Only This Moment

From my new Royksopp CD that I finally bought today as a reward for finishing my work, yesterday. I'll blog more about the sprint to the finish later this week when I'm alone during some formerly-central-to-my-life global holiday, but right now I'll just leave you with these words, which have a lot of meaning to me for different reasons. The usual caveat that I at times feel like the speaker of the lyrics and at times feel like the audience applies -- oh, and there is an important change to the chorus at the end, so you have to pay attention!:

Only this moment holds us together
Close to perfection
Nothing else out there
No one to guide us
Lost in our senses
Deep down inside I know our love will die

Only this moment holds us together
Lost in confusion
Feelings are out there
Scared of devotion
Doubting intentions
Deep down inside I know our love will die

Stay or forever go
Play or you’ll never know what heaven decided
You can’t deny it’s all you’ve been waiting for

Stay or forever go
Play or you’ll never know
Your spirit’s divided
You will decide if I’m all you've been waiting for

Clouds in my head have been parted with grace
By the force of an angel revealing her face
And her words do make sense, and I do understand:
Falling in love isn’t part of a plan

Forces within me mix reason with lust
But I try to accept it and not make it worse
'Cause I know I might lose it by taking a chance
But love without pain isn’t really romance

Only this moment holds us together
Close to perfection
Nothing else out there
Always beside her
Trusting my senses
Deep down inside I know love will survive

Only this moment holds us together
Close to the other
Nothing else out there
Always beside her
Trusting my senses
Deep down inside I know love will survive

********

VC

Most Rollercoastar Day Ever

Ended with a fight with the 34th son of the Prophet Mohammed (PBU them BOTH), and me leaving my mobile in a taxi.

I could just goudge my own eyes out right now, but the Oedipus thing is SO played out (as I remember Pookie and I once seeing, over the course of a month or so THREE plays/vocal performances/dance performances that explicitly referenced it).

Ok so now I don't have Syria and I don't have a mobile, and I really don't know what to do. Splurging on a vacation AND a new mobile feels obscene, but I loved that mobile, and I already spent $100 more for accessories.

Maybe the cliffs of Dover would be less trite?

VC

More Hating on AUC

I don't think a Registrar's office should even be ALLOWED to refuse to offer transcripts. And this is great (forgot to mention it), if you want a transcript within one day, it costs US$15, but if you are willing to wait five days, then it's only like $8 or something. Can you believe that? $8 for a single transcript? At Columbia there were free (and unlimited).

So here's where the Registrar's office is just so full of crap (and VERY typically AUC -- this is SO SO SO TYPICAL): If you order a transcript now, AND pay for the one-day express service, then you will get it on January 2 (keep in mind the office is NOT closed...it just isn't offering transcripts). If pay the "wait 5 days" rate, then you get it on 8 January.

CAN YOU BELIEVE that they are insisting upon an express v. regular service price AND time difference, when BOTH are taking way longer than the normal 5 day period? Wouldn't it be more appropriate to let everyone pay the 5 day rate and then APOLOGIZE for not getting it to them until the 2nd (let alone the 8th)??

I hate AUC.

Here is the email I just got from Columbia after I begged them to read my application without waiting for AUC:

Dear Chunk,

Thank you for your continued interest in Columbia Law School. [they always say that]

Unfortunately, we cannot review your file until it is complete. As therequirement for foreign transcripts is one that we insist upon for all ofour prospective students, we would not consider it fair to make anexception in this case. You are also very well ahead of the February 15thdeadline, so completing your application in January should not influenceyour candidacy to any significant degree.

We look forward to receiving your Dean's Certification.

Best regards,

Columbia Law School

So -- as we say in Egypt (even though I still don't really understand what it means): "ma3lesh" ("3" stands for a letter in Arabic that, standing alone, looks like a backward 3, is written in Roman script with an apostrophe in the shape of a superscript 'c,' and sounds like...well...I can't describe it, but if you know the German work "Ein," (like "Einstein") and then sort of constrict your throat and grunt (think pushing a baby out or being extremely constipated) on the "E" part, and you will have it -- I have a GREAT `ayn (or "3ayn"), which is what makes me superior to most Americans ;p -- you can click here to hear a recording of the sound, but I have to say it's kinda weak...we need a strong Gulfi `ayn, not some wimpy one that sounds more like German than Arabic). That was one big parenthetical! Anyway, ma3lesh basically means like "whatever"/"what can one do?"/"regrettably, no" and represents a passive acceptance of material circumstance that I find extremely frustrating (because it's like, once you "let go" and utter the words "ma3lesh" then you -- you meaning the waiter you are talking to, or the bureaucratic behind his desk -- are basically saying "I ain't gone do nuthin'").

VC

More Bureaucracy

Forgot to mention in my post, below, that I called the Syrian embassy and my visa was rejected...really don't know what I'll do, now, for Christmas/New Year. :*(

WOW I was tired when I did my last post. I kept falling asleep and waking up while I was typing, lol. Just woke up from almost 5 hours of nap, and need to make a plan to get this LAST paper squeezed out. It will involve a lot of text explication, and I always find these analysis papers (like in art history) much less torturous to write -- you develop your theoretical framework and you apply it to something...it's a pretty easy process -- but it's STILL a paper, which means it is torture in some way. Right now it's almost 7PM, and I'd like to have one of the three sections (I'm analyzing the banning of three texts) written before I got to bed, and hopefully pump one out in the AM, leaving myself with only one left for tomorrow evening (aka: NOT another 30 hours wherein 20 are a straight chunk of typing in different places in Cairo -- yesterday was AUC library, Grand Hyatt food court, then my house, assisted with two rather yummy MacDonald's cappuccinos!).

Still pissed at AUC that it is so twisted. The AUC press should publish a manual: how to get your students to NOT give back as alumns and trash-talk you when you go back home to the exact US universities from which they wish they had more students.

Unfortunately, despite any effort I could make to discourage students from coming here, there will ALWAYS be the government job seekers who salivate at the thought of their State Department/CIA files getting a boost from Arabic and living in the region.

Gotta eat!

VC

Bureaucratic Update

Given that humans are generally prone to mood swings when sleep-deprived, that this is a really stressful time, and that I genuinely have had a lot of sh*t to deal with today, I think that I'm handling everything with amazing balance. In fact, I think that maybe me having been awake now for more than 30 hours without rest has made me just SO tired that I can't be bothered by things like the AUC mess that was today.

If you happen to be a corporate litigator with whom I am totally smitten (you know who you are and so does everyone else), and you don't have a lot of time to read my rambling blog, today, then skip to point 3 below. It's the most important and confusing in terms of my life.

But let's start at the top. The good, the bad, the inbetween. It's all about VC's struggle within the bureaucratic matrix that describes his current life (read: academia).

Let's start with classes: Turned in my importing democracy paper (hence me being up for 30 hours), and it was on time, and I already have an A in the class (she posted it like an hour after I handed the paper in). I really REALLY like the professor, and feel good about that class. The ONLY thing I have left, then, in terms of coursework at AUC is the completion of a paper from a spring course in which I took an incomplete. Enter the stress: there is no policy published about when to submit these things, so I'm submitting mine on the 22nd (the last day of finals), however for all I know there's a very real chance that I missed some unpublished deadline and will fail (with all the repercussions for update law school transcript requests, my thinking I'd finished my coursework but being wrong, etc. that come with failing). Will work to finish it the next two days and just wait and pray.

On to law school aps: So Stanford has this AWFUL system where you have to physically mail the a check AND a Dean's Certification, so my ap there is not complete, and Columbia has the most ridiculous Dean's Certification. Keep in mind that I went to Columbia, AND Columbia, as a college that send Certs to OTHER schools for it's own alums applying to law school REFUSES to use the forms of other schools (and instead sends out their own standard "Chunk's GPA is X and he was always in good academic standing with no disciplinary measures" form letter) -- Columbia law school's Dean's Cert that it asks other schools to fill out is INSANE. All these grids and boxes and the request of a "summary letter" describing the student! I got the professor from the class I just handed the paper in for, who is an Assistant Dean, to fill them out for me, and I FedExed them today (a good experience, my first time at AUCs FedEx, where we get corporate rates and only pay 25% of what I was paying down the street at the real office!). The thing with Columbia, and I know this because I emailed and called them, is that even though Harvard, Yale, and NYU all OBVIOUSLY accepted the informal transcript that I sent (it's only grad school! most people don't even go at all!), Columbia wants one FROM AUC.

Enter AUC bureaucracy: The Registrar *refuses* to hand-out transcripts until after the start of January, since right now grades are being input into the system. SO, if Columbia (and maybe even Stanford) won't consider me complete until I get a transcript from AUC, which will be after the first week of January, then I'm basically screwed, because NO ONE gets in to those places that late in the admissions cycle. So -- yeah. I emailed Columbia and explained to them that the Dean's Cert confirms my GPA, that other schools didn't require an official AUC transcript, etc. and let's see what they say.

AUC cont'd

Had my comprehensive exams moved to next semester, although they kept them on my transcript with a "withdraw" next to it (question: why is it not the goal of the Registrar to present the student in the best light possible while still being truthful to the situation -- I NEVER TOOK COMPS, what is the POINT of having it there??).

AUC cont'd

While at the Registrar, I checked on the winter Arabic courses, and of course no one knew how/when I needed to actually register, and no one knew about whether or not my fellowship applied. I sought advice form the magical woman do takes care of EVERYTHING for grad students if you actually use her, and this is what happened:

1. The winer arabic course is not for regular students but for visitors, and costs $2200 for one month, not covered by my fellowship, and includes things I don't need like city tours and a dorm room with a roomate, etc.

2. I can apply for (and just got, apparently) an Arabic Language Fellowship, which covers 1/2 the cost of tuition, and they were generous enough to count it based on credit points for the course (removing all the housing and other crap) which is $535 (or something) per point X 3 points - 50% (fellowship), so I pay like $850...which is a lot less than it would have cost to go home for winter. Fine.

3. While I'm there talking about my Arabic problem, the cat is out of the bag that I finished my required courses, and *GET THIS* my fellowship is therefore over. Not only am I not permitted to take any courses next semester, BUT even registering for my comprehensive exams, which are 0 points if you take them with other courses but 1.0 point if you take them as a stand alone course, I will have to pay for. So basically I finished all my courses early and got punished by HAVING to pay AUC to let me stay for the fourth semester in which I could have been slowly finishing my coursework.

I am NOT paying AUC to stay here an extra semester. There is NO way I will do that. I mean -- like not even when hell freezes over AND pigs fly would I do that. I'd just as soon go back to the US ASAP (if there's not AUC reason left for me to be here), study Arabic there, and try to take my comps in AUC's New York office.

This is my new plan: the reason that I'm graduating early is that I got certain courses this term to substitute for ones next term that I officially need to graduate. What I decided to PRETEND to do is just not have the ones I took this semester substitute, register for the theoretically-required courses that I would then "need" next semester, like I'm not ready to graduate (and my fellowship is still therefore on), and register for Arabic (which we can do for free on top of a full couseload, but not standing alone -- great logic, right?). Then, once the bill is paid by my fellowship, I'll drop everything but the Arabic and have the last laugh. They can seriously kiss it if they think that i will pay them a penny more than what I'm paying for the winter course (which is already insanely expensive -- $850 in Egypt goes an EXTREMELY X 10 long way).

So -- law school aps in the air, might fail a class from spring, might drop out of AUC. On the equally-likely side: law aps will be fine, the paper I'll turn in on the 22nd will be accepted, and my master plan for registration for next term will go off without a hitch.

Wanna place bets?

:) MUST SLEEEEEEEP

VC

Still Peppy, But Realistic Too

Ok well it's nearing 3:30AM and I need to make an edit to my schedule, below.

I think I need to re-prioritize, given how long it's been taking me to put my argument together, and shift my efforts to doing the reading/short reaction paper that is DEFINITELY due at 4PM, now, and also work on the materials I'll be presenting at the Fellow's meeting. Then, with all that done, I can ONLY work on the long paper during the day (free of all other errands and commitments).

The long paper (in my independent study with the Assistant Dean) is due because I set the due-date for myself: [imagine this in black and white, since it happened a week ago]

Dean: "About your paper, I'll be leaving on the 22nd, so if you can try to get it to be, you know..."

[VC interrupts]

VC: "Oh I'll give it to you at our next meeting on the 18th."

[Dean, surprised, delighted]

Dean: "Oh, ok. Great. Looking forward to it."

SO, yeah, it's not great if I need one more day, but at least it will be MOSTLY done by the time I meet with her in 12 hours and 35 minutes. I also think that when I email her my reaction paper in anticipation of our meeting, like way in advance (at, say, 6AM), than she'll know that I'm taking things seriously.

Guess it's clear that the 4AM - 8AM sleep thing is getting cut-out, but I can rest when I get back from class for 3 hours and be good as new.

While we're being peppy but realistic :) who am I kidding? I'm totally more rippley than chunky ;p

VC

Post-Doctah Peptalk

Just got off the phone with Dr. Juicy and I am inspired (after being inspired by her to inspire myself -- meaning: she always puts me in a positive and driven place) to make my FINAL breakneck plan for the semester. I have a paper due tomorrow, as well as a meeting, another short assignment, and several administrative things to take care of, and then after that I have 4 days (sounds like eternity) to finish my LAST PAPER FOR MY MA. *VC cheers*

I have been dreading working on this, because I hate writing SO SO SO SO SO much (I'd rather run 10 miles, fast, and have to eat soggy cold spinach after each mile -- THAT'S how much I hate writing papers), but this is ridiculous: I'm a capable writer, I will do the best I can, I will not use comma-splices like I am in this sentence (these commas should be semi-colons), and this is my final academic push before a semester of intellectual indulgence next semester: Arabic study, TA-ing for my favourite prof, and work on a cool Moot Court project that will take me to DC. Finishing this paper and staying motivated means proactively getting one step closer to FINISHING my time in Cairo, returning to NYC, snuggling with my Pookie on the couch, lunching and shopping more than is responsible with the Dr., having my favourite popcorn with Curie and walking for hours, and, most importantly, returning HOME to a place where I can talk to my mom every day again on the phone.

Six minutes until midnight and writing begins (tonight we're writing about importing democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq...it started out as an analysis of Afghan election posters, but I expanded it. I'm making the argument that what starts out as the cosmopolitanization of democracy -- the global sharing of a seemingly-agreed upon value set -- when "imported" through belligerent occupation -- turns cosmopolitanization into cannibalism, evidenced by what it is that these countries who have imported democracy find themselves exporting: narcotics, torture, restricted identity categories along gender and tribal lines, etc.).

That was one long parenthetical lol.

SO: Last schedule of my LIFE at AUC (shouldn’t need these next term) à

Midnight - 4AM = Work on paper

4AM - 6AM = Sleep

6AM - 10AM = Work on paper

10AM - 11AM = Go to school and get settled (email, etc.)

11AM - 12PM = Finish paper work

12PM - 12:45PM = Prepare for fellows meeting (questionnaire, honours update, conferences update)

12:45PM - 2:30PM = Prepare for Dean meeting (reaction paper, long paper)

2:30PM - 3:30PM = Fellows meeting

4:00PM = Dean's meeting (check on Moot Court, Certs, and honours proposal)

Off to work. Motivation, productivity, and happiness to all my readers :)

XO

VC

In at NYU!

...and sending out Stanford. The Pook is thinking about leaving NYC, so I figured why not open up some geographical options (when you are strong-arming someone into a long-term relationship, I think the best strategy is flexibility lol), and I also think it will be a good ego regulator to receive more rejection letters than acceptance letters, and adding a near-certain rejection from Stanford (which is about twice as hard to get into as Harvard) will help me do that :)

VC

Cairo Photo Tour: Experiments With Food

I mentioned a few days ago (unless I only emailed people about it and never blogged?) that I tried cooking, and ended up having to throw away two plates after unsuccessfully trying to heat up pizza and cinnaparts (you should check the link out -- Pizza Hut KSA...gotta love the image of the camels crossing the desert to get some Spaghetti Bolognaise!). Well I've FINALLY loaded the software for my unbelievably gorgeous and "ever-so stylish" mobile, and so I was able to download some of the photos that I've been taking on my mobile (because I'm too lazy to PLUG IN my ridiculously nice camera so that its battery can charge), and one of them is on the couch in my living room with the cinnaparts heated up. I think it's also worth mentioning that the plate, which came with the apartment, is the same flatware (flatware is plates and not silverware, right?) that we had at my guesthouse in Afghanistan, which I found odd and a bit disturbing (thinking I'd escaped Cairo only to find out that it had followed me to Central Asia).

I am also attaching a photo of the "chocolate souffle" (if you tasted it then you'd know that it needs to be in quotes) that I ordered from Tabasco, last night -- a restaurant that is kind of the AUC student/Zamalek spoiled youth hangout, but we also have two here in Doqqi, one which *gap* serves alcohol. I won't get into the horrible (HORRIBLE) fight I got into with the restaurant, because that will distract you from the actual point of the photo, which is the odd cream sauce that they gave me {prepare for slightly philosophical discussion of "the normal"}

They were thoughtful enough (I am shocked) to actually give me a ton of powdered sugar and sauce to put on the souffle, as well as extra red sauce for my ravioli, etc. Here's the problem: I'm not sure (even after eating it) what the sauce was, and I'm not even sure if it was meant for the souffle.

As you can see in the photo, the sauce was a kind of yellow/white/GREENISH liquid that was mostly watery but with some moments of thickness (almost like a watery custard). When I *saw* it I thought: vanilla sauce. When I tasted it, though, it was basically just egg. Then I thought maybe they gave me extra souffle batter in case I wanted to cook my own (combining my cluelessness about cooking with the total unpredictability of ALL service industry logic in Cairo means ANYTHING could have been happening, in my mind), but then I realized that I'm not even sure if you use eggs in souffle, and even so, you'd need chocolate -- I felt stupid for thinking that it might be souffle batter when I realized that, duh, cooking what they gave me would have just made, like, scrambled eggs. Then I thought maybe it was white sauce for my pasta (I chose red over white, but maybe they wanted me to have options), or just a lot of creamy melted butter.

Here is the problem: I totally liked the sauce. I mean, the souffle needed some kind of peristalsis-promoting lubricant, and the sauce had this proteinaceous (admittedly: suspiciously so, although I won't make any comments more provocative than that -- you can see the photo for yourself) , SLIGHTLY sweet taste, and I liked it. I even *Chunk blushes* DRANK it out of the cup while I was eating. What made me so uneasy, though, was that, despite enjoying the taste, I was really hung-up on what was proper, and what I SHOULD be eating it with. Was I downing cream sauce made for my ravioli and pouring it on my souffle? I hate butter, but was I chugging creamy butter? That I was so gastronomically disoriented (and that I realized how much I *cared*, in the privacy of my own home, whether or not it was PROPER for me to be eating it or not) was really off-putting! :(

Things to look out for in the photos other than the food:

* In the cinnaparts photo, notice the freakish mini pillows that decorate my house (not my choice). EVERYONE makes fun of the midget pillows. I sort of like them.

* In the souffle photo, notice what is the EPITOME of "Louis Farouk" Egyptian interior decorating: the marble table atop the spray-painted gold wood. It's the quintessence of the Egyptian bourgeoisie!

Anyway, enjoy the photos. I will post more in a bit about pollution, here :)

VC

Cock-a-Doodle-Doo!

It's 8AM.

Bring it :)

VC

Fatigue-Induced SCS

(self-confessional syndrome)

Since this blog is read by less than a dozen people and you are all loved ones, I thought I'd share a moment from a little more than a year ago that I still think about, often. [now that I’ve written this blog entry and am re-reading it, I don’t talk a lot about the actual moments of realization but more about what it is that I realized…sorry lol – just picture all the thoughts below occurring while I’m sitting in ancient Middle Eastern cities alone and thoughtful and happy]

I had just purchased Nelly Furtado's second CD (a TOTAL unexpected gem) and set-off for 'Eid in Jordan and Lebanon with my now-lost iPod mini. Traveling alone for two weeks, you have a lot of time to think, and feel, and be reflective almost the point of obsession -- in other words: do what I do best, lol.

There is a song on her album, which remains one of my favourite songs in the world, called "Try." I think of it, now, because after I posted, earlier, about staying in NYC, I saw, for the first time, her video for this song (sort of what I imagined it would be, but a bit disappointing in the execution...anyway that's not the point). It reminded me of how that song really brought clarity and some kind of peace to me about my relationship with the oft-mentioned NYC Pook, because we'd been broken up for about two months with almost no contact, and the song, which I listened to a lot over my trip in the Levant, made a lot of sense, both in terms of our relationship, and in terms of my life at the time. Here are the lyrics, and I'll gab on a bit more [edit: a LOT more] afterward:

All I know, is everything is not as it's sold
But the more I grow, the less I know.
And I have lived so many lives, though I'm not old.
And the more I see, the less I grow,
The fewer the seeds, the more I sow.

Then I see you standing there, wanting more from me
And all I can do is try
Then I see you standing there, wanting more from me
And all I can do is try.

I wish I hadn't seen all of the realness
And all the real people are really not real at all.
The more I learn, the more I love
The more I cry, the more I cry
As I say goodbye to a way of life I thought I had designed for me.

Then I see you standing there, wanting more from me
And all I can do is try
Then I see you standing there, I'm all I'll ever be
And all I can do is try.

All of the moments that already passed
Try to go back and make them last
All of the things we want each other to be
We never will be. We never will be.
And that's wonderful.
That's life.
That's you baby. This is me baby.
We are -- we are...free in our love.
We are free in our love.
Try

What was so immediately impactful to me, apart from the relevance I think this has to my romantic life, were her comments about this kind of aged quality to her life. I have lived so many lives, though I'm not old, and while there is so much to be learned in that, and it's such a dream in many ways, it's also very rough. This is not to be self-pitying, but rather to make an honest assessment of the fact that you don't cram all this in by the time you are 23 and not be as broken by some of your experiences as you are enriched by them. There have been times in NYC and in Cairo (as Desi has witnessed) I have been both the seed-sower and the disappointed idealist, thinking I was on the brink of real, deep, and lasting interactions with people (and I don’t mean romantically as much as I do just in terms of friends) and ended up being totally let-down by how empty things were underneath the surface.

This theme sort of returns, when she talks about saying goodbye to a way of life I thought I had designed for me, only now, of course, the romantic element is also introduced. I found myself in Cairo, silently in love, with velocity going somewhere within a large and vague universe of "post-ivy kids who are supposed to make something of themselves but don't know exactly how that is measured," and I realized, quite suddenly, that all of the things that made my life from late 2003 to late 2004 so wonderful I'd totally taken from myself, and left myself with none of the things that gave the existence that I'd come to appreciate its essence. I look back, now, and think: "I had everything, including happiness...why did I need to escape that?" As I have asked myself that question SO MANY TIMES the past two years, I think that the answer is two parts: 1. I had to sabotage something I wasn't ready to accept I had, because of all the things accepting it would stand for; 2. Something in me knew that there was still some growing up that needed to be done in order to really appreciate and make use of the things I had.

In another song that I really like, "That Particular Time," Alanis Morisette talks about (to take it out of context from the song): "My foundation was rocked. My tried and true way to deal was to vanish." I look back and think about the total (TOTAL) contrast between what I had been conditioned to understand was love from my first boyfriend and NYC scene life in general, and then what Pookie presented, and I think that I didn't even understand at the time how difficult it was for me to re-orient towards something that was actually healthy -- towards a person who was actually a really amazing guy. I remember times when I would go into prosecutor mode and drill him on where he was/what he was doing, trying to catch him in a betrayal (which is just so NOT him), and when he'd say to me: "Chunk, I am not on trial, here, and you are being ridiculous" (but not in a dismissive way, just in a clear and honest way), I would realize my insanity and immediately shift, feeling ashamed of my inability to function outside a destructive romantic framework: "I'm really sorry. God, how can I even think it's ok to be so suspicious? I'm really sorry...how can you be with someone as un-trusting as I am?" and he'd just say: "Yeah, there's no reason for you to feel the way you do, but it's not a fatal flaw, and it's something people work on," and put it to rest. Anyway, back to foundations --> as well as I thought I was dealing with someone who was remarkably complete and healthy, I realized when I came to Cairo (and saw the kinds of drama that I was tempted to seek out/manufacture in certain situations, here), that the terrain I was on with Pookie was unlike any I'd been on (or witnessed) before, and I didn't quite know how to navigate. Foundation rocked, I vanished, and his own relationship doubts and perceived limitations facilitated my exit, and even helped me not understand, for months afterward, my accountability in what happened (and what didn't).

I say that something in me knew that I needed to sort of get away and grow up, and that I 100% stand-by that; there is just too much evidence of that need, and I physically FEEL -- and see, to my despair at times -- myself more as a man than as a boy, now. I say that it was difficult to accept certain things about what I had in NYC if I were to really face the reality of it, and I think that (while it's too complex a discussion to have, here), a lot of that has to do with the categories we, particularly as urban gay men, allow ourselves to be put into. Accepting valuation NOT through being young, or cute, or charming on someone's arm at a party, which was more or less how I originally came to understand my place in NYC gay life pre-Pookie, and instead having to understand my worth as an equal in a relationship between two adult men was, I think, a difficult transition for me to make. Even in terms of the physical types we are encouraged to think of ourselves as, I had been (or have been, rather) undergoing what was, at moments, an ungraceful and mentally traumatic maturation that definitively casts me outside the space of "boi" and into the that of "man." Just a few days ago I was lamenting over email the fact that I keep getting more and more muscular, and part of that lamentation is that when I see myself in the mirror, I look, well, like a man lol. {I fully accept the problematization of the "normative body" that my discussions of manhood deserves from you critical thinkers out there} Realizing, then, my own inability, at that time, to assume my place as an equal partner (despite what I always believed was my own defiance, as a boy, to be kept or be in any other way less than someone's equal), it was important for me to remove myself from my location within NYC urban gay life, my relationship, etc. and exist outside the system, so to speak, for a time long enough that I could grow and re-enter more effectively upon my return.

Back to the song --> What I think is so important in the song, not from my perspective as the person who understands it as his voice (as I clearly do, in parts) but as the person who also understands himself as the audience, what I realized during my time in the Levant, traveling, thinking, and listening, was that what I needed to do (and what I believe I have begun to successfully do, over the past year) was communicate to a certain someone that we can look frankly at our limitations, and disappointments, and still try -- in a way that is neither risky, nor damaging, and that, in reality, is very freeing. I love it when she changes the chorus to say "Then I see you standing there, I'm all I'll ever be" but says that, even being that, she can still try. I also love it that she is able to say that what is freeing (and therefore "wonderful") about understanding you and me and what we are (and are not) is understanding that we will NEVER be everything that we want -- not for ourselves, and not for each other. I think that most people, myself included, are pretty good, in the post-Oprah age, at not forcing themselves to dwell over what they are not, and I think that people are similarly good at not expecting unrealistic things from their partners (I'm not perfect and I don't expect you to be); the critical part that is often missing, though, is the ability to not expect from yourself as you relate to your partner things that are unrealistic. In other words: saying "I'm not perfect and I don't expect you to be, either" is great, but we need to also be able to say: "I'm not perfect, and part of my peace with that is also knowing that you don't expect me to be, and I don't expect myself to be unlimited in my capacity to deal you, even though I am admittedly limited, as we all are, as an individual." Got it? :)

To recap: Wandering through the streets of Beirut with nothing but some ridiculously hot Lebanese guys to heal my pain (SO KIDDING!), I began my reflections, which I continue to this day, on the decisions that I made to come here, my relationship with Pookie, and what it means to be damaged, limited, growing, loving, etc. all within this crazy world of global capital and the disciplinary state (just kidding: I threw that last part in as a joking reference to the meeting I had today wherein we discussed Appadurai’s theory of the “promiscuous movement” of financial capital, lol).

The song is extremely powerful, and beautifully (if simply) sung, and if you don't have a copy, but are in the tristate area, then I volunteer Curie to make you a copy (lol I made her go buy the CD as soon as I heard this song!).

VC

Law School Update

No, no decisions have come through, yet, but the more I think about it, the more I think that I will stay in New York no matter the outcome of this admissions cycle. If there is one thing that I have learned after leaving New York then it's that I really do feel like NYC is my home, and it's where I need to be for the next few years. There is the smallest (SMALLEST) chance that I could go to Yale and live in NYC, like starting my second year (although the chances that I'll be admitted are even smaller, lol), but I think that in all likelihood I'll stay in NYC. There are a lot of push factors that make me not want Boston as much (the character of 99% of the student body that I've met, there, being one huge factor), and there are so many pull factors for New York. It would feel amazing to have Harvard on my resume, and I think that the academic/program opportunities there, if they compare at all to what I observed as an undergrad at Columbia, probably far surpass the other top five schools -- with the exception being in international law. I can't be pushed into this logic of "some people are top athletes, some are top models, some top actors, and you are none of these, so you are a top student and need to go to a top school," because I recognize how important it is to NOT function according to these measuring sticks in other spheres of my life (eg: the general peace that I've somehow managed to move towards with things like physical appearance) -- why allow myself to get tangled up in another directionless race? I am going to incur so much debt in law school that it is really almost unfathomable -- I might as well enjoy myself doing it (meaning: be with Hawk Barbie, Vanine, Curie, and Dr. Juicy -- AND POOKIE!) and assert as much agency as I can over my life circumstances. I think it's different if you're straight out of undergrad and have not spent THREE YEARS working as an independent adult (even if for only a year) and then doing grad school abroad, and at this point I can't let myself make the "only three more years of unhappiness for a much bigger goal" cost/benefit calculation, when the cost of unhappiness is so high, and the marginal gains to not going to *gasp* the #4 law school in the country (and #1 in international law) are just not that great. Not only that, but I'll probably incur less debt at an NYC school then I would elsewhere, because they are likely to offer me merit-based aid offers.

Don't need to decide now, I know, but this is just where my thinking is at.

Off to a late (after 11PM) dinner.






VC

8AM GI Infections

It's 8:00AM! ... somewhere over the Atlantic :*(

Syrian Embassy and Radio Shack cut-out. Moving on...

Wanted to send out a quick public service announcement, courtesy of Juicy, MD emailing me her thoughts on her med school subjet du jour -- parisitic infections of the gastrointestinal tract (and I quote):

my advice:
don't eat raw ANYTHING (not beef, pork, fish. even vegetables are not safe because a ton of these parasitic worms live in the soil!)
don't walk barefoot ANYWHERE
don't go in freshwater ponds or lakes
don't touch ANYTHING, EVER! (if you must, make sure you wash your hands frequently!)
and last but not least, don't ever scratch your butt and then touch your mouth! (i think that is a good rule in general, but especially in the prevention of spreading of parasitic infections)

No, I am not becoming germ-phobic. Bacteria and viruses don't scare me. Flatworms, roundworms, tapeworms, and flukes, they scare me enough that i am considering leaving medical school. i am only eating processed food from now on, {censored} the organic movement, bring on the pesticides! (but not canned food, because even though i am not afraid of bacteria, botulism is an exception)

Remind me to tell you sometime about Wong's father's colleague's daughter (wow!) who had to have an enormous work drawn out of her system through her mouth using some kind of attractive light (at least that's how I remember the story from when I was like 7).

Chunk wonders if Juicy, MD can give her opinion (re: the "touching butt" point, above) on the risks involved in letting your ADORABLE and extremely elegant (and now-deceased) cat eat from your JELLO pudding cup even though she (as Wong often reminds you) "licks her own butt." Thanks for any insight!

While I away studying, you can entertain yourselves with this: NAME THAT WORM! (I'll give you the answer in my next post. Hint: the worm in the photo, above, is found inside the body cavity of a dead rabbit :) ("wormy rabbit!")

VC

PS: I had to spell-check "juicy" -- guess I'm not Spelling Bee Chunk, afterall!

Schedule Update (Fun, right?)

Well I received a call from Pookie NYC in which he had the gaul to challenge the likelihood that I would ever wake up at 8AM (indeed I did not, but he has insider knowledge of my sleeping habits: weekdays he would wake up, get ready for the gym, workout, come home, eat breakfast, and often get to our office before I did, even though I should have been the one with the less flexible schedule -- being a peon and all, and on weekends he would often wake up 3 or 4 hours before me, vaulting over me [I slept on the side exposed to the room], get dressed for the gym, workout, go grocery shopping -- sometimes dodging Upper West Side power-walking mothers and their strollers -- come home, and start making lunch before I would even get up...and he NEVER complained or resented my habits...tell me he isn't an angel!).

Pookie parenthetical completed...the point is that it's 5AM Sunday and I'm ready to revise my schedule (in short-hand that will be meaningless, but you can still read it just for your own confusion and enjoyment):

Sunday, 11 December
*Wake up at 8AM (I AM SO GOING TO DO IT AND POST ON THIS BLOG WHEN I DO!)
*Go to Radio Shack (don't forget to leave money for housekeeper!) to return the $100 universal laptop power source that I bought this morning to replace the one that I lost and then re-gained in the Grand Hyatt Food Court yesterday
*Go to the Syrian embassy and apply for visa (if goes well, go to AUC travel office later for tickets/hotel bookings)
*Go to school to print Rieker articles; read Rieker articles; write Rieker response paper and prepare talking points for meeting
*Moot court meeting @ 2:30
*Rieker meeting @ 4-5
*Go home and nap until 6:30
*Work on comparative con law final from 6:30-8 (this thing is taking FOREVER, but I have to admit that I'm doing a really good job on it...although that makes me sound like an obnoxious chunk, rather than a veiled one!)
*8PM go to Grand Hyatt, have dinner, work more on comparative con law final; gym; finish comparative con law final
*Sleep not at 5AM (maybe like 2 or 3)

Monday, 12 December
*Wake up at 8AM and gloat about how it's the second day in a row on my blog
*Prepare final revisions to Ottoman Yemen paper presented last week; complete reaction paper for final Sedgwick reading
*Sedgwick class @ 4:30PM
*Pick-up loaned insurgency articles from library
*Go home and nap until 6:30
*Email comparative con law class for update on simulation constitution draft
*Go to Grand Hyatt for dinner and review insurgency materials (as late as I can stand it)

Tuesday, 13 December
*Guess what time I'm waking up!? :)
*Continue with insurgency analysis
*Print comparative con law papers/final for class @ 4:30
*Go home and nap until 6:30
*Go to Grand Hyatt for dinner and review insurgency materials (as late as I can stand it)

Wednesday, 14 December
*8AM Encore
*Finalize insurgency materials for presentation @ 4:30 clinical
*DO WHATEVER I WANT (but go to the gym at some point)

Thursday, 15 December - Saturday, 17 December
*Complete Rieker's importing democracy paper for presentation on Sunday

Sunday, 18 December
*Complete and present importing democracy paper @ 4:30
*Work-out, eat, and review theoretical framework for book-banning paper

Monday, 19 December - Thursday, 22 December
*Complete book-banning paper for submission on the 22nd
*Relax, email, maybe see Flightplan again :)

Friday, 23 December
*Leave for Christmas and New Year in Syria (insha'allah)

VC

PS: Wrote this at 5AM and the spell check only revealed 2 errors. Go spelling-bee chunk!

VC Apologies & Update

Sorry for not posting AT ALL, lately, but I'm in my last 2 weeks of coursework for my MA (after which point a period of miraculous Arabic study will begin, the academic stuff behind me).

This is not a real post, but just a "what I'm doing and why I'm not replying to anyone's emails or updating my blog" note. By the way, I know it's selfish, but PLEASE keep emailing me. I love reading your emails even though I haven't been replying. They keep me sane (or something close).

My tomorrow (I should say: "my 2.5 hours from now" since that's when I'm waking up...it's 5:30AM):

FRIDAY, 9 December 2005

8:00AM – 12noon = Complete Part One of Comparative Con Law/Human Rights final, and begin Part Two

12noon – 12:30PM = Relax

12:30PM – 4PM = Book-banning paper Part One of Three

4PM – 5PM = Relax

5PM – 6PM = Nap

6PM – 8PM = Gym

8PM – 12midnight = Complete Part Two of Comparative Con/Law Human Rights final

12midnight – 3AM = Book-banning paper Part Two of Three


Final Coursework
* Comparative Con Law/Human Rights Final (Tuesday, 13 DEC)
* Book-banning Paper (ASAP)
* Ottoman Yemen Paper (Monday, 12 DEC)
* Analysis of Insurgents under International Humanitarian Law (Wednesday, 14 DEC)
* Importing Democracy Paper (Sunday, 18 DEC)

Pre-Finals Coursework
* Seminar response paper (Sunday, 11 DEC)
* Ottoman response paper (Monday, 12 DEC)

Other Responsibilities
* Register for Winter Arabic
* Re-schedule Comprehensive Examinations for Spring
* Moot Court meeting (Sunday, 11 DEC @ 2:30PM)
* Fellow’s meeting (Sunday, 18 DEC)
* Conference update/email for students
* Followup on honours proposal
* Survey draft
* Apply for Syrian visa
* Register for Spring (get proof of payment, insurance card, visa update)

Life
* Email severely-neglected friends

VC