I am taking a class in Etymology, and I am in over my head. It is interesting, but difficult, and although I know I'm in for a lot of frustration, I'm too stubborn to choose something easier. I want to know these things so I will learn them, even though I'll probably cry about it.
Today I read about how the word sad used to mean satisfied, as in, "having had one's fill (of something)." My textbook goes into how to trace its changes, but it's all very scary and technical and I don't entirely understand. But eventually sad began to mean, "weary or tired (or something)," which is where it developed a negative connotation. Later still, its meaning broadened to mean, generally, "sorrowful or mournful," remaining negative but becoming less specific.
I feel like that's the kind of thing that's good to know.
h.
First Snow of the Year (October)
Film.
I've been back in the apartment since Friday. It's been snowing like mad. I've been busy having some sort of social life, complete with a slight hangover in the morning. It's been fun. I've been having fun.
Tomorrow is the first day of the last semester of my degree. How weird. I'm expecting an insane workload but I'm also expecting to be (mostly) really interested in what I'm learning and, you know, what the hell. I'll crank out a mountain of papers and then it will be over.
I wish I had more to say, but it's 1 in the morning and I have to get up early and I just don't want to talk about it.
h.
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
h.
Film, September.
Lately I'm quick to criticize. I'm at home and suddenly obsessed with understanding how my family operates, why we are the way we are. It's easy to see what's less-than-perfect. But sometimes we all sit together for supper and everyone laughs and nobody rages and we're all just trying our best. I have a lot here. I can't forget that.
h.
I fell in love. I quit dancing. I went to a party dressed as a treasure map. I went to a party dressed as Rosie the Riveter. I baked amazing chocolate chip cookies.
I understood my family differently. I found new places to call home. I spent hours in the passenger seat, and hours on the back of a tandem bike. I cried in public washrooms. I wrote letters by hand. I filled boxes with photographs.
I asked for what I needed. I wore a lot of dresses. I dyed my hair blue. I went to concert after concert. I flew to Toronto twice. I spent afternoons with my Grandma, sitting on the couch and listening to her stories. I put my hair in rag rolls and spent the summer in curls.
I had a lot of trouble sleeping. I spent a lot of time afraid. I learned to swing dance. I spent hours on the telephone. I started drawing again. I wrote poetry and then stopped writing poetry. My room stayed messy.
I made some pretty great cakes but couldn't make crabapple jelly. I began to create my own life. I bought a typewriter and combat boots and rolls and rolls of film.
I spent a lot of time in photobooths. I spent a lot of time in churches. I spent a lot of time in libraries, sometimes working and sometimes having picnics. I had a lot of picnics.
I was sad and scared. I was almost heartbreakingly happy. I got angry and then I got determined.
It's been a big year, but it's been a good year. One of the best.
h.
Spilled sugar on the counter.
I've been mostly doing nothing. I've fallen into the dreadful habit of staying awake until 3 a.m. and then sleeping until noon. I don't know how it happened, really, but it happened and while I know I should fix it part of me doesn't mind. I prefer the house when it's quiet. I like having a few hours at night to wander around and be alone.
This place is starting to get to me.
This evening I ran into a girl I used to dance with. She was one of the few people I was really sad to leave when I quit. She's just... kind. Really, really kind. I ran into her in a bookstore and we ended up talking for nearly half an hour, standing in the aisle between Humour and the children's section. She told me she missed me at rehearsals and I asked how things had been going. The company recently celebrated its 40th anniversary, and marked the occasion with a big, fancy performance. When I asked how it went she said, "I hated every minute of it."
I can't even count the number of performances I could say that about.
We mostly talked about dancing - she told me how unhappy it's been making her, and how much she wishes she could quit. We talked about the impossible expectations, the standards that none of us have ever met and that no one will ever meet, about the infuriating insularity of that whole, strange world. We talked about her older sister, who used to dance with us, too, but retired a few years ago - she doesn't miss dancing at all and is just incredibly relieved to finally be free of it.
I still can't figure out how this thing that we all start out loving eventually becomes an absolute torment, but it does.
As she talked, I could see that she was relieved to be telling somebody who understood. And I was relieved to hear her say the things I'd been thinking for so long. When I quit dancing, I didn't expect to find any sort of understanding - because when you dance you are expected to be committed wholeheartedly and when you aren't - when you can't be - you're defective. The company is better off without you. I expected, if anything, a lot of good riddance.
But I'm not the only one who felt the way I did. I'm just the only one who acted on it.
h.
Jacques Henri Lartigue
I could write about Christmas. I have a lot to say about Christmas, I guess. In so many ways it was exactly the same as it's always been, which was by turns a relief and a cause for concern. It has been a volatile year. The return to "normal" for the holidays was nice in that it helped assuage my otherwise constant fear of the unexpected... but if the past year has proven anything, it's that what has been normal for us for so long really doesn't work. Part of me wonders if the thing I should have been hoping for was change.
And part of me is tired of hoping for anything.
*****
I am applying to graduate schools. I've mentioned this before. I spent the better part of this evening working on my applications - I've been working on them slowly and steadily since September and they're finally coming together, but that means I'm nearly ready to be done with them and oh my god. On one hand, these things have been weighing on me heavily for months and it will be an enormous relief to finally be free of them. On the other hand, being free of them means all I'll have left to do is wait. For months. I have wanted this for so long - but "this" for me has less to do with a Master's degree and more to do with escape. A Master's degree is a family-approved, easily explainable vehicle by which to go.
(Don't get me wrong: I feel like this program is perfect for me - and I want to do it, and I think it's something I could really be good at. It isn't that I don't care about the education itself, only that it is inextricably tied to my desire to get the hell out of here.)
What is freeing, I guess, is that my happiness rests less on this particular program than it does on the destination. If I don't get into any schools, I will just have to find another way to go. But in a lot of ways, working towards this has been my way of reassuring myself that I can choose my own life. If I can make this happen, I am suddenly, supposedly, the capable adult I desperately want to be. So, what will it mean if I can't?
(It will mean that my GPA wasn't high enough or that I filled out part of the application wrong or that my referees were late or that a bunch of wildly ambitious and intelligent people applied this year. It will not mean that I am a failure at life. But it will feel that way.)
I am trying to work through all of these forms and statements and plans and I am trying to do it without freaking out too much, but I continue to equate success in this one particular thing with success in MY WHOLE ENTIRE FUTURE, and that is is a one-way ticket to crazytown.
And I would like to stay the heck out of there.
While desperately trying to get the heck out of here.
(Tis the season for multiple escapes.)
h.
I cannot for the life of me figure out how to embed the actual video, but I made this because I got an excellent thing for Christmas and felt like it required its own post:
Kit-Cat Clock on Vimeo.
I am at home and it's very cold here. I always forget that about this house. I go to sleep with piles of blankets and three pairs of socks.
h.
I stayed up late to watch the eclipse. I would have stayed up late regardless, but it felt good to have a reason to be awake other than simply restlessness. At a certain point, the moon moved so that I couldn't see it out my window, so I had to keep running out of the apartment. When I was inside, I was watching Shopgirl and wrapping Christmas gifts. Earlier this evening I started reading a book that's on my reading list for next term. I'm taking a class on Chick Lit and Postfeminism - so I'm reading this. So far it's lovely. I am explaining this because I think this is less sad and nerdy than if I were spending my Christmas break reading Chaucer or something.
Earlier still, I went to the stupid mall to buy stupid jeans, because I ripped my one good pair (and I'm not opposed to wearing jeans with holes but a girl has got to have at least one pair of pants that her grandmothers will not insist upon patching). I never invest in jeans, really. I kind of hate them - and I hate shopping for them. So I always buy some cheap dumb pair and then they fall apart and then I have to buy another cheap dumb pair and on and on and on. Sigh. Anyway, today I think I came a step closer to reforming my pants-shopping ways. Why am I writing about this?
I'm a bit frustrated with clothing in general, lately. In the last few months, getting dressed has started to feel like a chore. I've stopped wearing makeup almost entirely. That has become a very strange debate in my head. I feel like I should be opposed to the idea that I have to literally cover up my actual face in order to feel comfortable. And I am opposed to that idea, sort of, but part of me has always really enjoyed makeup and also I can't deny that the whole thing makes me feel a bit prettier and what is wrong with that, really? I don't know. But lately I get up in the morning and look at all my bottles and brushes and just can't perform all the mental gymnastics necessary to get me to put anything on my face - so I don't.
As for clothes, though, there's no debate. I'm just... bored. Maybe it's time to really re-consider my wardrobe or start being more deliberate about where I am getting inspiration or... something. I don't know.
I expected that I'd quickly get all antsy being alone in the apartment, but so far it's just a relief. The quiet and the privacy, combined with finally being free of all academic responsibility, feels like the first breath after being held underwater.
h.
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