9 January 2003 (Thursday)
the culture tyro
Occasionally I wish I'd had, say, a history professor and a concert cellist for parents. Money would have been tight all through childhood, surely, and life chaotic at times -- but oh, the books on the library shelves, the dinner guests, the trips to the symphony! And someone to hold my hand and tell me what it was all about, why it was so wonderful: that's what I sometimes wish I'd had.
My parents in real life, faithful to immigrant strategy, worked diligently in school and studied sensible things, took respectable jobs, built a foundation for a home and family with hard-earned paychecks. There was no room to be fanciful, no option for daydreaming. Their knowledge lay in electronics, in accounting, in looking at a shopping cart and estimating to the nearest dime how much it would all cost, taking the Sunday-paper coupons into account. They drew up a budget for their children; it included art class, and piano lessons. Their own childhoods had primed them for usefulness, and they stood now largely illiterate in their adopted culture, while the memory of their native one faded. They hoped that their own kids would get something better than that.
Bring it home, they say to me now; show us what you've learned, tell us what you've seen. And I tell them what I can about Hemingway, Platonic forms, Shostakovich, Shakespeare, Warhol. But all I have is a neophyte's understanding, don't even know myself how to see keenly into these things and feel their greatness. And my parents mostly nod their heads uncertainly. Strange stuff, they usually say with a little laugh. I don't get it.
posted by enjelani @ 11:39 PM PST [ link ]
i need a pub
The Irish apparently have this theory that every man needs, in addition to home and work, a third place where he feels comfortable, fits in. Somewhere to seek refuge from the other two, somewhere he has no role to play, no responsibilities to bear. For the Irish, of course, it's the neighborhood pub. I could use one right about now.
Problem is, I don't drink.
Actually, I think the real problem is that I have no first and second place, let alone a third. I lost the office/home work/play division months ago, and the disparate social circles along with it, so now my daily world has shrunk into hours of solitude at a desk in the kitchen of a studio apartment. I have no colleagues; I have no family or roommates. There are friends I see from time to time, yes, and those are precious. There's Soren, there are weekend visits with the folks out in the suburbs, there are the occasional merry meetings-up with communities of people to which I sort of, kind of belong. But for the most part, I am alone. I don't usually mind this, but right now I'm feeling a lot more like a sheep than a lone coyote. I need a pub.
posted by enjelani @ 06:34 PM PST [ link ]
8 January 2003 (Wednesday)
so, young lady, what are your plans?
The general idea is to be really good at one thing, and pretty good at a second thing. One of the things should be relatively selfless and make some contribution of the saving-the-world variety, and the other should be just plain fun. At least one of them needs to make money. The kind you can buy a house and send a couple kids to college with. It would also be nice if, in the midst of all this, I had enough time to cook dinner every night and read bedtime stories.
I'm not sure if this is too much to ask.
posted by enjelani @ 10:18 PM PST [ link ]
5 January 2003 (Sunday)
insert non-cliched title here
Soren and I had a splendid date on New Year's Eve, which involved dinner (at one of those 50's-themed diners, where we decided that I was going to write a Celine Dion #1 hit entitled "(I) Live To Love You") and a movie (there were no more seats and we had to sit in the aisle and get kicked out about an hour in, but we got a full refund. Which means we got to see half a movie for FREE. Shyeah.) and much pointless/romantic wandering around the downtown district watching people stumble around in drunken glee, plus a return to the aforementioned 50's diner for a milkshake, and in general much laughing and grasping of arms and pointing at silly stuff. We missed the countdown, though.
Each year the family newsletter gets more embarrassingly late. We're calling it the Valentine's Newsletter this year. As usual, I'll type a few paragraphs full of cheesy G-rated wit, leave out all the melodrama no one wants to know about, and sound endlessly optimistic about the year ahead. Sometimes manners can inspire a genuine improvement in attitude.
posted by enjelani @ 07:42 PM PST [ link ]