9:35 p.m. - 04/19/02
fair books & feminists...
So many thoughts, so little energy...
I had a pretty marvelous day today, despite some minor (ok, maybe not *minor*) freakouts with my parents, between my parents, with me in reference to my parents, et cetera. I worked on my research paper (still the research part) for a little while this morning and realized that even though this Richard Gordan book is interesting, and a good resource, the interpretating of the research is not going to be significantly helpful in writing my paper, and you know, I have over 100 notecards waiting to be documented, so I could probably just start writing. I'm telling myself that the analysis I've come up with is just so thoroughly groundbreaking that I can't find any documentation of it to reference...so maybe this will be my big break, or something. Red will certainly comply to that hypothesis. Richard Gordan is a professor at Bard, and the workshop Sarah and I are submitting the new play to is at Bard, so I have this fantasy that I'll get to meet him and talk shop and be like, "You've made some really interesting points, but you've completely overlooked an entire population and minimized the significance of a large portion of your research in order to support a simplified theory. Why don't you let me talk you into re-evaluating?" And he can find flaws in my hypotheses and I can go home all hurt and confused of my own worth, and then a week later realize, "Holy shit, I held up a conversation with a highly respected person in this field, and he was intrigued by my ideas enough to challenge them."
Of course it's 'only' a fantasy. I think that's my next essay in the making. I've never really been an essayist, but I'd really like to get in some pre-college education. I know what I want to do, but I want to have some background in it before I go to college, especially if I end up getting to go to Hampshire, like I want so desperately. It'll make my life a lot easier if I've already defined my interests well enough to establish a really fulfilling curriculum for myself. Oh, learning...
"Sometimes you just have to learn to learn. To learn *how* to learn." <--my teacher said this today, and I was like, see- that's why you are such a miracle.
She really is like the best person imaginable for the job. She was so subtly kind about her concern at my message - she said my voice sounded scary, like I was upset or struggling- and she asked me about what had triggered it, if I knew, if I wanted to share. I told her about how things are parallel now to when I became sick, and again when I became *very* sick, and I just got overwhelmed. She told me if that happens, if I get anxious or stressed, to really not worry about school. She said, very Brea-like, very generally red-like, "This is just school. It'll always be there...And I think [your math teacher] is grading you on what you accomplish"...(We know my English teacher is.) I just stared at her and told her I was going to send her back to my old town to talk with some teachers. But she said adults were scary and she didn't speak with them- so we came up with a plan to train the outspoken, somewhat obnoxious kids to save subversive, revolutionary things and change the course without risking our introversion. We also planned to run our own country and I told her about my plan to attack Harriet with water balloons and the little foam dinasours that expand when wet, and we decided that would be our usual mode for seizing countries.
It was nice. It was just *so* nice to be able to talk with someone, and laugh with someone, as if I were nothing more than human. Something more than patient, client, disorder. Plus, she pushes me. That's part of what made her comment about school so amazing. She comes, she challenges me (forces me) to take tests, she pushes me past my deprecation into my intelligence, so that I feel like she knows that I'm 'smart' and then she goes and says this idea that translates to "Don't feel like you have to prove it" which is something I've been waiting to hear since I starte pre-school, if not earlier...
But anyway, learning is good. And I'm looking forward to my next essay, which is helping to balance the dread of actually *writing* the current one - which has grown so massive inside me that I can't imagine articulating it all. It should be ok as long as I maintain the necessary endurance to revise it with further research. I have no problem turning in an early, somewhat premature, draft for my silly junior english class- but I don't want that to prevent me from really delving into the research and theories a bit more. I want to answer all of my own questions, so that the ones I'm asked are new. And I want to be brilliant and infallible and adored but...I'll probably have moved onto another project by then that I can daydream will achieve that, so I'll be ok if this one trasnpires to reality.
That's what it's going to be about, by the way. Reality. I have a strong belief that the importance placed on reality, or rather the *lack* of importance placed on other realms (fiction, daydream, memory, loss of memory) is directly related to many, perhaps all, emotional disorders. People lose the right to tell their stories in a way that honors exaggeration, emotional perception, and imagination when they lose the right to play figure games, and I think many disorders, specifically those that 'exaggerate' imaginary problems (not to mention the lesser but more common end of the spectrum) might be a response to that inhibition. I've seen a lot of books about fiction as a healing tool and it's gotten me thinking about this. I'd at least like to look into it further.
Actually, I've seen a lot of books in general today. We checked out the local used book store, which is more depressing (who knew that was possible) than the local county library. It's the same combination of romance novels and Westerns housed by my old library...without the architectural incentive. And there's a loud, somewhat ravaged woman on the phone talking like a city-dweller on a cell phone, which is just no conducive to the book-browsing atmosphere.
Stop #2 was a much more enjoyable one, though I wanted to hide when I first saw it. It was the corner of a parking garage area filled with tables for the local book fair, and I was in absolute euphoria. When we first arrived my dad asked me if this was heaven, and I said, "No" meaning, "No, heaven is better-organized and less populated"...but after a few moments of browsing through a grand (if picked-over) selection of books commonly 1-2 dollars, I was won over. I got six or seven books for under fifteen dollars; Borders can chew on that for awhile...
And...perhaps the most extraordinary 'find' of the night - I stumbled across my old-school Euro teacher in the women's studies section. I was glad I'd taken my new meds because normally such an unexpected visit (despite nagging intution) would have made an already hard trip harder. But she was a pretty great women - hard to broach difficult subjects with, but genuinely caring, and humorous, and doing her best. She's one of those people that you really wish could cross that barrier into the "next generation" but you understand are wary of the freedoms they see - or even covet. I mean, she is a history teacher after all. For instance, I don't know if she was actually *looking* at the women's studies books, and that's the kind of uncertainty I'd expect from her. There's a connection and a boundary simultaneously, and the latter goes beyond simple teacher-student code. I feel an intense desire to offer her something, because she really is amazing, but at the same time I feel restrained in doing so. I think I'll write her an e-mail; she'd be a good person to stay in touch with, methinks...
You know what I really like...intellectuals who aren't instantly peg-able as intellectuals. People who don't feel *completely* comfortable reading philosophy in a coffeehouse - but you come to realize are extremely interested in being interested. I like people for whom intrigue is intriguing.
I learned some things about my 'agoraphobia' today - but that will have to wait. I'm too sleepy to consider it in words.
Goodnight, you princes of Maine, you kings of diaryland...
chord
�
�
