wasted days

My consolation is: time might go alarmingly fast, but there’s a lot packed into the days. The last few are a blur (inevitably). Went to see The Wild Party Thursday night, then out to coffee with Hollis until the CoHo closed. Admit weekend, so the campus is thronged with lost 17-year-olds. My profro didn’t arrive until Friday, which was also 420 and a success by any reasonable standard. Spent the afternoon with Kevin and then the barbeque with my profro. Columbae in the evening, then out with Hollis again. Arrived back at the dorm at god knows when; the profros were all asleep. Saturday was recovery, spent writing quiet poems and working until late in the evening, then some relaxation and, regrettably, another 4am bedtime thanks to Battlestar. An infatuation which was furthered Sunday night, after an afternoon writing about S.T. Coleridge’s excellent Kubla Khan for IHUM, by a trip to Phi Sig with my external hard drive in hand. We watched an episode; I wrote a poem for class; we stayed up until 4. Which was an unfortunate time, since I had a class this morning at 10, but this is one thing that I am willing to shirk sleep for. Less so for my incredibly involved CS assignments, but it looks like that’s happening again this week. But such is life. Tonight has been spent staying awake and working when I can bring myself to, which is rarely, because it’s hard to turn my mind off. I’ve calmed down a little by telling myself to just accept the nature of things present and future. It only works so well.

background noise: “Romulus” Sufjan Stevens

I finally feel like I’m really in college. It took the better part of seven months to learn how to actually be able to see it, but I’m there. What a wonderful feeling. Mostly, I just really like living with my friends. I really like that Elena just woke up on the couch after sleeping there for two hours while I worked, that Zhi has wandered in and out, that if there’s no one here I can wander 50 feet and talk to Lyndsay or Ron or Austin or anyone else. I have small epiphanies; this is one of them. This is what I want right now, and I’m getting it.

background noise: Mews Too (Asthmatic Kitty Compilation)

As a postscript, a revised version of the robot poem:

this rusty heart: my life as an angsty teen robot [revised, albeit not much better]

It’s a funny thing, birth.
Most people don’t remember it,
but still take it as something
eminently human.
It is an experience for which
I have no comparison,
having simply been “switched on”
and having never forgotten
a single thing since then.

I made a list of
“Ways in Which I Am Different,”
my carefully indexed,
thoroughly organized,
wholly gratuitous
tabulation of distinctions between what I am
and what I might be–
    (a thinking breathing mess of metal
    trying to find grace in the gracelessness
    of mechanics, of physicality).
“Birth,” right between
“Baseball” and “Boredom,”
which I respectively have no interest in
or conception of.

I wanted to be a poet,
or a lover–
    (of life, or of metal,
    or of anything in the world
    into which I was thrust
    fully formed)
–but they told me
poetry is divinity
and robots don’t have souls.
They took the pen out of my hand
and told me to express myself
in ways more appropriate
for a machine:
something in zeros and ones, perhaps.
I am blessed with all the perfections
that make me more machine than man:
    perfect memory,
    perfect teeth,
    perfect breath.
But there is nothing perfect
about a love so precise,
or a dull silver heart
that wasn’t created with romance in mind.
They tell me that I am a miracle,
that I am the culmination
of intelligently designed creation.
They tell me they made me better
and more perfect
than even God made his children.
They tell me I’m alive, but
I’m really not sure.

What a breathless four days. My father was here on Friday and Saturday so we went out to eat and went shopping and went down to the mountains to go hiking at Big Basin. I spent all day with him, recollecting, and all evening with my friends here, making memories. Or attempting to; parties every night aren’t always conducive to it. But there are always people in our room at night, which is important for my bizarre and recently-recognized social addiction. Thursday night went to the coho and got my keys stolen by someone cute, then came back to the dorm and just had everyone over to the room. Watched Austin write “BALLS” on Ron’s forehead. We went out on Friday, which was a nice change of pace (and successful in the sense that I sated another part of the social neurosis for a little while), and then had the West Lag party Saturday night. It went well and all, I’m happy, although I’m afraid our contingent was more of a shitshow than anything else. Next time I need to actually spend more time at the party, rather than running around the dorm trying to deal with myself and keeping track (or, more often, losing track) of everyone around me. Overslept for brunch with my father Sunday morning; the alarm got turned off while I was sleeping. That always happens when it’s least convenient. It turned out well enough, though. I’m now underslept and with much work to do (this is what I get for not going to class or working at all for four days), so it’s looking like a couple hours coding before I crash, crash, crash.

Wrote another mediocre poem for class last night; I’m writing more at least but I could be doing better. To be revised, but now it reads like:

this rusty heart: my life as an angsty teen robot

it’s a funny thing, birth
most people don’t remember it,
(or much else)
but still take it for granted
as something
eminently human.
It is an experience for which
I have no comparison,
having simply been “switched on”
and having never forgotten
a single thing since then.

It is one record of many
in my ever-growing list of
“Ways in which I am Different”
my carefully indexed,
thoroughly organized,
wholly sentimental
tabulation of distinctions
between what I am
and what I might be–
    (a conscious hunk of metal
trying to find grace
in the gracelessness
of mechanics, of physicality.)
“Birth,” right in between
“Baseball” and “Boredom,”
which I respectively have no interest in
nor conception of.
I wanted to be a poet,
but they told me
poetry is an expression of divinity
and robots don’t have souls.
They took the pen out of my hand
and strapped machine guns to my arms
and told me to express myself.
I am blessed with all the perfections
that make me more machine than man:
perfect memory,
perfect teeth,
perfect aim.
Mine is a precise love,
born in a dull silver heart
and nurtured with every clean, deadened thing
I can try to pass off as romance.
They tell me that I am a miracle,
that I am the culmination
of the intelligently designed creation
that was so long struggled for.
They tell me they made me better
and more perfect
than even God made his children.
They tell me I’m alive,
but I’m just not sure.

–

And that’s all, for now.

background noise: early mountain goats (new asian cinema / some of the alpha series)

update: it’s too windy to go sailing? one of these days it’ll happen…

First sailing class is today. I hope it goes well, because I can only remember about 75% of how to rig the boat. That’s without looking at it, though, so I’m sure it’ll come back once I’m there. I have started watching Battlestar Galactica. This is not good for my productivity. All I do is watch it now. But I also want to be writing and reading more, so hopefully I can figure out some way to combine the two. I say this as if it’s difficult; it’s really just a matter of not being lazy.

In the meantime, my first creative writing poem (mediocre):

canine teeth

Fluffy had a black nib of a tail and
oversized paws when she arrived.
Alice named her Fluffy, which our parents had
accepted over my candid suggestion of
“Dumptruck”
as the lesser of two evils.
The day my mother brought her home
it snowed.
My sister and I pressed
our faces against the window,
tasted how cold the glass was.
We watched as my mother unloaded
a simple brown box
that whimpered just softly,
more softly than the bleach-white snow
of heaven
that warmed us with its lightness
and fell outside from my
glass-fogging anticipation
extended towards this small living thing
being brought up the front walk towards our lives
in December in New England.

“Oh isn’t she the cutest,”
my mother would say,
“you could just eat her with a spoon!”
Fluffy was, in reality, no longer the quiet,
fragile thing that came in a blanket-lined box
shrouded in winter,
but actually a small-scale disaster
of garbage smells and wetness
that had succeeded in her coup d’état
of the household.
My mother loved Fluffy.
She would confuse our names with the dog’s,
calling her Jonathan and me Fluffy.
It bothered me when I was young;
I would worry in small ways
that my mother loved Fluffy more than me.

I grew out of it.

But years later my mother will slowly
begin to again forget,
and as she goes senile will again call for
her small friend, her only child
who did not grow up and leave her,
but who rather simply winged away, as my
mother one day will,
into a
snow-scarred sky.

A new quarter, a new outlook. This time we’re doing things right. Not that we weren’t before, but with a couple practice rounds I think there’s the definite possibility of an amazing next ten weeks. Classes are looking good: CS107 (difficult, undoubtedly, but also quite satisfying I’m hoping), English 92 (Poetry! Creative Writing! It’s good for the heart!), and Literature into Life (more poetry! Not quite as interesting, but it’s nice to couple extensive analysis with synthesis, plus I can’t drop IHUM). This plus sailing means a comfortable 16 units that should leave me plenty of time to write extensively if I can manage it and devote as much time as I want to CS. And I’ll get to sail, which is fun, and I’ll still have plenty of time to relax hopefully. We’re a week into the quarter and I’ve already been partying about 6 of the last 8 nights. Which is awesome. Right now my room is full of people strategizing about assassins. I couldn’t really care less; I’ve got my headphone pumping Brand New (because, yes, I’ve been listening to a lot of Brand New…) and I’m just happy there are people around. I’m learning the in’s and out’s of my social neurosis and generally weird attitudes towards a lot of things. This has been accomplished via extensive introspection, which isn’t particularly effective most of the time but I feel like it’s helping me act more rationally.

Anyway, beyond the reasonably boring miscellanae of daily life I have nothing to say at present. I have simply promised myself I’m going to start writing things down again, because I don’t like that I’ve stopped. It’s on the list of things to do right this quarter. I’m going to get good at longboarding, I’m going to write a lot of poetry, I’m going to write a lot down here, I’m going to sail a lot, I’m going to have a great time, and it’s going to be an epic ten weeks. Here’s hoping for the best.

(In other unrelated news, this site is now cheerfully hosted on the server Micah and I hacked together. anotherwastedday.com now has it’s own fancy box. Overkill is spelled “dual 2.4GHz Xeon processors, 4GB of ECC DDR RAM, and 160GB of hard drive space in a RAID-5 array”. Have something you want hosted? E-mail us.)