Sunday, August 26, 2007

I am sitting at the computer at 12:30 am in my moms house, researching bladder cancer. Ah, the carefree life of a swinging single 25-year-old gal. That life can suddenly pile so very much on a person who was, by all accounts, living a quite mundane life not long before (even if i was living said mundane life in a loud, fun way) , is very disturbing. If it didn't make so much sense in a rain-on-your-wedding-day kind of way, I'd find it positively tragic. But, fortunately, this is the stuff of a moving, powerful, and growth inspiring life. wheee.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

my version of How to LOVE the new person in your life


Getting to love your step-mom (or bonus mom….or the chick your dad married) is like getting to know that one camp counselor you hated until your friend, who you’ve known for days, made you hang with her.
Basically, what I’m trying to say, is that no matter how badly you want to hate her ( or no matter how strong your irrationally fears are) you will eventually, no matter how much time it take, get down to the person inside the evil archetype you’ve spent you’re recent life hating and realize that this is someone who loves you father, and whom your father loves, and learn to shut the fuck up and appreciate the little gifts life send your way even when you don’t want it…..

Friday, July 06, 2007

Feminesto


I was reading recently about the inception of the second wave of feminism. How the ( attempted) burning of bras, aprons, and other implements of patriarchal oppression finally brought the political home to meet the personal, the private. And how that wedding of the political to the personal made the movement powerful, loaded it with the passion women have used for years to fuel and endure their personal lives, whatever their choices and options. The author went on to explain how, for third wave feminists, this marriage (if you’ll pardon my usage) of personal and political was less clear, less distinct. The author implied that the difference between second and third wave feminists was the view that the personal was in fact political.

And then I started thinking about my own life, my own goals. I was probably a feminist before I knew what the word was, thanks to the strong women in my life and my family, and the loving and sensitive men around me. I have been fortunate enough to have never felt the dark forces of patriarchy imposing so heavily upon me that I refused to call myself a feminist. I found economics as my calling after several failed attempts at various schools of study, and am fortunate enough to be able to shape my study of economics with a hearty feminists attitude. And now I am in the process of trying to get into a graduate program for economics. Which of course mean I have to clarify and reclarify my goals in the most powerful language I can muster, so that an unseen panel of academics and bureaucrats will let me sink myself further into debt while working my ass off for a few more years. Somehow, it always seems to come out soft, compared to how strongly I feel.

It actually hit me when I was painting a deck in Syracuse, Indiana. Trying to save up a couple of bucks, I found my self thinking about all of this while I watched four separate teams of service providers (myself included) toil at a family’s summer house in the hot sun. And that’s when it hit me. You may not know it by looking at me in my paint-stained shorts and dirty hair, but I want to get my PhD in Economics. You may not know it by looking at me painting this bourgeois whore’s deck, but I want to work for an NGO and help some developing nation create jobs, commerce, and independence by using the skills and resources they’ve honed for generations. You may not know it from looking at the globs of paint and dead bugs wedged inside my sports bra, but I want to be the next chairperson of the federal reserve board, because I realized a long time ago that I had too much conscience for the presidency, and have decided I could do far more at the Fed. And then I started thinking about the things I would tell my young cousins when I was completing my PhD and doing my research and traveling to new and interesting places. And hopefully, through hearing my stories and seeing what I’ve been able to do, they would be emboldened to make better, more fulfilling decisions for themselves, in their lives. And counsel their friends to buck the standard. And be an example to other young women on the street wondering whether to play it safe and get married in college, or make a run for it and try a semester abroad. And my decisions would reverberate throughout society, in a rocking feminist way. And I would carry that kernel of knowledge with me wherever I went, and It would inspire me to continue to make the right, strong choice, even if it wasn’t an easy choice.

And, to me, that is the definition, the quintessential truth, to the feminist maxim that the personal is political.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

You haven't lived until you've spent a Saturday afternoon cleaning while quite drunk.

Which is not to say that that's all I did today. I woke up on someone’s couch at 8 am. I said goodbye to some friends and then brushed my teeth at 5am. I went downtown and watched the start of the Kinetic Sculpture Race and took about a million pictures. I made a fantastic gorgonzola and white wine cream sauce. I even got a free sticky bun and made a few phone calls, which is hard to do when you have no phone. But I have to say that the highlight of my day has been getting smashed on random bottles of booze while I cleaned windows, banisters, and doors, uploaded pictures, and listened to a startling array of music.

Woo Haw! That's what weekends are about, finding new and interesting ways to make alcohol a larger part of your life.
In a matter of days I am leaving the place I've considered home for about 7 years now, and I have to say, the catharsis of cleaning and drinking alone to music I forgot I liked has be like a tonic. Now all I need are my three road trips to completely wipe the slate clean, and a new, improved Andrea will emerge for all the world to enjoy.

palabra.

Friday, April 20, 2007

It’s taken me a while to dig out the root of my bitterness surrounding the Virginia Tech shootings and the emotional aftermath. Of course, I am moved to the defensive by my fear that white America will somehow try to make an example of this Korean immigrant who, ironically enough, is the child of dry cleaners. And, of course, I am enraged by Christians and other Jesus-Loving church goers’ inevitable and unchallenged claim for the moral high ground as counselors and caretakers of those left in the aftermath. Not that I’m against the idea of them helping. I just get pissed when no one talks about atheists bringing pot roasts over or rabbis leading prayers for those who’ve passed, or Buddhists mourning the loss of all life, including young Mr. Cho.

What really frustrates me is they way everyone, from the mourning friends and family to the story-hungry media, search for a meaning. I know I can’t be the first person to have realized this, but it seems to me that society is going through some of the stages of grief together, as a unit. And

Subsequently we are left with a nation of newscasters and reporters, and the entire investigative force of Virginia, dedicated to searching out the reason why Cho Seung-Hui acted out so violently. Apparently, everyone else in the United States is blinded by grief, but that’s okay. I’m here to tell you all why something like this happened to so many innocent people. Because Cho was unstable and freaked out in a violent way against other people. That’s it. It wasn’t that there was too much pressure to perform at school. It wasn’t because he listened to Marilyn Manson or played Grand Theft Auto (neither of which I believe he did, but you know, those are the usually suspects). We couldn’t have caught him early with our over reacting to and alienating hundreds of other creative, individualistic, and probably depressive young people. The fact of the matter is that sometimes some one just snaps and there’s not much we can do to control it, prevent it, or explain it.

In nature a single animal will occasionally freak out and act out against its community. Zoologists write it off as a variation of normal and move on. Humans, especially humans so obsessed with control they ear pieces for their cell phones lest they spend 10 minutes incommunicado while driving to the store, have a difficult time understanding how that can happen in our carefully manicured society. After all the time, money, and energy the media has spent socializing these young people, how dare they react to normal stimuli in an abnormal way?
This is not to say that what happened at Virginia Tech was not a horrible tragedy. And I do not mean to make light of the suffering of those close to the victims. I just find it interesting that the media and the public can’t seem to accept that sometimes sick people make plans and act them out, and it turns out that there was nothing we could do about it. You can’t prevent a disturbed person from taking his or her dementia out on his or her peers any more than you can prevent a hurricane or earthquake from decimating our infrastructure. All you can do is be prepared for the tragedies you can foresee and live your life to the best of your ability while it’s still yours.

The world will probably never know why Cho Seung-Hui felt so ostracized and so alienated from his society that he felt he had to shoot and kill his classmates and then himself. We can just move on, try to make the most of our days, and use this as a reminder that there are plenty of people out there who could probably use a smile, and be grateful that our lives aren’t so depressing that we’re hoarding hallow point bullets.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Dancing Feet

After spending most of my work day casually looking through Sheila's travel photos, i finally put my finger on exactly how they make me feel.

It's the exact opposite of home sick. They make me wanna run far and fast and now. They make me not want to study for the GRE tonight. They make me want to escape my job and my apartment and my bills and the people I've grown tired of looking at every god damn day. Jenna and Jon excluded.
I want to go places I've never been and meet people I'd otherwise never know.

I feel like i'm ready to jump out of my skin and run into the ocean.
right
now.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

My SoulMate

I just talked to sheila on Gmail Chat about poop.

Now I miss her even more.