kuakistar's Xanga

D.C. descending

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 03:59:28 GMT

D.C. is descending upon me.

Saturday I'm moving all my things out. Sunday I go to D.C. I can't really believe it.

Sunday I kiss my boyfriend goodbye for 4 months. o.0 I am going to be a nervous wreck with the missing-ness.

Finally petitioned a few classes today, will petition other ones tommorrow. Realized that after petitioning these classes, I will pretty much only need 2 classes to graduate. (shit.) Which means I'll be needing to get a job 3 months (er, make that six months) earlier than I had been planning. (shit again.)

Planning on being a part-time student Winter quarter..which means I will need a part-time job. I really want my own room. My current roommate seems like she's out to get me.

In the past, I've "kidnapped" my brother's girlfriend to go to movies/plays because I wanted to get to know her, and had free tickets for things, and whatnot. (My brother jokes, "Kathleen, stop taking my girlfriend out on dates!" I joke back, "Well, you weren't there, and I was the next best thing around!" )

Well, they're both in the East Coast. So I kidnapped my brother's girlfriend's new roommate instead. MUAHAHA. This would be a profitable business if it weren't for the fact that I'm trying to get rid of a lot of my crap and gave her a bunch of dishes/yogamatt/boogyboard etc.

Yes. So. D.C. Not yet believing it. And yet I got running shoes today. Oh holy fuck.

addiction

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:54:24 GMT

Attempting to diminish/eliminate caffeine dependency.

Had a tablespoon.5 of insta-coffee this morning (considering a few weeks ago, I was using 3 and saying, "look, I'm cutting back!" this is still an accomplishment.)

Withdrawal headache. temptation looms. Course, I would have to get up to find coffee, and head drooping sleepily. Library is comfy.

May have to resort to getting coffee before work, don't want to be a zombie for the kiddies....(muahaha excuse...)

*zonk sleeeeep...*

The Future

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:55:25 GMT

I'm sitting in the UCSD library, working on my take-home final due Saturday (that I want to turn in tommorrow/thursday so as to not have anything to do thursday or friday), I can't seem to stop my mind from wandering back to a familiar path, a subject it has been drawing back to over and over again in the recent weeks: the future.

My constant re-tracing of thoughts about the future is somewhat vexing to me; one of my personal rules is to avoid thinking about the future, based on the idea that if I think about the future, I would distract myself from relishing the present; that I might come up with all sorts of unrealistic expectations that, because they would never come to fruition, would break my heart; that I'll freak out worrying about things that I have no way of being able to do anything about. I feel this system has generally worked out well for me, apart from several incidents involving my complete inability to plan (eg: hiding from crazies and cops in a closed train station in a little town in France hopped up on so much espresso I couldn't tell if the reason why my hand was shaking was due to fear or caffeine...oh, and the time I spent the night freezing underneath an overhang in Spain when it was raining...etc). What comes to pass has come to pass; my life, without any conscious effort on my part, was already following a plan, although I guess through following instincts, I've accidentally deviated from the norm. I've almost never spent more than 3 consecutive years at one school; I've left pieces of my heart in the hands of friends I never thought I would be lucky enough to have; I traveled to places I never imagined I'd see, with people I never imagined I could learn from; I fell in love despite circumstances no one believed were realistic. I'm grateful to my instincts for every time they've taken me off the path of well-worn expectations.

And yet, as I'm reaching the beginning of my (potentially) last year of formal instruction, I can't help but think about the future. Since as I mentioned before, I have absolutely no capability to plan, this preoccupation with the future seems to be a subconscious plot conceived by the subversive part of my brain to torture me. Many of my friends and acquaintances have graduated and are already "out there" on the path of making their dreams manifest in a tangible form, while I'm still doddering away finishing take-home finals. I'm starting to think my ideas about leaving the future to the future were misguided and escapist rather than sensible life plans…because here I am, standing at the end of the pre-planned plank, staring into a formless, unending depth and trying to see into it as if it were a scrying bowl.

The future has never been more unknown to me. I knew after elementary school there was middle school; that after middle school there was high school, and then on to college. Sure, I didn’t know which middle school, high school, or college I was going to—but it didn’t necessarily matter, because I was convinced that no matter what school I went to, all I had to do was work hard and I would turn out alright. The question now is not “Which institution will I go to next”, but “will I go to an institution?” Before me lies a myriad of choices—Peace Corp? If so, which country? ESL certificate? Take a course in Quechua? Go straight to the American Work Force? If so, for global issues or local issues? Should I try my luck getting a job in Latin America? Should I go to Grad School? If so, what should I be going to grad school for?

I know I should be thinking of this precipice of the unplanned as an opportunity, not as something to fear—life is a blank page, its unwritten (as Natasha Beddingfield would say), what freedom to shape your own life! But of course, to anyone who has had to write ANYTHING EVER and had a deadline to turn it in, a blank page is freakishly scary. (Have you ever said, “oh goody, the page is blank, this essay could turn out in any way whatsoever!” I seriously doubt it.) And there is a deadline. When I graduate, in either 8 months or a year, I will have to do something; and whatever it is that I choose, it will involve giving up things I hold dear for other things I hold dear. Worse, I’m used to thinking of things in assignments: once its done, its done; once the page is written, its written, and I can move on—but this page is an ongoing project, one that will not be finished until the day I die. (And with my luck, probably mid-sentence.)

I guess whatever I do directly after I graduate won’t alter the course of my life for good or for bad; but it could. I want to live the life worth living, and I’m afraid that I’ll fall into the patterns I’ve been accustomed to, following what is prescribed rather than cutting my own way through the jungle. I want to write a book or 12, I want to bring world peace; some of my goals in life seem as though the fulfillment of one would mean the ignoring of others.

And this is the point at which my thoughts once again devolve into helpless sputtering; so many choices, so many options, and so much confusion. I guess I’ll be going back to that take-home final.

The Future

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:54:43 GMT

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And this is the point at which my thoughts once again devolve into helpless sputtering; so many choices, so many options, and so much confusion. I guess I’ll be going back to that take-home final.

so there's no realy reason for this except procrastination

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 03:02:10 GMT

Halloo!

Right now I'm frustrated with the rate of writing on the essay I'm making for my MMW class (that six-week long course that ppl in my college have to take as a GE.) Its got to be at least 8 pages, turned in on Thursday, and so far I've got about 5. I suppose I should give myself a pat on the back that I'm working on it now instead of putting it off further, but still I'm annoyed that I haven't at least gotten further on the quota I established for myself by tonight (needs to be 6 pages before I go to sleep).

My essay is about Spain (surprise!) While I really like Spain, its hard to care about an essay, because its overall hard to care about the class. Everything that the professor has said, everything that has been covered in the reading, I HAVE ALREADY LEARNED. On the plus side, its a nice refresher on 20th century world history, but its a bit of a damper that I actually have to take a class on things I've already learned. Sometimes I'm bored in class because its painful trying to listen to information I've already absorbed and memorized. (Surprise! World war one was fought in Trenches, everybody! Chairman Mao's cultural revolution really really sucked!)

So that's one thing that's annoying.
I'm also really frustrated about my poetry class. So on the plus side, I got an email today from the prof asking if I could re-send her one of my poems so she could share it with the class...but. (there's always a but. )
I don't really like my group. there's two guys in it who just really, really suck. One of them doesnt' ever seem to do homework or give us poems to look at or say any useful comments (i exagerate a little...but not much.) Everytime the other one speaks, I want to thwack him upside the head. Actually, no one in the class likes him much, because he doesn't seem to really understand appropriateness, how one can talk about certain subjects, or what kinds of inflections one is supposed to use with certain words. He sounds like a really big jerk every time he talks. (mental THWACK!!!) And his poems suck. a lot. I mean, really, really suck. On monday he submitted a poem about superheroes, but it was really hard to read because it was so....incredibly bad.

you are fast
you are good
we look up to you
bullets don't hurt you

etc. (that's superman)...

GRAAAAR!!! My inner poet dies. Its very hard to get the incentive to write anything good when every class I'm presented with really really crappy writings each week.

I'm also upset with myself because I don't think I've been submitting things worth reading the last few times (yet the people in my group seem to like them--but I would prefer to use my own standard of good than others, just because my standard is usually set higher and is therefore more desirable, at least to me. ) When I'm feeling really uninspired, I end up just writing poems about things that happened in my past, which feels cheap to me because I can make those really shocking and virulent without trying very hard, which makes it feel like cheating. This week I rather felt sick when I turned in my assignment, because the poems I wrote were really connected with some of the darker parts of my past, and it seems sick to me that I have to share those parts of me with the dumbasses in my group because its the only thing I could come up with at two am the day the assignment was due. meh.

I also felt ill because I dug up memories probably better left forgotten in order to write it...meh. Oddly enough, my paper for MMW is all about supression of memories, too.

hm...share the poem? hm.
meh. why not. I'm hopefully not connected to anyone I really dislike on xanga anyway. (and there's the whole 'no one reads it' factor. )

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Abuse

Door slamming, I remember the sound, the screams, clutching the golden, golden knob to close it, shoving clothes, stuffed animals under crevice between wood and floor, pushing chairs, our tearful selves against it, but he charged in anyway.

I don’t remember what followed.

Eyes flashing, I remember the horrid blue gleam, running away into a barricaded room, afraid of dying, burying hiding under laundry suffocating from the force of my own lungs beating pounding choking on teardrops, screaming voice “You can’t leave until you forgive me.”

I don’t remember what followed.

She tells me, what she remembers, he hit and denied, hit and denied and laughed when we cried and said we were beautiful, but stupid inside and bit, ruptured pride and screamed and broke things but always

denied.

I don’t remember.

but the silence speaks larger than the echoes

Its nice to know I make a difference sometimes

Fri, 23 May 2008 00:26:10 GMT

I'm not the kind of person that does things a certain way because it would be easier that way, or because that's how everyone else does things. The things I do I do because I think they're right, or so as to prevent myself from having regrets. Its not the way that's easy, or that makes the most friends, but its not boring either. And every once in awhile I find it instantaneously rewarding.

For example, Monday this week, I went out for Tapas with some friends to avoid studying. So here's the group: Paco (best buddy in Spain) Juanma (his ASSHOLE boyfriend) Mery (Italian girl) and Ernesto (cuban guy). Why is Juanma an asshole? Juanma is the type of person that thinks its perfectly okay and acceptable to take out his anger and frustration on other people (whether through insulting them or, in the case of his boyfriend, hitting them) , and takes pleasure in making other people feel worse. Anywho, we're sitting at a table and Paco starts tickling Juanma. J takes out his lighter and burns Paco's finger. I've seen him do likewise things before to Paco, but this time, I COMPLETELY FLIP.

Me: WHAT THE C*** DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?? You can't just do that, that's F***** UP!!!
Juanma starts waving the flaming lighter in my direction, trying to intimidate me like he likes intimidating everyone to make himself feel potent (which in my opinion is a pretty sick way to treat people you supposedly care about). I stick my upraised middle finger straight in his face. Twice. If it weren't for the fact that I think violence is the sickest and most putrid way to settle disputes I probably would have slapped him.

He's obviously not used to that kind of reaction. What does he do? The turd TURNS AWAY FROM ME and starts using his "oh pity me" voice to MERY and says, "but....he was tickling me!"

oh that totally TOTALLY was underhanded and manipulative and PISSED THE CRAP out of me and I sputtered something very ingrammatical that was meant to be "Oh, as if THAT'S a good excuse for pulling out your goddamn lighter and BURNING THE FINGER OF THE PERSON WHO LOVES YOU MOST IN THIS WORLD" but it came out "AS IF THERE'S A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE TWO!!"

Mery tried calming me by saying, "Katalina, you have to understand these spanish." That made me twitch and I inadvertently knocked over my glass (which was luckily empty) and if I recall correctly, I think I said, "I don't want to."

There was tension and awkwardness for a bit. I would like to think its because they knew I was right, and ashamed that it took the one who'd been in that group for the least amount of time, and even worse the one who could least speak the language, to speak up against it.

Unfortunately here the story takes a nasty turn. Paco took up trying to smooth things over by making cheerful comments, smiling, the kind of things people do when they want to smooth things over and pretend nothing happened. I smiled back and I can tell you that was one of the sickest feelings I have ever experienced. It felt like with that smile, I erased the truth and importance of what I'd just said. In retrospect, I think I did it partly because I'm used to the "go with the flow" attitude that all the study abroad advisors say one must take when experiencing life in a different country, but the other part of me, sadly enough, did it because I didn't know what else to do. If I EVER find myself in a similar situation again in the states, I will NEVER AGAIN erase my words with a smile.

My promises to myself keep getting harder to keep. First there was the preschool promise: to never be like those other girls who were mean and didn't let you play with them. (that was quite easy, and constantly reinforced throughout elementary school.) Then I guess the next would be: "Don't let others have a good reason to insult you." (they can have all the bad reasons they want, just as long as they're without foundation." Somewhere in High school there was: "Do not let yourself become cynical: there are good people and good things in this world too, and in being cynical you only add to the bad." Senior year of high school: "Given: there are many kinds of love, and you therefore love more people than you have grown up believing you do: action: tell those you love that you love them, no matter what kind of love it is, and even if you know they will not say they love you back." Sophmore year in college: "You can do things and later regret them, but don't take inactions that you will regret". Winter break of this year visiting France: "Never give up." and now "no erasing your words with smiles".....One of these days I'm going to have to add "stand up for yourself, too, not just others," but I think one promise is enough for today.

hm. wow lots of information. ah well. I suppose I don't really care if someone I don't know reads this because they don't know me and I don't care about their judgement anyway. And those who know me probably already have their opinion made. And these are things I think even when its not two or three or whatever time it is in the morning.

oh right back to the title I think that even though I felt sick after smiling, Juanma seems nicer now. Its possible that he's only that way to my face, but I do think that telling him he can't just burn people when he's angry, and not backing down when he tried to intimidate me had an affect on him. Quite possible that's never happened before. And that's why I wanted to say, its nice to know that sometimes taking the not-easy route has its rewards. (Plus I've been wanting to yell at him all semester, and now that I finally did it, I can say that I've completed one of my promises--I can't regret inaction now).

justice is not very comforting

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 14:33:30 GMT

Well, I finally sent in that complaint form about my host family last semester. It was hard to do, because I basically had to call up a bunch of unpleasant memories to write it. By the time it was done, I was jittering with anxiety.

My complaint´s been processed. The girl (Liz) who was living there this semester has been quickly moved out. It was ugly. The host mum was yelling at her, trying to guilt trip her, basically being a bitch. The program directors were not very nice to her either, pulling manipulative tactics, guilt trips. They showed up to move her out at an awkward hour of the night, without having told her aforehand that they were going to move her out. It seemed the higher-ups had a "discussion" with the program director that did NOT go over well, and he was taking it out on Liz. The program directors don´t seem to be aware of my email. Black clouds of drama loom on the horizon.

My ex-host mom has been removed from the business. Not just fired; she is not allowed to host any more students that go to the school I go to.

There are several emotions plummeting through me at this current moment.

Firstly, there´s an anxious and sickly churning in my stomach, a worry for this coming semester. I don´t like antagonizing people, but I don´t like putting up with bullshit either; I did what I had to do and that may have made things more difficult for myself. Who knows what the program directors are going to be like now--at least I know the higher-ups are receptive to my complaints, though. Its a good thing the hard-vs-easy distinction isn´t quite as important as the wright-vs-wrong distinction. And at least, I like a challenge.

Secondly, I´m frustrated that I hadn´t thought of doing that earlier. Yay, its great that I helped future generations of study abroad students escape the clutches of psycho-host mom, but how does that help me? (insert self-interest: damn econ class, I can´t think of anything without inserting econ terminology anymore!) What if I´d had the foresight to complain to the higher ups earlier? How would my study abroad experience have improved? Could I have avoided the last month of sheer hell? Or was it necessary for me to suffer to write as good a complaint, so that other people have a better time?

Thirdly, I´m feeling very powerful. I´ve never gotten anyone fired before. My words are all the sudden much more important than capable of proving whether or not Shakespeare meant for Hamlet to be a role model or a dunce--they really can shift reality.

Fourthly, as a writing major and a language fanatic, I´m very pleased with my persuasive writing ability. WOOT!

missage

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 11:11:55 GMT

Today, while procrastinating on finishing my essay for my "imagenes de las mujeres en la literatura espa~nola" class, I was looking through my old emails at my xanga subscription digests from bygone ages. (I just figured out how to read in binary, and I was looking for one message a friend sent me a few years ago and refused to tell me what it meant. Now I can decode it! sweet victories.) ....Yes, there are still a few digests from my highschool days collecting dust in my inbox.

I smirked at some of the quizes whose pictures had dissappeared due to having been removed from whichever photo-hosting site in which they used to reside, smiled at those pictures that still remained. I laughed at the cute poems and photos of people, computer-generated hexcode images, complaints from people from back in the day.

It made me realize I really miss my friends from high school. I mean, I knew before that I missed them, but it helped put it into a blatant contrast.

I miss LGHS, I miss SFHS. I miss UCSD, too, but I feel like most of my real friends I left behind when I packed my bags for the dorms.

I had a dream the other day in which I was walking around the perimeter of my elementary school in the autumn, with fiery amber-red leaves falling from the trees, coating the sidewalks, draping my view with a vibrant sepia, the color of faded photographs. I crossed paths with a short friend from LGHS, who although is not a child, has always been associated in my head with childhood and youth, due to her short stature, playfulness, and childlike manner of speaking. In my dream, she asked me, "why did you leave us?"

Its dreams like that that make me wonder what the fuck I'm doing here in Spain. Obviously, I'm staying for the rest of the year; I'm excited about living in a dorm, away from the hellish host fam, and making my spanish skills uber-sweet. But still. We're trained to think that exploring the world is a good thing to do, that it makes us deeper persons, but I feel that after a certain point, one's experience of new cultures and ideas is saturated, and starts spreading thin. More than ever, I feel drawn to staying in one place, and exploring the personalities and customs of the people who are already close to me, the people I already care about, rather than consistently push forward and explore things that are "new and exciting".

I have a lot of webjournals. Xanga, Myspace, Livejournal, Blogspot, Facebook...While I was happy when I only had Xanga, and joked about the people who had fifteen zillion different journals, I eventually did collect several, as there were different people I could reach with each one. Xanga is for my high school friends. I'm inclined to post this to one of my other journals, because there are definitely some people from UCSD who I am missing like the hole of a doughnut, but I also miss the daily rants, the coloquial, physical presence of these friends. I wonder if when we're all done with college, we'll all be living in relatively the same area--I doubt it. I find this depressing; that school, careers, individual motivations do not help us to select our communities, rather, to separate us from the people and friendships we love. I shrink from the example of my parents, whose closest friends have never been a part of my life--only a glimmer in the eye with the pronunciation of the name, the occasional christmastime letter, laced with photos of unfamiliar faces. Always unfamilar faces. And while the idea of exploration and new adventures is tantilizing, and the posibility of regret for being locked into one place due to attachments repugnant, I always seem to find that the adventure is never as exciting nor as gratifying as the smile or hug from a friend I love.

There are many things I could do with my future. For the most part, I have no idea what I want to do as a profession. Sometimes I can't even figure out what I like to do as a hobby, and I find myself resorting to discovering myself through understanding things that I do not like, that I do not want. And the one thing that I know I do not want in my future is a lifetime of unfamiliar faces.

I wonder if anyone else has an emotional attachment to their xanga anymore.

damn foreign TAs...

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 04:01:09 GMT

So today I had my spanish final, and I hung out with one of my friends beforehand. As we walked to the final, we ran in our TA, who started talking to us IN ENGLISH.

...so odd hearing a spanish TA talk in english...

....especially when you find out that they actually have a really hot latin american accent.

WHY?? WHY DIDN'T HE SPEAK ENGLISH SOONER?? daaamn....

that's the problem with foreign TA's: they're either really hot or really incomprehensible.

damnit. Oh well, at least I'm getting an A in that class cus I'm teacher's pet. whatev.

...but really, DAMMIT!!

Playground—Practice

Tue, 22 May 2007 20:30:37 GMT

Circles round a pole

tied to a rock-yellow ball,

punched one way,

then the other—

Roses, red, jammed in the metal locker

crumpled paper tied, with

slick ribbed curls.

Bounce it on the grey ground,

Who can bounce it highest?

Who is stronger?

Hands opening doors

smile unzipping mouth--

feed that dog anything,

it hasn’t eaten for days.

Purple sundress fleeing trousers green,

Who is faster?

and what, does that mean?

Telephone sitting lonely,

longing for the human touch,

just a little longer

It’ll wait

he’s gotta make up his mind.

Ha-ha!

I got you.