Life is Good!

Wow, I sure used to be depressed and confessional about it. Yikes! Makes me grateful no one really read all that. This is just a marker post for myself, to note that I'm happy, now. Happier. Not so hopelessly adrift and all. Doing good things and moving in good directions. Content and more secure. Remember this feeling. Of serene confidence. Knowing you're doing well and can be happy with yourself and that you're still striving to do and be better. Yep. Content. Not that angsty business back there. Whew!

ambiguity is fun until you're its victim

arg. fun, but ultimately ambiguous. this is why framing is important: everyone knows what's going on.

But there's too much to do to get hung up and neurotic over this. Either try to focus on the good, or just stop thinking about it.

Must gear self up to face another day of spreadsheets and endless phone calls. Replenishing my supply of chapstick will help, right?

ever vigilant?

Last year, I spent an inordinate amount of time worrying about how to get to and from school/home. Worrying about being safe walking about alone, worrying about feeling unsafe. All because of a mugging at the beginning of school. I spent hours on that little shuttle bus getting from the library to a half-block from home, and then worrying every time I walked from the bus to my door that those two men would have figured out where I lived and were waiting to get me. Even when there were other people around.

And now, the vestiges of that fear and worry remain. I still cannot trust anyone on the street; I still fear strangers and dark spaces and downtown areas, and I still look upon all unknown men as potential muggers. And that is terrible.

Sure, it's good to be vigilant, I suppose. But at what cost? At making innocent people feel like you are casting them as criminals?

Yuck. So thanks, Chicago, for making me a terrible, fearful person. Thanks, society, for creating the social and racialized stratification that led to those two men targeting me as I walked home that night.

sure, life is different, now, but the memories and the fears linger. I'm glad I don't constantly worry, every fucking day, about how I'm going to get to my front door. A year of that was enough.

migration

I should maybe mine this for poetry seedlings and then lock it down and get out. I've moved on to less selfish (although still, of course, selfishly motivated) pursuits over at wordpress:

Nostalgia and Cultural Critique
contemporarycontempt.wordpress.com

It's a slow start, but I hope it gets better as motivation increases...
I bet someone has done some sort of tracking or research into online migratory patterns...in the realms of blogs, social networking, etc.

xanga, livejournal, friendster, facebook, myspace...all these virtual places people pour themselves into, only to move on when the newer, more popular "place" comes along...
will we ever settle down???

etic understanding of scenes

always on the outside looking in
never quite a PART of something
a fringe participant, sure
but usually outside
observing

and isn't that where i like it?
where it's best?
because what would life be like without the longing?