and then my bravado leaves the room.
and then i'm left thinking
maybe they're right.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
inter-generational schooling
i said thank you. i nodded. i stood and left the meeting room.
my new 20 year old friend sends text messages asking me where to find particular buildings on campus. i either send him to the wrong place or i don't know. today i didn't know. today he suggests we have coffee so i can debrief about my meeting. how could i refuse this? it felt so perverse that it felt right. we met by the library and moved off campus, further away from the crowds and the meeting that just took place. and there i am in a café talking about it all to someone i'd not yet met; someone who could easily be a student in my tutorials. or maybe i'm perverse for making this seem perverse, because maybe it's fine to communicate with another adult person who just happens to be young. because he's quite lovely and interesting, despite my pre-judgements of 'those young people'. but there i am, sipping coffee with a man who's undecided about what to do for his 21st which is coming up. i'm supposed to be in a better place than him (with all my experience, wisdom, and learning), but something tells me i'm probably not.
we'll meet up again next week.
my new 20 year old friend sends text messages asking me where to find particular buildings on campus. i either send him to the wrong place or i don't know. today i didn't know. today he suggests we have coffee so i can debrief about my meeting. how could i refuse this? it felt so perverse that it felt right. we met by the library and moved off campus, further away from the crowds and the meeting that just took place. and there i am in a café talking about it all to someone i'd not yet met; someone who could easily be a student in my tutorials. or maybe i'm perverse for making this seem perverse, because maybe it's fine to communicate with another adult person who just happens to be young. because he's quite lovely and interesting, despite my pre-judgements of 'those young people'. but there i am, sipping coffee with a man who's undecided about what to do for his 21st which is coming up. i'm supposed to be in a better place than him (with all my experience, wisdom, and learning), but something tells me i'm probably not.
we'll meet up again next week.
taking responsibility
and i actually have a smile on my face. because i see what's happened as ridiculous. it's official: my research progress is unsatisfactory.
S3 is the first of my supervisors to speak and she says she hasn't seen me take responsibility for... i'm not sure what, because i was too amused by her use of the R word. she's putting her hand in the box of keywords and wielding the words that infantilise me. this matches my research arguments about what happens when researchers and health promoters talk about young people needing to be 'more responsible'. the utterance is an action and that action is an infantilisation whose only response is akin to 'fuck off. what would you know anyway.' i argue that it's an unfair action, because it disregards what's there, the practices in place, the efforts and concerns already operating in/around the subject deemed irresponsible. it's a swipe that re-installs a hierarchy. and it's stupid. but good on her, because it worked. the panel took hold of such keywords and in the end, echoed everything my disgruntled supervisors had to say. quel surprise!
tomorrow is payday. drinks are on them!
S3 is the first of my supervisors to speak and she says she hasn't seen me take responsibility for... i'm not sure what, because i was too amused by her use of the R word. she's putting her hand in the box of keywords and wielding the words that infantilise me. this matches my research arguments about what happens when researchers and health promoters talk about young people needing to be 'more responsible'. the utterance is an action and that action is an infantilisation whose only response is akin to 'fuck off. what would you know anyway.' i argue that it's an unfair action, because it disregards what's there, the practices in place, the efforts and concerns already operating in/around the subject deemed irresponsible. it's a swipe that re-installs a hierarchy. and it's stupid. but good on her, because it worked. the panel took hold of such keywords and in the end, echoed everything my disgruntled supervisors had to say. quel surprise!
tomorrow is payday. drinks are on them!
Sunday, February 27, 2011
narcissus
the project continues.
today i wrote this, then i sent it to my fictional lover.
The tragedy reaches a higher level when Narcissus, at the moment when his tears disturb the pool, realizes not only that the loved image is his own, but furthermore that it can disappear.
(Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love, 104)
At that small half-oval kitchen table in Paris, my tears were part of a realisation that this image was about to disappear. In realising that the object of my love was an image that I had created, I knew that it would soon be destroyed. I would soon be dragged away from that site of reflection. That is, the place by the river where I intersect with Paris and with JB. That is, a place of love.
Ripples, like words of an email where he says we cannot meet again. My image shatters. In the days leading to this moment I’d been increasingly drawn to the water’s edge, to the image, to the love I was fostering. Unlike Narcissus I knew that the image was my own creation and therefore believed I could not fall. Armoured with knowledge, I thought myself invincible. I continued to look at the image, to revisit that place, to conjure feelings that I knew were fictions. Yet no armour shielded my eyes which continued to drink from the water.
And then this day, at that table, the water ripples and the image is lost and the loss surges within me to bring forth tears. My tears offer another layer of disruption because they conceal not only the image, but the absence of the image. But still, this double erasure leaves me mourning a loss that is greater than an image, for it is a loss of self.
These tears might also be armour, for they blurred my vision and created bodily convulsions that distracted me from the focal point of my loss. In this moment my attention shifted from an external love object to an internal chasm. While I could not see the absence I could certainly feel it. My loss was not physical, because the absence of his body and mine had nothing to do with it. Rather, it was the loss of a reflection (of my self) that I had come to love. At this moment I stopped, I faltered, I cried. I did not see my tears, nor did I feel their hot and cold on my skin, because at this moment I had no external presence or surface. With closed eyes, sobs erupt from within. Convulsions, sounds, tears, but none of this happens through physical consciousness.
The intensity of the loss was superseded by the intensity of these bodily eruptions. I was aware of the chair beneath me, the music around me, and the light from the window, but I had no awareness of my external presence in that room. A mess of emotion and bodily tissue, I was uncontained and spilling outward. Most present were the internal passages through which my sorrow pulsed, raged, and erupted in tears and gasps for air. When suffocating, there is only internal struggle. I forget his lips and his hands. My need for air (that is, for life) rises and seizes me. I mourn a loss at the same time that I clutch at life. I am feeling something that engraves itself into my soul and will be written there forever. This is not a ‘something’ that I can easily give words to, because it’s nothing that is familiar to me. And it is not locatable, because it puts itself everywhere, in and around me. It’s a feeling. It’s a moment and a spasm that I will never again feel in its entirety. It was here, but now it’s over there.
From here to there is a journey I cannot trace for I’m too busy living, breathing, and writing myself into the next chapter. I lift myself from the chair, I dry myself off, and I walk into another room. I am met with a silence that is beautiful; made tranquil through the absence of bodily spasm. This is not unlike a post-orgasm transformation. In fucking, my body has a saturating presence where I am all skin and touched surfaces. This physicality reaches its peak at orgasm and then falls away, like water sucked back into the ocean. I am left with quiet bliss. My body melts into the bed and absorbs everything; the pleasures receding into some internal cavern. I lie still as the sediment settles, deeper and deeper into a place I cannot fathom. I no longer have a body. Or rather, it was over there, but now it’s here.
I sleep so that I can forget. I fuck so that I can forget. I fall in love again and again so I can etch over these old words with something new; like waves that continuously renew the shoreline. I fall because I have to. I forget most of what I know about reflections and fantasies. Forgetting is necessary so that one day I can return to the river to reflect.
today i wrote this, then i sent it to my fictional lover.
The tragedy reaches a higher level when Narcissus, at the moment when his tears disturb the pool, realizes not only that the loved image is his own, but furthermore that it can disappear.
(Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love, 104)
At that small half-oval kitchen table in Paris, my tears were part of a realisation that this image was about to disappear. In realising that the object of my love was an image that I had created, I knew that it would soon be destroyed. I would soon be dragged away from that site of reflection. That is, the place by the river where I intersect with Paris and with JB. That is, a place of love.
Ripples, like words of an email where he says we cannot meet again. My image shatters. In the days leading to this moment I’d been increasingly drawn to the water’s edge, to the image, to the love I was fostering. Unlike Narcissus I knew that the image was my own creation and therefore believed I could not fall. Armoured with knowledge, I thought myself invincible. I continued to look at the image, to revisit that place, to conjure feelings that I knew were fictions. Yet no armour shielded my eyes which continued to drink from the water.
And then this day, at that table, the water ripples and the image is lost and the loss surges within me to bring forth tears. My tears offer another layer of disruption because they conceal not only the image, but the absence of the image. But still, this double erasure leaves me mourning a loss that is greater than an image, for it is a loss of self.
These tears might also be armour, for they blurred my vision and created bodily convulsions that distracted me from the focal point of my loss. In this moment my attention shifted from an external love object to an internal chasm. While I could not see the absence I could certainly feel it. My loss was not physical, because the absence of his body and mine had nothing to do with it. Rather, it was the loss of a reflection (of my self) that I had come to love. At this moment I stopped, I faltered, I cried. I did not see my tears, nor did I feel their hot and cold on my skin, because at this moment I had no external presence or surface. With closed eyes, sobs erupt from within. Convulsions, sounds, tears, but none of this happens through physical consciousness.
The intensity of the loss was superseded by the intensity of these bodily eruptions. I was aware of the chair beneath me, the music around me, and the light from the window, but I had no awareness of my external presence in that room. A mess of emotion and bodily tissue, I was uncontained and spilling outward. Most present were the internal passages through which my sorrow pulsed, raged, and erupted in tears and gasps for air. When suffocating, there is only internal struggle. I forget his lips and his hands. My need for air (that is, for life) rises and seizes me. I mourn a loss at the same time that I clutch at life. I am feeling something that engraves itself into my soul and will be written there forever. This is not a ‘something’ that I can easily give words to, because it’s nothing that is familiar to me. And it is not locatable, because it puts itself everywhere, in and around me. It’s a feeling. It’s a moment and a spasm that I will never again feel in its entirety. It was here, but now it’s over there.
From here to there is a journey I cannot trace for I’m too busy living, breathing, and writing myself into the next chapter. I lift myself from the chair, I dry myself off, and I walk into another room. I am met with a silence that is beautiful; made tranquil through the absence of bodily spasm. This is not unlike a post-orgasm transformation. In fucking, my body has a saturating presence where I am all skin and touched surfaces. This physicality reaches its peak at orgasm and then falls away, like water sucked back into the ocean. I am left with quiet bliss. My body melts into the bed and absorbs everything; the pleasures receding into some internal cavern. I lie still as the sediment settles, deeper and deeper into a place I cannot fathom. I no longer have a body. Or rather, it was over there, but now it’s here.
I sleep so that I can forget. I fuck so that I can forget. I fall in love again and again so I can etch over these old words with something new; like waves that continuously renew the shoreline. I fall because I have to. I forget most of what I know about reflections and fantasies. Forgetting is necessary so that one day I can return to the river to reflect.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
the emperor's bricks
today is spent reading on the couch. then there's time sending and receiving phone messages from a man i don't know. flirting. building potential futures but with enough cynicism to not expect much. he seems nice enough.
he told me there's a fine line between bossy and assertive, and i fall on the good side of that line. he knows how to say the right things. this raises him above the others who sometimes appear in my phone. of late, all i get are disembodied words. i'm bored of this.
after my mid-afternoon shower (breakfast was not long before) i play some music, including this:
all the kids have always known
that the emperor wears no clothes
but they bow down to him anyway
because it's better than being alone
these lines always resonate, but today it makes me think of my relationship to 'the institution' that is 'the university' that is the edifice of knowledge production. the institution excludes as much as it incites, it punishes as much as it encourages. i'm a product of the institution, although i never entirely see myself in this way. but i am. these words that you read arrive at my tongue (and fingertips) through the education that i have been submerged in for over a decade now. and when i realise this (as i increasingly do) i feel like some philip k dick character who imagines he's outside the machine, fighting against the machine, only to wake up one day and realise he has devoted his whole life to sustaining the machine that destroys him. for such reasons, and in such moments, i come to love such songs.
because the emperor wears no clothes. the institution shields itself with its superior knowledge and its rich insights into all things known. but this is an invisible fabric that only the institution can weave and wear, fooling itself that others cannot comprehend, for they do not see what is here. and what they do not see reveals their inferiority (their need to learn).
obviously i'm spinning a fairytale here. some of my favourite people belong to the institution. most of them resent it as much as i do. and maybe we think we can change it, tear it down, brick by brick.
and sometimes we bow down to it because it gives us what we need. the institution is fueled by an ongoing surplus of insecurities, our needs to belong, to be smart, and to be employed. belonging to an omnipresent yet detached machine is particularly attractive to those of us who long to be exterior to a world we loathe. many of us smart-bots subjectify ourselves as 'alternative'. we study from afar, and we critique those things beyond our selves, but often in doing so we forget to critique that platform from where we project these insecurities.
being smart is as performative as any role we might take on. but this performance boils down to wordplay, the right texts, the right theoretical allegiances, and the right friends. the institution is naked but for a network of invisible strings of sentiments that shield it from crass society. the institution allows me to be smart. it also allows me a level of dissatisfaction through which i can bond with others also wrestling the machine. this machine is probably no different to any machine, like the ones we study and critique.
i don't know what the future holds. maybe in a couple of decades i'll be so far inside the machine that i'll forget what the world looked like before i had letters after my name. maybe i'll be one of those bots whose struggles morph into keeping the machine alive because the machine has pierced my being and i can no longer tell its pulse from my own.
i can only hope that this song, and all the other songs, come back to haunt me.
he told me there's a fine line between bossy and assertive, and i fall on the good side of that line. he knows how to say the right things. this raises him above the others who sometimes appear in my phone. of late, all i get are disembodied words. i'm bored of this.
after my mid-afternoon shower (breakfast was not long before) i play some music, including this:
all the kids have always known
that the emperor wears no clothes
but they bow down to him anyway
because it's better than being alone
these lines always resonate, but today it makes me think of my relationship to 'the institution' that is 'the university' that is the edifice of knowledge production. the institution excludes as much as it incites, it punishes as much as it encourages. i'm a product of the institution, although i never entirely see myself in this way. but i am. these words that you read arrive at my tongue (and fingertips) through the education that i have been submerged in for over a decade now. and when i realise this (as i increasingly do) i feel like some philip k dick character who imagines he's outside the machine, fighting against the machine, only to wake up one day and realise he has devoted his whole life to sustaining the machine that destroys him. for such reasons, and in such moments, i come to love such songs.
because the emperor wears no clothes. the institution shields itself with its superior knowledge and its rich insights into all things known. but this is an invisible fabric that only the institution can weave and wear, fooling itself that others cannot comprehend, for they do not see what is here. and what they do not see reveals their inferiority (their need to learn).
obviously i'm spinning a fairytale here. some of my favourite people belong to the institution. most of them resent it as much as i do. and maybe we think we can change it, tear it down, brick by brick.
and sometimes we bow down to it because it gives us what we need. the institution is fueled by an ongoing surplus of insecurities, our needs to belong, to be smart, and to be employed. belonging to an omnipresent yet detached machine is particularly attractive to those of us who long to be exterior to a world we loathe. many of us smart-bots subjectify ourselves as 'alternative'. we study from afar, and we critique those things beyond our selves, but often in doing so we forget to critique that platform from where we project these insecurities.
being smart is as performative as any role we might take on. but this performance boils down to wordplay, the right texts, the right theoretical allegiances, and the right friends. the institution is naked but for a network of invisible strings of sentiments that shield it from crass society. the institution allows me to be smart. it also allows me a level of dissatisfaction through which i can bond with others also wrestling the machine. this machine is probably no different to any machine, like the ones we study and critique.
i don't know what the future holds. maybe in a couple of decades i'll be so far inside the machine that i'll forget what the world looked like before i had letters after my name. maybe i'll be one of those bots whose struggles morph into keeping the machine alive because the machine has pierced my being and i can no longer tell its pulse from my own.
i can only hope that this song, and all the other songs, come back to haunt me.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
collaboration and gratitude
i've just hit the send button. there's no turning back. what i sent was the review form and accompanying documents for next week's postgrad review. in the morning both of my supervisors will discover that i no longer want them. i feel a little bit nervous and a little bit mean. i read those words on those documents so many times that they no longer make sense to me. today was lost to writing 2000 words.
word of the day: collaboration.
i asked a bunch of postgrad and academic friends to help me out, and five lovely people gave up portions of their day to read over my documents and give detailed feedback. these are friends who know of my situation. i'm glad i did this as i think my case is much stronger now.
feeling of the day: gratitude.
now it's very late and tomorrow i have an early start. all those other emails didn't get sent. nor did i do anything other than read and edit those 2000 words, over and over, morning til morning. tomorrow is for doing other stuff. and tomorrow is looking pretty good right now.
word of the day: collaboration.
i asked a bunch of postgrad and academic friends to help me out, and five lovely people gave up portions of their day to read over my documents and give detailed feedback. these are friends who know of my situation. i'm glad i did this as i think my case is much stronger now.
feeling of the day: gratitude.
now it's very late and tomorrow i have an early start. all those other emails didn't get sent. nor did i do anything other than read and edit those 2000 words, over and over, morning til morning. tomorrow is for doing other stuff. and tomorrow is looking pretty good right now.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
hard day at the offices
i'm so not used to the workforce. not that i would even call this proper work. i'm starting a new routine of many small jobs with flexible hours and sporadic workloads. only 2 of my 4 new jobs have started and already i feel exhausted, but happily so. today a supervisor (workplace, not phd - a much better species) mentioned a friend who may know of more work if i'm interested. because i'm crazy i said 'sure'.
4 jobs is 4 lots of administration. i'm filling out tax forms and signing employment contracts every second day. today i had a proper OH&S briefing. tuesday's was more like: "there's the door, there's the toilet, if there's a fire we leave".
i have 2 new desks to work from. next week i'll have another. which is just as well, because soon i'll have to give up my favourite one in the library. 5 desks (including this one at home) is probably enough.
soon i'll be catching more trains and less buses. soon i'll be tightly scheduled. next week i have no free days. thankfully, none of this is permanent. i know the circumstances of a casualised workforce are fucked up, but it tends to suit me for now. my fear of commitment sees me enjoying each tick of the 'casual' box on that tax form. flexibility, impermanence, unclear future... these are good things. as is taking a breather from studies.
4 jobs is 4 lots of administration. i'm filling out tax forms and signing employment contracts every second day. today i had a proper OH&S briefing. tuesday's was more like: "there's the door, there's the toilet, if there's a fire we leave".
i have 2 new desks to work from. next week i'll have another. which is just as well, because soon i'll have to give up my favourite one in the library. 5 desks (including this one at home) is probably enough.
soon i'll be catching more trains and less buses. soon i'll be tightly scheduled. next week i have no free days. thankfully, none of this is permanent. i know the circumstances of a casualised workforce are fucked up, but it tends to suit me for now. my fear of commitment sees me enjoying each tick of the 'casual' box on that tax form. flexibility, impermanence, unclear future... these are good things. as is taking a breather from studies.
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