Nods of the awake kind

For now, I'm happy. Hungry, but happy. I take my hunger, this insatiable curiosity, out into the world- into this beautiful universe- and I ask YOU to join me in song and silence and open our hearts to the infinite forms God takes in this brilliantly lit life we share.

Life after the dissertation

(Book Autopsies by Brian Dettmer)

It keeps going. I knew that it would. But for some reason I thought it would be different. The relief is just as sweet as I had thought it would be. But ... but I don't know. I usually love acknowledging that I don't know. It means another visit to Wikipedia, or being wide-eyed while a new tidbit is added to the ever-growing part of my brain that obsessively collects trivia and unusual information. Usually. But these past few days have been rather unsual.

I don't know. I keep telling myself not everything has to make sense. Sometimes, random things happen, and you can't explain them. To work out how this particular coordinate of space and time fits into the greater scheme of the universe is a bit too much for one silly giggly girl to handle. To work out how it fits into my limited reality, however, is an achievable feat. Something I don't have the energy to do right now.

And to think that my curiosity snarls at me, as it circles around repetitively before it collapses on the floor to sleep, worries me. A lot. Because I don't want to be this sort of person.

My to-do pile steadily grows as my output remains the same. I was not expecting things to stop, but I certainly wasn't expecting it to be this hard. My mother consoled me, it's because you're capable people keep coming to you with things they'd like you to do, you're blessed Yerin. Blesst and blessid. I know this. But that doesn't change the fact I'm horrendously grumpy and prone to breaking into tears. My eyes started to leak at the dinner table last night. I don't know why. My dad got upset because I refused to talk about it. I thought I was being honest in saying I didn't know why I was crying. Must there be a reason for everything?

Knowledge is power. I know a lot of things, this is true. I don't know how they are to empower me though. Maybe I'm not ready to know so much. I need to grow up, fast, before I can be mobile. Because I desperately want to dance.

Not too long ago, I was thinking about how sympathetic we are when people get sick. Allergies, upset stomachs, a headache. We're not only physical beings though. We're emotional. Since when were our emotions located directly below volition of the self? Maybe it always has and I'm only just catching onto the idea.

A naked swim in the ocean would heal this, if I was not afraid to leave the rectangular confines of my room.

---

I know it keeps going, I know; but just give me a minute while I tighten my shoelaces.

People are not cats

I burped. The tastes that the air left in my mouth could not be differentiated. Deep and digested, carbohydrate or saccharine? Breakfast or lunch, from today or yesterday?

*face hides; pushed around by hands*

I closed my eyes for a moment and imagined what a cross-sectioned bus would look like. A tesselation of angular people. I got scared for a minute thinking about how fast this bus was going, 70, 80, 90 km an hour, a tin full of people, hurtling through the air on greased wheels.

I looked out the window of my northern express bus. I never noticed how close it drove to the ocean. Were it not for the windows that would not open, if I had stuck my tongue out, I would have tasted the salt. Still salt. The water was calm today. No kite surfers, no great big white fleshy clouds. Just still and grey.

***

What does it mean to get sick of someone? When you feel that you've had enough of that person you would like to move that person from the 5-6 servings base of the pyramid nearer to the top? Why do I even think I can ration and portion people in a way convenient for me? An open heart is a strong heart but I feel like the walls have been worn too thin. I don't want to go all cagey and introverted while I regroup. I don't want to collapse again when people get too demanding. Can't I chose what to ingest? To internalise?

I need to challenge myself more. I think the fact that I've allowed myself to get into such a thinking space; to treat and think of people like this, means that I've allowed myself to get far too comfortable. Perhaps a bruised ego is what I need what right now. Perhaps a bit more of your reality is what I need.

A vain wednesday morning

This is how some people have stumbled across my blog. The following words were searched for:

1. thoughtswithadjectives: 2
2. adjectives for a messy room: 1
3. adjectives for a salon: 1
4. adjectives for oil: 1
5. adjectives for coping: 1
6. bubbles adjectives: 1
7. google images adjectives: 1
8. list of adjectives to describe a messy room: 1

My ego is tickled with splee that the name of my blog is number one, and yes I am going to remain in ignorance of the actual numbers. If anyone has intentionally meandered to this blog to discover it is not dictionary.com, and you happen to be looking for adjectives for a messy room may I suggest describing the form light takes in this room, the sort of objects that are located in the room (what-ie clothes, discarded take out boxes, notes, where-location location location, how- ie lying about, strewn, scattered,) give the colours in the room emotions, anthropomorphise a salient object or two, and I would suggest giving your own twist on what 'messy' entails. Usually it's not a good thing, clean and orderly is 'good'. Messy is 'bad'. I encourage you to conceptualise of messy as something else other than these two.

If I was more awake, I would provide my own example. I'll save that for another sleepless night perhaps.

Adjectives for oil intrigue me though. Now, language and meaning is all about context.. I don't know what sort of oil I need to conjure in my mind's eye. It is the liquid black liqorice that hugs the ocean surface, or the soft human smell in a lover's hair, or the markings an old worn out volkswagon beetle makes on the road, the malleable yellow I smear liberally on low fat scones, the music in some people's voices... what?

(I was doing the dishes today-domestic tasks are repetitive and oddly calming-and I noticed the bottle of dishwashing liquid was FOUR TIMES STRONGER THAN REGULAR DISHWASHING LIQUIDS TO CUT THROUGH GREASE. The four was more like a 4! though. I thought to myself, dear Lord, what are we eating these days for the need/market for such a product come into being? Ew. Although having said that, pasta tossed with olive oil, tomatoes, fresh basil leaves with salt and freshly grinded [ground?] pepper is one of my favourite dishes. Oh 4 am hunger pangs starting to kick in... 4!)

And in my clumsy drowiness I have lost the trail of crumbs. Oh crumbs.

Um. I vaguely remember the original reason for starting to write this post was because of a boy. But I suppose forgetting turned out better for all of us. I don't feel like writing obtuse generalisations about boys right now, and I assume you don't want to read them either. My brother's ipod, which I have pinched to keep me company in these god-forsaken hours of the morning, is winding me down with Radiohead. Hello Thom Yorke. Goodnight dear reader.

Closing comments: ''first draft'' tag is becoming redundant. What do you do when you're sleepless? -Just realised that the reason I may be so awake is because I'm in a foreign bed tonight. And no, not like that. I'm sleeping downstairs tonight.

Monday

Technology is doing my head in. Or rather, out. Out into a million fragmented pieces, firefly explosions of events that never really happened, but rather a passing moment, a rolling instance.

In 140 words or less, I type out...whatever it is I fancy. Recently, I've joined Plurk.com, and this website helps with 'writer's block', lets call it, by providing starter verbs. Yerin says, wants, feels, loves, shares, wishes, feels. My life, my thoughts, everything, can be divided into these verbs. Broken down according to what I do.

Facebook is making me equally nervous as well.

Now this is all just me ranting, but being prompted to produce updates regularly has eliminated the need for anything to happen. The description has preceded the event. Or nothing at all has to happen, and I write about that. -is bored, -is procrastinating, -wonders what to have for breakfast.

Having read a whole of notes and books and footnotes about how the narration of everyday life can help shed light on human experience, providing a more coherent and accurate picture of lived human experience, especially experience of people who are marginalised, the question that comes to mind is, well what sort of human experience does our micro mini online social networking narration of ourselves suggest? (it's very interesting how we're all taking part in each other's narratives with the 'like' and commenting; lamebook presenting excellent examples of this)

Obviously one's motivations for updating differ from person to person. I suppose mine is just getting what's on my mind out there. But the thing is, the form that this expression takes, itty bitty sound bites, breaks up my train of thought. I don't collect my thoughts in jars anymore, but they're on display in a donation-optional quirky antique collection out-in-the-country-highway road stop. You know? Like a thousand owl figurines lined up on shelves. I've had 16 Plurks so far today. They're counting. Sweet Jesus they're counting.

It's to much. It's broken down too much. Too compartmentalised and timed and counted and broken and minute. Call me greedy, but I need to have more space to write out sentences, I need more synonyms endowed with delicious vowels.

Also, what is up with all these neologisms? Tweets and Plurks and googling. Bebo.

I create words and texts and then in turn they influence and create me sort of thing is going on here I think. Maybe I'm looking too much into this. Maybe. Probably.Although, I'm terribly amused at how we upload excessively flattering pictures of ourselves on fb. I should just swallow all this and let trends in all their trendy splendour keep going.

HB pencil

I've been keeping myself from blogging the minow details of my day to day life. What I had for lunch for who I met for coffee or the bus driver who could have ruined my day when I realised I'm not that sort of person.

I don't collect such observations and musings for the specific purpose of blogging, but because I haven't done so for a really long time, it feels like they have balled up inside me and I have to write them out, otherwise I will implode or remain irrationally grumpy for the next week. Yes, my levels of grump correlate directly with the amount of writing I've done.

Something small and uncomfortable stirs inside me when I haven't told you about how I cut across the damp grass to get home wearing leaky shoes, how the streetlamp turned itself off as I walked under it, but I had just enough time to catch a glimpse of the buttercups, and knowing I was in the company of buttercups made damp socks worthwhile.

I feel incomplete if I don't unclutter my pockets of buttons, string and coins, to inunduate you with waking up at 4am with a carnal hunger for oranges and going back to sleep at 4.12, happy with zest under my nails.

I wanted to try muting all this and make my blog more clever, more objective, less personal, less everyday. I tried, but that's not who I am. I thrive off smiles and learning a person's favourite colour, I look forward to time I spend on the bus everyday to just watch people and wonder. Making a cup of tea is ritual for me. Reading the same novel again is transformative.

And now, I'm okay. Not because I'm at zero; balance; equilibrium (stagnant stillness), but because I've opened up my chest in the most amazing standing mountain position, I don't know where to draw the lines between literal and metaphor, everything is moving and being poured out, shifting and alive.

Faecis take two

Analogous to the varying usage of the soil and dirt, the use of the word home is all about context.

We don’t think about ‘home’ when we are in it. Really think about it I mean. When we are in it, it is physical, geographical, residential and tangible. Once we leave, say to a foreign place, then home moves from being to being embodied. We see the value of our homes when we aren’t in them, and the transition from physical to emotional space occurs-the emotion of nostalgia is brought to the foreground. This, I believe, is in line with Lakoff and Johnson’s argument that metaphors are embodied. (Out of placed-ness also draws attention to the normative conditions of the existing environment)

However, home is not always our place of abode; there are instances when we find ourselves feeling ‘at home’, in the most unexpected places. So examining the use of the phrase ‘like home/at home’, we find this is primarily psychological. Where does this psychological sense of home come from? I think it's how well the space we are in embodies what we think is characteristically us. To what extent my surroundings reflect me, I find myself in that dresser, the painting, the walls. When we ascribe the appellation of ‘home’ that is not our place of origin, our residential address, or a place that we have lived a long time, it is because that place somehow manifests ourselves externally. (Lantz 1996: a home is an extension of an individual’s very person pg 29) We have what we understand to be ourselves looking back at us.

Home is a place that speaks to us in a way that is gentle and familiar.

A combination of the physical and the social, and intersection of geography and ideology.

In my study, I propose to look at the mutlifaceted, polyvalent concept of home from the perspective of the first and 1.5 generation of Korean immigrants to NZ. Their self-writing will be my primary source; both published and unpublished narratives will be looked at, and possibly using blogs as a source of narratives as well. Geography is something that has been ignored somewhat in critical theory, focusing more on gender, identity, class etc. I propose to ground my research in a theoretical framework that includes cultural geography.

I think my study has important implications for the future of immigrants, promoting race relations and cultural understanding. It will also be able to contribute towards the growing literature of and for the 1.5 generation, for the movement to be theorized and analyzed more comprehensively.

-In doing a review of people’s narratives, what is the home associated with? Ie family, friends, status, achievement?
-How these metaphorical meaning making dimensions coincide with the specific patterns and processes experienced in an immigrant lifestyle?
-How space and place structure identity and belonging, what ideas of identity and belonging are transmitted from the places we situated ourselves in, especially of the home.

Home, identity, language, retrospective narrative, interactive metaphor, relationship of spatial metaphor and spatial practice(s/processes) of home, Narrative inquiry