s what feeling too big for your own skin feels like.  It feels like you have the ability to accidentally crush things, to destroy the important items in your life, to tear down all you believe in from neglected attention.  Unlike Mayakovsky, this doesn’t appear to ever cause me to walk down the street and call out the failings of others.  It makes me want to sit down, very quietly, and wait for it to blow over.  It makes me want to not open my mouth, to fail at conversations because it’s impossible to attend to what’s being said.  My hands bump into things, my feet trip over themselves, my gaze wanders.. my brain reduces to deplorable, functionless matter.

And this always happens as a result of feeling too small.  I’ve come across a bunch of stuff in cleaning lately, like old (we’re talking freshman year vintage) papers I’ve written, class notes, assignments, and some personality profiles I had to do for various offices I’ve worked in.  It all adds up to the same thing to me – that I don’t think I’m good enough to be doing what I want to be doing.  What I want to be do is become a professor of phonology.   All I have in my portfolio looks like mediocre work, me thinking too highly of my abilities, and this personality profile that tells me I’m great at organization and detailed execution, and crap at “big picture, abstract theorizing, and creative thinking”.  I just don’t think I can be any good as a researcher without theory, big picture, and creativity.  I know these personality profiles are ridiculous, but the damage is sort of already done.  It’s like reading a self-help book – when it says what you already believe, it takes on the timbre of reliability and truth.

I’m just full of feeling useless, lost, and unspecial.  And poor.  Make me think about how I’m never going to succeed in doing anything I like, and so I should just drop out and get a real job and support our family so some day so we can afford to have not only a car, but maybe even children!  And once I get started with this smallness, everything slides in to place to make it sound like some sort of cabal.  Like I’m just realizing a conspiracy that no one thinks I’m very interesting or worthwhile, and that’s why things work out the way they do.  Why I have no advisor, why I can’t seem to get into this neuro thing, why my parents moved away, why I’m cleaning the house instead of living.  Argh.  I’ve been through this loop so many times I can’t even count.  I know I’ll sleep it off sooner or later.  Life will change, become busy, gain purpose, feel meaningful again.  I’ve just got to wait it out.

June 28th, 2009 | Tags: depressed, whining | Category: life | Comments Off

It was darn hot today.  The weather says it hit 106, but my house was a trooper!  We never really needed to turn on the AC, though it was 88 degrees in here by the peak of it.  We got new blinds installed a week or two ago, and it’s amazing how much keeping the sun out of the windows does for the temperature inside.  I’m very pleased!  Plus I washed and cleaned all the front windows today before it got hot, so it was looking particularly nice and sparkly when we finally got to pull the shades back up.

I’m doing an excellent job of wasting my break away, which I suppose is one of the activities I actually intended on accomplishing.  I do wish I could put myself to task a little better doing school work in addition to the projects and gardening I set up for myself.  It’s hard, because if you start the day with school work, you end up wasting the whole day sitting at the desk or table, and then by dinner time I feel like I’ve gotten nothing done, and that I’m a dope for having not left the house all day.  However, if you start the day in the garden or doing some housework, like I prefer, you end up spending the whole day doing not school work.  Definitely sub-optimal.  Perhaps I’ll have myself better put together when we hit July.   It really has only been a could of weeks since class ended.  I’m always too hard on myself!

I’ve been cooking so much, it really makes me happy.  This week I’ve mastered the Denver omelet (why did  it take me so long to figure out how to cook an omelet?) and I made red beans and rice for dinner today.  Mmm.   We’ve got so many delicious left-overs in the fridge, and lots of tasty salad stuff we haven’t even dug into.  For all that cooking more means eating well, it does sort of obliterate one of my better excuses to get out of the house.  But we’re doing a good job of saving money, anyway.  And it means I get to try out a bunch of new ideas – ricotta pancakes, mozarella chicken panninis, baked sole…

Money is still too much on my mind, but I think that’s always the way of things.  We did our budget for next year, and calculated it a few times over and came to a very sad conclusion: there’s really no way to pay for car insurance.  I’m feeling very deflated after this decision… I was really looking forward to having a car, and having a car of our own we could take places more guilt-free and easy-like.  The prospect of Davis without a reliable car next year is rather daunting, though do-able.  I guess it’s the first thing we’ve really had to cut out in the “you can’t afford that” category.  We’re just going to be barely scraping by next year – we’re already making so much less money than we were when we were both working, and our appointments next year (and the loss of the one-year-only fellowship Lewis had) means we’re making almost a third less than that.  We’re canceling all the extraneous costs (our veg box, our carshare dues) but that really leaves just a smidge of an emergency buffer after our necessary budgeted expenses.  So unless car insurance is magically rather affordable, we’re sunk.  And that means a few things for me, the spelling out of which seems so trite.  It means I’m probably giving up the gym, because I can’t seem to muster the gumption to bike there (particularly in 90+ degree weather), and it means I need to start shopping at the Co-op weekly or more often.  I’ve been getting so spoiled by the ability to drive to the store and bring home all the bottled water and cat litter my heart desired.  Now it’s back to the ol’ cubic feet calculations.  Whine, whine.  I know.  Like I say – it’s just the first of these “we can’t afford this luxury” things, and it’s a cranky one to let go.

June 27th, 2009 | Tags: car, cleaning, cooking, food, heat, money, procrastination, worry | Category: home, life | Comments Off