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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "lapelosa" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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07:47 am
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With apologies to an unknown girl
Yesterday I visited the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and I really, really liked the museum. It has some seriously famous names in
there, and the museum is free, and parking is free. It's incredible. I was
in the medieval/renaissance section looking at this work by El Greco:
http://www.artsmia.org/viewer/detail.php?id=278&i=1&v=12&dept=6&op=1449
And I started talking to this girl with a notebook, who was an art student
and had an assignment from her teacher to describe the painting and then
state a thesis about it. So we both started examining the use of light in
the picture, and then I started going off on the narrative content of the
picture, of how it wasn't just money changers in the temple, but a market
in the temple, and I said that it represents the incompatibility of
earthly values with spiritual values. And the girl is scribbling away and
saying this is good, I want to talk about paradox so this is a good
thesis. And then I started noting particular details of the painting --
particularly the coop of chickens and broken eggs next to the woman, and
there's nothing more earthly than buying a chicken for your dinner, and
the woman with her bosom bared carrying a basket, obviously for selling or
buying, and I made the observation that they were the only two women in
the painting and the house economy -- going out to the market and doing
the shopping -- was traditionally the domain of women, and then explained
the gender ideology of how women were more bodily, less spiritual than
men. At which point the girl excused herself and said that she needed to
get a drink of water, and later on when I was in the impressionism room
looking at a Van Gogh, I passed her talking to a friend about me.
Analyzing that painting was FUN. But then I felt embarrassed.
So when I was looking at the Van Gogh, I was thinking about how Van Gogh's
world is an animistic one, a world in which everything is ALIVE, and that
is how I perceive the world and why I love Van Gogh so much. But I managed
to refrain from telling anyone about it.
http://www.artsmia.org/viewer/detail.php?id=1218&i=5&v=12&dept=6&op=1449
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10:29 am
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I've read my Paolo Freire, my Antonio Gramsci, my Jonathan Kozol
In an email with Chica just now, I wrote what is essentially my mission statement of why I now want to go into teaching. God help us all.
A couple of problems with your objection: 1) even if I become a middle
school teacher, I am very unlikely to suddenly turn dull, 2) I'm not
planning on becoming a middle school teacher.
High school! Sixteen- to eighteen-year-olds! Just a little younger than
college freshman! And yeah, I resisted this idea for a long time because
of my poor experience in the public school system, but I really think that
I could, essentially, create my own reality there. Or something. I mean,
I'm highly educated, I'm brilliant (if I may say that), I'm enthusiastic
and passionate, and I'm highly empathetic. With those qualities, I think
that I could probably be a superstar teacher.
In grad school, I was very depressed, which influenced my experience
there, obviously. The reason why I stopped talking about tutoring as a career option
is because that could never be more than a part-time gig. Not a full-time
gig. No benefits, no nothing, it would be a hard scrabble life. And
getting certified as a teacher, even if it means putting on a little more
student debt, is actually my best chance of being able to make a
middle-class income and actually pay off my student debt.
Last night I talked on the phone for an hour with one of my high school
teachers, asking for her advice. I asked her about the assertion that
being too highly educated and qualified with an academic masters makes you
unemployable -- my dad's wife Linda yelled at me yesterday morning that the masters degree
means that I couldn't get hired as a teacher -- and Denise, my high school
teacher who holds an M.A. in French, said very firmly to that, "Bullshit."
It's ridiculous. I think that Dad and Linda are so utterly certain that
my education is a giant joke and a big waste that even when I talk about
going into education, they think that my education is a giant drag. When
it's utterly ridiculous to say that being highly qualified makes me
unemployable. I just remember when I was in the military and I was getting
rather low marks in my performance evaluation (it didn't help that I
despised the military and so was not exactly highly motivated), and I
said, but in the college courses that I'm taking, I'm getting remarks such
as, this is the best student paper he has ever seen and he's just
completely and totally blown away, doesn't that mean anything? And I was
told, no. So then I went into college, where it DID mean something, and
for the first time in life I felt appreciated and able to accomplish great
things. The nail in the coffin of me looking for private sector work came
when I talked to that job counselor in the library, who told me that my
education doesn't matter, I should put my education on the very bottom of
my resume, and I was like, but I am very proud of this, and she said, well,
unless you're going into education..... And then when I talked to that
private school principal and she was highly receptive to me. And the fact that
the educational org I interviewed with actually appreciated "my very interesting mind,"
because as a mission statement they rather highly value education.
Education is where doors tend to open for me. It's where I can most
directly work with what I love, and feel like what I'm doing is of social
benefit. That was a big part of my problem with academia. Not only would
it not allow me to pursue my creative ambitions, but it felt so cut off
from the real world of real people. The world where I grew up and suffered
and which formed the core of my inner emotional experience. The academic
world is dispassionate, full of small rooms of people
talking only to each other. I felt very strongly the imperative mantra of
E.M. Forster, "Only connect."
So Denise, my old teacher, told me to forget the masters of education,
that it wouldn't make me more qualified than the M.A. makes me, and it's
additional student debt that I don't need. Just work on getting certified
-- and I could get certified to teach not only high school English but
also high school history, making me that much more marketable. It's the
fastest way of getting me into the career stream. And then later....
I saw this on the university web page, which made me VERY excited.
http://cehd.umn.edu/students/Certificates/Talent.html
I could do this! I WANT TO DO THIS. My biggest teaching dream is to be
able to help students who were like me when I was a kid, gifted and from
disadvantaged backgrounds. Which is why I latched on so strongly to being
an enrichment tutor for my 14-year-old incarcerated girl who was not being
sufficiently challenged in the classroom, instead of the normal path of
being a remedial tutor for those who are behind. And look at the classes I
could take! Intelligence and creativity! I'll talk to the career adviser
Monday morning, but what will probably happen is that I'll start off
teaching high school English and/or history, and then when I'm more
settled get certified in that special program.
Looked up gifted programs in Minnesota to find out what's out there. Found
this.
http://www.mcgt.net/links.html
And there's a gifted school in Minneapolis!
http://www.district287.org/index.php?src=gendocs&link=teachLearn_Gifted_GEAC_main&category=TeachingLearning_Gifted
Anyway, yeah. A lot to be said there. And I've already said a lot.
You didn't remember that I went into the military because I had no money
to go to college?
Lapelosa, still highly wired and possibly manic
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11:38 pm
[Link] | Are you ready for whiplash? I'm ready for whiplash. I got off the phone earlier this evening with my uncle, who talked me down. Thought that I had much more opportunity in Minneapolis than in Omaha, if I just stick it out, and furthermore (and I had been coming more and more to this conclusion for a while myself) education would be much more my forte than publishing/editing. As in me, going through the certification process, becoming a high school English teacher. I got very burnt out and disillusioned with academia, but while still in Ithaca I volunteered as an enrichment tutor for incarcerated youth, a 14-year-old girl, and I enjoyed it very, very much. I found it very fulfilling. And because high school teaching is much less of a pressure cooker than academia, I could write That Great American Novel after all. Or Russian novel, as the case may be. Basically, just think of me as Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes and all.
Are you thoroughly confused? Because God knows I am. I've been in crisis mode since Monday.
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10:26 pm
[Link] | So I am feeling extremely discouraged about finding a job. The week before, I interviewed for a position as a publications assistant at an educational non-profit, a job that I really, _really_ wanted. And they narrowed it down to one other person and me, and went with the other person. This, after a weekend when my dad made it abundantly clear that he thought that I would never get that job, is adamant that a liberal arts degree only prepares you to work in a gas station, although he sneered at the $32,000 starting salary that I would have received at the non-profit, and told me that if I don't have a full-time job lined up next week that's it, I can no longer live with him. Then he changed it to, you must have your own apartment and moved out by January 1st. The publications assistant job fell through, and then two secretarial jobs which I was prepared to do in its stead fell through. I was scheduled to do an interview this afternoon for a secretarial job at a housing assistance organization, which actually sounded interesting, and then they canceled it because they filled the position somewhere else. And now I have nothing. Plan on filing for unemployment and registering with more staffing agencies until something else comes through, although I need to do the job search stuff away from my own computer, since I need to stay out of the house because of Dad.
Just applied for this:
http://www.simplyhired.com/job-id/uhdupxm5yd/document-production-jobs/
I called the woman who I would have worked for at the non-profit -- by all accounts they loved me, and they wished that they could create a new position for me. The woman said that I would have a "very interesting mind." But they wanted somebody to not only be the publications assistant but to also be the go-to person whenever something technological breaks down, and decide if it can be fixed there or needs to be called in to tech support. And I'm comfortable with technology, but am not a techie, and I told them that, and the person that they went with was stronger in that department. Anyways, they loved me, they didn't hire me, and they told me that they'll keep an ear out for me for other possible positions in town.
I hope that I don't end up sleeping on an air mattress on my mother's floor in Omaha (and my mother lives in a slum, although she's a much nicer person than my dad) while working a telemarketing job, but it just may come to that.
I'm feeling very discouraged not only about getting an editorial job, but even a secretarial job or any other kind of job.
On the other hand, I finished my third radio news story today and it aired on the radio. Is available here, for 10/27/08, sometime after the 10:30 mark. It's on a ballot proposal to raise the Minnesota sales tax for the environment.
http://www.kfai.org/node/47
And I also heard from a Russian woman I met at the radio station -- who's from Birobidzhan! A city I already knew about, because I accidentally stumbled upon my accidental knowledge about the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, where Stalin tried to get all the Jews to move to instead of to Israel. In the furthest, furthest reaches of Siberia, next to a swamp.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Autonomous_Oblast
Anyways, she volunteered to help me translate a trial transcript from Russian to English, for the research I'm doing for my idea for a novel. And so she just sent me the first six pages of her translation, and said that she knows that I'm unemployed right now, but we could talk about a rate and I could pay her after I'm employed. I need to think about it, with everything that I have going on right now.
Current Mood:  depressed
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10:44 am
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Back from the dead
I've been away for.... a while. Quick update: I took a leave of absence from Cornell, became clinically depressed, worked a job that made me crazy with misery, eventually pulled myself together and finished my master's thesis, left Cornell at the end of July with my master's degree, moved in with my dad in Minneapolis while I look for a job in publishing/media, had a close call but am _still_ looking, and have started volunteering as a reporter at a local community radio station. I'm on the radio and everything. Also, I found an excellent subject for a novel and am just beginning the research project for that.
Not feeling so great about the job search front or living with my dad thingie, but am trucking on, trucking on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rwa2lsIR_l0
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08:03 pm
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This says NOTHING about who I am as a person
On the twelfth day of Christmas,  lapelosa sent to me... Twelve politics drumming Eleven queerness piping Ten angevins a-traveling Nine al-andalus reading Eight metaphors a-cooking Seven pseudo-dionysius a-writing Six dreams a-biting Five me-e-e-edieval manuscripts Four road trips Three fairy tales Two medieval mystics ...and a nebraska in a medieval history. Current Mood:  exanimate
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05:02 pm
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Our whacked out email conversations are screaming to be held in an all night New York City diner
This morning I and ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) chicalolita had an email exchange which I thought was very interesting, and so I've decided to share. Nothing fangirlish, I'm afraid -- mostly just our ramblings about life and friendship.
( Read more )
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08:00 pm
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My real life is lived parenthetically
I haven't posted in a while. Reason. I am bored with talking about my own life because my life is so boring. (And then when it's not boring, I feel so overwhelmed by it all that I just don't have the energy to sit down and write down it all.) What have I been doing all day? Latin, for my big Latin translation project. It's interesting Latin, but still. Latin. If I didn't have the animals (my cat and my ferret -- my ferret has a cold, I think, poor dear, and I've recently decided that my cat looks like an ewok) and internet friends to distract me, god knows what I'd do. Actually, judging by this summer, fall into a major funk -- no movement, no communication. I feel like I'll never be creative again. I'll never have an interesting thought again. Instead, it's just: I've been doing Latin all day, I just ate a little bit of the lentils and rice again for dinner, and I have a crick in my neck and a small headache and my left shoulder has been feeling achey for a few days now. God, I just want.... something. I don't know. I imagine myself standing in a snowy field looking up at the stars, cold and twinkling in the infinite dark. So far. And the way that the sky always looks in my dreams, as if it's so close that I could reach up on my tiptoes and touch it. A storm and tornado about to let loose on me. Even actually touching the sun and then making a sort of half step into another dimension, another world right beside this one all along, just underneath the surface.
Lapelosa, feeling stuff
(That was supposed to be "feeling stuck", but I like it.)
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02:27 pm
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Let me draw you a very stupid picture
Ah well, here I am with another picture post. But a GOOD picture post, I promise.
As some of you may already know, Amanda Swyver, meum alterum ego, has now been appointed mascot for the crumbalicious Facebook community More Tad, Please, run by the crumbalectable lashia69. I have, er, kind of sort of been having a lot of fun with Paul Dinello/Stephen Colbert/weird-shit-they've-done-together type of pictures, and I want to show off.
( Click here for the glory. )
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05:56 pm
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A very boring post of little interest to anyone
So teaching is hard. Last year was my first go at it; now I'm doing it again. But I think I'm getting better. Last year I had a few days of trying to get the students to talk about the assigned text and nobody talking; so far this semester that hasn't happened. Although students can be quiet, when I call on them they generally have smart things to say about the text. Conclusion: somehow, miraculously, I'm getting better at this.
( Read more lazy cut )
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06:15 pm
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Voice Post
Because Jaime asked me to sing. Beware!
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04:59 pm
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My weekend, my rambling
An exciting weekend. Highlights, in chronological order:
The Fuck Monkeys
Paul Dinello
Jordan Carlos
Annie and Friends
Talking with Chica
The Chelsea Hotel
So Friday I made the six hour bus trip up to NYC to see The Fuck Monkeys. I forced myself to read and comment on student papers on the way up, which was painful. Reading bad student writing is painful anyway, but I was also feeling very, very day dreamy, so it was pretty bad. I'd read a paragraph and then stare out the window for 10-30 minutes at a time. But I finally got in to the city around 6:30, immediately took the subway to the youth hostel where I had reserved a bed and checked in, and then navigated the subway system from there to the club in the Lower East Side, which was slightly tricky. I actually arrived a little early!
It turned out to be a very good show. The comedians were very funny, the music was rocking, the atmosphere of the little room was nicely intimate and freewheeling. Annie, aka shappyshaps, showed up and sat right behind me. At one point during the show, Paul Dinello came in and walked partway up the aisle right next to me, looked for a little bit and then turned back around and left again. Then it was finally time for him to go on and do his bit, and he walked in and stood on the floor while Matt Lappin, the organizer of the show, was introducing him. Turned out I sat down in a very good place, because Paul Dinello was standing right next to me -- like, I could have leaned over onto him -- for several, several minutes. It was weird. I looked away a lot in an effort not to stare, and then when I did look at him I had to crane my neck. He was wearing the red swim club tee-shirt and a black leather jacket and beige-ish slacks. This is going to sound odd, but I was disconcerted by the fact that he was chewing gum. He just stood there, chewing, pausing only for the occasional smile. At one point Matt asked if he was ready to go up there, and Paul silently shook his head no. And then Matt started going on about how Paul saved his life one time, until Paul got in, "I just asked you to leave my bathroom!" Then he went up on stage with his guitar, called Laura Krafft up onto the stage, and they started their show. Basically, they did this musical number where Paul pretended to be an ex-boyfriend stalking her and creeping her out. "I completely do not listen to your phone messages while touching parts of my body." "I just want to let you know that this just gave me an erection, in a professional manner." It was quite dirty all throughout. At the end Matt Lappin came back up on stage, said something about a Jesus song, and Paul Dinello just looked at him and said, "That's called pimping, Matt." No Jesus song. The end.
( LJ cut in a random place )
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04:49 pm
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Crotch face!!!
I just got my grubby little hands on a series of slides of the greatest thing EVER.
I just spent some time scanning in these slides. Yes, I know I just uploaded several examples of medieval art yesterday, but I have two defenses. One, this makes an actual series. It makes sense. The pages themselves may be out of order, but I basically kept multiple images from the same page together. It's fun to read. Now for the other defense.
THIS IS THE GREATEST THING EVER YOU GUYS. I LOVE THIS ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT SO SO MUCH YOU JUST DON'T KNOW. IS MY OVERUSE OF CAPSLOCK CONVINCING YOU OF THE SEVERITY OF ITS SHEER GREATNESS? OKAY THANKS. Go here to see more! I skipped lunch for this. BUT NOW I HAVE IT FOREVER!!!! I badly need supper.
Current Mood:  hungry
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06:03 pm
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So it appears that I like doing picture posts a lot
I invite you all to look at a very random collection of medieval art culled from a catalogue book of art from England 1200-1400 that I happen to have with me at the moment, for *blush* icon purposes. Random, because I just went through the book and scanned in images that I like. Now, it turns out that I fail at LJ still, because I just tried to post pictures from my image gallery, and it appears that by doing it that way I can only post one image at a time. I consequently direct you over this a-ways. As a taster, I present to you, for your viewing pleasure, this:
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detail from a manuscript page by the artist W. de Brailes, Oxford, 1230-1240.
Freaky women (?) OMG! |
Whoever can tell me what the hell is going on in this picture wins the internets.
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06:53 pm
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Compliments on the house
Comment with your username and I'll give you an honest compliment. Then post this in your journal and spread the love.
Ahahahaha. I just lost my meme maidenhead!
Oh, and BTW: A rack of Lamb of God for the win!
http://lapelosa.livejournal.com/8904.html
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09:51 pm
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Grocery shopping and literature
Some very, very random thoughts I had within the hour.
While grocery shopping
They have pomegranates on sale! OMG I love pomegranates so so much. They make the best snack food -- peeling apart the rind with your fingernails, pulling apart the waxy part of skin and the rind as tentatively as you can so that you lose as few seeds as possible to the winds of change, popping a handful of seeds into your mouth and biting down and tasting the juice and then swallowing the seeds, which would be doing nature's work if not for the part where I have indoor plumbing and don't live in a climate where pomegranate trees would flourish. Sorry, Mother Nature. But I'll eat you anyway. As random seeds pop out and squish juice all over my floor.
I like baked things and creamy things, but this grocery store, just a little, regular ol' grocery store, is not the place to satisfy those cravings. Oh, they have them on sale all right, but when the list of ingredients is this Frankenstein list of hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup and tons and tons and tons of chemicals, I just can't do it, yo. I just can't think of that shit as food. And so I walk out of the grocery store with those cravings for baked things and creamy things sadly unfulfilled. But places where they have good food? DANGEROUS. Mm, yummy stuff.
Did I actually just hear the intercom interrupt that Beatle song for an announcement about upcoming Boss Appreciation Day and you should buy a present to show your boss your appreciation? THAT IS ALL KINDS OF FUCKED UP. Marketed day to "show your appreciation" to those WHO HAVE POWER OVER YOU?!?!?! *cue outrage, becomes a socialist*
While Walking Home From The Grocery Store, Thinking About My Day
I've just started re-reading Chretien de Troyes' Knight of the Cart, so that when I force my freshmen to begin reading it for Friday and be ready for class discussion, it's actually fresh in my mind. And OMG I am so glad I did. It's been a while since I've read Chretien, and I'd completely forgotten not only how charming and fascinating his stories are, but also how incredibly fucking surreal they are. There's a nice manuscript illumination I have somewhere that I may have to scan in of Lancelot lying in the Perilous Bed as darts shoot at him from the ceiling (no one shooting the darts, mind you. Just... darts). I especially like the scene where he walks in and finds a woman about to get raped by a shirtless man, and the woman totally expects Lancelot to save her but Lancelot just wants to get rid of her anyway because she's keeping him from His One True Love Guinevere and he's pretty creeped out about how the man has no shirt on and in the meanwhile the entire household is standing around the freaking room watching everything and eventually Lancelot charges in to fight but man he's so not happy about it. And we have the sex and we have the violence and we have the deep and agonizing philosophical questions about the nature of gender and love and subjectivity and the construction of identity and it's just totally HEART.
That is all.
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10:05 pm
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Voice Post
Chica,
I think I've decided to just make this available for you to listen to, for now. The results are not as hilarious as I had hoped... although I did enjoy screaming "Lincoln, I'm coming!"
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09:18 pm
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I am easily amused, and surely going to hell
http://www.wrestlingforgayguys.com/
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06:07 pm
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Bought a new digital camera, am playing around
( FTMFW )( FTMFW yet again ) *is an exhibitionist*
What you see here is basically a conjunction of several, simultaneous forces colliding all at once in an awesome display of synchronicity and unnecessary posting, all of which involve me spending unnecessary money. First, I finally joined the rest of (privileged) America and bought myself a digital camera, albeit a cheapie. This means that I no longer have to go through the process of buying a disposable camera, processing film, and scanning in the prints. For The Motherfucking Win. Also, as I said before, I went and splurged on a paid LJ account, which means not only that I get more icons but also lots of other cool stuff like the ability to upload photos and use rich text editor. Are the pictures too big? Will the LJ cut work? We shall find these things out soon, surely.
Although really, I have no excuse. I have no point to this entry. I just liked the way these photos of myself I took this afternoon turned out.
Thank you and good night.
FTMFW!!!
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05:04 pm
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In the motherfuckin' club
Well well well, guess what I just did. I finally got around to downloading a bunch of icons, got greedy, upgraded to a paid account. Figured eh, it's about the cost of a magazine subscription and I spend more time with this than I would with a magazine. Plus, I've been hanging around here for at least the past two months, so I got staying power baby. Whee.
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