The Desert

Apologies for the long absence. I'm still adjusting to having moved, and Applications are taking up all my time. Today, finally, I've got most of them out. YAY. Now I wait with bated breath.

Not much to report. Life is slow here. I'm still operating mostly on US time, but that's OK with me. I like the silent house at night. One gets used to silence and night when one lives alone, even learns to like it. The TV situation is better than it used to be, though still not what it is in Boston. And, I miss the Pats. Tomorrow should be an interesting game. I would like to see how Foxboro welcomes Adam Vinateri back. I'm hopeful after last week's game, but then not having watched a single game this season means I really don't know what I'm talking about.

I have found a new hobby: reading Blogs. Yes, reading blogs. Not all of them are self-indulgent journals like mine, and make for rather good reading! Of course, this means I stare at things all day long, the TV, the computer screen, my parents...reminds me of a Roald Dahl poem I once read about kids watching TV. Now I can't remember it at all.

I'm allergic to dust, which makes living in the desert a real trip. And it seems the allergens have finally caught up to me. This last week has been one continuous sinus headache. The weather is still muggy out, though we're starting to get a cooler breeze at night that makes it seem balmy rather than muggy. Its an important distinction.

I miss fall/winter. I know that sounds crazy to those of you facing the New England winter, but I do.

OK...that's it for now. Now that apps are mostly over I'm going to start making this blog more substantive, or at least try to anyway.

Happy Weekend!

Purgatory

The speed with which one can travel across oceans and continents these days can leave one feel discordant and dissonant. This disorientation is only heightened when it is an involuntary move away from "home" and away from one's real life.

Yes, I have landed in the dry and dusty Arabian desert. My previous life now seems a blur that ebbs away the more I settle into life here. With every move I wash away the finely etched lines of what had seemed to me my real life, and every effort to live here seems like a negation of the latter.

Unpacked I have not. That will require an effort of will I do not yet posess. I can see still the streets of Boston, with every hour I can imagine what might be happening there. Unpacking would mean acquiesence to a life here. In the more irrational moments, unpacking seems like a wilful rejection of that previous life.

Even my body is still reeling. A 24 hour journey with only three hours of sleep, and a seven hour time difference has left me with some serious jet lag. The body too hangs in the balance between the Atlantic Ocean and the Persian Gulf.

It seems to me that it should be summertime here, since I have only been here during the summer for the last eight years. But, its October. The days flow like molasses on a winter morning. Slowly.

It seems then, that I am suspended in a secular, worldly purgatory. My body resides here, while my heart and soul long for there.

Post LSAT, pre-departure haze

Yes, the LSAT has been taken. What a slog-fest. I have newfound freedom: unemployed and no frightening exam to take. Of course, that doesn't mean I haven't been running around like a headless chicken imploring various embassies to grant me transit visas just so I can fly through their national airports. Max Weber seems more on the mark each day.

At least I am getting to enjoy some early fall. Spent the weekend in Western Mass. Leaves are indeed turning, especially along the Pike. Northampton was bliss, as always. Funny I like it so much now, seeing what I thought of it my first year there. Beginning to think I could live in Western Mass. Just close enough to Boston to not be completely isolated, and far away enough to not be so "city". Had to catch myself a few times from being alarmed when people smiled when they caught my eye on the street. Didn't know I had become such an urban child. I am done with the city, however. This is why Ann Arbor seems like such an interesting prospect right now. Hmm. Time will tell, I guess, where I end up. The LSAT is over, but applications are just beginning. The ego is once again, on the line, though this time, I am not afraid to take my shots. What's the worst that could happen?

What else?? TV is back :) Grey's Anatomy for a while, and LOST as soon as certain other people are all caught up on the last two seasons. Gonna go see Jon tomorrow. Yes, that Jon. We're having coffee :) My senior banquet prophecy has finally come true ;)
And, I have a new George album. Now all I need is a good book...and the ability to stay in a country of my choice as long as I like!

And, for those wondering, I think "real life" might have finally cured me of my Pats addiction. A little irked with them right now anyway. I might actually sit this season out. This task is of course easier because they do not beam Pats games over to where I'm going. Imagine that?

Not enjoying this growing up.

This nomadic existence...

Sigh. Here I am again, getting ready to move across the oceans. 25 years and how many times have I done this? I used to think (back when I started college) that I would just love to find a place to call home. Settle down, put down some roots, buy a house - in short, never move again. Now I am less sure. Back then I was searching for a place to call home, a place to truly belong. Now I think differently. Belonging, after all, is for the weak (sounds Nietzschean, doesn't it?) I kid. This nomadic existence, I have since realized, is going to prevent me from belonging. And that's OK. The struggle then, is to keep from falling into a belonging, to keep from morphing into a label that the world would find convenient to put me under. After all, it doesn't matter to me that I can't truly say "where" I'm from. I don't know any different. It is this bureaucratic system of nation-states, identity politics, ethnicities and religions that insists that we identify with a piece of paper that was handed to us due to an accident of birth. And for this accident of birth, I am being uprooted from the place I had come to feel at home, and being sent somewhere that technically should be my home. Nevermind the friends and family, the lives and loves I leave behind. Nevermind that I have lived there for only 4 of my living years, and here for 12. In this world of ever increasing globalization two things are clear to me: one, that we can exist under this system of nation states and paper-based citizenship only so long, that is, if we are to truly globalize; and two, that the "global world" remains ever more accessible to those lucky enough to be born in the First world, the Developed world, the Western Hemisphere. The barriers facing the rest, even in making a choice to move for employment, are unfathomable to those who have never had to stare down immigration officials. Globalization, in the true sense, remains a farce.

Catapulted at the whim of bureaucracy, everywhere I leave I take something with me, and everywhere I live, I leave part of me behind. Just yesterday I longed for Texas as I walked down the streets of Boston. And the day before that, as we were all treated to an early, chilly fall, I enjoyed yet another malted vanilla malt milkshake from Herrell's as I walked down Harvard Square, only if I closed my eyes, I could have sworn I was back in Northampton. So we come full-circle :) Some days I walk across the Public Gardens and see them as part of a seperate world, a world in which I am no longer visible. They appear to me as if from a movie screen; I am merely a spectator. Almost a year after I moved here, I am now preparing to say goodbye once again. One hopes it will be a short-lived goodbye, a hiatus, if you will. Only time will tell. Last year I had thought I had finally landed in the place I was going to call my home. This year, I am less sure. Even I cannot evade my nomadic existence too long.

The Chill of an Early Fall?

eek babies,

I've been gone many months. Winter was long, summer thankfully short. Could we be experiencing the chill of an early fall?

Let's see...the high/low lights:

Pats had a late run, then they decided not to show up for the Broncos game. They could have taken the Steelers and the Chargers, together, on Super Bowl day, but it was not to be. Vinateri then went to the Colts - Colts suck. I hate the Colts. Do I even care about the NFL anymore?

Life has been a roller-coaster ride...

Got a job at CPC...new friends, new apartment.

Got completely addicted to Grey's Anatomy and LOST.

Watched the July 4 fireworks on the Charles.

Went to Tanglewood.

Impending unemployment. Am at Plan B...plan C? LSAT, law school admissions - here I come! Notwithstanding a successful job-search by the middle of October, I am out. It seems I am destined to return to the volatile Moyen Orient. It will be a short stay, hopefully.

Law school admissions! EEK.

I am homeless again.

Now y'all are caught up...Its been fun :)

Sights and Sounds of Boston

Can I be a roving reporter? It has often occured to me to record the sights and sounds of my daily commute in this, my blog. Today, I waited for the train in the Coop., absorbing the high-brow, intellectual universe of Harvard U. I had my brand new Maureen Dowd "Are Men Necessary?" in hand and was savoring the last few pages of her wit and wisdom when two men in khakis, plaid scarves and blazers sat down next to me. Preppy. Very Harvard, I thought. I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but they were close and rather loud. What happened next can only be described as aural and cognitive dissonance. As they started to talk, they sounded more "Boston" than the man announcing the Red Line Stops. They then proceeded to discuss how their wives' new jobs had put a damper on their style. No longer could they come home to a clean house and piping hot dinner on the table. The wives still adored them, but they were now demanding that they (the men) should help around the house; that they could also cook, and, imagine, clean the bathroom too! The one claimed he had started making dinner, but upon questioning it was revealed "dinner" had consisted of a washed and dressed salad and heated canned soup. Even this, was a physical and psychological struggle, they grumbled. Don't they wish their wives could just stay home?
Perhaps they were playing pretend: dressing up to "fit in" as they had coffee in Harvard Square, or presenting a picture of the PC, enlightened male, when they were, in fact, still stuck somewhere in the 50s. Wierd.
I don't even know where to begin, so I'm going to leave it at that. The poor dears!

Football :)

The Pats just got hot.