Matter Over Mind

Have you ever tried to think about nothing? That elusive Zen-like state of calmness. It never works because then you concentrate on not concentrating. But today, I stopped thinking. My mind literally went blank. Nothing. Nada. It stopped functioning. Just like that. My cold has sapped all energy out of me. I go around with a glazed look and gaze at things without recognition. Blargh. My eyes are glazing right now.

I look Superquiz today, which despite its intimidating name, went surprisingly well, resulting in an usually high score : study time ratio. (As opposed to English, whose score:study time ratio is depressingly low.) After literally zero study, I realized it was the least-prepared I've ever been for a test; I hadn't even made an attempt to study nor had I touched the packet since November. Strangely, I think I did better this time than on the first round. Pfft. This actually establishes a terrible precedent: any motivation to study for future tests is gone. (Not that there was much motivation before.)

My zoned-outness extended into Acadec as well:
Jyoti/Yi: Number 19 doesn't make sense. Was that the question thrown out?
Crick: Yea, 19 is a terrible question. It's just screwed up. (Okay, maybe he was more articulate , but my mind isn't recording on such high cognitive levels.)
Me: What's wrong with number 19? It makes perfect sense!!! OF COURSE WINTER SOLSTICE IS CLOSEST TO THE END OF WINTER. GEEZ!
So in King Lear, the most foolish person is actually the wisest. Maybe that's the case here? And no one else realizes my brilliant logic? Yea right. Sigh. And then I tried to make Sue correct my test even though she hadn't taken Superquiz yet.

I need sleep. Good luck getting any this weekend. The next 7 days will be hellish.

To Do for Weekend of January 20

• 2 days of Calc - in my supreme ditizness, I didn't realize there was a back to the assignment sheet
• 2 days of physics
• Catapult
• French Project: write and finish art, memorize presentation
• King Lear recitation
  
• KING LEAR PAPER.
  
• 1 week worth of Euro homework
• Senior Sem advertisement
• Figure something out about Yale
• FAFSA, CSS profile, taxes and crap
  
• Angela's Ashes
  

To <3 or Not to <3

Despite that message at the end of the last post, I still haven't touched math. Procrastination is a way of life.

During math class today, I half-listened to Noeth while cramming Chinese music for Acadec. I know a little of both subjects and not enough of either. Alas, the period afterwards, I sojourned all the way to the red wing to seek out Crick for the music test. He was chatting with former students (yet again), and I got plaintively waved off to somewhere "quiet," which suited me perfectly fine.

I skimmed through the music test while skimming through my daily internet perusals: email and Slate in the computer lab. (Evidently, Chinese music is too boring to occupy my entire brain.) Steff walks in and starts doodling differentials onto my test. As we assess the aesthetic appeal of various terrorists and actresses, I remember I have to turn in the test to Crick next period and get back to work on it. There, I see Steff has scrawled, "I <3 CRICK."

Sigh. I <3 Steff.

Paris. Berlin. Mexico City.

Hunkered down with Youtube and DVD for some lovely and romanticized traveling this weekend.

First destination was Paris via Youtube. Upon learning that the long-anticipated portmanteau film Paris je t'aime was bootlegged on youtube, my hot little criminal hands sought then out immediately. So yes, watching a 5 in screen surrounded by white space and ads is not the optimal viewing experience, but shame on US distributors for not putting it out in theaters or DVD. (Especially when this French movie has so many American directors and stars.) I haven't gotten around to watching them all -- it seems 6 years of French study has been for naught -- though I have been so far duly amused and touched.
Maybe it's just my short attention span, but I adore short films and short stories. It is a difficult art to capture something momentous in only a few minutes or a few pages. Brevity is the soul of wit, no? When done well, a short film is the perfect capsule of a sentiment. When done badly, it just seems very pedestrian. From the segments I've seen so far, Paris je t'aime is a mix of both. My favorite are by Tom Twyker and Alexander Payne (not, interestingly, my favorites directors at all): Fauborg Saint-Denis and 14e arrondissement. Least favorites are by Christopher Doyle and Wes Craven, the former tries unsuccessfully for Chinese-French punnage and the latter is just unsuccessful despite invoking the spirit of Oscar Wilde.

Sunday night, I turned my gaze eastward and backwards in time to 1980s Berlin. Wings of Desire was recommended to me by my UChicago interviewer, and since I recently received a nice email from her, I decided I needed to watch it now. But Wings of Desire is not an urgent movie. It languishes, it longs, it lingers. From its soaring aerial views to the cool black and white , it's a poetic meditation. I actually liked it quite a lot, but I need to rewatch it in a less detached frame of mind. I love the title Wings of Desire because it's haunting, and the same can be said about the film, but I need to let it "haunt" me more. The ending however, just totally lost me; I thought it was terrible and stopped listening.
By the way, on top of sharpening my French, I need to learn German too. The angels in Wings of Desire hear snippets of thoughts that are never translated in the subtitles--how infuriating! The opening lines of the film are echoing in my mind right now. Whoever said German was an angry language never heard enough German.

After a hemisphere change, I found myself in a rambunctious Mexico City. Sólo con tu parejga is a exuberant sex farce that manages to take on a rather serious topic: AIDs. Tomas (Daniel Gimenez Cacho -- creepy priest of Bad Education!) is a serial womanizer who gets a bitter pill when one of his conquests decides to take revenge. I adore the cover art - inventive, loopy, and rife with phallic symbols - sums up the film perfectly.

Now I am off to the utterly unlovely and unromantic Mathland.

Drunken Nerds

Four successive posts UChicago-related. Hmm, I begin to sense a pattern. Anyways, bits and pieces from fellow Chicago applicants assembled from around the Internet.

On why Chicago students drink so much:
The smarter you get, the more depressing you realize the world is. The more depressed you get, the more you drink. (paraphrased)

So, bar jokes:


Rene Descartes walks into a bar. The bartender asks "Something for you, sir?" Descartes replies "I think not," and vanishes.

A neutron walks into a bar and asks for a beer, which the bartender gives him, and then walks away.
The neutron calls after him, "Hey, how much does this beer cost." The bartender replies, "For you, no charge!"

C, E flat, and G walked into a bar. "I'm sorry," the bartender said, "We don't serve to minors." So E flat left and C and G split a fifth between them.

Essay 1: Claustrophilia

In his book Having Everything Right: Essays of Place, Kim Stafford describes the Kwakiutl tribe of British Columbia assigning place-names based on the natural characteristics of a location, the events that took place there, or the feelings that the site instilled. "Where Salmon Gather," "Sound of Dripping Water," and "Where Dzo'noq!wa Cried Out Oh," were among the names the Kwakiutl people assigned to their surroundings. He'lade, translating to "Place Having Everything Right," was of particular meaning, as it was the name universally given to exceptional locations. What is your he'lade?

I’ve never understood claustrophobia because I have the opposite condition: claustrophilia. Small spaces are my he’lades. The walls encircle me like hugs, and I curl up in my own warmth. It is comfortable and comforting. There is no room for a big scary monster to hide behind my back, and I can inspect every inch of the floor for creepy crawlies. As I press my chin into the groove between my folded knees, I feel good. It’s as simple as that.

Small spaces are common, but they are not created equally. You can find them anywhere: under a table, behind a door, between shelves. But the conditions that create small spaces also make them uninhabitable: too dark, too inaccessible, or even too small. The perfect space is hard to come by, but I happen to have one in my bedroom.

Between my bed and the wall, there is a strip of land that is the exact width of my hips. Holiday feasting usually makes the squeeze snugger, but fat is fortunately squishable so I still manage to fit in. On one side, I have the white blankness of a wall—a potential canvas if inspiration strikes. On the opposite side is the narrow ledge between the mattress and bed frame, where I’ve improvised a shelf perfect for hiding pencils, socks, and midnight snacks. A nightstand makes up the third side, and a clock and lamp sit atop as reminders of the outside world. The groove of my neck fits perfectly on the top of the nightstand, but the handles of its shelves dig into my spine. I’ve gotten used to it, though future spine problems may be blamed on those handles.

Usually, a book or magazine rests on my knees when I sit there. If it’s a school assignment, my left hand splays the book open and my right wields a pencil ready to discern its meaning. More often, I am peering at the glossy pages of a magazine, either reading about Baghdad or the latest misadventures of Sienna Miller. Its floppy pages stay put on my knees, so both of my hands are instead devoted to stuffing food into my mouth. Compressed in that little space between the bed and wall, I have learned two hundred years of European history as well as the intimate details of Miller’s relationships. As thus, I have enjoyed the company of both John Law of pre-French Revolution infamy and Jude Law of Nannygate infamy in that inter-furniture space.

In three dimensions, this place is tiny, but other dimensions exist too, and they can be boundless.