In honor (or perhaps dishonor) of Salinger, I am posting an essay I wrote a number of years ago. 2004 to be exact. It’s a bit lengthy for a blog post, so it’s behind the cut. Yikes it is PAINFUL to read things you wrote 6 years ago, and actually SUBMITTED for a grade.
Oh Billy Joel, how I miss being able to listen to your music. Otherwise, I’d actually have “Souvenir” on my iPod. But after the embarrassingly awful alcohol poisoning incident in 2008, which landed me in the hospital and caused my acquientence to miss the entirity on Last Play At Shea, I have been unable to listen to you without cringing. This is a shame, because you play in the background of so many of the scenes of the first half of my decade. Luckily, Dar Williams sort of takes over at a point.
Anyway, to complete the chorus “Every Year’s A Souvenir/That Slowly Fades Away”
Here are ten of them.
A ridiculously overwrought reflection on NYC
I started a post last night about how I really didn’t want to go back to work and how I was having this Pavlonian-esque response to Labor Day. My stomach was in knots and I was filled with just this dread that one feels the night before school starts. And I liked school, for the most part!
But anyway, I didn’t finish it, because whining is unattractive and to save myself from future cringing and deleting, I stopped writing. Also, laziness.
I am kind of jealous of the people heading back to or starting school today. I love the start of a school year; new clothes, school supplies, and Promise.
I was originally going to write a “deep” about memory today, but the words just aren’t come out the way I want them to. I know, that’s no excuse. The purpose of this space is to post imperfectly, but I am my first and most critical audience. I want to be able to re-read an entry because I like it, and not scroll past it because it’s unimpressive or uninteresting.
But instead of memory, or a reflection on the fact that yesterday marked nine years to the day that I first kissed The Ex (and the fact that that was nearly a decade ago…my lord), or yet another navel-gazed novel about how I’m feeling I decided to go for a stream of consciousness blather. I’m not even going to re-read this before I post it.
I don’t know why I’m suddenly fretting about work. Maybe its because before this job turned permanent, I had the luxury of being able to say “well, it’s just a temp job. It doesn’t matter too much if I suck.” I’m also probably being over sensitive, because the experience at The-Job-That-Wasn’t was so dreadful that old habits are dying hard. It took me probably a month before I could even ask questions and take the answers at face value.
(My old boss used to purposefully give me incorrect information. I would double check things with him that just seemed…odd…and he would repeat his request, and then once I finished whatever task he had given me and brought it into his office, he’d give me a look like “WTF?” and say something along the lines of “Now why would you do that?!?” and I would attempt to stutter out “…well…because…you told me to?” And it was always bad. I had to adjust to the fact here that people are not actively looking to mess with my head. )
Four years ago, I wrote: ”These artificial divisions of time turn into benchmarks, ways to measure your life, as you can’t help but turn back and think about what you were doing four years ago today, and what’s changed since then, and what you’ve done in the interim”
I think I stole that from somewhere, but I have no clue where.
Anyway, four years ago, I was still hopelessly, completely enamored with He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named (and I was in denial) I was doing NaNo for the first time, and went on a date with a guy I met at the Albany region gathering. His name was Rob and I convinced him to read Atlas Shrugged. I was less than two months away from graduating college and full of schemes and plans that changed weekly.
On election night, I sat in my room in Fain C, yelling election news back and forth with my housemates. I never though Bush was going to lose, so there was no disappointment. Despite the sorry state of affairs I did not believe Bush could be defeated, and I certainly did not think Kerry would be the man to defeat him. I guess that’s why I wasn’t really upset that Bush one, because Kerry really did not seem like any type of improvement.
This year, I won’t like: I will cry if McCain wins. Not only can I not stand him, and the campaign that he run, but like most women (people?) I can’t stand Sarah Palin. I do not want either of them any where near the executive office.
I said it around the DNC that the change Obama wants me to believe in, is not my brand of change, neccesarily. But it is certainly better than the alternative. I also have a lot of respect for the campaign he ran. I started to notice it in the primaries — I think it was in the third debate he had with HIllary — she was going after him with character attacks, and getting angrier and angrier, and he just DID NOT engage her. I thought that was pretty awesome.
Four years ago feels like a lifetime ago. I have talked about this election for four years; it felt very strange to finally vote today. In a little over 12 hours, we should know for sure.
Libertarians for Obama!
For now, enjoy the moment, when all you have to prove is that you can prove nothing at.
