things that I like, and that I may be able to do with my life

- freelance journalism in Latin America
- creative writing MFA at U of O, University of East Anglia or another university
- getting a TEFL certificate
- teaching literature at a high school or university leavel
- teaching English
- teaching Spanish
- leading groups of teenagers around on service project trips a la Los Embajadores
- coordinationg service project experiences
- illigal immigration and border issuess
- learning more about microfinance and fieldwork a la Kiva
- studying more Onetti in Uruguay or Argentina
- School For International Training Social Justice masters in Vermont
- Peace Corps (blech)
- AmeriCorps
- Teach for America
- New Orleans
- Teaching fellowship in Spain
- apply for a Fullbright
- write a novel!

obama-ed

I've guess I've officially become an Obama supporter, in the sense that I've gone so far to donate $10 to his campaign. How did this happen? I'm not really sure. I read a quote from him on a NYTimes blog that I liked: “I think it would be a problem if Senator Clinton’s voters disliked me or my voters disliked Senator Clinton [but] I don’t think that’s the case. I think our voters are passionate about bringing about change. My sister keeps asking me, a fervent Obama supporter herself (she went to a rally in Conneticut; you can see her photos here: (http://goodtimes.webshots.com/album/562385124SwFVbz) Part of me wonders if I'm just as much of a bandwagon jumper in politics as I am in sports (ver since the Lakers acquired Paul Gasoul and suddenly looked championship caliber again, my interest has suddenly resparked). I didn’t expect Obama to get this far, but since he has, he’s definitely looking better than Clinton. I’m suspicious and cynical about politicians in general, but as far as these things go, Clinton is definitely more of a politician than Obama, in the worst possible sense.

In other news, things are stressful. I vacillate thinking I’m totally screwed with my thesis and that I’m never going to finish it, verses being absolutely giddy and convinced that I’m a total genius. I am rarely in between, and quite frankly it’s getting exhausting! I’m working in the Catholic Charities immigration office this semester, which I’ve really enjoyed so far, but I had to flake out on going there this afternoon for the second week in a row just because I’m so far behind on thesis work that I’m absolutely panicked about meeting with my adviser with what I feel is very little to show him. Part of this comes from being mildly depressed for the past week and a half, whether from the always gray weather or having the flu or general ennui, I’m not sure. But anyway, I keep forgetting (and then relearning!) that the best way to conquer malaise or writer’s block is to simply get out and do things! I’m at my best, mentally and emotionally, when I’m buzzing around like a little bee, going with grim determination from one appointment or assignment to the next. When I don’t have clear deadlines or goals, I waver. I get bogged down and overwhelmed, like I’m walked through a swamp and my boots get so much mud attached to them I get stuck in a slurpy mess. Onwards and upwards, then.

yeah, what he says

This basically sums up my feelings. Quantity over quality, myth-making, not sticking to its actual mission. Basically the main reason why the Peace Corps appeals to me now is that there's a possibility I'll get placed in an interesting volunteer position that will be paid. Sigh......

I want to go abroad, but I also want to be useful. I've had the whole "getting more than what I give" experience; I actually want to feel like I can contribute in a meaningful, important way (while also obviously remaining realistic about the whole "making a difference" idealism).

My sister told me something helpful yesterday, about how we're not born leaders, but we become leaders through experience. "We learn when and how to put our leader hats on." We get better at it through time.

I'm also wondering should I cough up the dough for a TEFL certificate? Or do I stick with the cheapie website made by hippie backpackers?

State of Denial (Bob Woodward)

There were many moments in this book that made me put it down in my lap and gaze somewhat mournfully off into space, thinking, “Wow... that would make for a serious dramatic moment in the movie version.” My favorite is the scene at the end of the election chapter, after Bush receives a phone call from Kerry (that useless twat) conceding the election. Bush promptly breaks into “convulsive sobbing” and goes around hugging everyone in the room. “This is a wonderful gift you’ve given your dad,” someone tells him. When he reaches Cheney, Bush tells him “I know you’re not the hugging kind!” and shakes his hand. It’s all there: the unexpected display of emotional weakness, the reference to the creepy father-son undertones (which are especially emphasized in the book’s first few chapters), Cheney’s fundamental creepiness.

Reading this book was a pleasant walk down the memory lane of the past five years. More accurately, it was like receiving one stomach suckerpunch after another: Katrina, Harriet Meirs, that whole crazy CIA identity leak scandal, the non-existent WMDs based on evidence that was blatantly inaccurate, the Abu Gharaib prison photos, Cheney’s blatant fear-mongering for reelection. I could go on and on.

What was most interesting to me in this book was reading about how people’s personalities and fucked-up psychological makeup directly affected the administration’s handlings of the war. Rumsfield is the principle villain of this work (Cheney remains dark and inscrutable). Woodward emphasizes how Rumsfield frenzied need to control everything really fucked Washington in the ass. Basically, everyone in this book just came off as hopelessly incompetent. There are some moments in the book that are real killers. Like when Bush is asked by Republican Senator Chuck Hagel if he believes that he is getting “bubbled” in the White House on Iraq. Or Woodward describing the atmosphere in the Oval Office following the early days of the invasion as a royal court: “some upbeat stories, exagerrated good news, and a good time had by all.” (226) I found particularly sickening how Bush seemed to only think of his strategy in Iraq in regards to what Kerry and the Democrats had said or did that way: lots of Iraq rhetoric and pep talk in terms of how it would affect his reelections, but not once asking a specific question of what was going on there and what should be done.

What Thomas Pychon would have called the “whole sick crew”—Bush, Cheney, Rumsfiled, Rice, and to a lesser extent Wolfowitz—come off as completely and utterly clueless. Simply put, they had no idea of the reality of the situation. They existed in their own little world. It’s one thing to have that attitude if you’re running an NGO, or a university, but as the leading administrators of the most powerful and influential nation-slash-imperial power, it’s inexcusable. I know it’s easy in retrospect for people to stand outside an incredibly complex situation and criticize—ooooh, I woulda done this, I woulda done that—but is it really too much for me to want people in those kinds of positions, power and influence to achieve a certain level of competence? Even if it was just enough to realize the need for translators for soldiers before 18 months had passed.

I’m grateful for journalism of this sort, that is both readable and accessible, and yet highly detailed. I feel like the book could have been edited down a little bit; the last hundred pages in particular felt to me like Woodward was getting mucked up in the slog and losing his bite (how many times can he use the “Rumsfield was furious” example of his control freak tendencies?). I wish Bush’s and Cheney’s motives had been explained a little more: why the heck was Cheney so obsessed with connecting Hussein with Al-Qeada? Did Bush really believe all that democracy-in-Iraq rhetoric trash? This book was useful for me in light of the upcoming presidential elections. It makes selecting a viable candidate I truly want to support more difficult. Ideally, I would want somebody hardass and smart enough to deal with the kind of bureacratic mess that is the politics and military that this book describes. But what a person psychologically brings to a table as well (what they “represent” as a leader) is just as, if not more, important. On a scale of 90 second segments officially produced to an angry Ani Difranco song, I rank this a stars and stripes that is only slightly bent.

Man, do I ever have a good horoscope for the new year, courtesey of freewillastrology:
Your main assignment in 2008 is to become highly skilled at feeling good. Does that sound like something you might want to do? (editor’s note: YES) If so, here's the beginning of a regimen you could follow: (1) Be constantly taking notes about what experiences give you delight and what situations make you feel at home in the world. (2) Always be scheming to provide yourself with those experiences and situations. (3) Take a vow that nothing will obstruct you from seeking out and creating pleasure, peace, love, wonder, and an intimate connection with life.
Yay! Good to know. Meanwhile, here is a travel blog styled entry for the past week or so.

Friday December 28th- Corey arrives! I wait nervously at the airport arrival gate, surrounded by mobs of families. I envision terrible scenearios on my head: Corey doesn’t get off the airplane, there was no record of him having ever been on the flight, he disappears completely into oblivion. Fortunately, he steps out of security in one piece. We embrace with great enthusiasm.
- We drive home. Corey observes on how the driving here resembles Grand Theft Auto, and comments on how you could mount a camera on the car and put it on youtube for people’s entertainment. At home he is promptly introduced, one, two, three, to the siblings, British cousin and cats. Twin sister seems to be in a bit of a daze when they are introduced.
- We go out on the town, a barbarian horde. The car is so cramped I have to sit on Corey’s lap. We pick up two of Thomas’ hoodlum friends, who ride in the trunk and make our driver extremely nervous. Corey seems overwhelmed by the general dark griminess and gritiness of the Cali streets.
- After dropping everyone off, we retire to the sanctuary of my friend Andrea’s apartment. There is a reunion with several of my Colombian girlfriends whom I haven’t seen since high scool; much high-pitched squealing and screaming is involved. Also butt-slapping with Alex shouting, “Why do you never call me back, you slut?” A fair enough question. The evening is fairly mellow, with everyone drinking Club Colombias and talking. Thankfully another gringo boyfriend is present, so the conversation is mostly dominated by English. I think up jokes involving gringo boyfriend holding pens. Corey does very well (a theme for the entire week!) considering he is in a roomfull of people he doesn’t know. He almost gets into a semi-heated argument with gringo boyfriend #2 involving welfare for single mothers in the state of Louisiana. I gidily interrupt several times in an attempt to change the subject; fortunately in due time the conversation topic switches over to the fall from grace of Britney Spears’ little sister.
- The three of us (sister, Corey and I) take a cab to meet my little brother. We are in a neighborhood of Cali I do not know very well (I hardly know any of Portland well, let alone Cali, my sense of direction is utterly hopeless). I begin to feel, as they say in the Star Wars movies, “I’ve got a baaad feeling about this.” Little bro is at a party with throbbing lights and various sunglasses-wearing, gum-chewing characters. It’s a testament to this party’s sketchiness that my cousin later told me that around 5am when he and his friend Juan showed up, Juan took one look at it and was like, “Dude, we are not going into this party.” Anything that exceeds my cousin’s baromenter of sketchiness is thus VERY SKETCHY INDEED. Corey wants to leave and I don’t blame him; this is Advanced Introduction to Colombia as opposed to 101. I give my sister the cellphone and leave her and my little brother there. If there’s one thing about families, you can’t tell them what not to do. Corey and I thus retire for the evening.

Saturday, December 29th- A quiet day. Corey and I go on two hikes. One goes past my regular jogging route over the river (is it the rio Cauca? I honestly don’t even know… if there’s one thing that never fails to embarrass me, it’s how little I know about the country in which I live for basically 18 years).

We take a dirt road through the mountains to a valley that opens up over a soccer field.

We then scramble down the side of a hill and sit with our feet in a river, watching a family on the other side picnicking. I scratch my many mosquito bites.

In the afternoon we go to Parque de las Garzas, another nearby walk to my house. I am glad that I get to show Corey my neighborhood and perhaps make up for the disorientating near-horror that was last night.

We found a lot of ferns he got really excited about, which made me feel pleased and proud, as though I ‘d planted them there myself.


- That night, we go out on the town. We take a taxi to Martyn’s, the expat bar in the north. I use an address I found on an online blog that was possibly wrong because I swear I didn’t recognize the place that the cab took us. They wouldn’t let us in anyway since Corey was wearing shorts. We decide to walk to La Sexta (main disco-clubbing strip) and have a beer.

We also drink a bottle of aguadiente and have some grilled chicken with chimichurri. Corey is much more cheerful and relaxed than the night before; I think how much easier it is to get around and do the fun things that you want to do with only two people, as opposed to a group of them (even if it’s “only” three!). We enjoy watching the fruit tree bats fly around and eat the mosquitos around the light. Properly and pleasantly drunk, we then go to a salsa disco called Las Cascadas and have a brilliant time dancing. Corey claims people are staring at him, most likely because of his beard (I can’t believe I never noticed how no one Colombian has a beard here; I guess it makes you look a little too jungle treking, Marxist guerilla-esque).

Sunday, December 30th

We go on a family hike to Nirvana, not the state of enlightenment unfortunately, but a nature reserve about an hour and a half away. Corey takes many interesting pictures and stops to study the plants intensely several times.




We see a surprising amount of wildlife, including:

a giant spider,

an unidentified bird,

and a bee (wasp? hornet?) hive.

(not a wild animal)
The views of the valley were muy, muy bien.

For lunch we eat the giant trout from the trout farm.


It is of course delicious, and I of course end up eating practically all of my food and scraping the leftovers of Corey’s plate onto my fork or scooping them up with my fingers. Yum, yum. Corey enjoys drinking the poker. We make my sister gag by being smoochy-woochy. He pats her on the arm and tells her, “don’t worry, one day you’ll get to kiss a boy too!” I feel glad that he doesn’t let her push him around.
- The next day we left for Gorgona. In Real Time my family is leaving for Cartagena tomorrow, so this blog may just have to wait to get up to date on both that little adventure and this next one.

The Road to Wigan Pier (George Orwell)

I don't know how any sensible person my age could possibly not relate to a sentence like this one from George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier: "It hardly needs pointing out that at this moment we are in a very serious mess, so serious that even the dullest-witted people find it difficult to remain unaware of it... Presently there may be coming God knows what horrors--horrors of which, in this sheltered island, we have not even a traditional knowledge." How could this not make any one in this day and age drop their jaws, thump their chests, run their hands through their hair in nervous, twitchy recognition? Maybe I'm just feeling apocalyptic from watching the trailer of Will Smith roaming through an overgrown, decrepit Manahattan hunting deer. Maybe I've been feeling a little too much like the guy from "Into the Wild" in general, lately. I even read some parts of this book aloud, perhaps picturing myself--doing what? Giving impassioned semi-Socialist speeches to huddled groups of Catholic high schoolers sitting on the floor of the Salesian center, picking the dried concrete off their shoes... I guess.

What I found most interesting about this book is Orwell's personal franknes, not not so much towards what he is revealing about his subjects, but what that act of revelation is revealing about himself, and his own class status, and all that messy stuff that comes with it that we don't really want to talk about with our college mates. Class is one of those messy things that gets in the way like race (not so much for religion and politics, I feel), but Orwell deals with it in a way I almost want to call self-confessional. In my non-fiction creative writing class, we discussed how one of the main things you could do to make your piece more interesting would be to think of the dirty, shameful things you would be embarassed of sharing, and then go ahead and admit them in the most exposed way possible: writing it down with the intention and knowledge that other people will read it! Orwell admits a lot of things that the middle-class person today would have trouble with even mumbling at their feet. For instance, his main argument as to what lies behind the class distinctions of the West goes as such: the lower classes smell. This is obviously a (deliberate) oversimplification on Orwell's part, but he gets his point across. This is something we don't want to admit aloud. In Ecuador, I turned my head away from the little kids huggging me because of the alternatively rank dank burnt stale sweet salty scent of their scalps. The Catholic teenagers in Tijuana were advised in low voices by their adult leaders not to pat the little kids on the head, for fear of lice. Yes, poor people are dirty, and we are all a little bit afraid of that. It does good to admit that, to say it (write it) out loud. Such a sentiment can lead to dangerous territory, though... Don't drink the water in Mexico, because the water will make you sick (because the people are dirty. Because brown people are dirty).

Orwell spares no words when describing himself either: he calls his fifteen-year-old self "an odious little snob" and never fails to remind his reader of the middle-class position from which he is writing from. I felt good reading these blunt admissions, as I'm sure it must have felt good for Orwell to write them. Overall, I highly admire Orwell's no-nonsense approach to his subject and his own writing style. I even find myself now wanting to write this review in an Orwellian style: dry, self-reflexive, easy to understand and follow, simply stated--all writing qualities of Orwell's that I greatly appreciated. I love his vocabulary and the humor that comes out of a well-chosen word. There are true gems in his book, such as his observation of newspaper canvassers: "Their job seemed to me so hopeless, so appalling that I wondered how anyone could put up with such a thing when prison was an alternative."

The book stumbles a little bit in the second section when he goes into a long discussion of futuristic, mechanicized societies and the different results that this would have on the individual. It was interesting, but a bit long, and I wanted him to get back to Socialism, already. That being said, Orwell claims he's playing the Devil's Advocate for socialism in the first few chapters in order to properly defend it later, but he never quite gets around to doing that (maybe he does in another book? Maybe deep down inside he doesn't believe his own defenses? Here's where some biographical knowledge of the author would have come in handy for me). He suffers from what my Hum 411 class dubbed the hot-potato ending: he drops out without actually proposing anything concrete we (or the early 20th century British socialists, I should say) can actually DO. To be fair, he does list the necessity for the formation of a revolutionary Socialist party with simpler ideas that more people can relate to. It's fair to concur that the actual "hows" and "whys" of doing so are a book in themselves.

On a scale of Marx to Weber, I give this a Lenin.

a wee bit of a frenzy

Well… I didn’t have time to read any books for pleasure this month. What did I do instead? I “wrote” a “first chapter” for my “thesis” (yes, the apostrophe marks are necessary). I had my oral boards. Today, I have been trying to think about what I want to do post-May 2008. Basically, all the plans I had set up for myself no longer exist. I am not the kind of person who finds this feeling giddy or exhilarating. Rather, it makes me bite my nails down to a state of raw, ravaged crescents.

It can be pretty stressful trying to plan for the future.

Honestly, I know there's no point to writing about or worrying about these kinds of things, since they seem to change so sporadically, and obviously life is impossible to plan for in general, but still--that doesn't seem to stop me. Most of the best decisions of my life have been made impulsively, at the last minute, and sporadically. Nevertheless, that doesn’t prevent me from trying to anxiously plan for—not everything, I suppose, but the next year of life.

I always thought that I was going to apply for Peace Corps after graduating. Not only have I always wanted to do it, having grown up with hearing my parents’ stories about it (the story of how my mum and dad met via a rabid dog in Nepal is one of the many key tales in family lore), but it would also conveniently take care of the iffy question of what exactly I was going to do with the next two years of my life. It would be Done For! Decided! Taken Care Of! However, something came up that I didn’t expect, and which has prevented me from submitting my application: I met someone, and I don’t particularly want to spend two years away from him at this point in our lives. He is going to Ecuador next fall to some research work with fungi, and unless something completely unforeseen and unpredicted comes up, it looks like I am going to go with him.

Which raises the big question for me: what exactly am I going to do with myself, once I’m there? Teach English? Work as a Kiva.org fellow? (If they hire me despite no financial or business experience, and complete computer ignorance, and no money to fund myself) Should I apply to grants in order to fund my trip and do things to make my resume look better--take a computer class, take an econ class at Reed, read the recommended books on microfinance and ending poverty, get an internship—why is my resume blank of internships? Why, oh why? What, oh what did I do with my time as an undergrad, besides fretting about my extremely poisonous relationship with my extremely evil ex-boyfriend? These are the questions I try not to ask myself, if I don’t want to drive myself into an absolute existential frenzy. Chances are, my resume is more than okay, even if I never volunteered with Amnesty International or interned at Mercy Corps.

There was a time when I thought I was going to go to graduate school. That changed pretty much in one day, after the orals for my thesis. Hearing my thesis advisor and my first reader engage in a highly theoretical discussion about the difference between the term “knowledge” vs. “understanding,” I had what is called an epiphany: This is not for me. Existing in a world of such abstract language is not for me. I cannot sit in an office and talk that talk for the rest of my life. I will not enjoy it, it will make me go crazy, and therefore I do not enjoy researching. I enjoy writing, and talking about books. But researching and publishing papers (or even writing papers), I have never really enjoyed.

All of this seems to be pointing to the deeper, more fundamental question. The biggest can of beans, if you will—what exactly is it that I am good at? Well—I’ve done some volunteering abroad. I sure did enjoy my job last summer, working in Tijuana with high schoolers. I enjoy being in an international environment. I enjoyed facilitating an international service-learning social justice-oriented project. I enjoy working with people.

I guess I will meet with the Career Services office about applying for some grants, and about job opportunities period in Ecuador. Search the World Learning site a little more. Maybe get in touch with Reed alumni who lived in Ecuador. Take deep breaths. Things will be okay. I still got time.