berlin

in honor of reading Herr Lehmann tonight...

Berlin. I always call it the ugliest of cities. Berlin's beauty isn't in its buildings, it isn't in any single Kiez, it isn't the wondrous and multiple bars, restaurants and perversions galore that abound there. It isn't the wonder of it's many amazing museums, its ruins from war, its rising from the ashes of war and a wall. It isn't for all of the wealth of literature that has poured from there. Berlin is. It lives, and breathes and says fuck it all. If a city ever had a personality in modern European culture, it's Berlin.

Built on a swamp. Home of thugs and dictators. Six stories, its many buildings, topped with antennas as far as the eye can see. The church bells ringing out in the morning. The clear, piercing winter sunlight, the gloomy endless grey of many days. The summer nights that are so short, and its days filled with its inhabitants swimming, drinking, biking, making the most out of its most glorious season. Odd little tucked away dance clubs/language learning center/volkskuchen run in an old apartment run by gay men and transsexuals from America. The Tajiki tea rooms with worn rugs, dim candlelight and the air of perfect romance. Speed and coke from ill-lit rooms on Oranienburgerstrasse, filled with hordes of backpackers looking for the next cheap exotic thrill. Hash in the basement bar with an unknown bartender. Late nights at bookstores with kooky smelly old hippies trying to make love to you for an unknown reason. Backyard barbeques to celebrate a graduation, with sentiments of bourgeois respectability disappearing with each drink. Foolish old women on the garish Ku'damm, looking at a whore whose time has passed. Watching films about the building of Brasilia in the Schwarzes Cafe at three am before visiting the Auslandersamt. Playing with children at Kollwitzplatz, running barefoot in the sand, pushing a little girl with a striped dress on a swing. Watching antifa kids scream righteous anger, as the cops follow them, hating the kids for believing in something impossible in Germany's rigidly respectable society. Eating falafel at four am on Rosenthaler Platz. The crazy woman on the U2. Dodging the kontrollers, trying to play the fool or run as fast as you can. Fireworks on the Oberbaumbruecke on New Year's Eve deafening and blinding you as you try to drink fast enough to stay warm. Breakfast of rolls, cheese, tomatoes and spread at the park of the lesser-spotted elephant. Buckets of cheap veggies at the closing of the Turkish market. Borscht at a cheap little Russian dive. Socialist realism at Treptower, shivering, knowing the marble came from Hitler's chancellory. Biking up the Prenzlauer Berg, down summer houses by the Spree, through the grounds of the Schloss Charlottenburg, through the Brandenburger Tor. Drinking with the working class old men at the Duncker 80. Being free. Loving life. Not giving a damn, for the trees are green, or will be again, and there is beer then and there is beer now. Making art, making love, fighting for something worthwhile. It's all there, somewhere.

One memory: on Greifswalderstrasse, by the Ernst Thaelmann memorial on the east side of the Thaelmann park. Stopping on my bike to look where I was. It was fall, and cool, but the trees were still green in the park. It was late in the afternoon, and the sunlight fell behind the trees, illuminating them, giving Thaelmann's memorial the proper tribute due a socialist martyr. Beyond, I could see the buildings in the park, the pool where I swam every week, the apartments and blocks beyond, where I lived. The cobblestone streets that I bumped on every day on my thin-wheeled bike. It was for that moment, my home, and I loved it, never as much before and never as much after. The wind blew my hair and I remembered I needed to meet someone at Mehringdamm. I gave one last look to the sight that gave me such pleasure, and then raced down to the Pope's revenge and beyond.

always a moment to think

i'm not really a political person. i have beliefs, but that doesn't make me political.

i do read the news voraciously. i have since i was a child. i've always had an awareness of the horrors of our world. i guess the internet is my favorite thing these days, since i can read news readily from foreign sources, the bbc, the guardian, spiegel, die welt... german and english sources anyway. occasionally will try and muddle through le monde, but my french is just awful.

hm... days of assassinations are always bad days somewhere in the world. in this case, it was a bad day in pakistan.

if there's ever a politician who gives any kind of hope of finding a solution that doesn't lead to bloodshed, there's always a fanatic to blow them away. i was 16 when yitzhak rabin died. i was buying a comic book and heard the radio report.

today, pakistan's best hope for stability was killed. maybe any kind of honest hope that that whole fucked up situation could be maybe tempered enough to take the bite out of the power of the madrassa-educated fanatics. out of the power of the greedy corrupt pakistani military. benazir bhutto was no great heroine - she was probably guilty of corruption, and wasn't really an effective leader. but a glimmer of hope is better than no hope.

so, another fucking country is condemned to years of civil unrest more, due to some asshole's bullet. it could have been musharraf who ordered her death or it could have been pakistan's equivalent of fundis that had her killed. who fucking knows.

of course, the best part is this isn't just some third-world hellhole nobody cares about. it has nuclear weapons (hurrah!) and a long-standing grudge against their very large and well-armed hindu neighbor with increasing religious fanaticism of its own. fuck, i feel like bismarck: he once said the great european war would be started by "some damned fool thing in the balkans." i wonder if some very nasty war of nuclear attrition will start because of some damned fool thing in south asia. someone will insult mohammed or allah or rama or shiva or whatever fucking name people give to their gods and prophets. i wonder if the bjp or the madrassa parties in india and pakistan respectively have enough sense not to start a fucking nuclear dick-waving contest. i wonder, really, if some of the states' vaunted cold-war leadership were still alive if they wouldn't give some credence to the fact that even krushchev had enough sense not to start a nuclear war. i would take a krushchev or a brezhnev over a religious fanatic holding a big red button with a mission from their own twisted version of a divine message.

there are worse things, virginia, than communism. religious fanaticism. an undereducated and angry populace. yep, those are pretty bad things.

a break from the theme to a point

most of my rants on here are about men, women and relationships... to celebrate the special day, i'll rant on a related, but different topic. today's rant: the stupid family pressure of that most wonderful time of the year (I'm saying this as I drink a scotch, mind you, because my family fucking makes me want to kill something).

Um...

my brother informed me tonight that I'm self-righteous for not wanting kids and working on preserving something beyond my lifetime that isn't for "someone I love and who loves me". he also disapproves that i am involved in something that isn't a relationship and doing something that isn't a job to him.

um, fuck him. sorry i don't want to work 40 hours a week, drive an hour to work and back and have two kids and a stay-at-home wife (or i guess it would be husband in my case). god, how fucking boring.

maybe nothing will work out with the guy in the bay area. maybe i won't end up going into academia. but i won't do something if it doesn't make me happy. i'd rather be happy than trapped in a life that makes me miserable.

i hate being here right now. i hate christmas, i hate my family pretty much. no, i haven't outgrown loathing my family. they are screwed up, really, and they pretty much don't want me. they want someone who doesn't exist that is certainly not me. i don't go to church. i am not going to marry. i am not going to reproduce. they aren't supportive, they are obsessive about fixing me. there's nothing wrong with me.

the worst thing about approaching thirty is this sudden flash of memories and feelings i thought long buried in the past: really, i was pretty much the kid that fucked everything up. i was one mouth too much to feed, i was the kid my father really didn't want to have, the girl that my brothers didn't bother including into anything, the child that my mother pinned all of her own hopes and dreams on. all of my life growing up i loathed that combined misery of all of that, of how my mother thought that i should have "everything she didn't", of how my father really was pissed that my mother decided to have me, of how my brothers really didn't have room in their boys club for a sister who they would treat as an equal. if anyone ANYONE ever wonders why i am perpetually angry and want to have nothing to do with my relations, it is mostly because of that. having to raise one's self emotionally and mentally, having people either loathe you or want everything from you is not something a child should ever be subjected to. i went through the worst emotional shit in my life before i was eighteen years old. nothing even the worse shithead male has ever done to me can begin to equal that. there is still the fucking angry ten year old inside of me that hates my parents for never allowing me to have the luxury of a happy childhood, or an innocent one in any way. my family stole the first part of my life from me; the rest of it is mine to do with as i fucking please and they can kiss my ass. i live up to my standards, not theirs and their standards are stupid. retarded. bourgeois, christian southern bullshit. racist. immoral by their own standards (a homeless guy offends them, for fuck's sake). they think if someone's homeless, it's their own fault (wtf?).

literally, fuck them. next year, i'm going elsewhere for the joyous season.

playing the numbers

i studied math. number theory was NOT my favorite class. i like analysis, topology, even algebra. but number theory and discrete mathematics was ryan's great love.

the number 42: the answer to life, the universe and everything. value: 0 mod 2, 6, 7. also the number of people i have now had sex with. also the number of unread emails in my inbox (mostly random undeleted crap from linguistlist).

the number 35: biological clock ticking. my friend lizka sent me the following story today about love over the age of thirty: a late thirty-something woman's tale of woe

numbers of the form 4x10^1 + n, 0 less than or equal to n, 9 greater than or equal to n. the numbers at which men realize they need to marry and have children if they are going to do it.

numbers of the form 3x10^1 + n, 0 less than or equal to n, 9 greater than or equal to n. the age that women realize the same, but men no longer want them because the women are apparently less valuable once, a, equal to the woman's age, is greater than 29. also if b, equal to the man's age, is greater than 29, the point at which younger women are no longer interested in them unless they possess income.

love is maybe not a matter of business, but it is a matter of numbers. even if people are not subject to such rules, you still have to rely on the probabilities of fate to deal you a winning hand.

post drnk

Not drnk now. Sobered up by sleeping it off at the house; my house (or Ryan's really) not Liz's.

I hated the men there aside from Ryan and Ham and her housemates. They were pugnacious retarded middle aged men who are really misogynistic. They were blaming women for their own lack of ability to make a relationship work. People, people: really, at a certain point, if you are in the reject pile at 40, its your own damned fault (there are a few exceptions: divorces don't make people rejects, especially if it was a long marriage, or the ending of another long-term relationship that is not formalized... but if you've spent the majority of your adult life single and are bitter therefore, then it is possibly your own damned fault).

Post baby-boomer Americans (and post 68-Europeans) are fucking stupid. While it is insanely true that they created a new potential for openness and honesty in relationships between men and women, they really blew it in making it just about selfish behavior. I am not waxing poetic about the good old days when I would be barefoot and pregnant (because that shit is also beyond the pale), I wish that somehow society would grow-up and develop standards in relationships that were more meaningful than the ones we have. We still have the bourgeois decadence of 'omg i must get married because i'm thirty and have a house and kids....' and the waffling between that and the 'it's good to get laid and have someone' mentality. I refuse to believe there isn't a third path somehow. A way for honest and sane relations between men and women (or men and men, women and women, such as it were, because I think that gay men and lesbians have to totally forge new trails in how their relationships work). Something that isn't bullshit clinging to society's standards of the white-picket fence or the selfish 'what am I getting out of this?' as our fucked-up legacy from the 60s and 70s.

And, maybe women in one way are the greater benefactors of our modern society than men. Women still have the things that have always made females in society functional (our ability to work together, empathy and the ability to endure almost anything and work hard for a long-term goal), but we now also have the things that gave men an advantage: access to education, ability to take care of ourselves, travel, work in any field. Women in American society are in the process of becoming the dominant gender. We are not only the hands that rock the cradle now, but we rock it alone more and more often, while working the jobs that keep the country going. We are more educated than men now (58% of college graduates are now women, not men). Politicians aren't necessarily catering to the dumbass stereotypical angry white males, but the angry women who have to work 8-12 hours a day and raise their kids alone.


It isn't that there is anything wrong with men. They are just used to getting by on the fact that they were once providers and breadwinners who never had to do so much as twiddle a fork under a tap in the house. We haven't gone back and revised the ego issue that men used to have because they were catered to as providers of cash for food and housing in past eras. Women don't need men anymore to provide. We who are of the straightish persuasion want relationships with men, but not with fucking assholes who hold themselves in some superior asinine way to us, while not even in the slightest our equal in terms of housework, education, intellect or ability to talk to another person and listen. For those friends of mine having sons right now, I hope they raise them to be strong, good people who don't have these fatal male sociological flaws. Really. We need to get over this Bronsonesque bullshit.

less on a conversation, more on reading...

specifically wittgenstein.

wittgenstein. my favorite twentieth-century philosopher (nietzsche being my favorite nineteenth century one for his sarcastic wit and intense classical education). he's the unknown man in twentieth century thinkers save for those with the proper background in either analytic philosophy, philosophy of language or love of all things fin de siecle vienna. i actually discovered wittgenstein in two ways: philosophical investigations i read parts of during my study of language thoughts beyond the typical linguistic vein (gah, damn chomsky and bloomfield) and then the tractatus when i was spending a great deal of my winter in vienna two years ago.

there is an elegance to wittgenstein, to his character, to his mind. there are very few thinkers or writers who i pick up i can so easily understand and appreciate their work (virginia woolf, tolstoy, homer are the only other ones that come to mind). his life was breathed on constantly by tragedy (three brothers committed suicide, people always seemed to commit suicide before he could meet them), knew or inspired some of the most famous/infamous of the twentieth century (he went to school with hitler, taught alan turing, influenced the prague circle, who included roman jakobson, leading to structuralism, early major theories of phonology in linguistics...). probably and most likely the most fascinating person who lived through the cursed and very interesting times of the twentieth century in central and western Europe.

i don't know if i'm right (this isn't a fucking academic treatise, so it doesn't matter if i am or not), but there were things he certainly seemed to think that i fundamentally agree with. the elegance of math and its basis, coupled with the necessity of logic and evidence alone in empirical sciences. the fact that language was the means of expression for other things, from the metaphysics he was weary of (gah, fuck modern metaphysics and, though may bob solomon rest in peace, his stuff too) to the investigations of the social sciences. he believed faith also belonged elsewhere. a man who believed in some creator, but didn't believe in fanaticism. a dogmatically honest and moralistic person who was rather anxious and horrible at dealing with others (he was apparently a bomb as a pre-secondary schoolteacher).

this is just a post about me raving about wittgenstein. really. he's my intellectual hero, if such a thing can exist. he also, probably, tying into the overall theme of this blog, is the basis for my ideal type of male.

a versus b, 9 versus 10 and a conclusion in my brain

my friend Lizka commented on something that rings fairly true the other day: men never marry or stay with their A, or their 10. They always choose option b, or someone they rank a 9 after having a 10.

Our theory on this is that men don't like having to deal with a woman who is their equal in intelligence, good in bed, etc. They don't. They prefer the one who looks up to them, instead of the one who looks them in the eye.

There are exceptions to this (my friends Kevin and Katherine, for example, are equals, see themselves as equals and always have). But most men have the courage of a rabbit when faced with a woman who can stand up to them or demand a straight answer.

My own personal conclusion in my brain for this week: worrying about someone who is as communicative as my computer (even my computer tells me at times it's been updated, or has memory issues... my computer at least has the functionality to tell me when something is wrong and it's a windows machine for fuck's sake) is a waste of my time. or so it feels. I'm better off filing love affairs off in the 'it was nice while it lasted, my memories of you are fond, i'm glad we are friends" category. That's the way men treat relationships with me, and if that's what they want, then they can have what they get. They don't get room for regrets, and I don't give second chances... the only time I did, it was a nightmare. I don't come with a reverse gear. I don't need to relive anything. Forward or no way at all. That is, unfortunately or fortunately, the way I am wired. I'm full steam, stupid/blind or not, ahead to where I am going and what I am about to do.

I saw a really old friend tonight (and I mean, old... we've known each other since we were 11, so now it's been 18 years), and she said she couldn't ever see me settling down. That in a lot of ways, other than I'm reasonably happy as an adult, I'm not so different than my teenage self, when I said I never wanted to marry or be saddled with a man forever. I've been saying that since I was a very young child, and it's never really deviated. During my time with Ryan, future time was amorphous, and I guess I assumed that we would always be together, or at least for the following two years (I don't plan as long as Chairman Mao... I seem to go on the two-year plan) at any point. Breaking up was a shock, but also a rather amazing blessed sense of freedom. After I met the cellist, the thoughts of 'long-term' once again entered my head. It wasn't meant to be with him, as our lives just collided in the short term, but it reminded me there were people I was more compatible with in the world than the usual retard male I meet.

The most recent affair spoke about how he was beginning to think that, at almost 40, he should perhaps settle down. Perhaps he should. I hope he does meet a nice girl and have a baby. I'll send a present and wish them well. I'll probably end up living in the same city as them, so I can even baby-sit and hopefully he would have a non-jealous partner that wouldn't care that I once fucked her baby's father.

Ok, now after the long run of evidence, I will come to the conclusion (I didn't write this as cleanly as a proof.. my written proofs were usually far more elegant than this long winded commentary). I'm probably an A or a 10. Too high for most men, if not all men, to shoot for. I don't think that I am, but they seem to think so. That's what seems to result in the pedestal placing (as with my darling old music-lover) or fear, or an annoyance that I'll stand up to them. A man wants someone they are comfortable with and who will worship them. I won't worship anyone. I'd adore and admire, but never kiss the ground they walk on. Too many men aren't comfortable with me and think I'm some goddess, which results in me being rejected for the former reason. I don't mind, I suppose, this relegation to spending my life single. It was, after all, a most likely conclusion, and maybe it isn't the conclusion, and life can change and who knows what can happen (I'm only saying this so my friends won't condemn me for being a fatalist; I, for my own part, remain a skeptic).

what men say and what men do

a new recollection:

when a man asks you to come back to see him before you journey off to do something, does he mean it? (especially when you show up and actually follow through?)

when a man poses the odd (non?)-rhetorical question one night of why it feels so right to be next to you (on a night when you aren't having sex and haven't even made out)? that's the dumbest damn thing to say to a woman who cares about you if you aren't intending to follow through.

that's what i feel right now. that's why i'm pissed off, that's why i can't get that one particular male out of my mind? what the fuck does he want? why do i even care?

that's the perpetual cry of almost every damned woman. how many friends have i watched cry because of some insincere male? why do i do so as well?

i am not so brilliant, nor so beautiful...

last night, i had a conversation (it's really conversations that for me provide my mental fuel)...
about facts of what men say and what men do.

men, ahem, men in my life say, usually repeatedly: 'you are brilliant' or 'you are beautiful'. i am neither, really. i am not brilliant. i am of above-average intelligence, perhaps, and well-educated. that gives me the appearance of brilliance. i am not beautiful. decent-looking, but not beautiful.

men in my life often say they care for me. or love me. or they say nothing at all.

men in my life do...
often lack confidence in their actions. if they are behind a camera or in front of a computer, they are like achilles in warfare. they are bold and know what they do. if they are confronted with a human being with emotions, they falter like the barest fool.

can't commit to anything that takes away from their own selfish existence. they can't keep their word because it might mean they have to give up something of their own lives. they might have to lose control. it makes them insane that they might have to do so.

of course, the one exception to that is the one person who i dated who clearly lacked any confidence in his ability with regards to himself. he wasn't acceptable because of that. he could give, but he couldn't put up boundaries. he knew no such thing, such as a boundary with me he wasn't allowed to cross, or setting a boundary i wasn't allowed to cross. his love bordered on obsession, like i was a prize.

and to a few other men, i have been a prize.

i am not a prize. i am also not a toy you can enjoy for a little while and throw into the closet. i am a person. yes, i do want to be idolized and petted and adored at times, as i am a female, and think it is my natural right, but remember that women, myself included, nurture your wounded ego and admire you as well. that is a give and take. but i also want you not to forget that i am a person, a person who prefers friendship above all else, a companion whose beauty will fade, but whose mind will remain intact. if you want something to last, try treating me like your car in a few ways: you have to change the oil, right, and fill it with gas, and take it in? you have to take care of it for it to last. yes, a relationship with a woman is like that. you have to pay attention and listen, you have to make your own boundaries and expectations clear, and understand that the other person has them as well.

i should sleep

insomnia. gah.

we all have something wrong with us; i've been reading about autism and a possible window into understanding it (children with autism have a lessening of symptoms often during a high fever). maybe it's a clue, a real first clue into autism, instead of the grasping at straws that medical science has been doing for years (not a condemnation... sometimes even the smartest scientist can have no clue.. even the smartest person can't figure out a crossword puzzle if there aren't any clues).

i have two autistic nephews... thus the interest in autism.

but, then, really, i seem to have this real love for men who probably have some form of autism spectrum disorders. geeks are my dating pleasure for the most part. men who can't communicate to save their skins. fuck, when did i decide dating nice quiet men who found the computer to be a warm and fuzzy companion a good thing? and why on earth does a linguist, a person who's profession it is to study language, find men who don't know how to use it attractive?

yes, yes. i have many things wrong with me. insomnia, tonight, is one of them. at least ryan's sleeping.

considering gender, place in life, and such things

two conversations today:

one - with a male friend, concerned that he isn't where he should be in his life so as to properly attract the opposite sex. the friend in question is 38, not so young, but not so old, either. he's in college, after having decided to go back to learn how to do something new in life.

i always applaud people for going to get an education, since most people in our society are such lackluster idiots. but he realized that, while he doesn't care for the opinions of people in general, it bothers him that the regards of others in society with care to place in life, see him as not in the proper and fitting role of a male of his age.

i agree that it is bullshit. but, on the other hand, i have this serious requirement that someone have a job/career. preferably career, as i have something akin to that as well. settled in their life, as i have begun to settle in my own. i don't want someone growing in a way that i grew years ago, because i've been there and done that and would find it unchallenging to date someone going through a process i went through years ago. there is a serious need for compatibility in a relationship, and place in life is one of those. of course, that rules me out for anyone at the moment.

the second was with my old boss/friend in berlin, who is 37, divorcing, mother of two, former war correspondent. she is thrilled that i am going to darkest africa to do something i've dreamed of doing for about five or six years, and gave me great insight into the importance of not only doing something that is so important to you (she also wanted to be a war correspondent), but in going to a place where the little bullshit in life, such as if your coffee is burnt or not, is quite fucking irrelevant. she was in kosovo in the middle of a war, and i'll be in a former war zone that is not recovering very quickly. i think they are comparable, if not quite the same, experiences. this friend is something of a hero to me, i admit, since she is not so dissimilar from myself in many ways. i see her as someone to emulate, even though her life is not the one i will have (she has two gorgeous kids, who i will say are very much adored by me, as i participated in their upbringing for over a year).

ah, but she is divorcing, since her husband (fifteen years older, feckless financially, and refusing to join her in the city she is living in with their children) has turned out to be ultimately hopeless. she, too, is another woman i know who has not had wedded bliss, or good luck with the men folk of the world, but she does at least have her beautiful children. i don't dislike her version of motherhood (as she still has her career), but she is a single mother, with all of its accompanying stresses and difficulties, even if she can afford to pay for a nanny to help with the kids. i've seen her life, up close, and don't think i could do it, or even want to try. perhaps it has turned out for the best that kids aren't an option.

and a conversation with the fig today... funny, i read all of these emails today, as i was sorting through it tonight, and found all of these old emails between us from before the kisses and such this summer. i think before we were involved in any way, or not involved, or whatever the fuck it is, he was easier and more carefree with talking to me. now, he seems to be more withdrawn, more afraid. i know that i am too, but i am making the effort. i am chatting with him, although it feels so odd and awkward to chat with him, because it is fucking chat, for fucks sake, not the living breathing person next to you on the pillow, or across from you at a dinner table or a cafe or bar. i miss him, very much, and, yes, admit to liking him very much... 'like' btw is a stupid stupid idiotic repulsive word that i am beginning to loathe as much as boyfriend. i hate fucking english and its refusal to describe anything well except emotional content of deep and human nature. we have no words to describe grief, none to describe feelings for others... the greeks were far far more awesome than we were back in the hey-day. no idea on the current language, but one pass through the iliad would yield far better words for love and loss than we currently hold in our own language.

on the fig, my day, my friends

one poor darling friend tonight... is suffering because of a man...

she can't sleep. she looks as though her life is washing through her fingers like sand. like she can't stop the tidal forces of whatever is controlling her, overwhelming her. a stupid man, a stupid, slovenly, morbidly embarrassing male met another woman behind her back..

the shock is worse this time than others i think. far worse. she had plans to be with this guy. to try and have kids with him. she's not twenty-five either. i think the shock of this is harder than others because she had so much invested in him, so many hopes and dreams tied to him and now it is gone. it is easy to say that he wasn't worthy of her (he wasn't, he's scum), but for a woman, at least, that kind of emotional investment getting blown is hard as hell in your twenties (i speak from personal experience), but in your thirties? fuck, fuck, fuck... this is like having everything you believed in and worked for knocked out from under you.

maybe this is why i have trouble promising anything i know for sure. i've had too many men play at love, and never really make an honest attempt at it. perhaps two of them did, but one was not ready, and not right besides, and the other did nothing but pet and love me all day and invest nothing in his own self worth as he should have. but it just feels like people would rather play house than make a house, would rather like the good things about having a boyfriend/girlfriend/whatever else, rather than deal with the hard things that come to having another person with a stake in your life.

these are very serious questions for me to be considering right now. the almost 30 thing. the friends marrying and breeding. i don't want to be approaching 40, ruing things i should have done years earlier or crying at the realization i will spend the rest of my life alone.

random rant about the world

since this is pretty much hidden from the world, i can rant about whatever is bothering me most of all...

today: learning the new standards for HTML 4.0, since I have to rewrite the website for the Krim and Bom project. Dealing with the bureaucracy at Portland State so that they will reimburse me the rest of my money so that I don't die of some dreadful disease in Africa. Trying to relearn CSS, correctly this time. Thinking about writing, but Austin is about as inspiring as an old moldy sock, so writing is always really hard here.

Downloading Knoppix so as to access other files that I need to complete some work for LinguistList. Trying to stave off annoying illness I feel coming down upon my head. Wishing it were me, not Shanta, going back to the bay area tomorrow (or rather both of us were going, because I love it out there and would hope anyone in Austin would leave and start anew in some place with much more pizazz than this place).

Again, sorting out issues of the figs and the thistles. Figs are partially a matter of taste, after all. I've had good figs... but they were never the right taste. I woke up this morning with a feeling of impatience. Knowing that the fig I am currently examining will never put forth effort, due to his perpetual habit of not taking risks. And I am a risk. A high risk, with little possible return investment. I am apt to run off to different continents, take on a job that is somewhere else, and so forth. I am not the kind of woman who will settle down easily, and the man who is capable of settling with me better know how to control the daily hurricane. They can't want children, because I can't have any. There will be no pitter patter near me, no pregnancy, no glow. That bothers me for many reasons, for the simple fact I can't experience pregnancy (which I always thought I could), and in the end, it makes me less somehow. Maybe not less of a person, but it lessens the experiences I could have had, or thought I would have in this life.

I can be patient and just wait. I have other things on my mind now, and cluttering it with thoughts of what can't be won't help me in any way mentally or emotionally. My emotions have had a hold put on them, because I am no longer willing to take risks either, not after taking so many and had so many disappointments. It's not that I'm not willing to love again, I just want to make sure it is worth my time and effort before I do.

stupid thing, but about the title

basically, it is from Edna St. Vincent Millay... "a few figs from thistles" was the title of one of her volumes of poetry. if you are single, female and over twenty-five, i think just thinking about that title for a minute makes a lot of sense.

and the first fig was my favorite poem when i was twenty-five:
"my candle burns at both ends
it will not last the night
but, oh my foes and oh my friends,
it gives a lovely light!"