a lesson must be lived
in order to be learned;
the clarity to see and stop this now-
that is what I've earned.

~ad

Alison's Top 11 Favorite Things (at this exact moment):

1. Parting Gift by Fiona Apple
2. Stoned dramatic readings of Wikipedia entries
3. Making holiday cards from whatever's in my recycling bin
4. Won-ton wrappers- specifically their versatility
5. Degrassi
6. Michelle Obama
7. ReadyMade magazine
8. Zappa and Esquintla, my cats
9. The month of December
10. Getting a voicemail from an unknown number that ended up being Briana!
11. Paul Simon's Graceland on tape

Sigh. This was a good list to make because it makes my life seem a lot happier and more satifisfying than it currently feels. For the record, it currently feels like a gray-black slide into an abyss of mediocrity from which I'll never emerge. I'll just sit at the bottom eating take-out, watching crappy TV, hating my job and writing post-secrets about how deathly lonely I am. And then eventually get drunk, take a palmful of benzos, put my Simon & Garfunkel mix on and crawl into bed to die.

Haha okay the suicide piece was a bit more detailed than I intended. I ensure I am not in any capacity suicidal. Just sad, borderline depressed (I'm also not eating take-out, I don't hate my job, and I haven't written any postsecrets. The crappy TV thing though, is a vice that needs to be kicked pronto). But it's been a tough semester of transition. Thinking about my life this time last year is like being sucker-punched in the stomach; I miss it viscerally, terribly, with all the cells in my body. But I'll adjust and probably thrive because I've luckily been blessed with the need to make people happy and good grades make people happy and good grades are something I can do. Soon I'll be a nurse. Then I can get the hell out of easthampton and travel the world for a bit. Or something. Right? Right.

Dear Alison,
When you send someone an email, and in said email you instruct the recipient at least three time not to worry about getting back to you because you know she's busy, please try not to percieve her non-response as a rejection. Pull out your trusty anxiety versus reality chart if you must and do a little work, because of all the places to require validation, the emailsphere is hardly the one to focus on.

Love always,
Alison

I have such a weakness for family-oriented holidays, and possibly even moreso for films about family-oriented holidays. I am excited for a marathon of such movies on some upcoming day when there is snow falling and a brief reprieve from science-based school work.

For Thanksgiving, Kat and I were assigned the following (via email from my mom):
-1 butternut squash dish
-1 dessert (NOT pumpkin pie)
-Rolls


For the butternut squash dish I have decided on a variation of this amazing-looking acorn squash and roasted garlic strudel I read about on a kitchen blog and have been thinking about ever since. They did acorn squash, roasted garlic, pine nuts, ricotta and sage, and wrapped the whole shebang in 10 layers of phyllo dough. I'm going to do butternut squash, goat cheese, caramelized onions and sage and, keeping with the strudel theme, wrap the whole shebang in 10 layers of phyllo dough. It strikes me that this could easily be veganized, if I just ditched the goat cheese and earth-balanced the phyllo instead of using butter. I don't know if it's because I've always kept close company with vegans or that some small part of me has always regretted my failure at adopting the vegan lifestyle (it would be a very, very small piece because it's a very big part of me that delights in omnivoraciousness) but I ALWAYS calculate vegan alternatives in my head to things I cook, and when I bake I nearly always go the vegan route (mostly because the flaxseeds-for-eggs swap is just so easy! and so full of omega 3s!).

Kat's taking the dessert, treating us all to a true southern pecan pie, which should be delish.

For the rolls, I've picked a parker house roll recipe and plan to make cranberry butter to go along with it. I'm very nervous about these rolls, and might do a dry run tonight. Even as I have so vastly expanded my culinary interests and skills, I can't bring myself to do breads. The margin for error seems so high. Also, everytime I see the word "dough hook" in the recipe, I shut down. But I'm young and virile and can certainly manage by hand whatever a dough hook can do. So eff you, dough hook and fancy electric mixers I'll never be able to afford. With a little elbow grease I think I'll do just fine. I don't know when I started needing to do positive self-talk around baking. Not sure what that means.

I'm trying to get all my cooking in this semester because I think when I step on the the UMass campus on January 5th my life and priorities are going to change bigtime. But if I can get through the first semester, it supposedly settles down a bit. OHMYGODI'MSOTERRIFIED of nursing school. Speaking of margins for error...

Ok, maybe I'll get all tech savvy and post some pictures of my contributions to Thanksgiving dinner. We'll see.

I just read a biography of Idi Amin and feel the need to share a few fantastical (if somewhat colored by a racist and neocolonial-loving author) funfacts about Mr. Amin:

-In 1975, he staged a photoshoot wherein he lay reclined in a sedan chair riding atop the shoulders of 4 western businessmen

-He routinely wrote telegrams to Queen Elizabeth II wherein he addressed her as "Liz"

-After dubbing himself the King of Scotland (because of his involvement in the Scottish liberation movement), he had the Ugandan Presidential Guard dress in kilts and play bagpipes

There are more, but I shan't go on. The cannibalism charges are dicey and I'm not 100% buyin' it. A savage African dictator who eats his own people is just a smidge too convenient. Oh goodness, these African tyrants really make me feel confused and reactionary, and then post-reactionary inside. Like meta-meta-meta-neo-coloniaial pseudo-empathic deconstruction. Or something. Speaking of racism... how 'bout that wacky presidential campaign that's going on Wild, eh? I swore I wouldn't get emotionally involved in this stupid election but I have too much homework to avoid and there is just too much sensational CNN/NPR coverage to distract me.

I am high and Laura and I are discussing the strange comorbitities of class privilege. Like being in your own way and not being able to pry yourself free.
I find out in the next 3 days whether or not I was admitted to nursing school. omfg.

Okay, well that is quite enough out of me. Sarah Palin is wacky, just wacky. I am going to eat some of the yummy lentil-pea-kale-rice-goatcheese deliciousness awaiting me. Did I mention I am making vegan candy corn for Kara's Halloween-themed B-Day extravaganza? Oh, yes. Although there are other things (like A&P lab practicals and Micro quizzes) to be focused on.

Goodness gracious.

what's nice is that nearly all of the problems outlined in my last post have been solved. We have a place, I'm registered for classes, my application is completed and mailed, I'm (very) marginally employed. also I just realized the bus, according to its posted schedule, goes right by my new apartment and to HCC at such a time as to deliver me to campus 10 minutes before my class begins. this is exciting but also nerve-wracking as one of my "things" is needing to be places 30 minutes prior to their starting. I'll just try to channel kara and her ability to be places exactly on time, while never once believing she'd be late.

::aside- if someone were to do blog analysis (I don't know if that's a thing, but I'm envisioning a process akin to handwriting analysis) on my livejournal posts, I fear the fact that I only ever capitalize "I" would betray some very ugly slightly hidden personality traits.::

so I think my classes will be kind of nice. I liked anatomy/physiology 1 and I think we do more dissecting in part 2. also microbiology is pretty interesting stuff and I really, really like knowing what's happening on the cellular level. I like knowing science things. it feels like some kind of subversion and also makes me feel smart and seriously contributes to my arsenal of polysyllabic words.

we are adopting 2 adult cats to be named idaho (the name she came with) and esquintla (the town in guatemala where dulio was born); we registered them at a lesbian owned vet in northampton. we are painting our kitchen red. we have successfully reached our goal of furnishing our apartment entirely for free (the final list of furniture we got from friends/family/freecycle/craigslist: mattress, boxspring, kitchen table and chairs, rocking chair, recliner, couch, armchair, desk, television, vcr, hopechest, bureau, and 2 bookcases). I tried to get rid of my old mattress on freecycle but no one wanted it. kat thinks I was too honest because I talked about the stains and the fact that it is horribly uncomfortable for more than one person to sleep on in my post. I just think if I didn't mention that, it would be awkward when the person showed up and I proffer up a mattress that looks like it was urinated on by 4-6 children (which it wasn't, and I really don't understand the stains, but they don't smell).

it's nice to think that I've now worked my first job where the fact that I don't know what crack smells like makes me a less effective staff member. speaking of this job, they get a big shipment from the boston foodbank on the last friday of the month and it's usually really terrible food. this week there were 2 large boxes (like that perhaps a television or fishtank would come in) delivered full of twinkies/ringdings/funnybones and the like. I ate a package of twinkies due to a combination of impulse and premenstrual status and immediately felt as if I'd been hit by a truck. I think I had some mild visual hallucinations.

finally, kat was late for work to bring me bus fare. she's just the sweetest thing, that one.
really finally, I cannot stop listening to antje duvekot. long way is possibly the most beautiful song ever written.

I am feeling 100% overwhelmed at even the prospect of packing for michfest. and I have OHSOMUCH to do before I can even think about packing, which makes for one stressed-the-hell-out girl.

I was reading people's packing lists on the message board and it became abundantly clear just how ill-prepared we are. and how we are going to end up relying on Laura finding an industrious girlfriend to set up our tent. actually, I have a pretty industrious girlfriend and methinks she could set up a tent if she needed to, so I'm sure we'll be okay. plus we'll be surrounded by macgyver-esque and totally chivalrous dykes who will be more than happy to come to our rescue (or so Laura and I keep telling ourselves...).

so aside from michfest my stress comes from the fact that a)we have yet to secure an apartment for september (although I saw a most adorable place in downtown northampton today that just might work) b)I have yet to secure a job for september, c) I have yet to secure admission to the nursing program that facilitated this whole move in the first place, in fact d)I have yet to finish my application for said program, e)I have yet to start studying for my final anatomy exam on Tuesday, f)I have yet to register for classes at HCC for the fall because I don't have the money and I have to take a biology assessment test that I'm not confident I'll pass, g)I still have 12 weeks worth of nutrition course work to complete in the next 2 weeks and h) OH YEAH, I HAVE YET TO START PACKING FOR MICHFEST.

a full and horrible circle of stress. I feel heart palpitations just thinking about it.

let's see. I'm going to westfield tonight for the first time in many months and I am 100% excited. mostly about the pool and seeing my niece and nephew and not having any obligations for 2.5 days. also tonight we are seeing ani & kimya at look park in northampton which will be lots of fun. a good group.

I think I am going to end up breaking my antipregnancy pact (between Laura, Kat and myself). Everyone said I would be the first to cave, and it feels very possible right now. I just want to be pregnant SO BADLY. I have dreams about it. And I want the aftermath of pregnancy sometimes. Kat is good to me and humors my period-induced bouts of maternal longing, because I always snap back to my "bearing children is morally irresponsible" baseline quick enough. but lately, man, that piece of it sort of just flits occasionally into my mind and the rest of the time I am figuring out how to fit childbearing and rearing into my 5-8 year plan. because, just as getting my RN by age 25 became absolutely imperative last year, getting the child thang underway by 30 seems necessary.

oh how I love arbitrary and self-imposed deadlines. I think they must be important in cultivating the environment of constant stress and anxiety that I've come to call home of late. which is something I should probably add to the list of "things about myself to fix/improve/abolish before procreating".

Somehow, I ended up with this accidental 4 day vacation. Through a series of coinciding class cancellations, unexpected days off from work, and a general lack of foresight, I got out of work at 7pm on Friday night and was struck with the realization that I had not a single obligation until Tuesday at 6pm. Beautiful.

Well, at first it made me feel panicky. Large expenses of time have a way of doing that. But now it just feels nice. Yesterday was roasted asparagus and peach bread pudding and the dollar-a-bag market (that's actually just a truck) and the co-op, where the cashew grinder broke down after producing approximately 2 tablespoons of cashew butter. Despite his best efforts, the greek gentleman with the slicked back hair who works in the back could not fix it. This meant no vegan cashew butter and carrot cupcakes for Kat, but there is time for that. Additionally, I ran into someone from high school who I didn't know lived out here and who didn't recognize me. Kara cooked dinner for Ted and I, I got accidentally drunk on vodka tonics, we finally made it to the Paddock- only to find out it was closing just then. Bummer. I fell asleep early, woke up feeling sick, drank Detox tea, went back to bed. Watched 4 episodes of the Mary-Kate and Ashley sitcom So Little Time, 1.5 episodes of West Wing, season 1. Then I stumbled across the extremely exciting fact that Kimya Dawson is playing right here in Somerville next week!

Tonight we are cooking more, eggplant parmesan with dandelion greens salad, $3 wine.

Tomorrow I want to go hiking with Kat, outside in the sunshine, and read for pleasure. We are having dinner at her mother's house. I need to talk to her mom about letting Jess/Kara/Me plant a little something, maybe watermelon, in her A-MAZING garden this summer. We are doing basil here, and flowers, but we haven't a yard at all which makes it difficult.

On Tuesday, I will go either to a museum in the morning or perhaps a film. I want to see Persepolis, and I haven't done anything cultural on my own recently.

Finally, Charlotte Kendrick has agreed to come play at our apartment the weekend before graduation! And, in a turn of events that is AMAZING, she is bringing... her new baby (it will be 2 months old when she comes) for us to babysit while she sings! She said she could get a babysitter in New York, but she would rather bring the baby along and have us watch it!!

Really finally, shit is going down in Zimbabwe and I hope it's not a Kenya-repeat. And my school is having a Happy 60th Birthday Israel party this Thursday. I think my sign will say "Too bad Israel's Birthday crashed the Palestinians' Party" or something. I'll have to work on that.

hmmm... methinks this nursing thing might just work out after all...










though, admittedly, not everyone will be quite so happy about it:(

I'm really pissed that I just spent 10 dollars on lipstick that doesn't even match the necklace I bought it to wear with, EVEN THOUGH I brought the necklace with me to the store and it clearly matched the color sample on the lipstick package.


That was, umm, one of the more surreal and uncharacteristic sentences that has come out of me in a long time.

ps jess and kara are now cool with the apt, so I might be unemployed but I won't be homeless (given my credit check goes through)!

and the choices are:

a)tell rosemary I can't work for her this semester, do my internship, and try desperately to find another job once I'm back at school

OR

b)tell the women's center I need to do my internship next semester, continue working for rosemary, and try desperately to find 2 classes to fill the 6 credit hole in my schedule that backing out of my internship would create.

the basic questions here are, is it more harrowing to return to school without definite employment or without a definite full courseload? (answer: the latter.)and, is it more harrowing to back out on rosemary or my internship? (answer: the former.)

and there is also, of course, the still small fact that I am as of now, homeless, starting in 2.5 weeks' time (jess and kara saw the apartment I found today and feel it's too far from campus).

k so I'm going to go throw up a little and then call rosemary and then try to forget my life for a few hours. and then bryan at 7:10am tomorrow. and hopefully no suiciding in the interim.

ok so this has to be quick because I am almost out of internet time and am unwilling to cough up the extra 500 schillingi for an extra 15 minutes. got back from zanzibar on saturday after 15 straight hours of travel (4 on a ferry during which the poor women next to me puked on both my bag and her burqa, and 10.5 on a bus). zanzibar was good. beautiful. full of rich white people but we didn't have any money so we were able to avoid them for the most part. ate rice and beans for 90 cents and a club sandwich for 8 dollars. strange, strange, strange. the no money thing wasn't too much of a problem although it did lead to a semi-stranded sitch in paje which ended in hitching a ride home in the bed of a delivery truck. kind of nice to be sunburnt, covered in sand and exhausted, snuggled in amongst the guavas and bananas with the breeze in your hair. no one told us that the buses stop running at noon on fridays because it's the muslim holy day. crazy muslims.
my homestay is lonely. my host dad is back in the mines for 2 months and my mama is doing business in dar for a week. my brother is at university and my sister when to moshi for a week for her godson's communion. just me, the housegirl and the two little girls. I have lots of books though, and only 10 (gasp!) more days to get through them. tomorrow tess leaves which means I will be the only remaining volunteer for a whole week. shit I wasn't watching the timer and now I exceeded my time and have to pay the 500 schillingi anyway so might as well continue. so I'm returning to the states in 10 days which is crazy and there are minutes when that seems like the longest stretch of time imaginable and minutes where I can't think of anything worse than leaving. hopefully I will slowly get accustomed to the idea and not spend the plane-ride crying. I have a lot of movies to catch up on (::crosses fingers that georgia rule is showing::) and, having spent one 8 hour flight in hysterics, I know it's not a good mix. the people next to you give you funny looks.
lately I have been waking up with a deep sense of dread/anxiety in my gut which I think has to do with the fact that we eat dinner at 9pm but nonetheless is not a fun way to wake up. it doesn't go away until after I get to the farm. oooo next week I get to harvest carrots. I am excited. I think that will be a truly gratifying harvest. pulling something out of the earth like that. harvesting the cabbages and nightshade and green beans was good but I think the karoti will really be something. additionally we are going to make shamba mojitos before I leave, using local gin and the mint we grow and maybe some of these strange sour fruits that grow on the trees in the garden. last week I got to cut down a wild growing papaya with a machete and eat it, which was one of the better experiences of my lifetime. I need to find a way to incorporate machete use into my life in the US because it's a powerful feeling. finally, and perhaps most exciting of all, the compost pile I made upon my arrival will be fully matured next week. le sigh. what more could a girl want? not much. except perhaps some ice cold soymilk which this girl here would kill for. but all in due time, all in due time.

additionally (I think that is the 4th time I've said that in this post), I had a dream last night where I tried to submit my wall-to-wall correspondence with laura scott as a creative writing piece in a class and the teacher made me edit out all of the west wing references due to copyright purposes. ok now laundry. yeah, besides soymilk, I also kind of miss washing machines. but man oh man am I being water efficient!!

there are bras and teeshirts and swahili-engish dictionaries to buy. an econ presentation that was 12 minutes of material squished into under 5 minutes with little time left for breathing. a voicemail holding a voice from the past that I listen to while purchasing mesclun greens and a avocado-sprout-havarti-on-wheat sandwich. mild disruptions in the peace due to perceived overuse of illegal drugs. this sky out my window which is pale blue and full of clouds on the left, and solid gray on the right. my clothes still damp from walking to class in the rain as I walk home from class under bright sunlight. tonight I'll swim or not, depending on the whim of one very cranky newly 16 year old girl with cerebral palsy, for whom I am having an impossible time finding a bob marley shirt. I have no money which is not new but kind of disconcerting what with this 12 week stretch of no-source-of-income coming up. I am a little tired but have been sleeping so much lately. my stomach is finally able to handle caffeine which is good in theory, terrible in practice. that's what I've got for right now. I'll keep you updated.

so yesterday at 5pm marked the successful completion of 2 kickass Third Wave events. The clothesline project ran Thursday and Friday, public art in a sun-drenched quad with occasionally intense winds rippling through the tee shirts. Thursday night was Kim Airs, who performed to a packed house and then came out for drinks with me, Kat, Gail and Melanie. KIM AIRS came out for DRINKS with US. until approx 1:30am. and told us about her time as a sex worker. and a million other things.

in other news. I leave exactly 3 weeks from today. this is INSANE given the sum total of shit I must get done in 21 days and counting. packing aside I still have papers to write and finals to take and an internship to finish up and an internship for next semester to find. it's going to be a very, very busy couple of weeks. good thing it ends with a valium/ativan cocktail and an 18 hour plane ride. I feel like that will be a good time to get my head together. oh and the 12 weeks directly following the plane ride... may they provide me with some clarity and a healthy dose of perspective. may they validate all this trust I am feeling in myself right now. may they teach and change and reframe and undo and detox and rebuild and and and... me. may they give me a better sense of how to move in this globalized world without squishing too many people as I walk. if nothing else, may these 12 weeks of summer spread out in front of me teach me how to make my very own kickass compost.

I am mere sentences away from completing a research paper that I only began researching yesterday. a research paper on domestic violence in immigrant populations in the US. a research paper in which I skewed facts to prop up my thesis, and wrongly attributed at least one quote. I did this because I do not believe my teacher is smart or that she will notice. I did this because I was tired of typing (Ammar, 2005) and wanted to type (Puri, 2007), so I did.

it's been this really busy week with lots of things that I spent lots of time planning suddenly coming to fruition. today was the day of silence during which I was not silent and explained on more than one occasion that yes, deliberate silence can be a social commentary on imposed silence.

yesterday I spoke with a transwoman who had lived the first 40 years of her life as a white male and when I asked her if how she felt about women only spaces being trans-exclusive on account of some transwomen still carrying their male privilege baggage she told me that she always laughs when she gets this question because really, male privilege only exists in small towns and in most of the world women hold the power. I said her opinion did not match up with my own empirical evidence but that I hoped she was right. no I didn't say that. I just tried not to look horrified and changed the subject.

tomorrow is clothesline project, and probably a soggy one at that. I am not feeling loved and supported the way I want to be but I acknowledge that I am not giving very much love and support. but I still expect it and maybe that's not fair. I'm looking forward to detoxing from my life this summer. spreading western imperialism. learning how to farm. yeah. my summer starts in less than 1 month and I am certainly looking forward to that.

I have a cyst on my side that popped up sometime between Sunday night and Tuesday morning. thought it was a poisonous spider bite and started to feel infection spreading through my body so I went to health services. not a spider bite. no poison. just a randomly occuring cyst. hmmm. must be the 60lbs of high fructose corn syrup that I, as a good American, consume each year.

in other news we went to syracuse for scott's birthday. lots of fun, though I feel as though I used up a week's worth of serotonin in one night. I mean, I really feel that way. as though I am serotonin-less.

also I am sick. this night sucks. I feel this entry has reached the level of angst appropriate to become part of the livejournal archives. ciao.

today I:

-made pancakes and drank newcastle.

-stayed in my bathrobe all day.

-watched an excess of 6 consecutive episodes of the west wing (making it more than 16 episodes watched in a 2 day period).


so. in summary. it was/is one of the best days of my life.

it is, in every sense of the phrase, the calm before the storm. tomorrow, classes start. my internship starts. I go back to work. gross. that cycle of business continues until by last final, on May 11th, which is followed by my departure to Tanzania on May 12th, where I will remain for 3 months. yikes.

but for now it's beer and west wing and total, unadulterated sloth. and I am LOVING it.

new lifeplan alert.

I have decided to get my RN after I graduate. preferably in an 18 month second bachelor degree program at UMass. after I take all the science classes I've successfully avoided so far, of course.

this decision comes after the realization that I will graduate with almost no skills that I could not have learned independently from reading a book. as an RN, I can work in free clinics in roxbury or mexico city or tanzania. plus I will still have the knowledge from my global studies/human services curriculum, and hopefully some grant writing skills to boot.

hopefully scott with do nursing school with me, because it may just be insufferable without a friend. she said she's game, but she doesn't believe I'll actually follow through. a reasonable fear on her part.

so. gonna be a nurse. cool.

in other news. the irs is after me for messing up my taxes last year. let me state for the record, I made $6000 last year. it would seem they could potentially have, what's that saying, fish in a much higher tax bracket to fry.

my life is amazing for several reasons and here are some:

first, CONCERTS. what I mean by this is that last night kat bought us tickets to all the upcoming shows at passim that we are interested in seeing. they include:

david rovics
bitch and pamela means
utah phillips
anais mitchell

but wait, it gets EVEN BETTER. kat is a member, so she was reserving tickets for the January members only concert, which didn't have any artists listed yet. but the guy leaked the names to us and it's LORI MCKENNA AND ROSE COUSINS. for FREE. what?? how beautiful is that.

also I watched the alix olson documentary today which was superb.

now we are going a flyer-ing, and then margaritas and dinner at border with the lesley crew.

also I made several cds that I must mail to the scott-brockhaus-vowel family.

you may wonder why I am so productive today? nope, not adderall. I was simply up at 9am because we thought the indigo girls were on ellen, but sadly they were not. so we walked to the somerville public library and then got sushi. yum.