Despite the fact that the class I am TAing for, called Many Ways of Being Human, is an intro to anthropology and not intended to be about racism, I cannot envision doing anything without talking about racism. Given the history of anthropology, given where I am working, given who my students are, I simply cannot imagine it.

When I worked with Identity, Inc and the Spanish-speaking immigrant youth who participated in that program and talking about (surprise!) identity, racism came up. It came up because people experienced racism and because they had racist things to say. Usually they experienced racism from White people and Black people, and those who had had racist things to say said them about Black people (and occasionally Asian people). It was not my job to teach them how not to be racist, it was my job to support them in resisting the racism they faced.

Now, here, I have a very different job description. I don't know how many kids in my section identify as PoC. It could be as many as half the 3/4 of the class, it could be as little as 1/7. When I brought white privilege into a conversation (I tried to ease us in by talking about classed space), at least half the class was extremely resistant to the idea.

Last week, I spoke at length (outside of class) with a White female student who, in addition to living in Africa for a while, has a number of (adopted) sibilings of color, and went to high school where she was "one of three white students in her class of 120." Her response to this has been to decide (as I suspect her mother taught her) that the world should be colorblind, and that in fact, she IS colorblind.

We had a nice long conversation about it. I broke down for her a couple of the ways that being "colorblind" is so totally not anti-racist and challenged her both on the quotidian and ideal applications of her desire for a world that ignores the differences wrapped up in that symbolic word/concept "color."

I'm pretty sure she didn't get it. When she left, my parting words were, "don't get to comfortable with your resistance," but I don't think she's ready to be uncomfortable. It took me a while, too, so I still hope, for her sake, that even after she forgets this conversation entirely, some of the ideas nudge her in new directions.

But, after the conversation, I had to sit and think about my own advice. It's gotten pretty comfortable, sitting in front of a group of relatively uninformed students and challenging them to both stop exoticizing and reducing to white-for-all-intents-and-purposes. It's gotten pretty easy to forget that, informed or not, my words in the classroom and out of it (my words in my research in particular), however much they may INTEND to be anti-racist (as my student intended to be), may silence rather than support. In her good intentions, I saw my own, and it was an uncomfortable reminder. But if there's anything that reassures me, it is the fact that I am uncomfortable.

Now, back to work! 

I am, I must admit, a bit uncomfortable these days. I was accepted to grad school at least partly because I had a clear idea of what I would be doing with myself. I knew what I wanted to do my research on, the timeline for school, and the career trajectory. What I didn't have was the theoretical base.

After a semester and a half here, I am beginning to get a taste of what I don't know, which has had the effect of throwing my research questions into doubt. Then, on top of that, I've been going around and collecting advice from more senior students and professors. Here is a collection of some of the advice I've received:

• don't worry about your timeline, you don't know anything yet
• you need to have a clear timeline or you will never graduate but will spend the rest of your life in grad school
• you really can't move forward with your research until you have a theoretical base
• you really can't move forward with your research until you have IRB approval
• you really can't come up with any important questions until you've really been IN the field for a while, so you should do that ASAP
• you should stop having such a narrow topic and such specific questions
• you should know exactly who and what you want to study, and it should be something with lots of research already so that you can look at it with a new theoretical base
• you need to get IRB approval ASAP and you should really be publishing and presenting at conferences: publish or die!
• you shouldn't bother with the IRB for your Master's Thesis
• you will never get IRB approval for your topic
• it shouldn't be too hard to get IRB approval for your topic, even though you're dealing with kids and sexuality
• no one will ever do an Independent Study with you during the summer
• you should do an Independent Study with me over the summer!

In short, I am living in a Choose Your Own Adventure novel.

Beyond the advice of others, I am doing my best to be comfortable with my own feelings of uncertainty, to believe wholeheartedly that the discomfort I'm feeling is healthy and indicative of learning. I am trying to let go of my need to have a plan and to accept the lack of control.
I have made some mistakes, which helps me feel a little less anxious about making more. I've made some friends and found colleagues I deeply respect that are also trustworthy. In the end, those have been the only real lessons I can imagine being universal.

And now: I have a meeting with a grad adviser to try to put together an AnthGradAZ Wiki over the summer.

Today was my first day of section.

After reading academicsanon  and going through TA training and talking with the veterans here, I was expecting a class full of drooling morons who consistently misspell their own names. As it happens, despite having a class of freshmen, only two students had never written a 10+ page paper (the most they'd written was 6) and people spoke up to contribute to the conversation! Excellent.

Although I wish we could have done more than talk about expectations in the 50 minutes, I was pleased. Compared to high schoolers, they were all remarkably engaged and alert. I was pleased that EVERYONE was making eye contact. In fact, it sort of threw me. In a class of 21, I expected at least a couple to be checked out. I'm sure that will resolve itself as the semester continues. I was happy with my own comportment, too. Mostly, I was just myself. I'm interested in and excited about teaching and anthropology, but I'm serious about teaching, too, and (despite the massively low expectations of some of my peers and professors), I expect a real commitment from the students. I'm sure that all came through in my demeanor and focus, I'll let you know how that works out for me.

There are, however, two problems:

1) I am teaching in a 1980's classroom. It has a projector, but one that needs transparencies. I mean, really! I ASK you, people. I couldn't even show my funny video from Savage Minds: http://savageminds.org/2008/12/22/what-are-those-subtitles/ This is very depressing and I MAY need to ask for a room transfer ...

2) Half of my section has class during my Office Hours. That just won't do. But I'm pretty sure I can resolve it.

So! All in all, a success!

I admit it. It was dumb for me to have just come on into the library and hoped to check out or watch their a VHS marked "in library." What I should have done is filled out a recall form - even though it's not checked out - a few days before I wanted to watch it. Now that I am here, it has been explained to me, even though the VHS is IN the library, even though I watched the librarian put my request in for it, I cannot check it out or watch it here.

This is dumb. And I feel dumb for waiting until this point to try and watch a video ("Girls Like Us") that I suspected would have major relevance to my paper which is now due tomorrow.

What's going on in my life:

Imaginary research: This becomes relevant in that I am writing a grant proposal to fund it. I've been reading lots of awesome books like Dilemmas of Desire to prepare for this, but in the past week or two it's taken a back seat to some of the other things I have been working on. I have learned a ton about the subject since arriving. It boggles my mind how much is out there already and frustrates me to no end how little of what has been written is available for wide consumption. Also, after being stood up THREE TIMES, I finally got to meet with the guy who really knows about education and Latinos, a crucial angle for my project.

Class projects: These would be (in order of due date) 1) Sociolinguistics quantitative project with another student of various sex ed curricula following variables for gendered terms like "guy" and "male," relationship terms like "healthy relationship" and "marriage," physical terms like "body" "vagina" and "hands," and descriptions of "sex" (this needs to be narrowed and analyzed still, obviously); 2) Sociolinguistics final project doing a discourse analysis of published narratives of immigrant (adolescent) Latinas about sex and pregnancy plus some lit review; 3) Mexican Immigration project with another student preparing a lit review, questionnaire, and possibly a flyer re: college guidance for immigrant students

Other course stuff: standard grad school reading and papers. I could do only this and still have no free time. So I'm not bothered that I don't get it all done.

Domestic bliss: Our house is still awesomeness itself, but Guille and I are a little antsy that he still doesn't have a job. I still think a lot about having kids, but it's not a conversation we can really have seriously yet. Probably not for at least another year. I miss my people back home. I have a couple of people here I really like, but no one yet that I actually want to spend regular time hanging out with. Yet. Also, my cat loves his training time, and now does annoying attention seeking behavior randomly until I get up and do his series of tricks with him (he can Sit, Lie Down, Scratch the Post, Jump Up on My Hand,  Fetch - okay, just go to the toy still, we're working on this one - and Come on command), but I'm proud that he's smart. He's also lost weight because he has so much more space here. Guille's doing well, though, and is very excited today because his old friend Pablo is with us for a couple of days.

The only thing that's weird is that people keep telling me to calm down. I'm CALM!!! I'm excited, passionate and undoubtedly motivated, but I'm not stressed. I hope that my mix of determination and enthusiasm isn't offputting to too many people, but at another level, I really don't give a damn. I know what I am here for, I am inspired by what I'm doing, and I'm not going to pretend I'm not. But I also think the people I will like will accept me for who I am, fast pace and all.

I am a different student at the University of Arizona than I was at Oberlin.

There, I really didn't care too much what anyone thought of me or my work. I did research, took classes, did homework because I found it interesting and engaging. When I got stressed, or extenuating circumstances appeared, I slowed down. I was, to some degree, organized, but only so far as the end of that semester.

Here, what people think of me and, more importantly, my work is of utmost importance. Yes, people are awesome and supportive, but that doesn't change the fact that they are my colleagues, not just for the next few years but for the rest of my life. These people will review my books. Now I do research, take classes, do homework because I can see the direct (or occasionally indirect) impact it will have on my career. That I happen to find all of the work (with some very minimal exceptions) interesting and engaging makes that a hell of a lot easier, however. Now, when I get stressed or extenuating circumstances appear (or I need to insert a little social life back into my existence), I work through it. I CAN work through it. Although I learned a ton of great coping mechanisms growing up, one that has made a major shift has been regular meditation. I am organized, not just hour by hour in my Google calendar or week by week, but semester by semester and project by project.

And I love it.

I am balanced and bookish, professional and still a bit of a social butterfly. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

From My Bday Party

(eugenics*) So life kicked into high gear last week. I lost my laptop (but recovered it) and realized that just because I'm keeping up with class readings does not mean I'm actually keeping up. Hello research projects! I struggled madly to figure out what I wanted to do (why must theses be clear and concise? why not vague and wide-ranging?) and more once I realized what doing it would entail.

(filibusters*) I realized that meditating can no longer be an "optional" part of my daily routine. I've been more consistent on meditation here (about 5 days a week) than I ever was back in D.C., but it just isn't enough. Those days when I lost things? (You remember: my debit card, school ID, driver's license, and laptop.) All occurred on days or the morning after days in which I failed to find time to meditate. Beyond that, and its obvious effect on my insomnia, it also simply makes me FEEL better. I can read more and longer. I understand things more deeply. I am more likely to do my pathetic little exercise routine (pushups, crunches and leg lifts on the floor of my office in between readings). And my shoulders feel less tense.

(growers*) I'm enjoying my Mexican Immigration class a lot, except I feel like a lot of the students are re-hashing stuff everybody should already know by now. Hello! We're in grad school! Can't we just take for granted that Manifest Destiny was a crucial part of U.S. history? I want to go deeper than blaming the media - it's too easy to say and too impossible to correct. And I'm annoyed that we keep trying to have a conversation about "why immigration policy is bad" instead of talking about the root causes (in my opinion, the "Zero Sum Game"/Culture War perspective that hypes xenophobic warnings of "racial swamping" and the basic question - not detailed laws - of how we define citizenship) and trying to come up with solutions. I realize this is only the third week, but the semester is short, people! (As I covered in point 1.)

(hyperfertility*) I am preparing to get started on research. At this point my research ideas involve interviewing (and/or surveying) high school nurses and/or teachers before, during, and after they teach sex ed. I'll be trying to elicit information about cultural values around sex and comparing them with what is already known about strategies in Latino families around pregnancy-prevention (the focus of my MA thesis and NSF grant proposal), differences in language choice between "sex talk" and other talk (the sociolinguistics project), and perspectives and opinions about the effects of immigrant status on academic success and sexual risk (for the Mexican Immigration class). As you can see, I'm trying to minimize the number of research sites I will have to develop. All this is dependant, however, on IRB (Institutional Review Board/Human Subjects) approval. I've passed the Human Subjects training, now I just have to get my proposal in.

(immigration*) This weeks list is all about immigration. Allow me to explain "One cannot divorce the Border Patrol's founding in 1924 from an era when eugenics was the rage." (Dying to Live, 111) Filibusters were the name given to expansionist raids from California and Texas into Mexico after the Civil War. U.S. growers had a major impact on immigration trends when it became their policy (supported by the Border Patrol) to recruit undocumented labor and bring them across the Border in huge numbers, growers are still a huge lobby impacting bad labor conditions (human rights concerns), unrealistic Border policies, and continued cycles of migration. And, as you may have heard, Mexican women have been a particular demographic threat because of their supposed hyperfertility.

Guille and I spent a slow week in Quito. Mostly it was gray and mostly we were tired so we spent a significant chunk of time inside the apartment. It belonged to a woman named Pepita – actually, we don’t remember her real name, but her husband’s name is Pepe, so everyone calls her Pepita. She is a friend of the family since she and Nelly (Guille’s mom) met each other in Memphis. They had daughters born only a day apart in the very same hospital, and they were from the very same town in Ecuador! Small world.

[me and Guille in front of the Voto Nacional]

Pepita’s brother, Don Fabian, came out to host us and drove us around Quito. We ate chugchuaras – five kinds of pork, including two types of pigskin – accompanied by popcorn (popcorn is eaten with everything here) and drank pilsner beer. Then, despite the rain, we had ice cream. I had guanabana, aka soursop, ice cream. Don Fabian was very kind for driving us around, but he was a pretty bad driver. I mean, everyone here drives close (like everywhere in the world except the U.S. and maybe England, I don’t know I’ve never been there), but Don Fabian’s reaction time was pretty slow.

[me eating llapingachos]

We went on a tour and wandered around ourselves, and I had time to fall in love with the Virgin of Quito, aka the Dancing Virgin, aka the Woman of the Apocalypse. You know that section of Revelation with the woman standing on the moon with a crown of stars and the wings of eagles? Yeah, that’s her. And she’s got the Beast on a leash. And she looks totally joyous. So when I found an indigenous made statue of her, you better believe I was all over it. It’s rare for me to find something that I REALLY want, but when I do … well, I’m glad it was in the beginning of the trip. Now I’ve just got to keep it in one piece until we get to Tucson.

[Virgin of Panecillo aka the Virgin of Quito]

On Saturday we met Guille’s family and now there are 10 of us – not counting Juan Carlos aka Lukas, Guille’s cousin who looks just like how Guille looked in college and who has been showing us everything we need to know of Cuenca. Yesterday, for example, after a lunch that I couldn’t even manage half of (I am SO full SO quickly here), we went for an 8 km walk and Lukas showed me the leaves of the achilla (?) that are used for cooking tamales and a brilliant green hummingbird (called kinde in Quechua).

[wideshot of us walking next to the river]

In the evening we made a bonfire in the backyard, and I ran around playing with the four kids. When it got dark, the three older ones sang hymns they learned at Catholic school, and when the fire finally died, we came inside and danced bachata and salsa and samba and later Elena (Guille’s grandmother) showed me how to dance bolero. I wasn’t exactly a natural, but it was a lot of fun.

[the whole family in front of the fire]

We don’t have internet in the house yet (which is otherwise perfect and gorgeous), but hope to eventually get dial-up. In the meantime I am quietly freaking out about grad school. The day before we left for Quito I got a letter from Financial Aid asking for additional info, including W2s I no longer have access to. So now, from Cuenca, I have to get Borders and Identity to send copies of my W2s from 2007 to my mom’s house and rely on her to send them to the school. I feel dumb for not anticipating that particular request, but in my defense, I did read all of the requirements and they weren’t listed anywhere.

[the view of the mountains from the house]
In other news, Guille and I may take Quechua classes together. I’m SO excited!

So I imagine most of us know about RateMyProfessor.com, but were you aware of Professors Strike Back!?

Awesome.

Holy crap. The University of Arizona just sent me a letter accepting me to their MA program.

I am in shock. This is weeks before I was supposed to hear back from them and I honestly did not believe I would get in.

I am going to Arizona. My first choice school. I am going to get my Master's and continue straight on to my PhD and then fight my way tooth and claw into the glutted field of academic anthropology where I hope to eventually find work as a professor. I am going to work with Therese de Vet, the classicist turned anthropologist I was so enamored with when I visited; she has been assigned as my mentor for my first year of grad school.

There are still plenty of questions that remain unanswered (money not the least of them), but at the moment? I don't care. Because I am going to Arizona.

I am so happy right now I can't think straight. I love everybody. Drinks on the house!

This seems strange to me, but of all of the classes I took in college, the one that makes me sound smartest in conversations is Roman Religion. Now, I know the professor of that class happens to read this lj, but I'm not actually saying it for her benefit (it's too late to suck up - unless you can somehow manage to change those grades now, can you, could you?). Today in the breakroom at Borders someone started asking about what would have happened to Christianity if, in fact, Jesus had not died on the crossed for our sins [his phrasing]. He was genuinely interested, not using the question as a starting block for his own opinions. While I don't know that his question can ever actually be answered, there were a number of places to begin discussing it, but I was excited that I, at least, knew enough to be conversant on some of the early cultural context. I mean, I was steeped in Christian history in our bizarre "confirmation" training (oh, Apes ... you haven't blocked that retreat from your memory yet, have you? Do you know I still have a picture of all of us outside? If I could scan that puppy, you better believe it would be posted here for the shock and awe of all), but that had a lot more to do with (not surprisingly) what is important to us as Seekers and even us as Christians within a wider Christian context, than it did anything actually relevant to the people responsible for it's nascency and "nurturing".

The point is, this topic, and many others that also are relevant to the cultural context of very early Christianity, comes up way more often than any other. Classical Greece is the second, and current (particularly indigenous) almost never, but although I don't want to make it the center of my own study, it's a field I was raised to delve into and question and research and for all the texts I have on the Historical Jesus, this class was and is incredibly useful. I suspect that this may be the one class (followed VERY closely by Ancient Greek and Roman Sexuality, and then by the Iliad) that I take with me from college and never lose. Cool.

In more depressing news, I scored a 350 (!!!!!!!!!!!) on my Diagnostic test for the quantitative section of the GREs (that's 350 out of 800, just like the SATs). Yes, I am now beginning the studying, but the fact that I have forgotten how to get the area of a circle does not bode well. (My thought at the time was, "I think it has something to do with pi.") Hopefully it will all come rushing back to me. Everyone cross your fingers please.

Hiya everybody. It's weird, I definitely wasn't planning on updating my journal, but after reading all Greenity's gushing and Katharine's book talk and April's kvetching at me for not writing, I decided I'd drop a line in anyway. I don't know why I feel so anti-writing right now. Actually, yes I do. It's because I'm being efficient. I'm packing like a madwoman, I'm cleaning like there's no tomorrow, and I'm totally redecorating and reorganizing my rooms. For example, I took all of my books (that's 3 stand alone bookcases) at Mom's and decided it was time to put them into some semblance of order. Now they stand proudly in alphabetical order by author, except for the Classics (as in old books, not as in pure myth) section, which is also in alphabetical order, but separate from the others. I've struggled to narrow down what books I'm bringing to college. I've ended up with lots of theology, tons of Classics and mythological material (although I'm still leaving more than I'd like), and like 5-10 books for fun. Arghhh! I'm never gonna make it. Plus, my grandparents have made it more difficult for me. They sent me a little panda with a note, "This panda wants to come to college with you." And I decided I needed to bring Doby, the Doberman Pincher beanie baby, to protect my stuff. I've named the panda "Lei la" after the only phrase I know in Chinese: "wah LEI la" ("i'm tired"). Sorry April, I know I said I'd keep it down to five . . . but the panda and the doberman are really little!

In terms of posters and wall-hangings, I'm bringing the four contruction workers eating lunch on a beam over NY, the Bjork poster I bought (she's BEAUTIFUL!), and . . . oh shoot! I thought I had another poster . . . hmmm . . . well, damn. I'm also bringing the beautiful sarong cloth from Bali that Jen gave me and the Tara thangka wall-hanging that I got at dZi. Clearly we will have to be buying a little more. But I'm also bringing some pics for the room. I'm bringing a NC Wyeth of a woman in thought, and a little clown drawing that Dad made, and a picture of Dad and me, and a picture of Mom and me (in clown outfits), and the Seekers kids together from confirmation.

I'm bringing two duffle bags full of clothes (WHY AM I TAKING SO MANY GODDAMN CLOTHES?), but I'm also bringing other clothes separately (like dresses and blouses and skirts). Since Halloween will come before I can come home for seconds, I have decided on my Halloween costume and am bringing that. I will also have to buy a black hair rinse to finish off the costume. And some bright red lipstick. And black eyeliner. And baby powder. I'm going as a really sexy Arachne. Oooh! I forgot rope! I'll have to pack that, since I don't know if I can come up with it at Oberlin. Aww shucks. I don't wanna. I guess I'll just have to dig some up. I'm also bring a craz hat or two and some neato scarves and my tam for when I get dreads.

Clearly I have a one-track mind, I apologize to all those who thought they would be reading something interesting when they started to read this. My mind is totally unfocused on goodbyes. Well, almost. I wanted to go see a movie with Rusty last night, but my Mom told me I couldn't. Her reasons sucked, so I was gonna go anyway and deal with the punishment, but I decided against it since she wouldn't have been able to go to sleep until I got home and that would have been between 3:30 and 4:00. I said goodbye to Katharine for the last time (again) this week. It was odd. That's the only word I can think of to describe it. I gave her a lovely hug goodbye. It felt like it was supposed to be serious and sorrowful . . . but I just wasn't feeling it. So after the hug we . . . uh . . . what does one call that? did a "handshake" ? and grinned and wished each other happy crazy fun at college. That seemed more like it. I'm completely unbothered by the idea of not being around these people for a while. I know I'll see them again when Christmas rolls around, I know that we'll keep in touch, so what's to be sad about?

I'm still gonna miss Angel. If I finish up with my room and packing tonight, then maybe I can give her a bath tomorrow! Which means . . . time to finish up here. Back to work!

Love.

First of all, quotey is DEFINITELY not a word. I just thought I'd tell you, my intellectual friends, before I continued. I haven't been writing in here lately, but that's because the other day I went on a this big "peace and enlightenment" kick, and didn't really want to go beyond my room and my house. I was so content just cleaning up my room, burning incense and meditating. It was beautiful. But I guess I'm relatively over that now. Sigh.
I've been writing in my new blood journal A LOT! It's filled with all sorts of poetry and random quotes. I even named her. She is Aislinn, it's Gaelic, it means "dreamer" and it is pronounced completely differently from the way it's written. I wrote pages and pages. And then I realized, oh no! I'm neglecting my online journal, the poor thing. So here I am, back online. Clearly the first thing I should do is share this very very cool poem by Ronald Koertge. I think that all should appreciate this, and bow before the mastery. Or something.

What She Wanted

was my bones. As I gave them
to her one at a time she put
them in a bag from Saks.

As long as I didn't hesitate
she collected scapula and
vertebrae with a smile.

If I grew hesitant she pouted.
Then I would come across with
rib cage or pelvis.

Eventually I lay in a puddle
at her feet, only the boneless
penis waving like an anemone.

"Look at yourself," she said.
"You're disgusting."


Now tell me, is that not one of the coolest poems ever? Maybe not. But I think it's funny, and oh-so-true. I would like to share something else, now. I read it in the Bhagavad-Gita. I think it's encouraging.
"The soul can never be cut to pieces by any weapon, nor burned by any fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind." (2.23)
I'm not sure why I find that encouraging, but I do.
I did college crap today with Mom. That's always barrels of fun. I want to get dreds, now, not later. We picked out sheets that will match my comforter, and I even got a new pillow (woo-hoo!). I also re-read stuff about the basketball team, and was very intimidated, and remembered oh-so very clearly that I am not that good, and I will have to try out, and that I come from a crappy little Quaker team that wasn't even one of the best in it's league. Sigh. I love basketball. I wouldn't be so worried if I didn't care so much. I also went over classes for next year. Also intimidating. There gonna be so much to do trying to double major in Classics and Psychology. That's okay. I'll just sleep a lot. Except I probably won't. I'll probably so busy I won't have time to sleep, and I'll start taking caffeine pills, even though they trash my body. Then I won't be able to play basketball. They'll kick me off the team - or I just won't make it. I'll be so crushed that I'll plummet into depression, whereupon the Psych professor will tell me that I have no business being a therapist. I'll drop the idea of being a Psych major, and with it all my plans for the future. I'll cling to my mythology, my beautiful useless mythology, like a little kid to its blanket. I'll sit in my room and isolate myself until April tells me, "if you don't take a shower and get something to eat, I'm moving in with my girlfriend." I'll get up and take a shower, but because I haven't left my room in so long and therefore haven't eaten, the hot water will make me pass out (as I have so many other times). As I pass out I'll hit my head on the tile floor and die.
I can't wait for college.
I'm also going to see "Kiss Me Kate" in a week or two with Trishie, so I can't get out of not knowing the music, anymore, when we play, April. Tomorrow Nara is coming over and we're watching "Beauty and the Beast" - I'm sad. He's going to be leaving real soon to go off to Michigan (Minnesota?), cuz his mom is moving there. So this MIGHT be our last time together. Hopefully I'll have that movie marathon with mi testarossa on Tuesday - oh, the anticipation! I think Rusty was supposed to come over here tonight, and we were going to watch "Strictly Ballroom" - but, no. Never mind. My VCR doesn't work, so we won't be watching anything. CRAP! That means Nara and I can't watch Beauty and the Beast, either. Hmmmm. We must think of a way to fix this.
I want to get dreds. Now. I don't want to wait until I get to college. I don't want to listen to Dad. He thinks I'm trying to make a statement. Maybe he even thinks I'm trying to rebel. He has no idea what he's talking about. I'm going through my own fears about dreds, anyway. The whole idea that I'll have to shave my head when I don't want them anymore is terrifying. There's some quote about women being tied up in their hair. Ann Murphy always said it. That's how I feel. Tied up in my hair. So maybe I am making a statement. But it isn't one of, "Damn the Man," or "I hate my parents, society, and cleanliness." It's definitely more like, "God, I love the way that looks, and I love the type of people who have their hair dredded." Which is basically why one gets any haircut. Well, no. Not true. I've never gotten another haircut because I thought other people who had it were cool and interesting. I just wanted to look like a girl. Man. I hope I still look like a girl.
For the benefit of others reading this, I just want you to know that my fears are NOT paranoia. There was a reason I was a relatively convincing Wang. My face isn't hugely feminine, and people have been mistaking me for a boy for most of my life. Just for memory's sake, I will repeat the story of Disney Land. I was skipping - SKIPPING! - down the street in Fantasyland, wearing a pink dress and blue jellies and a blue headband. As I was skipping by, an old woman turned to her husband and said, "Look at that poor little boy wearing a dress." I was heartbroken. But then, I didn't have dreds. Mmmm. Dreds. I can't wait.

Evening

The sun descending in the west,
The evening star does shine;
The birds are silent in their nest,
And I must seek for mine.

The moon like a flower
In heaven's high bower
With silent delight
Sits and smiles on the night . . .

~William Blake~

Okay, goodnight, kids.