Penny Hero (dot) Net

There’s a kind of potential for therapeutic honesty in blogging. There’s the publicprivate-ness of it too–the illusion of anonymity and the gratuitous self-indulgent drama… ego stroking/popping.

But, there’s value in the act of just spilling. unrestraint in a public place. telling faceless usernames how and why and to what extent you hate foo. I’m sure people have tied blogging to the psychological and psychic value that comes from “confession” before and I don’t want to be the umpteenth person to do that.

Potential for therapeutic honesty when you’re sure the people reading aren’t affected by the things you do/say/write/read.

On some topics, I’ve gone back to a paper journal. And tonight I realize I’ve taken for granted my freedom of expression here. I feel restrained, censored, even though I’ve got nothing bad to say tonight.

News: I’m manic today. and I’m not sure why. anxiety over being in class again. Anxiety over being part of a pair. Anxiety and worry about failing in either of those roles. Anxiety about being friends/co-workers with so many ex-boyfriends, one of which I think could grow into an awesome life-long work-partnership/friendship… but the anxiety comes in because I know my boyfriend would rather he was a girl, and/or not my ex…

anxiety about my roommate… and how now that her boyfriend is back, I’m more comfortable around her. It’s not fair to her to have let the relationship degenerate for 3 months while he was in Japan. It’s not fair, and not nice. I love her and I wish I could just be her friend… anxiety about girls in general… I can’t explain why I can’t ever seem to feel comfortable around them. conversations NOTHING, let alone roommates.

I want to feel more calm. I want to feel more capable. I feel so off-centered because of something. But I can’t figure out what it is. I feel like I’ve got something on my contact lens. enough to be fuzzy, but not enough to find.

I’m in a rusty, leaky metal row boat. I’m trying violently to sleep in the bottom while the gentle icy waves rock me back and forth. As long as I don’t move too much, I’ll be safe from the colder, darker water. Metal digs into my back, my sides, my hands. I’m cold. But the water’s colder, so I’ll stay here and pretend to be calm. But is it better? to be safe and cold? or dead and cold? or is the water just icy at first, and once I’m in it I’ll discover I’m really a flounder?

Right now, I don’t care to know. but it’s so hard to be calm when you’re shivering.

I have a little cloth notebook that I bought in Japan… and I’ve been using it to kinda log ideas, thoughts, rants, research topics, and anything else I feel like writing down.

I’ve realized now that there’s a certain value in posting some of this stuff in my journal. The whole public[private(public)] thing has many pros.

どうぞ：

• Research: “easy solution” epidemic… trace it through time. Q: a us phenomenon? diet fads, frivlous law-suits, internet shopping, editorials blaming the media for bad public critical thinking. Look at other countries… japan, china, canada etc. Is it related to “reductionist” values pervading much of patriarchal science? (Genome project, de-emphasis on research on 3rd-world disease etc) Post wwii physics p163 Barad.
• “interdisciplinary” isn’t even enough to help solve problems in classroom, education, literacy, culture. Worse: artificially enforicng lines between spheres. better: holistic… but how the fuck do you do that? seminar paper idea: look at how structuralism has enforced failures in literacy education. compare with other nations?
• Fiction idea: overwhelmbed but going, chugging along… and in ione fluid motion turn the page and smash th ebagel on my forehead, feeling the cool sensation of chees on my skin instead of in my mouth (java ii… no sleep. no possibility of finishing)
• There are arguments for making academic writing more accessible to the masses. There are arguments for forcing a person to strive and rise up to be able to understand academic discourse. (places value on one, not the other. is this right?) Bridge: there is a gap but someone could build a carreer “translating”… maybe not necessary. Ideas filter down through culture… but slowly. Is this enough? why am I so irritated by how opaque i think aca. lit. is?
• Rey Chow PMLA Jan 01 - equates derridas ‘mistake’ with those of columbus and the modern. so, war being a catalyst ofr new technologies and sciece would be ok too? Deconstruction: define halves then demonostrate motion… more likely that derrida was identifying how we percive chinese? claims D actually thinks the east in essentialist terms. Really? read gramatology. actually finding VALUE in stereotypes? “presense” == stereotype?”
• Screw housewife. marry rich and go to school forever.
• “it shows women in an objectifying way. it showes these men as objectifiers, unconscious of their surroundings etc.
• If we lvalue “unemotional” in getting things done, could ‘klingons and ‘enemy cultures’ or other’ be seen as a place where emotion/anger is effective? Are we incapable of imagining an “other” except by inverting something in ourselves?

There is much more, but i have to go to class in about 15 minutes and I still am not wearing any clothes.

Heh. :)

First class was Japanese… at bloody 8am. Gawd. Coffee shops are not even open in time for me to grab some caffeine before class either. Stupid coffee shops. I’m going to really dislike that morning class. Oh well.

I walked into my second class all stoked and happy because it meets in the spiffy-neat engineering building. (why do engineers get all the cool buildings?) I walked in early, and pretty soon the place was packed with lots of big loud male students. The first sign that something was wrong was the fact that everyone (all 2 or 3 hundred of them) seemed to know each other. Then I overheard much talk about engineering. Luckily, someone near me opened up their schedule to show someone, and I caught a glimpse of what class this really was. A 300-level engineering class. whoopie! So not CSS. hah. So I politely excused myself and about four other guys literally fought over my seat.

So, now I’ve got another 45 minutes to kill before I get to learn about dirt and shit. No, really. Dirt and shit. Crop and Soil Sciences, yo.

In Other News: I saw someone wearing a livejournal tee shirt on my way out of Japanese. I was too chicken to say hi though… maybe she’s a member of . For some reason, it made me think about how cool it would be if I could have a tee shirt that said I maintain <lj comm=”oregonstate”>. God, I’m so self-absorbed.

I just witnessed something very incredible. Livejournal is one of those incredible things… allows you to see tiny windows into random people’s lives (or people sorted by region, interest or community)… I just caught a glimpse of perhaps a star imploding… a nightmare shining…

I witnessed an intimate confession thrown out into the universe with so much fear and apprehension that its tension was a tangible entity detectable even in such a static and stoic medium as text on a computer screen often is.

This person is someone I’ve admired from a distance since I found their journal. Whenever I comment there, it takes me sometimes 30 minutes to compose a message, and just as long to become satisfied with it enough to submit it… I feel like I put on a mask there… inspired by his gossamer images and poetry… an attempt to be his equal.

Nightmare confessed, and the universe poured its love all around him… supported him in his fear and anxiety and reassured him that he was still real. God… To have the world hold you close like that. Only I can’t help but imagine the agony he went through to bring himself up to that point…

I was so deeply moved by his confession… I know that someday I might go through something similar. He gave me hope.