Growing Up Fast

I don't have time/energy/desire to do the "and this is how law school is" blog, yet. It's not that important (I'll explain that later!), and not blogging about law school will help me stay under the CLS blogger radar for a while.

Just wanted to share what I consider to be a sort of funny exchange with a guy online who saw my profile and sent me the message(s) you'll read, below. Keep in mind he's only 36 lol. I think it's hilarous that he starts off by warning me against going for older men, then when I blew him away with my boundless maturity (j/k) he turned around and hit on me, himself!

GUY:

ok: i'm going to be an asshole: but believe me, adult lufe doesn't happen till you're my age. enjoy your youth while you can....

advice from a person who grew up too fast.

ME:

Not asshole-ish at all. I'm not really sure why it is you think that I'm not enjoying my life or am growing up too fast lol. When you leave home so young, move to the City so young, live all over the world and go to places MOST people will only see on the discovery channel or a CNN "brink of war" special, then I think a lot of life is thrust upon you, and you do your best to squeeze as many lessons from that as possible, not take yourself too seriously, and remember that no matter how fast you think you're going down your path, what lies in front of you just gets longer and longer the more of the world and its people you open yourself to.

I'm not one of these people looking for a life or a result that puts my twenties behind me and thrusts me into middle age lol. I'm definitely living in the now and am grounded and appreciative! I just happen to be more physically attracted to guys who are older and untwinkish, and have more to say to people who can at least point to some of the places I've lived or are important to me on a map -- that's not to say there's not PLENTY of room for trivialty and frivolity!

I still shake my ass to the radio and get frustratingly addicted to crap reality tv like most 24yos, if that makes you sleep better at night.

:)

GUY:

i'm not sure why i thought you might be growing up too fast. i hope i didn't seem condescending. you sound like a very bright-minded and experienced fellow.

maybe something in your profile triggered a moment of unsolicted advice. when i was 19 or thereabouts i got involved with a man 15 years older than i--it lasted four years. but the reason i called it quits was primarily thai wasn't done being youthful. i thought i was an adult at fourteen, and once i moved to the city, i had a gradual recession.

anyway, thanks for not judging me as i might have been judged. your message was an incredible display ofintelligence, which just adds to your appeal. naturally, i wrote to you because i thought you were cute. how shallow!

VC

Legal Methods Brief

Well I know you are all dying to hear my observations about orientation and my first day of class (to sum it all up in one word: tiring), but I'm going to hold off on blogging about that stuff until my work is finished, so you might not get to hear all that stuff until Friday night or Saturday, when I can give you a week in review.

For everyone who is not really familiar with law school study methods, though, I thought I'd give you a little peak at what I'm working on (I promise I won't normally blog about law school work because that would be way more boring than hearing about my fictitious romances with world-class athletes). Since most law school classes use a case study method to introduce students to the law, and since most law school classes also ask that students have a certain mastery over the cases they've read, so as to be prepared to answer questions posed to them as part of the Socratic method (and yes, my professor totally "cold calls" and surprises people, but he's really nice even when people don't really give him what he's looking for), students develop "briefs" of cases, which are essentially handy references that allow you to talk about a case without memorizing it or having to wade through the text in the casebook.

Here is a brief I've done for one of the cases we'll be talking about tomorrow. At this stage, we're not reading cases for points of substantive law (it's not actually that important, in the case below, what 19th century British law says about employer liability and workman's comp). Rather, we're interested in seeing how the law develops over time and how it functions in response to different challenges (so in this case, we are interested in how a common-law court dealt with a new legal question by looking at potentially analogous situations it had addressed in the past, considering questions of social utility/policy, and then clarifying the issue of implied contracts and duties between masters and servants in a way that had not been done before).

Enjoy!

Priestly (servant) v. Fowler (master)

Procedural History

• Priestly sued Fowler for thigh injury
• Court awarded 100 pounds to Priestly
• Fowler appealed (obtained a rule to show cause why the judgment should not be arrested)

Issues

Main issue:

Does the nature of the master/servant relationship imply a contract with the associated duty being that it is the responsibility of the master (Fowler) to ensure his servant’s (Priestly’s) safety?

Secondary issue:

Is the servant bound to risk his safety in the service of his master, or could Priestly have refused Fowler’s request to transport the goods in the van if he had reasonably apprehended danger to himself in carrying out that request?

Non-issue:

How does Fowler’s liability relate to his knowledge of the repair and loading status of the van?

Facts

• Fowler, as master, directed his servant Priestly to transport goods in a van
• The van was in disrepair, was overloaded, and Fowler was not properly secured within the vehicle
• The van broke-down and Fowler fractured his thigh as a result

Rule of Law

The court recognizes “implied in law” terms to the contract between a stagecoach passenger and the stagecoach company, but there is “no precedent for the present action by a servant against a master.”

Reasoning

• Because Fowler’s knowledge of the status of the van is unknown, the court will not treat his liability as it relates to his awareness of the van.
• The servant is not bound to risk his safety and can refuse his master’s request.
• There is no such implied contract between master and servant. Furthermore, a general servant has knowledge of the situation that a stagecoach passenger does not, so the analogy between the stagecoach and the master does not apply.
• To have the master liable to the servant would have bad policy consequences.

Holding

The judgment was arrested (Lord Abinger), and Fowler was not required to pay Priestly.

VC

PS: It's totally not important in these cases what court the case appeared in (because it's an obscure British court that no longer exists) or who the legal personalities involved were (which is something we might focus on a lot more in a more recent Supreme Court ruling).

Lenfest Morning

Well they might not be as interesting as Impressionist time series, but here are some photos from my place that I've taken in the early morning.

The first two I took at the crack of dawn before going to bed a few days ago.


The next two are framed more or less the same as the first two, but were taken this morning a bit later in the morning (6:30AM or so) when the sky was even more dramatic.


The last two are just the view from my windows, but I really like the first one because it was so uncanny when I looked through the lens to take the photo. It was late enough in the morning (about 8AM) when I took it a few days ago that the street was fully lit, and yet there was not a single moving person or car on it, and it gave the huge red gridded buildings (many of them housing projects in the distance in Upper Manhattan) this toy lego quality. Very weird. The second one I'm only including for completeness (so you can see the whole view), but as you can see I have issues photographing through my screen, which also limited the framing of the sunrise photos.














Off to register for Orientation!

VC

A Manhattan Foot

NYC: Where apartment space is now worth more than $4,000 per square foot.

VC

Geisha Be Gone

As many of you know, I recently took a trip to Montreal that was intended as a kind of exploration of romantic potential with an ex who has become a valued friend and true supported of The Chunk.

Those with whom I've talked about the trip might recall that I felt almost unethical engaging on this fact-finding mission with someone for whom I thought that I basically already knew the outcome: I was not interested in him in that way. The analogy I used with most people was that if we had been forced into an arranged marriage, then we could have made it work, but that we'd be missing out on having a lot of our needs met if we settled on each other.

There were two factors which led me to go through the romantic motions, though, and I think they're both important to understand (especially because one of them was very subtle and did not occur to me that I was doing it until I was back home in California):

1. Despite the feelings I've had throughout the past two years for R (that you are probably tired of me blogging about, here), I knew that I should not wait for him to come around or agree to something that he may never want (nor, perhaps, should he want). It was important for me to still date and pursue romantic options and not pine away for something that might never materialize. I knew that I'd be a healthier individual AND a better friend to R (even though he already has a truly excellent circle of friends -- another bonus to being wit him!) if I weren't engaged in that kind of waiting exercise. When it became clear to me that L (I find it sort of funny that their initials are L & R and trust me there really are just about as opposite as are left and right!) was looking to explore romantic possibilities with me, I felt, as I do with other options that come up, that I should look into it, even if I thought that the chances were very small that it would be, in the end, something I would really want or could make work.

2. (this is the subtle one that surprised me when I realized I was doing it) I met L at one of the most difficult times in my life, which I've already blogged about, here. Although I actually declined his offer to date (opting, instead, for a rather ridiculous, in retrospect, whirlwind romance with a UN human rights officer), I did, over a period of months, realize that he represented a possibility yet unknown to me: to love and respect A MAN in a totally platonic way that is free from manipulation and full of healing. As happens with most people we sincerely care for, I came to feel very invested, these past few years, in his own personal struggle to locate himself, and part of that involved wanting for him what he wanted -- an intelligent, sincere, ethical (younger) partner. Unfortunately (I say "unfortunately" because I think that it's unfortunate for both of us that there was any misrepresentation of feelings) I, at some point, decided that I wanted so much for him to be with someone that I was willing to offer myself.

Now, let's be clear: I'm not saying that I'm so selfless and wonderful that I was willing to pretend to care about someone I didn't just so he'd be happy. Not at all. Rather, I was willing to try to make myself see in someone a romantic possibility that I didn't think was there because there was already such a strong basis of mutual respect and caring, and because I wanted for him, as someone I valued, to have something that could make him happy (the flaw in my thinking is, of course, that he could never be happy with someone who deep down didn't want to be in that situation, and I wonder if at some level he sensed that).

As some of you heard me say with increasing frequency as the time for the Montreal trip approached: "I love L, but I don't want to be with him. I just can't change that." This is UNRELATED TO (and this is key) my usual followup-statement (UNRELATED, but both statements are true): "I want to be with R."

In one of our SEVERAL journeys to pick up the constantly in-repair car, my mother and I talked about our experiences and habits of playing geisha to men we didn't really love (I should again stress that L was a slightly different case, because I care about him a lot, just not in that way). I still have not been able to totally understand why it is that we slip into these personnas, but I think it's perhaps that we focus on being what someone else wants because we are at some level afraid of articulating, going-for, and then receiving what we want (and need), that fear existing at multiple levels -- fear of being rejected or punished if we express our needs; fear of not being deserving, capable, or ready/responsible enough to receive what we've asked for; fear of asking too much; fear of what must be a startling calmness that comes when things aren't broken in our lives.

It's an important thing to understand, because I realized that it coloured so much of my interaction with men (and I am not like this in my friendships to any comparable degree). From the kind of sexual partner I am to the kind of dinner date I am, I have caught myself so many times constructing myself so as to accommodate, to the best of my ability, the needs of a man -- many times needs that he couldn't even himself articulate or understand, but that I have been able to anticipate and address. If you have ever wondered why someone of rather average physical appearance has had so many people convinced they were in love, or at the very least infatuated, well this is how. The pernicious thing about the whole process is that they only get what they need/want in the short-term (because in the long-term they are either eventually rejected or are smart enough to self-distance when they realize what is going on, that their needs are not being sincerely and sustainably met) AND we don't get what we want either (indeed we scarcely understand what it is that we want).

I should say, also, that I'm not coming to all this now. This is stuff I realized and worked on in Cairo, and even if thoughts preceded corrective action, I have come a LONG way.

Not that everything must always come back to R (I hate feeling like to some readers that undercuts my other observations/statements), but this is also one of the reasons that I have known that my love for him has been so sincere. I don't perform. There's no faking. There's no manipulation. My strategy totally falls to pieces. It's also why I would tell him *and mean it* that I didn't want HIM to try to burden himself with his ANTICIPATED expectations of what I'd want from him, and then force-feed himself our relationship and go through the motions of a partnership, the terms of which he didn't agree to or have any hand in setting. I've been there and done that, and I don't want anyone to do it for me, especially not someone I love and want to be happy.

Returning to L and Montreal, I had so much anxiety about this trip because I was so dreading the performance, and not just in a self-pitying "I don't want to do this because I don't want to" way, but also in an "I don't want to do this, because I'm not sure it's right for HIM" way. It was SUCH a relief (as I told many of you when we got back) when it turned out that L kept a physical distance in Montreal. I'd been trying to get together with him since coming back BOTH for silly errands-running help AND because I wasn't prepared to feel like my last performance was safely behind me until I'd heard from his lips that romance was not his agenda.

Today, after a distressing amount of silence on his part (I do well with honesty, not with silence and ex-post-silence retrospective honesty) he expressed his wish that we be friends, not lovers. I felt bad for him that he was so concerned about letting me down, but as I told him in the email that I sent him, this is a huge relief to me. As I've tried to regulate and limit the geisha tendencies so that I'm in that kind of situation as infrequently as possible, there was the lingering problem of L and the fact that it was one of the most significant remaining interactions like that in my life, with the consequences (especially to him, I worried) being also great.

Well it's been two very productive days. I was with Dr. Juicy for 9 hours yesterday, the majority of which were spent studying Arabic (well she was studying for her OB/GYN exams), and today she nabbed a table for us at the Barnes & Noble in Lincoln Center at 9:15AM and we worked there until lunch. I came home, read L's email and replied, and now blogged. Back to Arabic, feeling great about the way things are going (both with Arabic and in my life) and really happy to have made my life that much more REAL lol (you have to admit, I'm totally one of the most real people you know ;p).

VC

Marc Jacobs & Pookie Update PLUS Bonus Ghetto Song

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Glenn Beck is an Idiot

I should say that with the qualification that when I flipped his program on CNN Headline News on, I wasn't entirely sure if it was him or a guest talking (I came in RIGHT when the idiocy started), but he (or guest) finished a segment on Iran with the statement:

"I just want to say to you all that I believe that these mullahs are far worse than Hitler."

I don't think I need to comment on that.

The problem, here, and it's also what helped turn Nancy Grace into a GREAT prosecutor and advocate into a hyperbolic gunner, is that CNN Headline news is intended to be gripping, sensational, over-the-top, and, for all that, Fox News's direct competitor (here in OC they are actually on adjacent channels, with Nancy coming on at the same time as CNN-turned-Fox swan [aka: plastic surgery galore as part of network switch contract] Greta Van Sustren, for example) and that means reduced quality. I think that CNN (the prime station) is intended to compete with a station like BBC, but isn't editorialized/cult of the personality enough to compete with fox (it's not Jerry Springer enough to capture the attention of the ADD American audience), which is why CNN Headline News (even the name implies fast tidbits: the news distilled) is the real Fox News competitor.

Ok I have to stop watching this show. He just started talking about he's an alcoholic and the "insanity" in LA.

VC

PS: OH GOD! I should have switched it off when I said I would. He just rallied against Hep B vaccinations in LA schools because it vaccinates for a "sexually-transmitted disease." HELLO! It's not like saying to kids "ok, now it's safe to have sex." It's saying: "This is becoming a big problem in the world, and we didn't used to have a vaccine. Now we do. You might need this as an adult." THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN STUPID PEOPLE ARE GIVEN MICROPHONES!

Celine Dramatics (but still touching)

So I thought I blogged about this back when it happened, but maybe not.

When Hurrican Katrina destroyed part of the Southern gulf coast, Larry King had an impromptu fundraiser. Well Celine Dion had already, of her own initiative, given $1 million, but she still appeared on his show.

Now, I was generally not impressed with the coverage of Katrina (even from Anderson Cooper) but I did find Celine to be really touching (and really, as always, over the top).

A few things I like about this:

1. Her emphasis that her $1 million isn't even what she wants to talk about
2. Her comments about the looting and how that's not what we should be focusing on
3. Her confusion over our capability to enter Iraq but not Louisiana
4. Her comments about mothers and children
5. Her determination that we need to just GO and get people out

What always cracks me up when I think about that interview (and now, months later, I've seen the clip again) is that she's crying and going on this diatribe against the relief effort and then Larry is literally like "so...um...can you sing something?" and Celine literally wipes her mascara from her eyes and is like "well...I guess I could..." sniffs, and does a GREAT job on "The Prayer" (the one she did with Andrea Bocelli).

Sort of cracks me up, the singing at the end, but the interview is really touching. It actually made me cry when I watched it when it was live on CNN, and even now a few times she gives me chills (I think she's WAY dramatic, but also so sincere that it's touching).

HERE IT IS

VC

Rufus Followup: Reviews

For those of you (basically, I guess, my mom) who also love Rufus, here are three reviews of his Judy Garland concert (the one at Carnegie). I have to give Wong credit that she alerted me to this concert a long time ago, but I was busy hating Cairo and didn't pay a lot of attention to is:

New York Times review

BBC Review

Harp Magazine Review (GREAT REVIEW)

VC

PS: Did you really think I'd blog about the war?

RUFUS @ CARNEGIE (and Love Gossip)

I cannot believe I missed this. Check out this hilarious website -- Timmy Ray's "Drunk and Wearing Flipflops on 5th Avennue" (actually a QUOTE from a Rufus song...this guy really is a fan) -- which you'll always have easy access to, now that I'm linking to it.

As you can see from his 15 June entry, Rufus performed at Carnegie Hall! He and I apparently cater to the same demographic. I was happy to see, in the after party photos, that he looked a really healthy weight, so let's hope that his battle with meth et al. is totally over.

I haven't asked El Pook, yet, if he went to this performance, although I suspect he didn't, because he tends to go to Moscow whenever he has the chance to see someone interesting.

(It's 11:11, so I'm filled with double meaning)

OH! You'll also see on the website on the entry BELOW (earlier than) the Rufus concert entry that Marc Jacobs actually did a Rufus tribute at his store -- the very same store I linked-to on thie blog when Pookie still lived on Jane Street and there was a bag just FEET away that I was in love with (not quite feet away, and not quite love) -- AND, the amazing designer is SINGLE.

You have to see this link so see why it is I think I have a chance.

Ok, for those of you with limited time, I'll tell you: If you look at the site announcing Marc's breakup with his GORGEOUS 25yo boyfriend, you'll see two things. 1. That he likes younger guys (ok, his boyfriend is like 100 times cuter than I am, but it doesn't matter!...see point 2.). 2. He likes younger guys but NEEDS a guy who can be there for him when he needs him and who isn't into going clubbing every night -- he needs young but SERIOUS. That's SO ME!

If you check out the really funny (seriously, they're really funny) comments to the article on that site, you'll see the tragic news that, according to the little slut, he and Marc are back on, but I think nothing that volatile can really last. If Pookie hasn't made his move by the time I make Law Review, then I'm going after Marc (even if Pookie is way cuter and obviously has better taste in guys).

The comment that's still making me laugh is that Marc's boyfriend is "the gay hooker version of Kevin Federline" (that's Britney Spears's loser boyfriend for those of you with day jobs).

Really funny.

I know it's sad, but if you want to see the ex's friendster profile, then click here. I really hope it's a joke, because if it's not then that's just sad. As mature as I thought Marc's post-breakup comments were (about control and need and all that), I almost feel like if he's stupid enough to stick with that guy for 6 months then he might not be good enough for me!

XOXO

VC-Jacobs

VC's 1L Courses

Ok so if you ever are wondering what I'm studying in law school this coming year, here is where you should look (taken from the orientation website):

Students are required to register and pick up their course schedules in person on Monday, August 14, 2006, the first day of Orientation. Schedules also will be available in Lawnet by that date.

In the Spring term, you will be able to register for one of the first-year elective offerings.

First-Year Required Courses	First-Year Electives (Spring 2007 Term)
Fall Term Spring Term Legal Methods Legal Practice Workshop I Civil Procedure Contracts Torts Constitutional Law Criminal Law Property Legal PracticeWorkshop II Foundation Year Moot Court	(You will be able to register for one of these 6 courses) Law and Social Science Law, Culture, and Notions of Justice Lawyering Across Multiple Legal Orders Legislation Principles of Intellectual Property Regulation: Decentralization and Globalization

XOXO

VC

Completeness (1 of 3)

Well I've just seen another good (if not mindblowing) Oprah episode and I have to say that having seen Dr. Robin Smith on her show twice in the past week (talking first about debt and marriages and now about death and grieving) I think that Dr. Robin doesn't just blow Dr. Phil (who I don't like and won't link to on my blog) out of the water, but she actually says things that are really valuable. I believe I already quoted her on my blog, before, about what it means to be "private."

In her Lies at the Altar book she lays out the Top 10 Truths & Lies about marriage (and apparently at 2:45AM I'm prompted to adopt German capitalization rules?) and one of them is the following (not QUITE directly-quoted):

Lie: Getting married will make a person complete.
Truth: You cannot be partnered until you are whole.

I remember my first girlfriend at Columbia and how, during our first year together, the claustrophobia that threatened me by her even mentioning a relationship, let alone making me the target of romantic and sexual desire, made me realize a lot of valuable truths about myself (truths that it would take me another four years to actually cope with and help address).

I remember it as if watching it on video (you'll see the irony in what I told her in a minute) climbing through the levels of the Butler Library stacks with her and telling her how much I disagreed with her attempt to use Plato's writings on love to justify why it is that, in that time that I was coming to realize my problems and incompleteness, it was the perfect moment for me to be with her. She tried to argue that two people help complete each other. I argued, and it's funny that the argument should return, now, through a doctor I have seen on Oprah, that I totally disagreed, and that you cannot have a healthy and mutually-supportive love in which people grow and flourish unless both people are sufficiently complete and whole BEFORE and APART from the relationship; I even said (and I'm not kidding) that as much as I liked Plato, we should think about it more like Oprah -- I didn't want to sabotage or self-destruct, and I didn't want to bring her down with me. I needed to work on myself before I could work for us.

What's my point? That six years later I was vindicated by a motivational speaker on Oprah? No. Well actually, yeah ;) But that's not my ONLY point. My other point is that I want to say something briefly about the journey towards completeness.

To further complicate my already winding thoughts, while introducing an even lower brand of daytime tv, I remember the now-sacked Star Jones from The View making the unusually insightful comment that, for all the time she was waiting for the right man to come around, she herself was not the right woman. She was educated, successful, great on paper (if a bit thick through the waist), and expected for herself a total catch who would appreciate and adore her. The problem, she realized, was that she was not, yet, herself in control of all the attributes that would make her merit a person like that. Was she kind? Understanding? Discussive? LOVING? No. She was demanding and unqualified for Mr. Right.

I think (since this is my blog and it should be about me ;p) that that's basically where I was at between 21 and 23 (in other words: after my first evil Russian boyfriend and up until this past year). I had a lot to offer, but I wasn't really putting it all together, and I'm not sure I was ready to. I was not ready to be totally self-empowering (even if I could talk the talk and help others to walk it) -- my jealousy being a huge manifestation of that -- and I don't think I was prepared to make the lifelong commitment to being an emotionally-healthy person. Like getting over an addiction and having to say goodbye to your favourite substance, I had reached a kind of development impasse where I could articulate my problems, but had somehow accepted them as "me" rather than as "the parts of me I need to work on and get past in order to really engage my life in a full and fruitful way."

It has been a gradual process (and like all processes such as this, it's a process of becoming that doesn't have a clear beginning or end) by which I've had to draw from both devastating experiences and joyful ones, but (dare I say it), I think that I've recently, in the past seven months or so, taken absolutely enormous strides towards completeness. Of course, I'm not Jesus on Prozac, and I still make mistakes and I give-in to personal darknesses, but I think that the ways in which I think about and respond to my family, my environment, myself, and my romantic partner manifest this emotional growth spurt (which I'm trying frightfully hard to articulate rather unsuccessfully, here).

I was aware enough, before, of the kind of love I wanted, but I was not aware of what I needed to do to prepare myself to manufacture and receive it.

Knowing healthy v. unhealthy is big. I had that. Knowing how to embrace healthy and cope with unhealthy (which will always exist in most aspects of our lives in one manifestation or another) was a step I did not take until, I'd say, this past summer.

I'm too tired to write the other things I'd planned (hence the 1 of 3 in the title of this blog entry), but here's the preview of the VC Completeness series, lol:

Part I: VC's unsubstantiated and meandering introduction to (his own) completeness
Part II: VC's declaration of appreciation of the completeness of others
Part III: VC' tests for the presence of completeness

Well I need to rest-up before a visit to my brother and niece (both of whom I have not seen since Christmas 2004), tomorrow. I had a great diner with my mother, sister, and other niece, and hope that tomorrow will be as enjoyable (I think it will be).

VC

Why?

After having poured over these two recordings of Kelly Clarkson covering Annie Lennox's "Why?" I just had to blog the lyrics. It's a GREAT song.

For me being obsessive about vocal technique, I'm also cutting and pasting for your pleasure an email I sent to a vocal coach friend of mine in Amsterdam (I think I blogged about him before as my partner in singing/tennis/figure skating crime). My original email, typos included (if there are any). This is with reference to the first of the two recordings I hyper-linked to, above (the YouTube site is AMAZING!), even though the second one is much higher quality (if a bit less exciting in the ending):

**********

KELLY CLARKSON COVER OF ANNIE LENOX

Talk about hard to pull off :)

The recording is awful, and I hate the echo, but you're right -- Christina doesn't really communicate the meaning of a song that well when you hear something like this...you hear this and you BELIEVE her.

I think Kelly is amazing on this kind of thing, and I hate all the crap they're having her sing that has made her so popular these past two years. She has too much soul and talent to sing crap.

Pay attention to 1:45 (also my favourite part in the original...they lyrics are just great) because I think that any student who can't HEAR what it is to have a powerful diaphragm needs to only hear how much power she can get on quick notes on a single pitch like that (with nice fast vibrato, too) to know what proper power from the diaphragm sounds like. I also think that you can hear the perfect example of the "mixed voice" we're always talking about when she transitions up at 1:50. I also love (LOVE!) the TINY voice break at 3:29 at the end of "this is the fear." I've seen a bunch of recordings of this from different cities, and it's definitely on purpose (but you can only do it when you're properly relaxed, you know?).

UGH I WISH I COULD SING LIKE THAT! lol

XOXO

**********

Here are the lyrics:

How many times do I have to try to tell you
That I'm sorry for the things I've done
But when I start to try to tell you
That's when you have to tell me
"Hey... this kind of trouble's only just begun"
I tell myself too many times
"Why don't you ever learn to keep your big mouth shut?"
That's why it hurts so bad to hear the words
That keep on falling from your mouth
Falling from your mouth
Falling from your mouth
Tell me...
Why
Why

I may be mad
I may be blind
I may be viciously unkind
But I can still read what you're thinking
And I've heard it said too many times
That "you'd be better off..."
Besides...
Why can't you see this boat is sinking
(this boat is sinking this boat is sinking)
Let's go down to the water's edge
And we can cast away those doubts
Some things are better left unsaid
But they still turn me inside out
Turning inside out turning inside out
Tell me...
Why
Tell me...
Why

This is the book I never read
These are the words I never said
This is the path I'll never tread
These are the dreams I'll dream instead
This is the joy that's seldom spread
These are the tears...
The tears we shed
This is the fear
This is the dread
These are the contents of my head
And these are the years that we have spent
And this is what they represent
And this is how I feel
Do you know how I feel ?
'cause i don't think you know how I feel
I don't think you know what I feel
I don't think you know what I feel
You don't know what I feel

Great song.

VC

Busiest TA Ever

I was NOT the busiest TA ever when I was at AUC, but take a look at this job announcement that I received, today, from CPIL (Columbia Law's Center for Public Interest Law):

Columbia University School of Social Work for Legal Foundations
New York, NY
*Teaching Assistant
Overview/Qualifications: Student will assist in teaching, reviewing and
grading assignments, preparing cases, meeting with students. Great
opportunity for students interested in social policy/public interest law
and teaching. Taught by professor with a J.D. and Ph.D. in social work.
3L students preferred.
Duties: Eighty hours per week, $20 per hour, two-semester commitment.
To Apply: Contact Professor Vicki Lens at vl2012@columbia.edu
Salary: Unspecified
Deadline: Unspecified

Did you see that!? 80 hours per week. As a third year law student. That's almost 12 hours per day, seven days a week (minus one hour for lunch four of the seven days) IN ADDITION TO being a 3L. That's crazy!

VC

Unending Chunkiness, Global Edition

Hey everyone, well let's review what's happened since the last time I've blogged:

My maid and bowaab stole all my things, I missed my flight out of Egypt, shipped my worldly possessions to NYC, finally made it to Athens (only long enough to rush to the Acropolis and then back to the airport) with the help of some Cairene angels, spent my first night ever in Brooklyn and was reunited with two of my best friends (including one's much-anticipated girlfriend), came home to California, changed fuses on a car, was mistaken (with my mother) for Iranian, discovered that my weight gain since I was last in the States (18 months ago) is 23 bootyliscious pounds that my NYC friends politely tell me is flattering, flew BACK to NYC, moved into my new place (the bamboo garden isn't all that), got reunited with another best friend and her boyfriend (who I really like) as well as two exes (including one bushy-tailed pookie), had more nice meals than was necessary in a 72 hour period (one of them involving an embarrassing incident when one of my aforementioned best friends, working in counterterrorism, agreed with me that our hot waiter was Pakistani, except when I got her to ask if he was from Lahore he was confused, offended that she might be using dirty language with him, and finally clarified that he was Puerto Rican), saw a really cute Broadway play (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), furnished my entire new studio (proving that Lesbians and residents of Brooklyn can both still have really good taste) and flew BACK to CA. Oh yeah: I also got a New York mobile number again (YAY!), and had all my things released from customs (where they were under a mysterious but easily-solved "agricultural hold" -- like I'd EVER touch a piece of fruit or buy a plant, lol) and was mistaken for Punjabi (mistaken for Iranian and Punjabi in the same week -- how's THAT for a versatile look?). Oh yeah X 2: Even though I've been too tired/busy/lazy to email her, I did NOT forget to get a certain Pakistani-American someone the bronze jewelry she wanted!

I may have missed something. I'm a little tired that in the past two weeks I've flown from Cairo to Greece to New York to California to New York to California (not including the stopovers United kindly offered me), but I've gotten a ton of Arabic done on all these flights, and I suppose I'm reasonably happy.

A few lightening impressions with not much explaining, so pick what interests you and call or email if you really want to know what I'm talking about (no hard feelings if you don't, lol):

* Be kind to those around you, because you never know when you might need to stay the night with a crazy Japanese girl and cash-in on your good person points.

* Shipping cargo on Emirates is REALLY cheap, but costs a lot of time, so if you're NOT me and actually have a job, in which case the opportunity cost has a financial element, then just pay excess baggage and move on.

* Don't have ANY mail sent to your parents. Your mother might get a gold amex in your name while you're gone, and that's a very slippery slope.

* At least four people in Cairo really care about me and are there for me, which isn't bad for two years in a city I hated.

* Egypt has a culture of dishonesty that pervades every aspect of society (from business to family) that has nothing to do with poverty, no matter what anyone says...it might be about more abstract understandings of "ownership," though, as a much-valued Palestinian/Jordanian friend from Afghanistan has said.

* If you want a man, and you go after him, then you can usually get him (and I'm NOT talking about MY experience!! I'm talking about the experience of two girls mentioned in this blog entry!) [EDIT: I just realized that both these girls were after Palestinian guys, so maybe I should say: If you want a Palestinian man, and you go after him, then you can usually get him...even though I got absolutely zero action when I was in Palestine!]

* Orange County is more gorgeous than I realized, but just as dead as I always suspected. Not only is it the ultimate example of money doesn't equal class, but it is also bereft of any cultural outlet whatsoever minus the ubiquitous Blockbuster. I like it here so long as I don't go outside (which, since my mother did an amazing decorating job, is fine with me).

* People in NYC are absolutely as hot as I remembered. I shouldn't say "hot." I should say: "Put-together and in-shape." New York City is the only place in which even that dumpy guy who in another city would be president of his local anime club and 200 pounds overweight STILL manages to hit the gym four times a week (even if it does nothing for his social skills).

* People at Columbia Law living in Lenfest (SO FAR...hopefully I'll be wrong later) are fit but unfriendly. My last full day in New York (day before yesterday), I crossed paths with SIX people in my building, NONE of whom met my eye or responded to my smile and under my breath "hey," except one girl who HAD to say hi after I surprised her when the elevator doors opened and I almost walked into her -- she was just coming back from a run (as 4 of the 6 were coming or going for a run...high-strung over-functioning and high-rent-paying law students are apparently fond of running) and had her leg up and IN the frame of the elevator on the lobby to stretch, so it was sort of embarrassing for her when the doors opened faster than she was expecting and her thigh was in my face (that's very NYC, though, for someone to only say hello AFTER their thigh has been in your face, lol).

* With only a couple notable exceptions (and WOW were they exceptions) I choose friends really well. I have five really close friends in New York who I really know I can count on (there should be a sixth, but she is still lost in the chaos of her first year law summer), and in Cairo I have at least four...then there's Jordan, Kabul, Tel Aviv....My life is really full and rich from these people, and I have to remember that! I also might have a small family, but I have a good one, and it was so nice seeing (in addition to my mother, obviously) my really awesome sister...so excited that today I get to see one of my nieces, again, who has promised to kick my butt in bowling.

* People's moms love me and I love moms. (that's a simple one) SOME people's moms who love me also love cute clerks at Juicy Couture who in tern love the daughter of the mother who in tern loves me, which means I'm only two degrees of separation from being loved by one of the hot guys working at Juicy Couture (it's too bad they don't have the men's line, there, otherwise I would have had to try on a scandalously tight pair of jeans, right?).

* I really have grown up and become more secure (mostly just in the past few months, lol), and it's been tested. I accept and let go better than I used to, I'm more forgiving of people being human, and I'm less threatened and less prone to seek/need validation than before. (This one's in bold because it's the most important)

Two quotes of the past two weeks:

1. From Oprah's show on how debt tears apart marriages (with a really awesome therapist who shocked me with how much I liked her...Dr. Robin?). She was responding to a husband who explained that he's just a very private person, and that's why he doesn't like to talk about what's going on inside him, emotionally:

"You were not BORN private. You were born free and whole."

She went on to explain (as I was kind of learning from two different guys in Cairo, one of whom has appeared on this blog as Dubai guy) that you BECOME private when you are taught to fear expression, and when you are taught that you need to protect yourself by retreating, emotionally.

2. From today's nytimes.com front page:

"Interactive Feature: Unending fury in MidEast."

Well that's not a quote but a hyperlink. I have to say it rather poignantly conveys a situation that I find too sad and baffling to really talk about (two of my favourite countries I've ever visited at war). I like the quote because it implies a certain spectator agency in the process, and after all, aren't we all accountable, somehow, to what's happening, there, and it's unendingness?

VC

VC Moving Back to NYC

Ok so my travel plans were supposed to be as follows:

4 July fly Cairo - Athens (arrive 8AM), sprint to Parthenon, meet Glam (who is also in Athens, by coincidence), sleep

5 July take lunch and fly Athens - NYC; stay probably with Juicy (maybe some ice cream with my Brooklyn dwelling and future PhD friends?)

6 July fly NYC - OC

{Stay in Orange County with moo until 31 July}

31 July fly OC - NYC

BUT! This has all just changed.

I just got my housing assignment from Columbia and, despite listing it as my last (third) choice (I even said on the application that I think it's too expensive, especially on a high floor) I have been placed in the newest and most luxurious dorm in a private studio.

Check out the dorm website (yes, it has it's own website!) here, it's called Lenfest.

I shouldn't say my room number online, but let's just say that it's QUITE easy to remember, which reminds me of when I lived in Columbia's OTHER new dorm as an undergrad ("Broadway"), and my room number my last year was 1234 lol.

I have to say that the colour video intercom makes me feel VERY La Femme Nikita!...now if only I were to turn mine on one day and see Michael (Roy Dupuis) then the dorm would be worth the price!

The other news it that my move-in dates are 12-14 July, which obviously gives me a great chance to have a month in NYC already moved-in before classes start on 15 August, but also means that my mom and I will not get to cuddle barely at all, I won't get to see my nieces, raise a new cat... :( Maybe I will go to NYC, move-in, and then go back to NYC until the second week of August...

It's kind of funny that people in the online law school forums joke about Columbia Law School's ridiculous luxury dorm with a bamboo garden, and now I'm living there.

What can a chunk do to just live humbly!?

Here is the floorplan (EDIT: I can't figure out how to attach the photo-clipped image from the pdf)...yes it's a queensize bed. I'll have a microwave. I just...can't believe how much my standard of living will go up between Cairo and NYC (and for only one bigillion dollars extra per month!).

XO

VC

CNN - Crap News Network

As if the screw-up with Ahmedinejad's transaltion (which I blogged about, before) that got CNN kicked out of Iran wasn't bad enough, they just did a flash profile of Warren Buffett in which they said that he got an MS from "Colombia University."

Yes. The Nebraskan billionaire did his masters in Bogota. Right.

VC

VC as Crazy Bitch & the Grace Initiative

I should start this by saying that Egypt has been a very strange place in terms of emotional growth. I think I'm a more mature person than I was two years ago (thanks to aging in general, and thanks to my specific experiences abroad), but I also think that if I have made unambiguous cumulative maturity advances, I've also regressed in some ways that should be taken seriously, namely in the domain of romance and how I deal with my romantic partners.

I remember telling Desi, last year, that my near-relationship with Y and its ultimate (and final, thankfully) decline from rollercoaster romance to solid friendship made me realize the disappointing ways in which I was reverting to pre-Pookie romantic patterns.

Let's be clear: I was hardly the ideal boyfriend with Pookie. There were times, in fact, when I was so jealous and accusatory that, once I'd regained my senses, the rational/calm me was questioning of HIS sanity in staying with me.

To be tangential: I remember, once, going to Pookie's place, and on my way I was calling and calling...no answer...so then I ring the doorbell, as I knew he should have been home, already, from taking an ex-boyfriend to a Yankee's game...no answer...I ring again...no answer. Then, after about three minutes (which is actually a long time to get from the living room, two meters away, to the door) he answered and I was surprised to find his ex there with him and the air tense with what I perceived as post-fooling around guilt.

Now, one of the problems with being extremely observant, intuitive, and intelligent, is that you always think you're right, which is to say Pookie was tried and convicted before a word was spoken.

If you've ever seen the scene in Evita where she goes to Peron's house and kicks out his old playmate, then my attitude was not dissimilar. I think after a few minutes of saccharine sweet conversation my exact words were: "So where did you say you lived again?...Oh, so you live close to the subway; that's great...Well it was nice meeting you! Do you want us to walk you, now, to the subway, or you can make it on your own?"

He left and I immediately confronted Pookie with what WAS sketchy, but not necessarily guilty, behaviour. He explained to me that he didn't want to get up to answer the phone while X was in the middle of a rather serious discussion about his own life (Pookie is a regular screener, anyway, so I usually know it's unlikely that I'll get through), and that he wasn't going to be so rude as to leap of the sofa while his friend was in mid sentence to run to the door to see who was there.

To this day, part of me still wonders if there was something going on, but the fact is that then and now I found Pookie's sincerity convincing (even if small doubts lingered), and in reality, being in a relationship with someone means trusting him, and part of me growing up has meant accepting that, and not running around like a paranoid psycho worried all the time that I'm being lied to. I think Pookie and I respect each other too much for that.

Pookie, in the way that so far only he has been able to really do, diffused my paranoia and made me return to earth. He was neither dramatic in his affirmations (there was no "But you know I'd DIE for our love!" or anything so artificial as that) nor was he overly-harsh in his perry and riposte ("I have NOTHING to defend, here, and you are being a psychotic child in your paranoia")...he was just sincere ("Well Chunk, you're talking to me like a prosecutor or something, and I'm telling you nothing was going on...I'm not interested in him at all").

What was so amazing about Pookie is that he not only managed to calm me down, but he also managed to diffuse the post-fit shame. I suddenly realized that I was standing there accusing one of the best people I'd ever met, let alone had the fortune of dating, of cheating on me, and that I was doing it in an obscenely immature way, and all I could think was: "He's too good for this. He's too good for someone as ruined as I am..." I was so disgusted with myself for that, and yet he managed to say to me that yes, I over-reacted, but it wasn't something to break-up over, and all couples face these kinds of issues and move through them.

The guy is a gem.

I want to make a sidenote, here, about paranoia and cheating:

I think there's a lot of truth to the theory that people who are overly-jealous or paranoid about being cheated on are that way because they are the ones cheating, and it's their own transgressions that inform their imaginations.

That said, I think there is an alternative path to paranoia and jealousy, which you travel-down after being totally screwed viz. male rolemodels (ie: dad) and then having that trauma compounded by a first gay relationship at a destructiveness level that those who have been close readers of this blog know about.

Growing up, and I just realized this tonight (I'll get back to HOW I realized this, later), I saw a father that was the epitome of the swinging bachelor, and seeing his constant game-playing, lies, cheating, and trail of ruined women in his path, I don't think it was even possible for me to understand "male" (or more specifically: "boyfriend" or "sexualized male") and "honest" or "safe" as descriptors that could simultaneously be assigned to a man.

Part of finally understanding that you are gay, and finally allowing yourself to, in my case, let ANY man be trusted enough to even be your friend (I don't think it's a coincidence that I had an untrustworthy father and thereafter only had female friends), let alone your lover, is letting go of that fear that a man (even a boy...a schoolmate...anyone who will eventually become the lying, sexualized male) will do to you what your father did to others, and giving a man a chance.

We all know what happened the first time I gave a man that chance, and with my relationship with Pookie beginning (on 13 February 2004) barely more than 5 months after my relationship with the evil Russian ended, I think it's understandable that "damaged goods" would barely even begin to encompass what was going on with me, emotionally, with significant spillover effects into my relationships.

That said, a lot of what was healing about Pookie was that I DID trust him. He's wonderful. He respected me, was honest with me, and sometimes, to my disbelief, he adored me. Receiving love (or whatever it is he'd prefer to call it) is VERY healing, and it makes you value it so much that you want to give it back, and you commit yourself to loving and healing others. (but that's not the point, here)

Back to Cairo...

I think that the amount of dishonesty built into a society where men believe that their survival depends on lying about their sexuality (and, by extension, the survival of their families, their religion, their state...the sky would FALL if nature were so wildly violated as for homosexuality to exist and be acknowledged...it would be total anarchy -- or so they like to believe) is destabilizing for someone like me (for all of us, really). I also think that this directly contributed to certain backward-stepping, on my part, to pre-Pookie levels of paranoia.

I do not trust nearly as much as I did before I moved to Egypt. Not only do I not longer trust men as much as I did before, but I don't trust phone companies, waiters, landlords...I don't trust PEOPLE as much as I did before I moved here, and certainly not a man who will call me "habibi" or try to have sex with me.

That said, even if I understand this (and I've only understood it with this clarity for, like, 45 minutes, now), I don't like it, and I won't stand for it.

Why do I mention this? I had a date tonight.

Preface: about a week and a half ago, someone messaged me on MSN (Microsoft messenger...an email-based chat program structured according to "buddy lists"...not Man Search Now, or something, for all you straighties with wild imaginations) and said "I noticed that your are on my old email account, but I don't know who you are" and indeed he was on my list, and I didn't know who he was. We were talking, he was a 25yo painter -- aka: not my type -- and without any discussion of status or sex roles or anything of the sort (which would normally be the most important ingredients to a chat between two gay men in Cairo) we agreed to go to dinner. It was one of my first "normal" dates (I'm sure Desi loves the normative values reinforced throughout this entry lol) since moving to Cairo.

He's decent, polite, smart, and if not INCREDIBLY charismatic, and if not TOTALLY my type, and if not FULLY adorned with all the markers of success that would be important in a society like this one (where, for instance, the fact that he went to Cairo University and not a British or American school is only IN PART compensated-for by his BMW and summer studies at UCLA), he is (most importantly, I'm remembering) someone I just instinctively feel I can trust.

We've had three dates, all of which I can candidly admit were rather polluted by my Cairene baggage, and he's just NICE. We've never even kissed, never discussed sex, actually (and NO Desi, I'm not saying "We are BETTER for this, because sex is bad and I hate gay people," so get OVER your critique of me as a homophobe!) and in a way that is eerily similar to Pookie, he weathers my weirdness with surprising dexterity and tolerance (which is NOT to say he enables me!).

Tonight, though, I crossed a line. I over-reacted. I was immature.

He has a tendency to talk on the phone when we are together, which is a pet peeve of mine in general. I tend to think of myself as very considerate, as far as cell phone etiquette is concerned, and ALWAYS apologize to whomever I'm eating with (even platonic female friends) if I have to take a call while at the table, and I ALWAYS minimize the length of that call. That said, he usually does tell me "Sorry this is my dad, do you mind?" or "it's international, so just give me a few minutes, ok?" with a level of considerateness that FAR superceedes that of most Egyptians.

Tonight, though, as I said, I crossed a line. We left a cafe to go to a restaurant (what can I say? Sex-free dates are highly-caloric!), and on the street on the way back to the car I noticed him look up at the building we were passing, and open his phone. He told me to wait while he stood there and made a call, in Arabic, with no explanation (it was only due to my freakishly-good powers of observation that I noticed his eyes dart upward before making the call, so I could assume he was calling a friend in the building). He then, after telling me to wait, told me we could keep walking, walked me to the car, opened my door, and motioned for me to get in and wait. He expected to pace up and down the street, speaking to I don't know who in a language I don't understand, while I wait like a lap dog in the car for who knows how long?

Certainly NOT.

We were sort of joking in our gestures: My hands waving, shutting the door and not getting in "No, I'm not getting in. What's going on?" His body-language reply, smiling: "Just get in! I'll be right there!" Me calling him, half-jokingly, on the other line, to tell him to hurry up; him again motioning for me to get in the car....

Me feeling insulted and losing patience.

Me walking away and getting in a taxi while he was not paying attention.

Me forgetting my keys were in his car.

Me waiting on the street, locked out of my building at 2:30AM trying in vein to get ahold of him.

Him coming back. Us talking. Me trying to explain with a level of articulateness so incredibly low that one might think English was my third language. Him disarming me with a big smile and (out of his control) that sense that, as I said, he was trustworthy.

What happened, then?

I tried to explain to him that I knew I over-reacted, but that I thought he had been extremely rude. As he said, and as I acknowledged, I could have won (this connects to the idea of grace, later) if I'd just waited patiently and then said to him: "That was really rude." Instead, I lost all my credibility by over-reacting and having to be the one apologizing. I explained to him that it didn't matter to me -- winning or losing, looking crazy or not -- what mattered was that I felt disrespected and had to exit that situation.

Of course, part of it is that he DID fail to go through the usual motions of "sorry this will just be 5 minutes" or "a friend from Sydney...just wait in the car, ok?" or any of the things that would have increased my tolerance from a zero to a perfect ten, and part of it is also that when you combine the trust issues that have resurfaced in Cairo with the fact that he was rattling away in a language I don't understand, I am left feeling really uncomfortable and insecure.

The key, though, was that I didn't see him as treating me with respect, and the trick with this Chunk is that I have extremely high (EXTREMELY high) expectations of what respect means.

If you have won my trust and understanding, then I will be the most considerate and accommodating person you've ever met, but in this case, because he missed the step of keeping me in the loop about the call, I was intolerant and haughty.

An unfortunate result of the emotional conditioners I talked about, earlier (and not just seeing my dad, but the way my mother has also made various mistakes in her romantic arrangements) is that, as a protection against disrespect and abuse, I have to be treated like a queen...or, prince...or whatever reference to the monarchy suits you.

I have walked out of dates in Cairo (literally left money on the table and walked away with no explanation, at restaurants) for ONE mis-placed comment (in the particular instance I'm thinking of, a Libyan told me I was being rude...my blood sugar was low, it was finals, and I knew how totally polite and out-of-my-way considerate I was being to meet him at all, let alone have him lecture me about my Arabic, which is when I asked him to please talk about it after the food came, and not now, which is when I was told I was rude)...I have deleted phone numbers, emails, and people because of ONE unsolicited comment about my appearance or tasteless reference to a much-loved ex. Failure to give me the place I deserve -- not talking to me enough at the party you invited me to, not introducing me with any sense of my place of privilege within your romantic life being transmitted when I meet your colleagues from the embassy -- not deferring to me in all the ways I will of course defer to you, these are fatal flaws.

The problem, as I'm sure you can see as well as I can, is that my importance is so contingent upon the recognition of that importance by these men that my worth becomes, as one of my favourite singers says, "embarrassingly conditional."

I do deserve a throne, and I know for a fact that I'd not only occupy it with generosity and style, but that I'd also do everything I could to build a throne just as nice, if not nicer, for my partner. Mutual respect. Mutual empowerment. Mutual adoration, right?

Here's the catch: for someone who thinks of himself as possessing so much elegance and class, I haven't demonstrated very much grace. I have been, to quote the same singer, "utterly threatened."

I am right to feel entitled to good treatment, because I'm a loving person, a fantastic person, and because I give excellent treatment in return, but real maturity, and real security with myself, would mean reacting better and more gracefully (more tolerantly, more communicatively, and more generously) when I don't get the treatment I deserve. That is my next step, my new goal.

VC

Hingis Beats Venus

Wow that puppy sniffing the dirty socks really brought her some luck! Because Eurosport completely screwed-up the live broadcast of the semifinal matches, my pro-Hingis post didn't actually occur until AFTER she was already being totally demolished by Williams. I should have known not to trust the "live" times, because when I looked at the schedule on the Rome website, it looked like the match would be starting almost an hour before Eurosport's live broadcast would begin. Because it was SUCH a big match, though, I assumed that Eurosport wouldn't get it wrong, and I trusted the television start time and wished Hingis luck a bit too late. And it showed!

Hingis dropped the first set 0/6. I mean, it was a serious thrashing. She said in a post-match interview that she wanted to cry. Then, perhaps in part thanks to my late posting of the cute puppy photo (and my tuning-in to the European broadcast from Cairo), she totally turned the match around and won the next two sets 6/3 6/3!

I'm still worried about her form, because I think she's sometimes not selecting her shots well (which is really her strength), and is sometimes trying to go behind her opponent when she should just hit predictably into the open court, and I also think that she's making too many errors *when not pushing for power* (which is when I think it's ok for her to make errors), as I would encourage her to. The problem with Hingis would be that she'd win against most players making no mistakes, but her clean tennis approach wasn't working against more powerful players; the thing is: she CAN hit the ball, or at least hit it harder than she does, but then her errors increase and it drives her crazy. What I think she needs to understand (and I think she's starting to) is that she will still come out on top more often than not when she goes for the shot (she'll have more winners than errors), and her OVERALL result (winning against people she used to lose to) will validate the messier play. Anyway, the problem the past two days has been that she's been neither aggressive NOR clean, but both her opponents have been playing pretty mediocre tennis, too. I felt like she and Venus were both in pretty average form.

But congrats to her, anyway! She plays Dinara Safina, tomorrow, a Russian player who I really like (and not just because her more-successful tennis-playing brother USED to be hot, like back in 2002). Safina has had some REALLY impressive wins, this week, and I think it will be a good match.

Sticking to my theme, I'll post another photo of my stuffed puppy doing something cute to give Hingis the luck she was missing in that first set, today.

VC

Work It, Hingis!

Minutes away from her semifinal against Venus and I'm really nervous for her! I'm also perpetually sleepy because I'm malnourished and subconsciously stressed about my comprehensive exam, tomorrow. The only thing I've eaten for three days, now, is a medium pizza (the last two days, supplemented with two snickers crunch and two small bags of peanut M&Ms), and I think I really need to be physically healthy to be mentally healthy.

I'm going into hibernation mode, which I know some of you have seen (and maybe I've written about it?). Before big exams I sleep SO much, but it's like my body always knows when to turn on and use those sleep reserves.

It was weird, because I just had a dream, that I realized was a kind of repetitive/process-oriented dream continued many night before, where I keep going back to Afghanistan and India. At one point I was in an Indian river-race where we had to swim down this river, and at another point I was "home" in Afghanistan, which was oddly developed but still chaotic -- like imagine the kind of overbuilt chaos of Hong Kong transposed onto Afghanistan. It was really weird. I was SO tired when I got home (but was happy to be back, after my race in India), and I remember washing my face and almost falling asleep while washing it (in this weird sink that was too small and couldn't accommodate my washing needs, which was sort of a leitmotif that I can't fully explain) with a three-sided mirror. I remember looking at myself and saying: "It's been too many months since you went to the gym, and your body cannot keep up this life without conditioning."

The weirdest part of the dream was that I had this feeling of unease that occurs when you've been perpetually stressed and need to kind of decompress from the trauma. I was washing my face and frustrated by the size of my sink but felt like I needed to be cleaning my face in this little contained space...like I had become so accustomed, over the prior days, to being in survival mode doing all these rigorous tests in India and other parts of Afghanistan, and it was like I couldn't transition back, just yet, to my regular life again -- I couldn't let myself risk expanding into my space, if that makes any sense. I can't think of a way to properly articulate the feeling I had, but it was like if you had been serving in a war, and every day had to wash yourself using a small bucket, because it was not safe to go to the river to wash...and you get so used to your life depending on this restricted habit that when you return home from the war you can't so easily feel comfortable in some huge marble bathroom that asks you to spread out your life and regular activities into differently-compartmentalized spaces. That's the best I can describe it. I remember thinking: I am traumatized, but I will re-adjust, and I don't need to push myself now. The sink is ok for now, and I will sleep, and soon I will be back at the gym and using my shower and I will feel safe and strong again.

Weird, huh?

Here's the talismanic booty. [EDIT: Oh god! I can't get her booty image to load! Ok I'm going to upload a photo I took of my stuffed puppy sniffing my socks this morning...he's so naughty!...hopefully he'll help Hingis win!]


















GO HINGIS!

VC